Poisoned Pins (30 page)

“Why did Arnie agree to this?”

“I paid him, of course. He called me from jail. His accusations were preposterous, but I needed someone to keep an eye on the girl until I decided what to do. I posted his bail and told him to take the room next to hers at the motel. Once Debbie Anne became my houseguest, there was no reason for me to continue to pay for his room—or for his silence. After he delivered her, I asked him to park on Thurber Street and meet me in the alley, hurried him down the back steps, and told him to take a television set out of the closet.” She giggled again at my expression. “If I'd had any idea that you would insist on searching it for Debbie Anne, I
would have selected a different place. There was no reason to think anyone would open the door until the middle of August, and I did intend to deal with his remains long before then.”

I looked at the door and tried not to imagine what she would have encountered after two hot months. An even less palatable idea came to mind. “May I assume that's where Debbie Anne is now?”

“And where you're going to be, too,” she said, her ebullience fading as she stood up, the gun aimed at my cold, cold heart. “I had to give Debbie Anne a stronger dose of the sedative, but she'll awaken before too long and you can keep each other company. Eventually you'll grow too weak to visit, and you might even decide the coffin looks cozy. Now that I think about it, one of the pink robes might make a splendid shroud. There's no point in pounding on the door or shouting; such activity will deplete the oxygen, and the closet door is very sturdy. No one will be in the house for two months.”

“Forget it, Eleanor,” I said, refusing to rise. “Winkie and Rebecca will figure out what you've done, and you cannot count on their continued loyalty in the face of three murders, including that of a Kappa Theta Eta.”

“I do believe I can. Neither is aware that I, in my capacity as an alumna and a chapter sponsor, had to stop Jean Hall from threatening everything dear to Kappa Theta Eta. Using Katie the Kappa Kitten like that is an inexcusable violation of our creed!”

“Is that why you took the time to remove her sorority pin?”

“She was no longer worthy of it, but the process through which a girl is expelled is long and painful for everyone from the local chapter level to the judicial branch of National. It was so much more expedient to do it myself. Jean was in no condition to protest, was she? In any case, I shall encourage Winkie and Rebecca to think Debbie Anne committed the crime and fled the state, and I suspect they won't question it too seriously. Winkie is very keen to keep her job for one
final year, and Rebecca's a lovely girl, so wonderfully ambitious and talented, and hardly apt to confess her involvement to the police.” She tapped her foot impatiently, but her voice remained cool and courteous as she said, “Please cooperate with me on this, Claire. We both know how difficult it is to get bloodstains out of a carpet. I'd like to be home in time for John's call, and I'm sure Winkie and Rebecca have their own plans for the evening.”

She might have been inviting me to contribute to her favorite charity (presumably the Red Cross Bloodmobile), and she'd clearly chaired one too many committees in her day. If she'd been angry or frothing at the mouth, I might have been less terrified; as it was, locking me in the closet was merely the next item on the agenda after the treasurer's report. The heavy metal door to the chapter room was closed, and I doubted Winkie and Rebecca could hear a shot. After a nice cup of tea, Eleanor would assure them she intended to release me, wave a warm farewell from the door, and go home to await a long-distance call from her husband.

“Claire,” she said with a flicker of irritation, “let's not make this any more awkward than necessary.”

“It is rather awkward for me.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger. “I do wish you'd take this in the proper spirit.”

I could think of only one thing that might distract her. I rose unsteadily and took a step, stopped, and with my eyes widened to their roundest and my eyebrows arched, pointed at the comer behind her. “Oh, look!” I trilled. “It's dear little Katie!”

She turned involuntarily, and I grabbed a metal chair and swung it at her. At the last critical moment before it slammed into her face, I knew from her look of deep disapproval that Caron Malloy would never be invited to become a Kappa Theta Eta.

I was beginning to wonder if Peter intended to remain in front of his office window in perpetuity. His
back had rippled for a while, and the muscles in his neck had been visible for the first hour or so after dawn. Every so often his hands had curled into bloodless white fists. Now he was motionless.

