The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders (14 page)

Blythe Cornelius hollered as we passed her table. “Guess how many beans are in the jar and win a prize!” She pointed to a huge panda wearing a vest in Sarah Bedford's colors of gold and white. “Come on, ladies—only ten cents a guess!”

I shoved a dollar her way. “We're on the way to the car with this cake. Catch you when I get back.” Sadly, Teddy had recently decided he was too old for stuffed animals.

“Lucy, do me a favor, would you, please? Since you'll be going right past there anyway…” Blythe took off her glasses and polished them on the sleeve of her shirt. “I cleaned out Willene's refrigerator this afternoon and unplugged it, but I can't remember if I left the door open. It'll smell something awful if it's left closed. Would you run in and check it for me? Shouldn't take a minute.”

“Sure.” I waited while she fished the door key from her purse. Jo Nell stopped trying to count the beans and looked up at her. “You've heard from Willene?”

Blythe placed the key in my hand and smiled. “She's fine—just taking a few weeks' leave of absence to get her life in order. Wouldn't tell me where she was, though.”

I could tell Jo Nell was restless to go on, so we didn't linger. My cousin has legs as long as cornstalks and doesn't waste any time getting where she's going. I stopped to buy a double-dip chocolate-chip ice cream cone and had to run to catch up with her. “Poor Willene! I do believe she's outweirded herself this time!” she said. “Why doesn't the woman
do
something about that horrible man?”

“She was probably too frightened,” I said, and told her about the telephone message. “Couldn't get away fast enough. Sounds to me like her ex has a screw loose.”

Willene's small apartment was dark except for a faint light from the street, and we paused to unlock her front door. “Here, hold this a minute, would you?” I shoved my half-eaten ice cream at Jo Nell and she set her cake box down to take it, then waited while I went inside. Blythe had been right to be concerned. The refrigerator door was closed and I propped it open with a kitchen chair, thinking how sad it was that the place didn't look less lived in with Willene Benson gone than it did when she was here.

The rooms seemed hollow, and even with the lights on I could imagine someone hiding here. I couldn't wait to get outside and hurried to lock the door behind me. Willene's converted garage was far removed from the crowd. And it was quiet. The kind of quiet that makes me jumpy.

Snicker-snack…snicker-snack…The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

My hand shook so, I dropped the key and had to scratch around in dead leaves to find it. A falling acorn pinged in the black-dark area beside the building where a huge oak stretched skeleton limbs…and I thought I heard something else there. Maybe not. I stumbled over a root in my rush to get away.

Jo Nell sighed impatiently and held my melting ice cream at arm's length. “Hurry and take this thing, it's dripping all over me.”

I relieved her of the messy cone and looked for a place to get rid of it, but there wasn't a trash can in sight. We had started to the parking lot when I either sensed or saw movement behind us to my left and a figure stepped out of the shadows.

“Hurry!” I whispered, grabbing my cousin's elbow.

“Quit shoving me, Lucy Nan! It's dark out here.”

Too dark. The lamps beside Willene Benson's door weren't lit and the large oaks screened the lights from main campus.

“Where is she?” Someone spoke behind me. A man. “Where's my wife?”

I tried to move away, but his hand gripped my arm. “I don't know where she is,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

Jo Nell stepped closer and put an arm through mine. “And we wouldn't tell you if we did,” she said. “Now, I'll thank you to get out of our way.”

Please, Jo Nell, not now! Don't say any more!
The man's fingers dug into my wrist. He was so close I could smell his sour breath, see the dark stubble on his chin. Willene Benson's ex-husband. The nearness of him made me want to be sick.

Jo Nell locked on to my arm and tried to wrench me away, but the man stepped between us. My voice hid somewhere deep inside and I had to reach for it. When the words came they sounded as if they needed to be dusted. “Look,” I croaked, “I can't tell you anything. Now please, let us go.”

He gave me a sudden shake and shoved his pasty face into mine. “You're lying! I saw you come out of her place. You know where she is, and you damn well better tell me!”

A cold wind zapped me in the face, yet I felt uncomfortably warm—even hot. Every sound seemed magnified: Jo Nell's fast breathing, the crunch of an acorn. This man was unstable. He might have a knife, a gun. My cousin was too old to run fast, and I was no track star either. I had to do something.

