Рита Браун - Pawing Through The Past

"No. We just looked at one another at the supper and there it was. People told me these things happen at reunions but it wasn't a case of some old wish being fulfilled."

"Who did you date in high school? Any of the deceased?"

"Coop, I told you all this. No. My senior year I dated college guys mostly. The dances, let's see, I went with Bittner if my boyfriend at the time couldn't come."

"And where is this boyfriend?" Cynthia scribbled.

"A vice president at Coca-Cola in Atlanta. I think he'll be president someday. As you know, I married a hometown boy, although he was eight years older than I."

"Chris, sometimes outsiders can see more than insiders. What do you think?" Cynthia asked the blonde woman, who had been listening intently.

"That I'm glad I'm not part of this." She nervously glanced at BoomBoom. "Even if you are a woman and therefore probably safe, I'd be frightened."

"Did you notice anything unusual when you worked on the reunion?" Coop turned to Bitsy.

"Uh . . . well, they picked on one another. No one held much back." She smiled nervously. "But there wasn't enough hostility for murder."

"Did anyone ever discuss Charlie's illegitimate child from high school?"

Bitsy replied, "Not until Dennis lost his composure."

Chris looked Cynthia straight in the eye. "No. I didn't hear about that until later."

"You know that Dennis Rablan accused me of having Charlie's baby, but I didn't. I swear I didn't." BoomBoom frowned.

"But you know who did?" Rick quietly cornered her.

Boom's face turned red, then the color washed right out. "Oh God, I swore never to tell."

"You couldn't have foreseen this, and the information might have a bearing on the case." Rick remained calm and quiet.

Agitated, BoomBoom jumped from her chair. "No! I won't tell. She wouldn't have killed Charlie. She wouldn't. As for Leo and the others: Why? What could the motive possibly be? It makes no sense. I don't care what happened back then, if anything did happen. The murders make no sense."

"That's our job. To find out." Coop was now perched on the edge of her seat. "What may seem like no connection to you . . . well, there could be all kinds of reasons."

"But I thought these murders sprang from the supposed rape of Ron Brindell." Boom paced back and forth. "Isn't that what everyone's saying?"

"That's just it. No one admits to being there. Market Shiflett heard about it at school. Bittner says he wasn't there and the same for Dennis Rablan."

"What do you think?" BoomBoom asked Cynthia.

"It's not my job to point the finger until I have sufficient evidence. Right now what I think is immaterial."

"It's not immaterial to me." BoomBoom pouted, pacing faster. "You're asking me to betray a lifelong trust and I know in my heart that this woman has nothing to do with these awful murders." She sat down abruptly. "I know what you all think of me. You think I'm a dilettante. I have, as Mrs. Hogendobber so politely puts it, 'enthusiasms.' I sleep with men when I feel like it. That makes me a tramp, to some. I guess to most. You all think I take a new lover every night. I don't, of course. You think I'm overemotional, oversexed, and underpowered." She tapped her skull. "Think what you will, I still have honor. I refuse to tell."

"This could get you in a lot of trouble," Rick softly replied.

"Trouble on the outside, not trouble on the inside." She pointed to her heart.

51

Rick had been on the phone for fifteen minutes. On a hunch he had Cynthia call the San Francisco Police Department.

He decided he wanted to talk to the officers on the scene that night. Luckily, Tony Minton, now a captain, remembered the case.

"-you're sure the note was his handwriting?"

Captain Minton replied, "Yes. We searched his apartment after the suicide and the handwriting was his. Our graphologist confirmed."

"Enough is enough." Rick quoted Ron's suicide note.

"That was it."

"There were three reliable witnesses."

"And others who didn't stop. They reported a young man climbing on the Golden Gate Bridge, waving good-bye and leaping. We never found the body."

"And the witnesses could describe the victim?"

"Medium height. Thin build. Young. Dark hair."

"Yes." Rick covered his eyes with his palm for a moment. "Did he have a police record?"

"No."

"Captain Minton, thank you for going over this again. If you think of anything at all, please call me."

"I will."

Rick hung up the phone. He stood up, clapped his hat on his head, crooked his finger at Cynthia, who was again studying lab reports. "Let's go," he said.

Silently, she followed him. Within twenty minutes they were at Dede Rablan's front door.

She answered the door and allowed them to come inside. She then sent the two children, aged eight and ten, to their rooms and asked them not to interrupt them.

"I'm sorry to disturb you again, Mrs. Rablan."

"Sheriff, I want an answer to this as well as you do. Dennis wouldn't kill anyone. I know him."

"I hope you're right." Rick reassured her, by his tone of voice, that he felt the same way. "Has he called today?"

"No. He usually calls in the evening to check on the kids. He has them next weekend."

"You met just out of college?" Cynthia referred to her notes from an earlier questioning.

"Yes. I was working for a travel magazine. Just started. A researcher."

"Dede." Cynthia leaned toward her. She knew her socially, as they took dance classes together. "Did you ever get the feeling Dennis had a secret-even once?"

"I had hunches he was unfaithful to me." She lowered her eyes.

"Something darker?"

"Cynthia, no. I wish I could help but he's not a violent man. He's an undirected one. A spoiled one. If he had a dark secret, he kept it from me for twelve years. You have to be a pretty good actor to pull that off."

Rick cleared his throat. "Did you ever think that your husband might be a homosexual?"

Dede blinked rapidly, then laughed. "You've got to be kidding."

52

Monday proved to be even more chaotic than Sunday. Print reporters snagged people at work, and television vans rolled along Route 240 and the Whitehall Road as reporters looked for possible interviews.

Harry and Miranda refused to speak to any media person. Their patience was sorely tested when the TV cameras came inside anyway, the interviewer pouncing on people as they opened their mailboxes.

"Ask me," Pewter shouted. "I discovered the garotte."

"I discovered the body. I smelled it out!" Tucker tooted her own horn.

"You two better shut up. This is federal property and I don't think animals are supposed to work in post offices," Murphy grumbled. "They don't listen. They never listen. It's Dennis Rablan-dumbbells-Dennis and someone drenched in English Leather cologne."