Poisoned Pins (10 page)

“But that's dreadful,” she said as she sat down next to Winkie and patted her back. “Jean was spch an asset to the chapter, always enthusiastic and cooperative, eager to organize activities for the pledge class. Do you remember her initiation, Winkie? She looked angelic in her white dress, didn't she? When she sang the Kappa Theta Eta prayer, I nearly cried.”

“Why are those police cars parked in the alley?” demanded Rebecca from the doorway of the lounge.

“They strung yellow tape all over the place and wouldn't let us through,” Pippa added indignantly, standing on her toes so she could see over Rebecca's shoulder. “When the ambulance came by, we literally had to stand in the ditch.”

I waited for a brief moment to see if Debbie Anne Wray might appear over Pippa's shoulder with additional complaints, but she did not. I left Winkie and Eleanor to tell them what had happened, went out the front door, and cut across the lawn to my porch. Only a short time earlier I'd been within forty feet of it, lost in a reverie of food and drink, but I'd been sidetracked into violence and death.

I was halfway up the stairs when I realized I'd forgotten to tell Peter about my encounter with Arnie, maybe because it had had such a dreamlike quality—or nightmarish, anyway. Why had he been hiding beside the Kappa house? He'd admitted he was in what he called a sticky situation, but I couldn't imagine what it was. I doubted he'd stolen Debbie Anne's car and run over Jean as she approached the house. Arnie was an ambulatory catastrophe, but he was motivated by the
preservation of his pickled condition rather than by innate wickedness.

I went to my bedroom window and looked at the sorority house. All of the lights were ablaze on the ground floor, including those in Winkie's suite. The top of the screen was visible within a bush. I'd also forgotten to tell her what I'd done or ask Peter to have one of his men replace it My lapse would allow Katie to sneak back in after a night of terrorizing the town, however, and Winkie would surely notice its absence in the morning.

A campus police car stopped in front of the house. It was too dark to tell if the two officers were the ones I'd encountered previously, but it seemed likely that Peter had sent for them to get a full report about the prowlers. As they disappeared beneath the roof of the porch, yet another car pulled up to the curb. Hoping it might be Debbie Anne returning with a date and an alibi, I waited for someone to materialize.

The driver's door opened and a man stepped out of the car. I caught a glimpse of a round white face and a bald head that glittered in the bath of the streetlight. Massaging his chin and mouth with one hand, he stared at the house for a full minute, then climbed back into his car and drove away.

I went to my kitchen, where I found a note from Caron that stated she was spending the night at Inez's house. I made a pot of tea, heated the fettuccine, and retired to the living room to eat. I wasn't confident that Peter would appear before morning, but I was eager to find out if they'd located Debbie Anne. It could have been an accident, I thought as I envisioned her behind the wheel of the white car. The alley was dark and narrow, but the college kids drove down it as if it were an interstate, and on more than one occasion my hatchback had been imperiled.

However, I had no notions where she might go, nor was I inclined to walk the streets until dawn, plaintively calling her name in hopes of coaxing her out of
a shadowy hideout. Assuring myself that Farberville's Finest would do just that, I went to bed.

Peter did not appear at the Book Depot until nearly noon. He hadn't shaved, I noted with a wince as he nuzzled my neck, although he had changed into a fresh shirt and another of his expensive Italian suits. “Let's go away next weekend,” he said, displaying a goodly amount of seductive charm. “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine . . .”

“Did you find Debbie Anne?”

He released me and folded his arms. “No, we did not find Debbie Anne, my dear snoop. She didn't return to the sorority house last night, and hasn't shown up as of now. She didn't go to her classes, the library, or her parents' home.”

“How could she? You've impounded her car.”

“It's one of those official things we do, along with the yellow tape and the fingerprints. The captain saw it on some television show and decided we ought to try it.”

“Whose fingerprints were on the steering wheel?” I asked, refusing to react to his sarcasm. I had more important things on my meddlesome mind. “What about prints on the door handle? Did you find her purse?”

