The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders (4 page)

Even from a distance, the stench from whatever was inside the shed made me want to be violently sick. Joy Ellen had turned almost as gray as the sky and clutched her mouth as she gagged.

“Cover your nose,” I said, “and try not to breathe. We've got to get them away from here.” I pulled the wet bandanna from my hair and tied it around the lower part of my face, glad of the cold cleansing rain on my bare head.

Paula stared at us with wide glazed eyes and moved like a mechanical wind-up toy as I led her away, but Miriam shook so, it took the two of us to hold her, and gulped air in ragged, sobbing gasps.

“Go ahead, I'll catch up,” I told Joy Ellen after we had led the girls a distance away. “I'm going back to close that door.” Neither of us wanted to say it, but we knew what would happen if an animal wandered inside. Joy Ellen nodded mutely and started back the way we had come, with a shivering girl on either arm.

I took a deep breath of rain-washed air and ran back to the building, pressing my bandanna against my face. I didn't have to look inside to know what I would find, but in the few seconds before the thick wooden door slammed shut I glimpsed the discolored, bloated thing that had once been D. C. Hunter.

Halfway across the soggy field, Joy Ellen paused and called my name, a question in her voice. I hurried toward her, the rain mingling with my tears. Only when I turned to look back at the shed did I see Augusta standing there, her face as bleak as the sky.

The rain had stopped by the time we sloshed back to the main campus, but it had also turned colder and I shivered in my wet clothing. The girls were quiet now. Head down, Paula stumbled along beside me, hugging herself for warmth. Miriam clung to Joy Ellen, crying silently. The two seemed to have aged ten years in the last hour, and their faces were a sickly pale, their lips a purplish blue.

I knew enough about hypothermia to realize the danger, and apparently so did Joy Ellen. She looked at me over her shoulder and I could tell by her expression that she was as scared as I was. “Let's get them inside to Blythe,” she said. “She'll know what to do.”

“Blythe?” A happy name. I liked the sound of it.

“Blythe Cornelius, Dean Holland's secretary—has an apartment right here in the dorm. We can call the police from there.”

Blythe Cornelius was sort of an unofficial housemother, Joy Ellen explained. Many of the girls called her Aunt Shug because of her frequent use of the affectionate term and would sometimes come to her for advice. A calming influence, she said. She sounded good to me.

“Hey! What took you so long? The others are all safely back in the nest, so I thought I'd see what was holding the rest of you up.” Ellis hurried toward us with a huge black umbrella, then stopped abruptly, seeing our faces. “What's wrong? Are you all right? Is somebody hurt?”

At that, Paula burst into tears again and I drew Ellis aside to explain what had happened.

“Oh, dear God, not that! Not that!” Ellis shut her eyes, her jaw clinched tight, and for a few seconds I thought she was going to break down, too. I should have known better. My friend Ellis Saxon is made of sterner stuff. “I don't suppose anybody has called the police?” she asked.

With a dazed expression, Joy Ellen took a cell phone from her jacket pocket. “I had this with me all along…why didn't I use it?”

“We had more important things to do,” I told her. “Like getting these girls back safely, not to mention warm and dry.” I began to walk faster. “Come on, let's get them inside.”

Blythe Cornelius's apartment was on the main floor of Emma P. Harris Hall and Joy Ellen didn't even take the time to ring the bell, but pounded on the secretary's door and called out her name.

“Hold on a minute! I'm coming, I'm coming!” Blythe's vexed expression vanished when she saw us standing there and Miriam immediately threw herself into the woman's arms. “What on earth has happened here?” Her question was directed at Joy Ellen as she drew us into the room. “Miriam? Paula? What's wrong? Why, sugar, you look as pale as a ghost! Are you all right?”

Blythe Cornelius looked to be about my age, which is fifty-six, or maybe a little older. It was difficult to tell because she has that fine bone structure and smooth complexion that would probably keep her looking youthful for years to come, but she had made no attempt to disguise the gray hair that covered her head in a mass of short curls.

A gray cat that had been curled asleep in the armchair suddenly leaped to the floor and darted underneath the sofa. “Here, sugar, let's get off those wet shoes first,” Blythe commanded, trying to straighten the bifocals Miriam had knocked awry, “then tell me what's going on.”

And so we did. Ellis spread out a stack of newspapers where she piled soggy shoes and socks in a heap while I collected the wet jackets and stood wondering what to do with them. Joy Ellen waved her hand for quiet and turned away from the noise and confusion to speak calmly with the police. The students slumped side by side on Blythe's blue-sprigged chintz sofa, making two large wet spots, no doubt, while the rest of us dripped on her soft gray carpet.

