Poisoned Pins (31 page)

“I don't think so, Ed. I suppose I'm not quite ready to be a free spirit on the back of your bike. But come by the store and sling quotes at me whenever you want.”

Caron and Inez emerged only after Ed was gone, and I couldn't recall when I'd seen either of them so awed. I was hoping they were also speechless, but Caron finally
gave me a piercing look and said, “He Asked You for a Date.”

“He asked me to go for a ride,” I said mildly.

“On a motorcycle,” breathed Inez.

I considered pointing out that the encroachment of my fifth decade did not require me to take up an eremetic life of crocheting and counting liver spots. Self-sufficiency did not demand solitude any more than a few new gray hairs precluded companionship. It might have evolved into one of my finer lectures, but instead I said, “You're grounded until you clean your room and the garage.”

“I was going to clean out the garage anyway,” Caron said with typical—and insufferable—smugness. “I have to do it so I can start earning money for a car. Come on, Inez, a few spiders won't hurt you.”

“Brown recluse spider bites can cause your skin to rot,” Inez countered as they started for the door. “It's called necrosis, and if it's really bad, they—”

“Wait a minute!” I snapped.

“Oh, Mother,” Caron said as her lip shot out and her eyes rolled upward, “is this another hot flash? The plan's foolproof, and it won't depend on some toad-spotted traitor to make it work. It's one hundred percent guaranteed or your money back, and now that Pippa's dropped out of school and left town, I don't have to give her what I earned as a My Beautiful Self consultant. If you don't mind, I'd like to go home and start on the garage.”

My fingers may have tightened around the plastic cup, but I kept my voice steady. “What are we talking about, Caron?”

“Night crawlers. They're these icky worm things that people buy to use as bait. I've already sent in a coupon for a starter set, and all I have to do is find some wooden boxes and a lot of dirt. You dump coffee grounds and rotten vegetables on them, and then you sell them for a lot of money.” She frowned at Inez. “This palette stuff is nonsense. I don't see why I can't have a red sports car if I want.”

“If the palette stuff is nonsense, then I want my yellow blouse back,” Inez said.

“So you'll look as though you're terminally sallow?”

The bell jangled as they sailed away to entertain pedestrians with their latest topic of debate. I was in my office, scraping the bottom of the coffee pot and vowing to make some abiding changes in my life, when it jangled less violently.

I came to the doorway and stopped. Peter Rosen stood by the counter, doing his best to appear relaxed despite the thrust of his jaw and the intensity in his brown eyes.

“Do you want to talk, Claire?” he said.

It took me most of a minute to consider. “Yes,” I said at last. “I suppose I do. What happened to the cat?”

“Officer Pipkin took it into temporary custody, despite her husband's objections. He's allergic to cat hair. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss?”

I nodded.

KEEP READING
for an excerpt from
Joan Hess's next Claire Malloy mystery . . .

DAMSELS IN
DISTRESS

Coming soon in hardcover from St. Martin's Minotaur

 

 

 

 

 

“Good morrow, Kate, for that is your name, I hear.”

I blinked at the young man in the doorway. “Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing. They call me Claire Malloy that do talk of me.”

“You lie, in faith, for you are call'd plain Kate, and bonny Kate, and sometimes Kate the curst, but Kate, the prettiest Kate in Farberville. Kate of Kate Hall, my superdainty Kate, for dainties are all Kates, and therefore—”

“Mother,” Caron said as she came out of my office, “who is This Person?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted.

The peculiar man came into the bookstore and bowed, one arm across his waist and the other artfully posed above his head. He was dressed in a white shirt with billowy sleeves, a fringed leather tunic, purple tights, suede boots with curled toes, and a diamond-patterned conical cap topped with a tiny bell. His brown hair dangled to his shoulders, rare among the traditionally minded Farber College students. “Perchance miladies will allow me to maketh known myself?”

“This milady thinks you ought to maketh known
thyself to the local police,” Caron said, edging toward me. “Start with the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

He stood up and swept off his cap. “Pester the Jester, or Edward Cobbinwood, if it pleaseth you all the more.”

