"Ah, honey, come on. It will get better."
Pewter circled the building from the other end. At the sight of the tiger cat, Pewter broke into a lope.
"You won't believe it." Her white whiskers swept forward in anticipation of her news. "Rex Harnett is back there carrying on like sin. I mean, he needs to have his mouth inspected by the sanitation department."
"Because of Hank?"
Pewter puffed out her chest. "Hank, Charlie, Dennis, you name it. He's, uh, voluble." She opened her right front paw, unleashed her claws, then folded them in again. "Mostly it's babble about how he couldn't make the football team and was elected Most School Spirit as a sop. Get a life! He did say that he knows who Charlie got pregnant."
"Well?"
"Nothing. He needed to sound important. I don't think he knows squat. Tracy Raz got disgusted and went back to his reunion. His parting words were 'Grow up.'"
"I'm not sure what really started the fight but I do know that Rex Harnett may be a drunk but that doesn't mean he's totally stupid. Maybe he does know something."
"Rex is hollering that he's no homosexual." Pewter loved the dirt. "Bob Shoaf told him to shut up. If Rex were homosexual, homosexuals would be grossed out. Pretty funny, really."
"I thought you were in the cafeteria with the golden oldies." Mrs. Murphy turned in a circle, then sat down.
"I ran out with Tracy. The hall amplifies noise." Pewter paused for effect, returning to the scene outside with Rex: "Then, and I tell you I about fell over, Rex started crying, saying that no one ever liked him. He did not deny being a drunk, however. Are they all nuts or what? I thought reunions were supposed to be happy. Miranda's is. Anyway, Rex stormed off to the men's room. I think Bob walked around to the other side of the school to find Fair and Hank."
"The hormone level is a lot lower at Miranda's." The tiger smiled. "They're just animals, you know. That's what so sad. They spend their lifetime denying it but they're just animals. I can't see that we act any worse when our mating hormones are kicking in than they do."
"Paddy proves that," Pewter slyly said, making an oblique reference to Mrs. Murphy's great love, a black tom with white feet and a white chest, a most handsome cat but a cad.
"If you think you're going to provoke me, you aren't. I'm going back inside. Who knows, maybe someone else will blow up or reveal a secret from the past."
Pewter had hoped for a rise out of Murphy. "Me, too."
They bounced onto the steps of the side door. The old, two-story building had a front door with pilasters, a back door into the gym, and two side doors which were simple double doors.
One side door was propped open. They walked down the main hall toward the gym.
Susan Tucker, Deborah Kingsmill, and Bonnie Baltier barely noticed the cats as they walked by them.
"-ruin the whole reunion."
"They'll get over it," Susan replied.
"I wish everyone would stop speculating about who Charlie got pregnant. I fully expect everyone to sit down with their yearbooks and scrutinize every female in the book from all three classes. That's not why we're here and anyway, nothing anyone can do about it."
"Baltier, people love a mystery," Susan said.
"No one even knows if it's true," Deborah Kingsmill sensibly replied. "Because he was so handsome people make up stories. If it isn't true they want it to be true. It's like those tabloid stories you read about superstars drinking lizard blood."
The women laughed.
"What's so strange about drinking lizard blood?" Pewter asked.
"Pewter." Mrs. Murphy reached out and swatted Pewter's tail.
As the cats laughed and the three women headed back to the gym, Harry came into the hall from the front door.
Before the cats could run to her and Tucker, a shout from the men's locker room diverted their attention. Dennis Rablan threw open the door, stepped outside, leaned against the wall and slid down. He hit the floor with a thump. He scrambled up on his hands and knees, tried to clear his head and stood upright.
As Susan, Bonnie, and Deborah ran to him from one direction, Harry and Tucker ran from the other.
"Call an ambulance," Dennis croaked.
38
"Don't go in there." Dennis barred the way as Harry and Susan moved toward the men's locker-room door.
"They'll never notice us." Mrs. Murphy slipped in since the door was easy to push open. Pewter and Tucker followed.
They ran into the open square where the urinals were placed. Three toilet stalls were at a right angle to the urinals. A toilet stall door slowly swung open, not far.
"There." Pewter froze.
Rex Harnett's feet stuck out under the stall door.
"I'll check it out." Tucker dashed under the adjoining stall, then squeezed under the opening between the two stalls.
Mrs. Murphy, unable to contain her famous curiosity, slipped under from the other stall since Rex was in the middle one.
"He's dog meat," Mrs. Murphy blurted out, then glanced at Tucker. "Sorry."
"You'd better be."
"What is it? What is it?" Pewter meowed. Being a trifle squeamish, she remained outside.
Face distorted, turning purple, Rex's eyes bulged out of his head; the tight rope around his neck caused the unpleasant discoloration. His hands were tied behind his back, calf-roping style, quick, fast, and not expected to hold long. Between his eyes a neat hole bore evidence to a shot at close range with a small-caliber gun. No blood oozed from the entry point but blood did trickle out of his ears.
"Fast work." Murphy drew closer to the body. "What does your nose tell you?"
"What is it!" Pewter screeched.
"Shot between the eyes. And trussed up, sort of, scaredy cat."
"I'm not scared. I'm sensitive," Pewter responded to Murphy, a tough cat under any circumstances.
Although the odor of excrement and urine masked other smells as Rex's muscles had completely relaxed in death, Tucker sniffed the ankles, got on her hind legs and sniffed the inside of the wrists, since his arms were turned palm outward.
"No fear smell. This is a fresh kill. Maybe he's been dead fifteen minutes. Maybe not even that, Murphy. So if he had been terrified, I'd know. That scent lingers, especially in human armpits." She reached higher. "No. Either he never registered what hit him, or he didn't believe it. Like Charlie Ashcraft."
"And Leo Burkey." The sleek cat emerged from under the stall to face a cross Pewter.
"I am not a scaredy cat."
"Shut up, Pewter." Murphy smacked her on the side of the face. "Just shut up. You know what this means. It means the murders are about this reunion. And it means that Marcy Wiggins didn't kill Charlie. She may have been killed because she got too close. We can't discount her death as suicide."
"What are we going to do?" Tucker, upset and wanting to get Harry out of the school, whimpered.
"I wish I knew." Murphy ran her paw over her whiskers, nervously.
"We know one thing." Pewter moved toward the door. "Whoever this is, is fast, cold-blooded, and wastes no opportunities."
"We know something else." Tee Tucker softly padded up next to the gray cat. "The murderer wants the attention. Most murderers want to hide. This one wants everyone to know he's here."
"That's what scares me." Murphy solemnly pushed open the door as the humans from both reunions piled into the highly polished hallway.
39
Harry could hear the wheels of the gurney clicking over the polished hall as Diana Robb carted away Rex Harnett's body. Her stomach flopped over, a ripple of fear flushed her face. She took a deep breath.
"Damnedest thing I ever saw," Market Shiflett said under his breath.
Harry and Market walked into a classroom only to find Miranda, Tracy, and others there from the other reunion. The two cats and dog quietly filed in. Mrs. Murphy sat on the window ledge in the back, Pewter sat on Harry's desk, and Tucker watched from just inside the doorway.