If that bothered Blythe Cornelius, she didn't let on. “I can't believe this is happening,” she said with a tremor in her voice. “That poor child! Who in the world…? And right here at our own Sarah Bedford.” For a few seconds she stood there looking about the small living room as if she wanted to drink in its comfort: the mahogany writing desk, corner bookshelves filled to overflowing, family photographs that cluttered every surface. And apparently it gave her strength because she quickly drew an afghan around the two girls, straightened, and started for the kitchen. “Our duty now is to tend to the living. First a warm shower, then you'll want something hot to drink. I'll put on the kettle.”

“Let me, please,” I said, tired of feeling useless, and was glad when she agreed. In the tiny kitchen, I arranged the dripping coats on the first chair I saw and started to fill the kettle. That's when I heard someone gasp.

For the first time I noticed Willene Benson seated at the small maple table in the breakfast nook with a Scrabble board in front of her, along with two china cups and a plate of Oreos. She looked up with a frown. “Lucy Nan! What's going on? I thought I heard a commotion in the living room.”

“We found the missing student,” I said, trying to play down the grizzly details. “She's been dead for some time and I'm afraid it's taken an emotional toll on all of us, especially the girls who found her. Joy Ellen has phoned the police.”

Willene's hand went to her mouth. “Oh dear! In that case, I'd better go,” she said, rising.

“No, please! We really could use your help. Blankets—as many as you can find, and something hot to drink: canned soup—anything.” In spite of the warm kitchen, my teeth were beginning to chatter and I knew I had to get into dry clothing soon.

In the hallway off the kitchen I found Blythe Cornelius herding the two girls into her bathroom, and soon heard a shower running. Ellis, who was relatively dry, offered to run home for dry clothes, but Joy Ellen had already phoned her teenaged daughter to bring us something to wear, and Blythe sent a message to Miriam's roommate to hurry with warm clothing for the girls.

Joy Ellen and I eagerly snatched the towels and robes Blythe offered and headed for the girls' shower at the end of the hall. When we returned a few minutes later, we found Willene ladling hot tomato soup into Paula and Miriam, who huddled beneath blankets on the sofa. Two policemen stood outside the door and I recognized the younger one as Duff Acree, the sergeant who had searched my yard for missing jewelry the year before—but that's another story. Joy Ellen and I had to explain to the two why we needed to go inside before they'd let us into Blythe's apartment.

“Those policemen aren't setting a foot inside this door,” Blythe told us, “until these two girls have warmed up and calmed down. If the Hunter girl is dead like you say, she isn't going anywhere, and neither are we.”

But apparently that rule didn't apply to her employer, Dean Holland, who sat in an armchair by the window with a grim look on his face and a coffee mug in his hand. Willene had obviously taken her assignment seriously, as everyone seemed to have been supplied with something hot to drink, and almost as soon as I stepped into the room a cup of something that smelled like lemon tea was thrust in front of me. I gulped it gratefully.

The dean looked frail and ill, and when I went over to speak to him he merely shook his head from side to side and mumbled a groan. Partly, I knew, because he couldn't hear a word I'd said. Deaf as a roastin' ear, as my granddaddy used to say, but I could see the poor man was genuinely distressed at the turn of events on his campus. And he had good reason to be. If D. C. Hunter had been murdered, as it certainly seemed she had, it wasn't going to bode well for Sarah Bedford, especially after the drowning death of that other student several years before.

“One of the policemen told me they're waiting for Captain Hardy,” Ellis whispered aside to me. “He said two men have already been sent out to the shed where you found the Hunter girl.”

Having completed her duties, Willene Benson slipped into her raincoat, wrapped a shawl around her neck, and started out the door for home, only to be told by one of the uniformed men to wait until the officer in charge arrived. I thought the poor woman was going to break down and cry.

The officer in charge, I was relieved to learn, was not that doofus police chief, Elmer Harris, but someone new to the force, Captain Alonzo Hardy, who looked to be somewhere in his mid-forties. By the time Captain Hardy arrived, our clothes had been delivered and I was glad of something to wear, although Joy Ellen's warm-up pants were a little snug in areas I won't mention. The captain had jack-o'-lantern hair and a good-neighbor kind of face, but I doubted if much would get past his observant green eyes.

