Poisoned Pins (23 page)

I clutched my hands behind my back to restrain myself. “Were all these girls Kappa Theta Etas?”

“They did not wear their sorority pins, Mrs. Malloy.” He brushed back the pale peach fuzz on his head and nodded at me. “I really must attend to my guests. I have met the conditions you stipulated, and I hope you intend to adhere to our arrangement.”

“Take one more step and I'll go sit in Judge Frankley's lap and tell him the entire story,” I said, still so appalled that I was trembling. “Do you admit you called my house and made threats to my daughter?”

“She has a very disconcerting manner on the telephone. If I may ask, what precisely constitutes a color analysis? Is there truly a reason why I should pay ten dollars when I wear dark suits and white shirts every day? The only item that ever varies is my tie.”

It was sheer lunacy, I thought, as well it should be. I was standing beside a pool conversing with the man in the moon, who was worried about his palette. Romping with coeds thirty years younger was not a problem, and blackmail was pesky—but the color of his tie? Was dark red too adventurous? Dare he try green and navy stripes?

“I'll check and get back to you,” I said numbly, then went past him and through a gate to the driveway. I made it to my car, rolled up the windows and locked the doors, and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I waited to see if I was going to laugh or cry, but at last decided I was much too confused to do anything at all.

I'd been told Jean Hall kept the pledge class busy with picnics, parties, and community activities. No one had mentioned less innocuous but more profitable endeavors. Was Dean Vanderson the only self-righteous
satyr on the campus? And, most important, did National know about this? Was it right there in the pledge handbook, along with the rules, regulations, and secret whistle? Was it a sanctioned fund-raising activity for the spring semester?

A fist knocked on the window. Before I could scream, which I fully intended to do, a concerned male voice said, “Are you all right, ma'am?”

I exhaled and determined the voice belonged to a policeman barely out of his teens. “I'm fine, thank you. I was just thinking for a moment before I drove home.”

He drew circles with his finger until I reluctantly rolled down the window. “Would you step out of the vehicle, ma'am?”

“Under no circumstance will I step out of the vehicle, sir. That would make it impossible to drive home, and as soon as you move back, that's exactly what I'm going to do.”

“I'm asking you again to step out of the vehicle,” he said with a good deal less cordiality in his voice. “If you refuse to comply, I'll be forced to take action against you.”

“You're going to drag me out of my car and sling me on the pavement? Is this because you don't think I parked close enough to the curb, or because ordinary, law-abiding citizens are not allowed to sit and think, but must instead cater to whatever idiotic whim overtakes an officer of the law?” It was good, but based on his deepening scowl, not good enough. I continued, “And why are you here, anyway? This is a residential neighborhood, not a housing project with crack dealers and fences and gang members on every corner. Look right there, Officer. Is there a vicious killer on that deserted corner? I think not.”

“I'm on a security assignment because of a prominent public figure visiting in this area. I'm going to say this one last time. Step out of the vehicle, ma'am, and keep your hands in sight at all times.”

I did as requested, but I expressed my vexation in
colorful detail throughout the time it took him to find that I could indeed walk a straight line, touch my nose with my eyes closed, and watch his fingertip flitter in and out of view. My driver's license and registration were examined carefully, and verified via his radio. All the while, I wanted to tell him there was a philandering potential killer inside the yellow house not a hundred yards away, dining on quail and conversing with a prominent public figure on genteel subjects such as torts (but not, I should think, tarts).

“This never happened to Miss Marple,” I snarled as I took back my license and registration. “She didn't have to deal with overly zealous policemen who ought to be home with a baby-sitter rather than out harassing the citizenry.”

“Do us both a favor and move to St. Mary Mead,” he said as he went to his car.

Grumbling like the boiler at the Book Depot, I drove home and parked in the garage. There were no traces of successful decomposition on the kitchen floor, nor in the child's bedroom. A note on the coffee table informed me that her resolution to never set foot outside had been cruelly undermined by an invitation to accompany Inez and her parents to a triple-header at the drive-in movie theater. I made a drink and flopped across the sofa, the evening's events swirling in my head like brown water gurgling down the drain.