“Why didn't you tell me what was going on?” he said.

This particular question had been posed numerous times during the lengthy interview. I took a sip of cold, scummy coffee and said, “Nothing was going on until I went to the Hideaway Haven. Even then, I didn't have absolute proof that Jean was blackmailing John Vanderson, thus giving Eleanor a motive to intervene on his behalf—if it was on his behalf. She's spooky about the sorority. Then again, the sorority's pretty darn spooky.”

“But you knew a lot of things that might have helped us,” he said, still staring out the window as if wishing to see workmen erecting a gallows. “You knew Arnie was skulking in the bushes, as was this biker who was having an affair with the housemother. John Vanderson admitted he met Jean the night she was killed, and also admitted he'd been in the house.”

“But Eleanor told me he was—”

“Delusional,” Peter continued smoothly. As I mentioned, we'd repeated this particular conversation for several hours, and we were confident of our lines. “Rather than allow us to investigate the allegations, you chose to do so on your own. And broke into the house to save a cat, no less.”

“To save a cat, no less.” It was my turn to sputter, but before I could begin, Jorgeson came into the office.

“I interviewed the third girl, Pippa Edmondson,” he said, his ears quivering in response to the tension, which had to be as thick as fog. He put a paperback book on the comer of the desk. “She asked me to return this to Ms. Malloy, and said Caron could keep some case of color strips. According to the Faulkner girl, who's spilling everything she can think of like Niagara Falls, Pippa's a kleptomaniac. Whenever anything disappeared in the house, the girls would wait
until she went to class and then just retrieve their things from her room. Jean threatened to have her kicked out of the sorority unless she agreed to utilize her talents around town and focus on items of value.”

“Rebecca made her return my keys,” I said as I stashed the book in my purse. “I suppose she thought it might keep me from suspecting them of their other activities. Did she admit she sent the blackmail cat to Dean Vanderson?”

Jorgeson nodded. “Yeah, she said over the last two years she and Jean Hall had redirected upward of thirty thousand dollars from house accounts to their personal accounts. This spring Jean realized they'd better replace the missing funds before the books were audited, so she supervised some nasty fund-raisers. Vanderson wasn't the only libidinous professor to be caught with . . . his pants down and required to pay for it. Did you look at the photographs, Ms. Malloy?”

“I never did,” I admitted with a shrug.

“Just as well. They might have diminished your respect for the sorority. The Faulkner girl had taken over the operation. She said she went back to the house to search once more for that particular set of photographs, but she figured she could bluff the dean without them.”

“Has Debbie Anne Wray recovered consciousness?” Peter said without turning.

“Not yet, but the doctor said she'll come around okay. They got Arnold Riggles sobered up and transferred him to our jail, but he claims he doesn't remember anything since”—Jorgeson cleared his throat—”he made a bet with a certain senator. We'll see if his memory improves when he starts aching for a drink.” He nodded at Peter's back and edged out of the room.

I was getting bored with the scene. “Listen, Peter, I've already said that I was on my way to call you when Eleanor pulled a gun on me. That was partly my fault. I didn't realize she was guilty until she mentioned the name of the motel. Only then did it occur to me that the manager must have called her, and after
she missed me in the parking lot, she followed me home and waited to see what I'd do.”

“Which was to keep sticking your nose into the case until it was in peril of being shot off.” His shoulders rose and fell as he sighed. “I suppose we've been over this before, haven't we? You don't give a damn what I say to you—as a cop or as a person; I'd have more luck with a pink construction-paper cat. Schedule a time with Jorgeson to give an official statement, and then you can go out in search of your next corpse.”

“All right,” I said and stalked out of the room. I didn't bother to speak to Jorgeson; he would call me when he had time to take a statement. I flew out the door, and blindly started for the Book Depot, making no effort to temper my anger or analyze its cause. Despite my lack of sleep, I was going to open the store and snatch customers off the sidewalk.