“I don't know, I don't know, and no.” He gazed at me with an expression not unlike that of a condemned man on the gallows. “All you did was have dinner at the sorority house, Claire. It's evident that you didn't like them then, and I can think of no reason why you might have changed your mind. They've interfered with your sleep, burdened you with their personal problems—and their cat bit you, for pity's sake!”

“So what's your point?”

“Furthermore, as far as we know, we're dealing with involuntary manslaughter rather than a baffling mystery resplendent with red herrings and subtle, provocative clues. Debbie Anne Wray accidentally ran over the Hall girl, and now is sobbing at a friend's apartment
until she gets up the nerve to turn herself in. This is not something in a mystery novel.”

I contemplated mentioning it was right up my alley, in more ways than one, but instead nodded meekly and said, “I suppose not. Did you reach Jean's aunt?”

He shot me a suspicious look. “She came home around midnight, and the local police officers informed her of the accident. It turns out that Jean's parents live in California, but when the girl decided to come to school here, she filed some papers to have her aunt appointed her legal guardian.”

“To save having to pay out-of-state tuition?”

“That's what the aunt said.”

“I'm surprised the registrar fell for that ploy, but I must admit I'm not surprised Jean came up with it in the first place. She'd probably been planning to be a lawyer since birth, her little red face aglow with glee at the thought of suing the doctor for malpractice. Is her body going to be sent back to California?”

“In a day or two.” Peter managed a smile or two, and had either quit suspecting my motives or was concealing it well. After a brief discussion about dinner the next evening, he left and I sat on the stool and tried to convince myself that he was right, that this wasn't anything more than an unfortunate accident. Debbie Anne would turn herself in, sniveling steadily, and ultimately the judicial system would slap her wrist and admonish her to be more careful in the future.

Then again, her reception at the sorority house might be chilly, to put it mildly, and National would demand the return of her pledge pin and faded pink sweatshirt. No more secret whistles and construction-paper cutouts in her future. No hope of singing the Kappa Theta Eta prayer so sweetly that Eleanor Vanderson would weep.

I was working on a secret whistle that I would share only with regular Book Depot customers when Caron and Inez came through the door. I tried it on them.

“This is not the time for parakeet imitations,” Caron said as she slumped across the counter, covering her head with one arm and speaking in a hollow, muffled
voice. “My life is in shambles. I might as well die right now and get it over with. Inez, call the funeral home and ask if they're running any specials this week. Tell them I'll need an ivory casket.”

“I don't think I have a black dress,” I said, frowning, “but I did buy a nice navy one last week.”

She lifted her head far enough to glare malevolently at me. “Navy is not one of your colors, Mother. It makes you look like you've got one of those polysyllabic diseases.”

“That's right, Mrs. Malloy,” contributed Inez. “You really ought to wear earth tones like salmon and peach. For a funeral, you could wear gray, maybe.”

“Thank you.” I awaited the next development with jaded maternal patience.

I was rewarded with another malevolent look and a string of sighs. Caron at last found the energy to stand up. “Don't you care that my Life Is in Shambles?”

“Not as long as I know what to wear to your funeral. Can I rely on Inez's advice when I take clothes to the mortuary?”

“You're not funny, Mother.”

I'd assumed otherwise, but merely said, “What's the cause of the ruination of your life at the tender age of fifteen? Out of deodorant? Expired subscription to
Seventeen
magazine? New pimples?”

Inez blinked sternly at me. “You shouldn't make jokes about it, Mrs. Malloy. Didn't you see the ambulances and police cars in the alley behind the Kappa house last night? There was a horrible accident and one of the girls was—”

“I wasn't making jokes about that. I know what happened, and it's not in any way amusing.” I began to realize the source of Caron's eloquent and well-dramatized misery. She wasn't mourning Jean's death by any means. “This has to do with your Beautiful Self, doesn't it?”

“Pippa's thinking about dropping out for the rest of the summer and going with some friends to France or
someplace dumb like that. She says she's too upset about Jean to stay in the house.”

“And you can't continue doing the analyses without her?”