The first thing the captain did was get rid of the college big-wigs who had accumulated as if by magic and disperse the collection of curious students gathered in the hallway around Blythe Cornelius's door. Willene and Ellis were allowed to leave, but the captain asked Joy Ellen and me to wait while they interviewed the two students separately. Blythe excused herself from the room, but since we didn't know where else to go, Joy Ellen and I remained and tried to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible. The captain didn't object and I think it put the girls a little more at ease to have us there.

My hands were still cold in spite of the hot shower and I wrapped them around the warm cup, sipping the tea slowly and wishing Augusta were there. I had never seen her look as despondent as when I saw her last, and I knew she wouldn't be able to put what had happened behind her until the person responsible was brought to justice.

The sergeant, who looked to be about twenty-eight or -nine, talked with Paula in the breakfast room. He had a clean-cut college-boy appearance and she didn't seem intimidated, although I did hear her giggle nervously once or twice. Captain Hardy sat on the flowered sofa with Miriam and advised her just to take her time—even close her eyes if it helped—and tell him how they had happened to go inside the old stone shed.

“I don't want to close my eyes,” Miriam said, kneading a ruffle-trimmed pillow in her lap. “I don't want to ever see it again, but I know I will. I'll never be able to forget it as long as I live.”

She and Paula had run for the stone building when it started lightning, she said. “I'd forgotten the old place was there, it's buried so far back in the vines, but Paula remembered seeing it last winter when she went out to the back campus to jog.”

Miriam clutched the pillow to her chest. “We should've known something awful was wrong by the smell as soon as we pulled open that door, but I thought it was…you know, a dead rat or a possum or something. We were soaking wet, and just then it sounded like the lightning struck something really close. I'm scared to death of lightning!”

Captain Hardy nodded. “Do you remember who opened the door? You or your friend?”

“Paula. Paula did, and then we started to go inside.” Miriam covered her face. “We didn't get very far.”

“I know this is difficult for you, but we have to know. Tell me exactly what you saw, every detail you can remember.” The captain reminded me of Dr. Beasley the time I fell off Ellis's garage roof and broke my arm when I was ten. He prodded softly but with words.

Miriam grabbed a tissue and continued. “It—she was lying there on her back, kind of like she'd fallen from those steps, only it looked like she'd been cut.”

He frowned. “What steps?”

“There were steps to a loft or something. It was too dark to see, and we didn't stick around.”

“Why do you think she'd been cut?”

“Because there was a gash. Well, it looked like a gash…oh, God! And there was all this dark stuff—blood, I guess, and that curved blade farmers used to use to cut grain. You know, that thing that's on the old Russian flag.”

“You mean a sickle? The girl had been cut with a sickle?”

Miriam tucked sock-clad feet beneath her and nodded. Her shiver shook the cushion where she sat. “I'm not sure, but it looked like it, and it was lying right there beside her on the floor. It looked rusty.” She swallowed. “Or maybe it wasn't rust.”

Eventually Miriam remembered that D.C. had worn a jogging suit—blue, she thought—and that there had been a large metal drum and an assortment of old tools against the wall near the door.

It was more than I remembered, but I did see what appeared to be a small plastic container of breath mints by the steps when I ran back to close the door. I guess the only reason I remembered it was because it seemed so out of place: breath mints in that dark, putrid shed.

“Do you recall seeing anything else out of the ordinary?” Captain Hardy asked when I told him what I'd seen, and I admitted I hadn't spent much time looking around. Blythe's gray-striped cat that had been hiding under the sofa finally came out and jumped up into my lap. She looked as if she meant to stay and I was glad of the company and the warmth.

The detective held a brief conference with the policemen in the hallway, then spoke with Blythe, who had returned from the kitchen where she had gone to make coffee. “I understand the Hunter girl has a roommate, but she's not in her room right now. Does anyone know where we might find her?”

“Sally? I think she has a lab this afternoon,” Paula said, “or she could be at the library.”

“Would either of you know if D. C. Hunter received any unusual communication in the last week or so?” he asked the two girls.

“You mean like a letter?” Paula glanced at Miriam, who shook her head.

Miriam shrugged. “D.C. doesn't—didn't have a lot to do with most of us, but I guess she e-mailed like everybody else. I don't know anybody who uses snail mail much anymore, but if she did get any letters, Sally would probably know about it. She usually collects their mail if there is any.”

“What about boyfriends?” he asked. “Do you know if she's been seeing anyone—anyone in particular?”

The room grew so quiet I could hear the coffee percolating. “It's just rumor,” Miriam said finally. “You know how people talk. I wouldn't want to hurt an innocent person.”