And then I saw her standing there—Augusta—and she seemed to bask in a calming blue aura. Think blue, Augusta always advised me whenever my emotions got the better of me. Take a deep breath and think blue. And I did. For a brief second I was only aware of the ice cream trickling down my hand.

Ice cream
. I pulled free of Jo Nell's grip and smushed the melting confection right between the man's eyes, screaming as loud as I could while little streams of chocolaty liquid oozed down his face. For a few seconds he wore what was left of the cone like a unicorn's horn in the middle of his forehead. And then he ran.

Panting the whole way, Jo Nell and I pushed and pulled each other toward the lights, toward the voices and activity. My sweatshirt seemed to weigh a ton, and my heart drummed so, I felt it might make a hole in my chest. Apparently no one had heard me scream over the hubbub of the festival.

Just ahead on the flagstone walk Dean Holland tried to make a decision on a painted pumpkin the art students were peddling. He looked even more puzzled than usual when I grabbed him by the arm.

“A man!” I yelled. “A man just threatened us back there! Willene Benson's husband—he's crazy and he's running loose right here at Sarah Bedford.”

The dean smiled as he patted my hand. “Well, that's fine. Just fine. I'm crazy about Sarah Bedford, too.”

“That sounds like Riley Herman,” Blythe said when I told her what had happened. I could tell she was trying not to laugh. “And you hit him with
what?
”

“What was left of my chocolate-chip cone. It was the only weapon I had, and a waste of good ice cream, too.” I didn't think it was so funny.

“But you had to think about it,” Jo Nell reminded me. “Seems like you stood there for at least five minutes before you came to parting terms with it.”

“I didn't see you parting with that pound cake,” I told her.

Blythe was serious again. “You did report this, didn't you, Lucy?”

I nodded. “As soon as I had the breath to speak. If he's still on campus, the police shouldn't have any trouble finding him.”

“Now you see what Willene had to put up with,” she said.

“Can you blame her for trying to hide?”

“But aren't they divorced?” I asked. “Isn't there a law against that sort of thing?”

“Can't make it stick. I don't know how many times Willene has taken out a restraining order against that man.” Blythe rattled her bean jar at a passerby. “But this time she thought maybe she'd lost him for good.”

“Well, he gives me the creeps,” I said. “He's not right, not normal. No wonder she's afraid of him.”

Blythe zipped up her jacket and tucked soft gray curls under a blue knitted cap. “Let's hope campus security will turn that one over to the police…if they can find him.”

I heard the jangle of bracelets behind me and turned to see Sally Wooten. “Find who?” she said.

“Never you mind, sugar,” Blythe told her. “Just be sure you don't wander off alone. A drunk frightened Miss Lucy near the parking lot a while ago, so keep your eyes open.”

Sally made a face. “It wasn't that Londus, was it?”

“Londus Clack?
Drunk?
Surely you must be joking, Sally,” Blythe said, “Why, he'd as soon drink drain cleaner than touch a drop of liquor. What makes you say a thing like that?”

Sally looked at me and shrugged. “I don't know. He's been acting kind of funny lately. Follows us sometimes, and sort of hangs around like he wants to say something.” She rolled her eyes. “Weird!”

Blythe frowned. “Follows who? Where?”

“I guess he's trailed after just about everybody at one time or another. Celeste and Debra said he walked a few paces behind them when they went to the library the other night, only when they turned around he pretended to tie his shoe; and Paula said he was watching while she swam laps in the pool yesterday. He's always prowling around our hall.”

“How long has this been going on?” Blythe asked.

“I don't know. Couple of weeks, maybe longer.” Sally dug two quarters from her pocket and wrote down five guesses for the bean jar.

“I'll speak to him about it,” Blythe told her. “A month ago, I would've bet good money Londus Clack is as harmless as they come, but now I don't know. They even think he might've—”

“Might've what?” I asked.

But Blythe had a set look on her face, and I knew she wasn't going to say any more. “Don't forget one of our girls has been killed on this campus. Just be careful,” she said.