“Not especially,” I said. “Would you care to explain further?”

“Okay, I'm a grad student at the college and a member of ARSE. I was assigned to talk to all the merchants at the mall and on Thurber Street about the Renaissance Fair in two weeks. We'd like to put up flyers in the store windows and maybe some banners. Fiona is hoping you'll let us use the portico in front of your bookstore for a stage to publicize the event.”

“A Renaissance Fair? I haven't heard anything about this.” I noticed Caron's sharp intake of breath and glanced at her. “Have you?”

She nodded. “I was going to tell you about it when you got home this evening. The AP history teacher sent a letter to everybody who's taking her course in the fall. We have to either participate in this fair thing or write a really ghastly midterm paper. I don't think she should be allowed to blackmail us like this. Inez and I are going to get up a petition and have everybody sign it, then take it to the school board. I mean, summer is supposed to be our vacation, not—”

“I get your point,” I said.

“Look not so gloomy, my fair and freckled damsel,” added Edward Cobbinwood. “It'll be fun. We put on a couple of Ren fairs when I was in undergraduate school. It's like a big costume party, with all kinds of entertainment and food. ARSE will stage battles, and perhaps a gallant knight in shining armor will fight for your honor.”

Caron glared at him. “I am perfectly capable of defending
my honor without the help of some guy dressed in rusty hubcaps.”

“What's ARSE?” I asked.

“The Association for Renaissance Scholarship and Enlightenment. It's not a bunch of academics who meet once a year to read dry papers and argue about royal lineage or the positive side of the feudal system. Anybody can join. The country is divided into kingdoms, counties, and fiefdoms. The local group is Avalon. There are just a few members in town this summer, but when the semester starts in September, Fiona says—”

“Fiona Thackery,” Caron said with a sigh, not yet willing to allow me to dismiss her imminent martyrdom. “The AP history teacher. I'm thinking about taking shop instead. I've always wanted to get my hands on a nail gun. Or if I take auto mechanics, I'll learn to change tires and . . . tighten bolts and stuff like that. That way, when your car falls into a gazillion bits, I'll know how to put it back together. That's a lot more useful than memorizing the kings of England or the dates of the Napoleonic Wars.”

“You're taking AP history,” I said. “If you want to work at a garage on the weekends, that's fine with me.”

She gave me a petulant look. “Then you can write the midterm paper. Compare and contrast the concepts of Hellenism and Hebraism in
The Divine Comedy
and
The Canterbury Tales.
Cite examples and footnote all source material. Five thousand word minimum. Any attempt at plagiarism from the Internet or elsewhere will result in a shaved head and six weeks in the stocks.”

I cupped my hand to my ear. “Do I hear the lilting melody of ‘Greensleeves' in the distance?”

“The only recorder I'm playing,” Caron said sourly, “will have a tape in it.”

Edward seemed to be enjoying the exchange, but fluttered his fingers and strolled out of the Book Depot to bewilder and beguile other merchants along the street. He must have had a recorder tucked in his pocket, because we could hear tootling as he headed up the hill. It may have been “Greensleeves,” but it was hard to be sure. I hoped he wasn't a music major.

“Goodness gracious,” said Inez Thornton as she came into the bookstore. Her eyes were round behind her thick lenses. “Did you see that weirdo in the purple tights?”

 

Inez has always been Caron's best friend through thick and thin (aka high crimes and misdemeanors). Caron, red-haired and obstinate, faster than a speeding bullet except when her alarm clock goes off in the morning, able to leap over logic in a single bound, is the dominant force. Meek, myopic Inez is but a pale understudy in Caron's pageant, but equally devious. Encroaching maturity tempers them at times. There are, of course, many other times.

“Tell me more about the letter from your history teacher,” I said.

Caron grimaced. “This Renaissance Fair sounds so juvenile. Everybody has to dress up as something and go around pretending to be a minstrel or a damsel or a pirate or something silly like that. There's a meeting tomorrow afternoon at the high school so we can get our committee assignments. It's like Miss Thackery thinks we're already in her class. She shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. It's—it's unconstitutional!”

