Reunions Are Murder
by Ursla McNabb

PREFACE

SWOPE PARK —KANSAS CITY, 1966

 The dark silhouette hid in the shadows next to the picnic grounds waiting for one particular couple. As a slivered moon cut through the night sky, a cool spring breeze lifted off the Blue River and rustled through the park. The chorus of tree frogs voiced their approval at the final arrival of spring and the air swelled with the sweet smell of lilacs as the park filled with teenagers racing to their designated parking spots.

 Fred Bishop pulled the black ’57 Chevy with the large illuminating white walls into the small gravel parking lot. Fred, a popular senior on the football squad, had a crew cut, a face covered with freckles, and a noticeable gap between his front teeth. He turned off the lights and the car was enveloped in darkness. Rhonda was the senior class vice-president and one of the smartest girls in Humble High. She was a witty blonde with large breasts and sultry blue eyes and had been going steady with Fred for almost two years.

 “Trying to get away?”

 Fred reached across the seat and roughly grabbed her buttock in one hand as she leaned over to crank the window down to make sure they were alone.

 “Stop it!” she squealed, and playfully knocked his hand away, but Fred quickly found access through her parted legs.

 “Aren’t you glad I made the change. Ed’s car has more room than my Renault.”

 Rhonda fell back into his arms and he swallowed her with a kiss. Rhonda’s arm reached around his neck as she drew him closer, while Fred’s fumbling hands begin to unbutton her blouse.

 “Back seat,” Rhonda gasped.

 They rolled over the front seat to land partially on the floor. The silhouette slid forward when the car began moving in a rhythmic beat.

 “You smell gas?” Rhonda abruptly asked. She pushed Fred to one side so she could prop herself up to listen. Rhonda looked around the car suspiciously. Her large breasts that hung above Fred’s head were his chief preoccupation instead of any leaking gasoline.

 “It’s the carburetor,” Fred assured her. “It happens all the time. Probably the butterfly is stuck.” He pulled himself up and clamped his mouth around Rhonda’s breast.

 Rhonda giggled, wrapped her arms around Fred’s neck, and fell back down on the seat. She felt their bodies beating against each other with a frenetic energy, but an uneasy feeling prompted her to open her eyes and she saw a sinister shape standing by the front window of the car.

 “Stop, Fred! Stop! Look! Get off! Outside the window!”

 Rhonda’s squirming body pushed at Fred’s chest and pushed his head against the car roof. He made a failed attempt to grab her flailing arms in the cramped space.

 “What’s wrong with you, Rhonda?” Before she could answer, he felt something cold on his skin and the smell of gasoline burned his nose. He gagged as he sucked the fumes that made it almost impossible to breathe deep into his lungs. Rhonda was screaming hysterically and her foot slammed into Fred’s chin, knocking him halfway into the front seat.

 “Lemme out!” she wailed as she shoved Fred’s sprawled body and scrambled halfway into the front seat.

 “Burn in hell!”

 The nozzle shot through the open window and a stream of flaming gasoline splashed all over their naked bodies.

 Fred jerked his head around only to swallow a stream of flaming gasoline. “What the fuck?” were the last words Fred would ever utter. He clawed at the car door handle in one last effort to escape, but his flaming body crumpled lifeless to the floor. Rhonda struggled to crawl over Fred’s burning body when she felt the searing stream of burning gasoline against her skin. She let out one last horrified scream. The car interior blazed out of control. The nozzle was directed toward a rag sticking from the gas tank. The figure raced back to the tree line just as the tank exploded and a car full of rowdy teenagers, anxious to bushwhack their friends, suddenly stopped within thirty yards of the burning car.

CHAPTER ONE

SATURDAY—THE REUNION

NEAR KANSAS CITY—THIRTY YEARS LATER

 Kent Knowles felt a sense of accomplishment when the barn materialized at the crest of the hill after he had wandered aimlessly on gravel roads for the past hour. He pulled off the road into the makeshift parking lot as amber beams of light escaped through the huge cracks of the tobacco barn, only to fade in the night sky. Music from his youth drifted through the air. Kent wasn’t comfortable about tonight. He’d never attended a reunion, but Sam Curtwright had called him and he’d agreed to come. Kent wore a pair of faded jean shorts and a Grateful Dead tee shirt with a faded skull on the front. His skin was dark from regular tanning sessions while his blond streaked hair looked fastidiously unkempt. Kent recognized the woman at the entrance handing out name tags

 “Good God, Sam said you were coming! I can’t believe it,” Brenda Feldon screamed. She ran up to Kent and threw her arms around him.

 Kent found himself staring into Brenda Feldon’s smiling face and recoiling from her alcoholic breath, while she clung to his neck as if she never planned to let go. Brenda was not attractive. She was still that short, chubby girl with the kinky hair he’d known in grade school. Her skin had become wrinkled and blotchy and her eyes were sunken and dull.

 “Brenda, you’re choking me,” Kent pleaded, trying to pry her arms apart.

 “I don’t care. You are a dear friend, even though you haven’t called or seen me in….”

 “Thirty years,” Kent grunted as he roughly extracted himself from her grasp.

 “Every bit of that. You look great, Kent. Those shorts show that you still have the legs.”

 Brenda reached down and pulled his hair.

 “Hey, stop that. Aren’t we a little old to be pulling leg hair?”

 “Oh, you tease! You might have heard Jim and I are divorced now. How about you? You married?”

 “No, I’ve never been married. I decided early on to refrain from relationships that involve marriage—unless there is a lot of money involved.”

 Brenda snuggled her bulky frame closer.

 “Maybe you and I could get together later, after we mingle and all.”

 Kent ignored Brenda’s advances and asked, “How about Sam Curtwright? Is he here yet?”

 “You don’t know? Sam isn’t coming.”

 “What do you mean? He’s the one that talked me into this.”

 Brenda leaned over and whispered, “Its all that Mary Beth’s fault.”

 “Mary Beth?”

 Kent recalled how he had thought he had a chance with her after she told him she was going to divorce her husband, Tom Marks. A month ago, she’d ended their six-month affair. They had just finished making love and she was sitting in front of the dressing table in her bedroom when she told him nonchalantly that it was over between them. He protested, but Mary Beth explained he had nothing to offer but a stud service, which wasn’t enough. She and Kent were very much alike in one respect, both loved money.

 “Ever since that bitch came back there’s been nothing but trouble,” Brenda ranted.