The Kappa Theta Etas with their expansive gums, even teeth, bright eyes, pink cashmere sweaters, expensive athletic shoes, and twenty-four-karat gold pins were not quite as nice as their reputation purported. Some of them were earning their dues and tuition at the Hideaway Haven, while at least one of them was immortalizing the climactic moments with a camera. Dean Vanderson had mentioned the blackmail cutouts; did one “Katie the Kappa Kitten Says Thanks!” include a handwritten “For being such a generous old goat”?

Had Jean Hall been too greedy? Vanderson claimed to have met Jean shortly before her death and given
her whatever sum she demanded. He'd left her in a patio, supposedly alive and well and significantly richer. She'd tucked her ill-gotten gains in her purse and walked down the alley toward the Kappa Theta Eta house. Someone driving Debbie Anne's car had run over her, either accidentally or with purposeful malice. A second blackmail victim? As far as I knew, Jean's purse was still missing, and more strangely, her sorority pin. This implied an extraordinarily composed hit-and-run driver had gotten out of the car, grabbed the purse, and then dallied long enough to take the pin off the chest of the corpse. It seemed more likely that either Dean Vanderson was wrong or I'd failed to notice it. There had been a lot of blood, I reminded myself with a shudder. It certainly could have been as blinding as the cluster of jewels and chains.

Also missing was Debbie Anne Wray. Had she answered the telephone at the Vandersons' house—or had I suffered a mild concussion? Dean Vanderson had sounded truthful in his denial that she'd ever been there. Eleanor was at her garden club at the time. Could Debbie Anne have broken into the house? Those in the midst of committing burglaries rarely pause to serve as social secretaries, but no one, including myself, had accused Debbie Anne of being Mensa material.

I needed to talk to Eleanor, but I doubted I could sidle into the dining room and ask my questions while I nibbled tough quail and sipped champagne.

And there was the minor predicament of what to do with this new information. Dean Vanderson seemed to feel we had a contract, and he was the lawyer, not I. I hadn't precisely sworn not to divulge his story, but perhaps I'd implied as much. If he was telling the truth, his crimes were indictable only by the guardians of morality and good taste. I finally decided to wait until I'd talked to Eleanor before I called Lieutenant Peter Rosen and related what I knew . . . or at least what I felt he deserved to know.

“Those damn Kappa Theta Etas,” I muttered as I
went to my bedroom and looked at their house. Lights shone from the ground-floor windows, and the faint sound of music wafted from one. Surely it was time for someone to scream. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since the last blast, after all, and they knew the agenda. Where was our reliable prowler?

Inexplicably irritated by the lack of an uproar next door, I changed into more comfortable clothes, snatched up a paperback, and returned to the living room to swill scotch and read something that made a semblance of sense.

It ended with a tidy denouement in the drawing room of the country house, seconds before the constable came through the door, delayed as usual by the impenetrable snowdrifts. The villain, overwhelmed by the relentless logic of the wily amateur sleuth, had crumbled like a chunk of feta cheese and confessed all. Maybe I ought to move to St. Mary Mead and take up knitting, I thought as I put down the book and went to fetch another from my bedroom. I could knit Caron a Camaro.

I was contemplating my next foray into felonious fantasy when I heard what sounded like an airplane landing in the alley. Smiling at the absurdity of the idea, I selected a book and reached for the light switch. As the noise sputtered to a stop, I recognized it. The alley was not too narrow for a motorcycle, not even one the size of Ed Whitbred's behemoth.

I peered out the window, but what little patch of pavement I could see was as deserted as the corner of Washington and Sutton streets. The motorcycle had not stopped behind my house, and it sounded as though it had gone past the sorority house. But it had not gone all the way down the alley and dwindled into the distance as its driver turned onto Thurber Street.

I switched off the light, returned to the sofa, and tried to reimmerse myself in a charmingly ordinary pastime. After I'd read the same page three times, I acknowledged that I was listening for the motorcycle—or, more ominously, for footsteps on my stairs.
Blaming my nervousness on my reading matter, I put aside the book and made sure my doors were locked. All the fraternity and sorority houses were closed for the summer, with one notable anomaly. The Baptist student center, incongruously set between two of the rowdiest fraternity houses, was also closed.