“That's right,” said Inez, nodding emphatically. “Aren't we guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

“I'm not sure reading Chaucer and Dante will make you all that happy, but you never know,” I said. “You'll find copies on the back shelf. Help yourselves.”

Rather than take me up on my generous offer, they left. I would have felt a twinge of maternal sympathy had they not been muttering for more than a month about how bored they were. I'd never been to a Renaissance Fair, but I supposed it was similar to a carnival show, with tents, booths, and entertainment—not to mention men clad in armor made of aluminum foil, bashing each other with padded sticks.

Pester the Jester did not reappear, to my relief. I've always been leery of men in tights, especially purple ones (tights, not men). The few customers who drifted in were dressed in standard summer wear and more interested in paperback thrillers and travel books than in Shakespeare. Business is sluggish in the summer, when most of the college students have gone home and their professors are either wandering through cavernous cathedrals in Europe or sifting sand at archeo-logical digs. The academic community as a whole comprises nearly a quarter of Farberville's population of 25,000 semi-literate souls. Their civilian counterparts tend to do their shopping at the air-conditioned mall at the edge of town when the temperature begins to climb.

At 6:00
P.M
. I locked the doors and went across the street to the beer garden to meet Luanne Bradshaw, who owns a vintage clothing shop on Thurber Street. It could have been a hobby, not a livelihood, since she not only comes from a wealthy family on the East Coast but also divorced a successful doctor and left him barefoot in the park—or, at least, penniless in the penthouse. However, she chose to rid herself of most of her ill-gotten gains via trusts and foundations, dumped her
offspring on the doorsteps of prestigious prep schools, and headed for the hinterlands. Farberville definitely falls into that category. Despite being in the throes of a midlife crisis that may well continue until she's ninety, she's disarmingly astute.

She was seated at a picnic table beneath a wisteria-entwined lattice that provided shade and a pleasant redolence. Her long, tanned legs were clearly visible in scandalously short shorts, and her black hair was tucked under a baseball cap. As I joined her, she filled a plastic cup with beer from a pitcher and set it down in front of me.

“You didn't mention Peter when you called earlier,” she said by way of greeting. “Are you having prenuptial jitters? It's unbecoming in a woman of your age.”

“My age is damn close to yours,” I said, “and I'm not the one who scrambled all over the Andes with a bunch of virile young Australian men for six weeks.”

“I kept claiming I needed to rest just so I could watch their darling butts wiggle as they hiked past me. So what's going on with Peter?”

“The captain sent him to FBI summer camp so he can learn how to protect our fair town if the terrorists attempt to create havoc by jamming the parking meters. It's a real threat, you know. The mayor will have to flee to his four-bedroom bunker out by the lake. The Kiwanis Club won't be able to have its weekly luncheon meetings at the diner behind the court house. The community theater won't be able to stage its endearingly inept production of ‘Our Town' for the first time in nineteen years. All hell could break loose.”

Luanne failed to look properly terrified. “How long will he be gone?”

“Three weeks at Quantico, and then a week at his mother's.”

“Oh,” she murmured.

I took a long swallow of beer. “It's not like that. She's resigned to the idea that Peter and I are getting married, or so he keeps telling me.”

“But she's not coming to the wedding.”

“No, she's not,” I said. “She always goes to Aspen in September to avoid the hurricane season.”

“Rhode Island is hardly a magnet for hurricanes, but neither is Farberville,” Luanne said as she refilled her cup and mine.

“It's a tradition. She goes with a big group of her widowed friends. They take over a very posh condo complex and party all day and night. Besides, it's not as if this is Peter's first marriage—or mine. I'd look pretty silly in a flouncy white dress and veil, with my teenaged daughter as maid of honor. There's no reason why she should disrupt her long-standing plans for a simple little civil ceremony in a backyard.”

“She's probably afraid she'll have to eat ribs,” said Luanne, “and toast the happy couple with moonshine in a jelly jar. Have you spoken to her on the phone, or received a warm letter on her discreetly monogrammed stationery?”