I was not too distraught to detour past the doughnut shop for a sweet roll and a large cup of coffee, and I was devouring same when the bell jangled.

“Mother,” Caron said as she pounded across the room, “I have this incredible way to make money this summer! This time I won't have to beg a bunch of bitches to make appointments, then listen while they cancel with Really Stupid reasons about—”

“Why did they change their minds?”

Caron ducked behind the science fiction rack. “How should I know? I mean, they change their minds like other people change channels.”

“What do you know about this?” I asked Inez, who'd sidled in more decorously and looked as though she wanted to sidle right back out. “Did something happen while you and Caron were at the drive-in with your parents?”

“Like what?” Caron said with a scornful laugh.

I spotted the top of her head as it wafted in the direction of the gardening section. “Like something that provoked one of your clients to call yesterday and suggest that you were engaged in extortion.”

“It wasn't like that,” Inez said, blinking somberly
and keeping a judicious eye on Caron's head. “The junior varsity football team went on a retreat, so their girlfriends were kinda bored and some of them went to the drive-in with—”

“One lousy night without a date, and they're fooling around with the basketball players!” Caron chortled, now approaching the true-crime novels. “All I did was wander around the cars to see who might want to have a My Beautiful Self session. I didn't say one word about ratting on them to their boyfriends.”

“Not exactly,” Inez said thoughtfully, “but they seemed to be a little bit worried about it. And it's a good thing you saw Rhonda Maguire coming and hid in the playground until she gave up. My parents would have been upset if you'd gotten in a fight with her.”

Surely the Mad Hatter had come in with them, I told myself, and would offer me a refill while the Dormouse gazed dreamily at me from inside the cup. “And why is Rhonda so enraged?”

Inez seemed more concerned about a more substantial life form somewhere in the store. In a voice almost inaudible, she said, “Caron found a tube of Super Glue the night she locked herself in Rhonda's room.”

“Caron!” I said coldly. “Stop acting as if you were in a maze and get out here this very minute. This is too much.” I waited for a moment, but heard no response. I came out from behind the counter to stalk her, and was plotting the most advantageous path when a motorcycle roared under the portico and backfired once before dying.

Caron's face appeared over the classics rack. “What was that, Mother?”

“You may consider it a temporary reprieve from the governor,” I said, “but nothing more.”

“Good morning,” Ed said as he came through the door, dressed as I'd last seen him in a black leather jacket, the helmet in his hand. He looked older, however, and his mouth sagged dispiritedly as he tried to smile at Inez, who promptly scuttled into the racks. To me, he said, “I heard what happened at the sorority
house, and I just came from visiting Winkie at the jail. Jeez, what a mess!”

“Indeed,” I said. “Have you talked to Arnie?”

“Why would I talk to him? ‘And from the extremest upward of their head to the descent and dust below thy foot, a most toad-spotted traitor.' If Shakespeare wasn't talking about Arnie, I don't know why not.”

“Rhonda Maguire is a toad-spotted traitor,” Caron intoned from an invisible locale.

“Pay no attention to that girl behind the curtain,” I said, aware that I was mixing cinematic metaphors but too tired to control myself. “What does Winkie think will happen to her?”

“Her lawyer says not much. She was suspicious, but she didn't participate in anything illegal, and she swears she thought Eleanor Vanderson eventually would allow you to leave.”

“Did she?” I said dryly as I remembered her eagerness to unlock the door and her complaisant expression as she watched Eleanor escort me downstairs. Perhaps conspiracy to commit murder was in her job description. Would she have helped Eleanor plant us under the roses shortly before rush? Did Katie the Kappa Kitten say thanks?

Ed grimaced faintly as if he were reading my admittedly twisted mind. “Oh, yeah, and she said several times how kind it was of you to go after the cat. Unnecessary, but kind. Anyway, she won't be arraigned until early next week, and I was wondering if “—his cheeks reddened and he glanced nervously at the racks, from which fierce whispering emanated—”you might want to ride out in the country sometime. I promise we won't so much as go past the Dew Drop Inn.”