“Not if she takes her kit with her,” Caron said with the long-suffering resignation characteristic of the age. “If you'd lent me the money in the first place, I wouldn't be in this situation, but you wouldn't so much as invest one lousy dollar in my career. Now there's no way I can buy a car at the end of the summer. All along, you've encouraged me to be resourceful and industrious, and you're the one who said—”

“That's enough,” I said evenly. “I did not tell you to do something that goes beyond the ethical pale by exploiting your friends. If you want to earn money, line up some baby-sitting jobs or yardwork. Run errands for people. Clean houses.”

She stared at me as if I'd suggested she rob graves in order to sell the body parts. “You're telling me that I ought to scrub other people's toilets or rake their leaves or wipe their babies' noses? I can't believe it, I really can't! Come on, Inez, let's get out of here before Mother decides I ought to ride bulls in a rodeo.”

Inez dutifully followed Caron out the door, and no doubt would nod just as dutifully until indignation faded and some degree of calculation replaced it. In the interim, the pedestrians on the sidewalk could be entertained by a lengthy tirade of artistically colorful phrases, explosive sighs, and accusations of parental perfidy likely to provoke a visit from the Department of Child Welfare.

Two uneventful hours later, the telephone rang, and I answered it with some hesitancy, hoping it wasn't a social worker.

“Mrs. Malloy?” whispered a voice. “This is Debbie Anne Wray.”

“Debbie Anne,” I said, clutching the edge of the counter to prevent myself from toppling off the stool to shatter like a cheap vase, “where are you?”

“I can't tell you. I was just calling to ask you to let my mama know I'm all right. They might have her line tapped so they can trace calls. It's long-distance, but I swear I'll pay you back when all this is over. Every last penny of it.”

“I'll make the call for you, but you must tell me where you are, Debbie Anne, so that I can come pick you up. You're in trouble, and hiding out is not going to help the situation.”

“Golly, Mrs. Malloy, you think I don't know I'm in trouble? I should have stayed home and maybe gone to the junior college like my friends, but my mama insisted I go to school in Farberville, and look where it's got me!”

“Where?” I said cleverly.

“In a passel of trouble, that's where. Please won't you call my mama for me? If the police call her first, she'll most likely have a heart attack right there in the middle of the kitchen.” She rattled off a telephone number, waited until I regained a semblance of consciousness and found a pencil, repeated it, and added, “Don't worry about me, Mrs. Malloy. She'll never find me, and even if she figures it out, she'll be too scared to come here. Once she's been arrested, I'll come right to your store and pay you back for the call.”

“Who is this ‘she' you keep mentioning, Debbie Anne?”

“I'd like to tell you, but I promised I wouldn't. If I did, I'd be in worse trouble than I already am. Why, they could arrest me, you know, and lock me up tighter'n bark on a tree—especially if she lies about it and they believe her. In the end everybody'11 know it was her idea, but I don't aim to sit in jail until she admits it.”

I closed my eyes and sought inspiration, but nothing was forthcoming (except an embryonic headache). However, I was a wily and well-seasoned inquisitor, and she was but a freshman in more ways than one. I took a wild guess. “I don't think Winkie would want to see you in jail. She'll admit it.”

“Huh? I'm talking about Jean Hall, Mrs. Malloy. Somebody just drove up, so I've got to go. Have a nice day.”

After I'd grown bored listening to the dial tone, I replaced the receiver and tried to make sense of the conversation. Unless Debbie Anne was terrified by the possibility of being haunted by a diaphanous, chain-rattling law student, she wasn't aware that Jean was dead. On the contrary, she was worried about being locked up “tighter'n bark on a tree” (the quaint phrase did not refer, presumably, to a birch tree) because of something Jean might accuse her of doing, or of having done, or of planning to do in the future. Whatever it was would result in incarceration until Jean admitted her guilt, at which time Debbie Anne would be vindicated.

I knew Debbie Anne's parents had been contacted by the police, but I'd promised to call them and I was a bit curious about their reaction. No one answered, nor did a mechanized voice suggest I leave a message at the sound of the beep. Resolving to remember to try later, I tucked the piece of paper with the number into my pocket.