"Yeah, you can take him." Rick leaned against the squad car to light a cigarette.
"Those things will kill you," Mrs. Murphy scolded.
He looked up at the cat looking down at him. "You don't miss a thing, do you?"
"Nope."
"Need a hand?" Tracy offered.
"We've got it, thanks." Diana smiled.
Tracy asked Rick, "If you don't need me anymore I'll be going."
"Where to?"
"The post office."
"I mean, where do you come from?" Rick inhaled.
Tracy briefly filled the sheriff in on his background. "Retired now. Came back to help with our high-school reunion."
Rick reached out to shake his hand. "Rick Shaw, sheriff."
"Deputy Cynthia Cooper." She shook Tracy's hand also, as did Fair.
"I'm renting rooms at Harry's farm. If you need me I'll be there." He opened the back door to the post office, slipping inside.
Fair, face white with upset, hands in jeans pockets, said, "Quite an ending for someone as fastidious as Leo Burkey. To be dumped with garbage."
"Harry made a similar comment," Rick noted.
Market bustled back again. "Sheriff, I hope you don't think I did this. I couldn't stand Leo, but I wouldn't kill him. Besides, he lived far enough away he didn't work on my mood." Market's voice was tremulous, his hands were shaking.
"Market." Rick paused. "Why didn't you like him?"
"Smart-ass. In high school-well, always."
"Yes, he was," Fair confirmed.
"As bad as Charlie Ashcraft?" Cynthia watched as Joe and Harvey lifted the blue metal door off its hinges, leaning it up against the side of the dumpster.
"What's worse, reaching in the garbage or picking up the body?" Pewter giggled.
Tucker whirled around, hearing before the rest of them. "What's worse is here comes Channel 29."
Diana, now seeing the van with the dish on top, as she was looking down the alleyway, urged, "Come on, let's get him out of here and in a body bag before they jump out with the damned cameras."
Too late. Even before the van pulled over the cameraman was running toward them.
"Stand back!" Rick barked, holding up his hand.
A brief argument followed but the cameraman and on-air reporter did stay twenty yards back as Diana, with three assistants, lifted out the body. Since rigor was taking over, getting him into a body bag required effort.
"Why don't they break his arms and legs?" Pewter sensibly suggested.
"They'd pass out. Humans are touchy about their dead." Mrs. Murphy noticed the outline of his wallet in his back pocket. It would appear robbery wasn't the motive.
Market returned to the question Cynthia had posed before they were interrupted by the television crew. "No, Leo wasn't as bad as Charlie Ashcraft. Charlie was in a class by himself. Leo wanted us to think he was a ladies' man but he was more bark than bite. He had a smart mouth, that's all. Hurt a lot of feelings. Or I should say he hurt mine. And he was handsome, I couldn't compete with him for the girls. Not too many of us could." He looked up at Fair. "Like you, the class ahead. You always got the girls."
"Hope I didn't have a smart mouth." Fair still watched fix-edly as they struggled with the body.
"You were a good guy. Still are," Market said. He leaned against the car with Rick, as he couldn't stop shaking. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I feel dizzy."
"The shock of it." Rick patted Market on the back. "No one expects to come to work in the morning and find a dead body in the garbage."
"If I'd kept those old garbage cans it wouldn't have happened," Market moaned. "That will teach me to leave well enough alone."
"Until they scattered all over the alleyway again," Fair reminded him. "You did the right thing. Someone took advantage of it, that's all."
"Someone who doesn't much care about how they dispose of bodies. Two men, same age, same high-school class, shot between the eyes and left for the world to see. There's a message here." Mrs. Murphy walked over the back window, careful not to smear paw prints on it. "Like those stupid mailings. I think the message will get more clear in time."
"Both senior superlatives, too." Pewter backed down the tree to join her friend. "That's odd."
"Mom's a senior superlative." Tucker barked so loud she distracted one of the rescue-squad men and he tripped, then righted himself.
"We know," the cats said. Then Murphy continued, "But so far the murdered are handsome men, well-off. Don't panic yet."
"I'm not panicking," the dog grumbled, "only observing."
"They say that when someone dies their features relax." Pewter walked toward the post office, her friends walking with her. "But Leo Burkey looked surprised, like a bear had jumped out at him, like something totally out of the blue had shocked him."
"We didn't see Charlie but it's a sure bet he was surprised, too." Tucker pushed through the animal door into the post office.
Mrs. Murphy sat in front of the door, irritating Tucker who stuck her head back through to see where the cats were. "There's human intelligence to this. That's the trick, you see. Killers often start from an irrational premise and then are completely rational and logical when they act."
24
Glad to be home after an extremely upsetting day, Harry wearily pushed open the screened porch door. It didn't squeak. She noted the hinges had been oiled. She heard pounding behind the barn.
Mrs. Hogendobber had given her freshly baked corn bread in a square pan which the older woman had thoughtfully covered with tinfoil. Harry placed the pan inside the refrigerator.
"Look!" Pewter trilled.
Mrs. Murphy, whiskers swept forward, bounded up to Pewter in front of the refrigerator. Tucker ran over, too, her claws hitting the heart pine floorboards with clicks.
"Wow, this is a first," Tucker exclaimed.
Harry grinned. "Hasn't been this full since Mom was alive."
Milk, half-and-half, bottled water, and Dortmunder beer filled the beverage shelf. Chicken and steak, wrapped in cellophane, rested on another shelf. Fresh lettuce, collard greens, pattypan squash, and perfectly round cherry tomatoes spilled over the vegetable compartment. On the bottom shelf, neatly placed side by side, gleamed red cans of real Coca-Cola.
Stacked next to the refrigerator were a variety of cat and dog canned foods with a few small gourmet packs on top.
"A cornucopia of delight." Pewter flopped on her side, rolling over then rolling back in the other direction.
"He must be rich to buy so much food at once." Tucker admired the canned food, too.
"It is amazing." Murphy purred, too, excited by the sight of all those goodies.
Harry closed the door, turned to wash her hands in the sink, and noticed her yearbook and a 1950 yearbook resting on the table side by side. She opened the 1950 yearbook and saw Tracy's name in youthful script in the upper right-hand page. Strips of paper marked her yearbook. She flipped open to each one. Tracy had marked all the photographs in which Charlie Ashcraft and Leo Burkey appeared.
She closed the book and walked outside toward the sound of the pounding.
Tracy, shirt off, replaced worn fence boards with good, pressure-treated oak boards, piled neatly in one paddock.
"Tracy, you must be a good fairy or whatever the male version is." She smiled.
He pushed back his cowboy hat. "Oak lasts longer."
"Please give me the bill for the wood and the groceries. Otherwise, I'll feel like I'm taking advantage of you."
"I love for women to take advantage of me." He laughed. "Besides, you don't know how good it feels to be doing something. Bet the post office was wild today, wasn't it?"
She knew he'd changed the subject because he didn't want to hear anything more about repayment. "Yes."
"Damn fool thing. I read through your yearbook. I hope you don't mind."
"No."
"Dead bodies don't bother me. Got used to that in Korea. But wanton killing, that bothers me."