The crowd was thinning now and some of the booths were closing. Blythe turned away to wade through her basket of names and numbers to determine who would win the big panda. Jo Nell had wandered off earlier to find Idonia, as she was giving her a ride home, and I would bet my next paycheck—all $1.98 of it—the two of them were sitting at her kitchen table this minute putting a big dent in that sour-cream pound cake.

I turned up my collar, stuck my hands in my pockets, and told the girls in our booth to go home. They had sold all the taffy and only a few popcorn balls were left.

“I want to see the Haunted Garden before it's too late,” Celeste said, taking down our sign. “Anybody want to go with me?”

Debra, who was helping her, counted their earnings and wrote down the sum. “Not me. It's getting cold out here. Besides, I'm expecting a call.”

“Come on, Miss Lucy, it'll be fun, and the proceeds go to the Drama Club.” Celeste waited with her head to one side, looking about twelve years old. I shuddered to think of facing Weigelia Jones if I let anything happen to her little sister.

Leslie, I noticed, was helping out with a few stragglers in line for the ring toss game and I waved to let her know I hadn't deserted her. “I've already had one scare tonight. It can't be much worse than that,” I said. “Okay, let's go.”

I hadn't been on the “haunted” trail since our children were small, and it was fun letting myself be a child again. The college had talked about canceling the Drama Club's project after what happened to D.C., but the students had put so much work into it, they decided to go ahead.

Shrieks and moans against a background of eerie music were being broadcast throughout a thriller obstacle course beginning with the cavelike circle beneath the Tree House. Celeste and I were met by Igor—or was it Quasimodo?—who escorted us past a life-size dummy wearing a Frankenstein monster mask. The gruesome thing hung by its neck with a knife in its chest, but it looked so fake it wasn't even scary.

Dracula swooped out of shadows, ghosts appeared from behind gravestones, and a growling student in a shaggy costume, who I think was supposed to be Wolfman, stalked us along the way. “Look out!” I yelled and Celeste grabbed me around the neck as a witch on a broomstick swooped from behind a tree with a hoarse, rasping cackle that ended in a howling crescendo.

Laughing, we untangled ourselves and had started to walk on when Celeste grabbed my arm and whispered something so low I could barely hear her.

“What?” I found myself whispering too.

“Oh, Lord, there he is again.” She nodded slightly to the right.

It was so dark, I could only make out a low wall. “Who?” I said.

“Shh! Not so loud. It's Londus. Watching us. He's been acting real strange lately. Wait and see, he'll be there waiting when we come out.”

“Does he do anything? Say anything?” I asked.

“No, he's just
there
—like a bad taste in your mouth that won't go away. And it's always when there's just one or two of us around. I'm afraid of him. If he followed D.C. like this, she would've said something nasty, something that might set him off—and then…”

I clawed at a fake spiderweb. (I hope it was a fake spiderweb!) “Sally told me pretty much the same thing.”

“Sally Wooten?”

“Right. She was telling Blythe about him just a little while ago.”

“Oh. Well, she would,” Celeste said.

A tall figure with a jack-o'-lantern for a head stepped up and asked if we had seen her head. I recognized Joy Ellen Harper's voice. Celeste had moved a few steps in front of me, and now she turned and waited.

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

Celeste managed to look confused, but she knew very well what I meant. “By what?”

“What you said about Sally. She
would
what?”

Celeste looked down as she walked, ignoring Jack the Ripper with a bloody knife. “I shouldn't have said that. There's probably nothing to it, but…well, Sally would probably be relieved if somebody else got blamed for D.C.'s murder.”

“But everybody says they got along fine. I don't understand.”

“They did, or at least they
seemed
to.” We stepped carefully over a couple of rubber snakes slithering in our path. “Look,” Celeste said, “Sally never mentions this, but D.C. was bad news for her from the first day she set foot on campus.”

“How? What did she do?”

“Stole her boyfriend, for starters. Sally had been going with Tommy Jack Evans for almost a year, but we hadn't been back to school two weeks before he gave her the old heave-ho. Next thing we knew, he was dating
guess who?
I saw them together myself,” Celeste said. “Of course it didn't last long—couple of weeks, maybe—but long enough to make a mess of things.”

“How did Sally take that?” I asked.