I'd characterized Dean Vanderson as a wounded animal, but I was pacing like a caged one. Why had the motorcycle stopped in the alley—now more than an hour ago? Was someone breaking into one of the unoccupied houses?

There had to be a thoroughly innocent reason why the motorcyclist was parked somewhere in the alley. However, if he didn't start his engine and drive away soon, I was in peril of pacing to death. I wasn't going to relax until that second proverbial shoe hit the asphalt.

Twenty minutes later, berating myself with a goodly amount of acrimony, I went out the back door and down the stairs to the alley.

It really wasn't very late, I assured myself as I peered in both directions, then walked past the Kappa Theta Eta dumpster. I'd been home by eight o'clock, and Caron and the Thorntons would be watching only the second of the mutant insect thrillers. It was a good half hour shy of qualifying as a midnight prowl.

I arrived at the far end of the alley without spotting the motorcycle. Disappointed, but a little bit relieved, I retraced my steps, glancing at the dark windows of unoccupied houses. The parking lots were empty, and the backyards already were sprouting stubble.

I stopped by a high wooden fence behind one of the houses. It was likely to be the enclosed patio where Dean Vanderson met Jean Hall the night of her death, I thought as I eased open the squeaky gate. There were a few battered lawn chairs, a picnic table, a great scattering of crushed beer cans and cardboard pizza boxes—and one large, chrome-infested motorcycle. Admittedly an amateur in such matters, I had no idea whether it was Ed Whitbred's.

I determined that the back door of the fraternity house was secured by a heavy padlock. The interior was unlit, and as far as I could tell, vacant. I sat down on the picnic table and looked more carefully at the motorcycle, but I was unable to convince myself of its familiarity or lack thereof (I have a similar problem with other people's pets and offspring).

And where was its driver? Not inside the fraternity house, not ambling in the alley, and not likely to be in
one of the bars on Thurber Street, where parking was plentiful in the summer.

I wasn't wearing my watch, so I had no idea how long I'd been sitting and thinking when I heard footsteps beyond the fence. Crunch, crunch, crunch went the gravel; squeak, squeak, squeak went the gate. Rather than scream, scream, scream, I waited in a mantle of dignified silence until the black-clad motorcyclist was inside the patio, then said, “Hey, Ed, how's it going?”

He located me on my shadowy perch, sighed, and said, “It's been better. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”

“Trying to figure out what's going on at the Kappa Theta Eta house. I wish I could say I'd worked it out, but I'm still confused. However, I am making progress, and I'm confident it will all tumble into place at some point. That's what I'm doing here. What are you doing here?”

His small eyes were almost invisible in the less than intrusive light from a lone utility pole on the far side of the alley. “I left my bike here, and I came back to get it,” he finally offered.

“Now, Ed,” I said, mimicking his sigh, “I've walked the length of the alley, and my duplex and the Kappa Theta Eta house are the only two currently occupied dwellings. The woman in the apartment below mine is a lovely soul, but she's not the type to invite veteran Hell's Angels into her living room. You didn't come by to see me. That leaves only one destination, doesn't it?”

“So it would seem.” He sat on the opposite end of the picnic table, nervously toying with the zipper of his leather jacket while, I presumed, trying to concoct a remotely plausible lie.

Taking pity on him (and tiring of the incessant prickling of mosquitoes), I said, “Eleanor Vanderson said something several days ago that now has some significance. She mentioned that Winkie all but awarded you the contract for the remodeling. Now why would
Winkie risk the wrath of National by such blatant disregard of its regulations for the bidding process?”

“Winkie?” he said with a puzzled frown.

“You know, the petite housemother who can't keep her screens in place.” I slapped at a mosquito, trying not to acknowledge any metaphorical parallels. “She keeps stressing the importance of the sorority's reputation, but I think she's equally concerned with her own. Housemothers are not allowed to drink, smoke, carouse—or entertain gentlemen in their private rooms. I'm just guessing, but I think housemothers would be especially pressured not to entertain aging bearded motorcyclists who are adorned with a significant number of tattoos.”