Celeste shrugged. “Pretended she didn't know what was going on, and maybe she didn't. Tommy Jack never came to the college when he was seeing D.C. He's already finished school. Coaches football at the high school and has his own place here in town, so she must've met him there. Sally was devastated, though. I think she was in love with the jerk—or thought she was. Then, when D.C. started gettin' it on with Professor Hornsby, Tommy Jack Evans was history. Served him right!”

“Do the police know about this?” I asked.

“They should. They questioned everybody in Emma Harris. Wanted to know who D.C. dated—everything about her—which wasn't much. I'm sure somebody must have told them about Tommy Jack.”

Our breath came in frosty puffs, and Celeste shoved her hands deep into her pockets and shivered. “She saw him for such a short time, it didn't occur to me to mention it, but now that I think about it I realize I should've said something. It's just that…well, this is
murder
we're talking about, and he'd only known the girl a short time.”

I could see why Sally Wooten might want to slap her roommate upside the head a couple of times for what she did, but I didn't think she'd have a go at her with a rusty sickle. “So had Sally. So had everybody,” I reasoned.

“Maybe so, but she didn't seem all that upset at the service,” Celeste said. “Not many of us did.”

“Service? What service?”

“They held a memorial service for D.C. here at the college a couple of nights ago. Just about everybody came—felt guilty, I guess. I know I did. It was sad, real sad. I felt just awful, but I couldn't even shed a tear. I wanted to, but the only two people I saw crying were Leslie Monroe and that hypocrite Londus Clack.

“See, there he is! What'd I tell you?” Celeste elbowed me in the side as we left the garden through a gap in the hedge.

Londus stood alone beside a weeping willow, which was appropriate, I thought, considering his forlorn expression. He wore a dark jacket over his work pants and his ears stuck out beneath a visored cap.

The commons area was empty except for a few people packing away their wares. Ed Tillman and his partner Sheila had left, but Kemper Mungo, I noticed, had stayed to help the cleanup committee gather empty cans for recycling. Celeste's co-worker had taken the table and proceeds with her, and Blythe Cornelius was folding her card table. The panda, I noticed, was gone.

Celeste began to walk faster and I glanced over my shoulder to see if Londus was still there. I know I must have appeared surprised to see him approaching us with a determined and slightly disapproving look on his homely face. I paused. This man came and went about the campus freely, and a policeman was in screaming distance. What could he possibly do? I turned to face him, folded my arms, and waited.

He slowed, but kept coming. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Celeste poised for flight, and after what we had discovered in that old shed, I didn't blame her.

Removing his cap, Londus held out a hand. “Miss, I wonder, could I—”

“Aunt Shug!” Celeste yelled louder than all the beasties in the Haunted Garden put together, and Blythe looked up to see who was calling to her.

“Who won the panda?” Celeste ran toward her into the light.

Blythe smiled when she saw her. “One of the cooks from the cafeteria won it for her daughter. Took two people to carry it. I remember my little sister had a bear like that—only not as big, of course. Carried it everywhere she went.”

Blythe stood and looked at us as if she were waiting for something to happen. “You know, I sure could use a hand with this table,” she said finally.

I glanced back to tell Londus to wait, but the janitor wasn't there.

Usually I don't have trouble sleeping in a strange bed, but that night I kept stumbling over all the clutter in my mind. Augusta had insisted on staying overnight as well—“to get the feel of things,” she said, and I knew she was somewhere nearby. Leslie had read for a while after going to bed, but now slept soundly across the room in a cocoon of purple sheets. Her dad was to come for her in the morning and I hoped she would get some much-needed help from her doctor during her stay at home over the next few days. Something was causing her anxieties, and maybe her father did expect too much of her, as Nettie claimed, but I didn't think he was to blame for all of it.

And in spite of the girls' suspicion of Londus Clack, I didn't believe he meant to harm them. After all, can a man who owns a singing teddy bear be all that bad? His very shyness was probably what frightened them, I thought, his reluctance to come out and approach the girls with whatever he wanted to say. Besides, Londus didn't seem the type to read
Alice in Wonderland
or appreciate the Jabberwocky nonsense. I was almost certain he had wanted to tell me something tonight before Celeste frightened him away by shouting to Blythe.