The Class Menagerie jj-4 (12 page)

"How do you mean?"

"Well, they'd broken up at the prom. He probably was pretty shocked and insulted that she'd dumped him before he got around to dumping her. He got drunk and angry and came home. I think maybe he just meant to come home for a while — maybe go back over to her house later and tell her off or something. Or maybe come over and talk to me about it. Anyway, he could have left the car engine running and gone upstairs to get something. And if he changed his mind, and forgot about the car or just passed out…"

"But didn't Avalon say she was drawing the carriage house when she heard the car engine
start?
Remember, when she was showing us the picture she brought along? She said she'd done it that night."

"Oh, she was just being melodramatic," Crispy said. "And even if she did hear him start the car, the same thing could hold true. He came home for something, started to leave and remembered something else he wanted to go back upstairs for."

"I've got to get on with my jobs," Jane said. She'd suddenly heard all she could stand to hear about Dead Ted. The thought of a teenaged boy, the same age as her own Mike, dying, by accident or on purpose, was too depressing to contemplate.

"I'm sorry. I've offended you."

"No, you haven't," Jane assured her. "It's just that I promised Edgar I'd help him and he'll be back any minute. I need to get busy."

"Thanks for listening. I'm sorry I unloaded on you." She laughed. "You weren't one of the ones I intended to come here to punish for not recognizing my sterling qualities when I was a fat, seventeen-year-old lump."

"Is that why you came to the reunion?"

"Pretty much so. But someone else seems to have usurped my role as dispenser of overdue justice."

"You mean killing Lila?"

"Lila — and all the tricks."

"If you had to guess—" Jane began.

"I wouldn't guess," Crispy said firmly. "And a smart person like you won't either. It could be a dangerous game."

It wasn't until she was ascending the stairs with her cleaning materials that Jane remembered that she meant to ask Crispy what had been in Lila's notebook.

13

Pooky had just started cleaning up her room when Jane arrived to do it. "Go on, visit with your friends," Jane said. "I'll do this for you."

"Let me help you. I'd rather. They're all in Kathy's room, talking about politics and things. I'm not as clever as everybody else on that stuff."

"Then let's start with the bed," Jane said. "I've got fresh sheets here. I think I'd prefer to miss a political discussion with Kathy, too. I don't blame you."

"It's not that I don't know about other things," Pooky said, taking off the bedspread and folding it with excruciating neatness even though they were going to put it right back on the bed. "I used to be a travel agent and I went lots of places. Acapulco, Hawaii, the French Riviera…"

The culture meccas,
Jane thought.

"Have you been to those places?" Pooky asked.

"Some of them. My father is with the State Department and I grew up all over the world. I've lived in about seventeen different countries."

"Then you know what I mean. You can't travel without learning a lot. But I've never liked that stuff Kathy is always talking about. It just depresses me. Like nature programs. I used to really like nature programs — about penguins and flowers and things — but now when you watch them, they just make you feel awful. They're always all about how terrible people are ruining things. Oil spills and ozone and rain forests. I mean, what can / do about it? They never tell you that. They just make you feel horrible, then there's a commercial."

Jane looked at her with surprise. "You know… you're right!" She didn't mean to sound quite so astonished.

But Pooky didn't take offense. "Kathy's like that. She's always mad about people who aren't doing the right thing, but she doesn't talk about what the right thing is. She was always like that. Against stuff instead of for anything. I mean, what good is that?"

"So she hasn't changed since high school?"

"No, nobody has really. Except Mimi. Isn't she beautiful?"

"She sure is."

"She was real cute in school, too. But she's grown up real nice. Peaceful and polite. She was sort of wild and — I don't know the word—"

"Frenzied?" Jane guessed.

Pooky was pleased. "Yes, that's it. That's what I meant."

"What about Avalon? Has she changed?" Jane asked, putting new cases on the pillows while Pooky made hospital corners on the sheets.

"Oh, not at all. Avalon's wonderful. She's so talented. Did you see that picture she drew of the carriage house? Wasn't that fantastic? I hoped she'd give it to me, but I guess she didn't understand how much I liked it and she gave it to that man Edgar who owns this house. I wonder if I asked him—"

"I don't think I would if I were you. He showed it to me this morning. He loves it."

"Oh, that's too bad. Well, maybe she'll make another one for me. Avalon's really nice, too. That's what's great about her. Did you know she's got foster children. She takes handicapped ones that nobody else wants."

"I'd heard that. Was she so nice in school?"

"Well, I don't know. I don't remember her all that well, except that we had a home ec class together. She was really quiet, see, and I was real popular and busy. But in home ec she made this fantastic dress. It was all sort of scraps of fabric, you know, like pretty little rags, sort of here and there. She didn't even have a pattern, can you believe it? Greens and blues and purples. I think there were some ribbons, too — she should have gone into fashion design. Now,
that's
a great field. She'd have been famous if she'd done that."

Jane smiled. Kathy wanted Avalon to use her talents to better the world; Pooky wanted her to better the state of fashion. "What does Avalon do, besides take care of the children?"

"She has a little craft store down in the Ozarks. She sells things that ladies there make, plus her own things. Quilts and like that."

"Somebody said she did drugs," Jane said. Actually both Lila and Kathy had suggested it.

Pooky nearly dropped the bedspread she'd picked back up. "No! I can't believe that anybody'd think a thing like that! I'll bet it was Lila who said that. Lila is — was — a big liar."

"Here, let's put that spread back. Lila seems to have threatened a couple of people. Did she threaten you?"

Pooky gave the spread a fierce flap and, as it settled into place, said, "No! No, there's nothing to threaten me about." Her ruined face was set in harsh lines and

her hands were trembling. It was obviously a lie.

Jane's curiosity was overridden by guilt. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

"You didn't! I'm not upset! Now, where are the towels? Oh, I see. I'll put these away. And give me some of that cleaner stuff!"

She stomped into the bathroom and Jane could hear her crashing around, although how she did any crashing armed primarily with towels was a mystery in itself.

Jane dragged the vacuum in from the hall and shoved it around until Pooky came back out. "I'm really sorry," Jane repeated. "It must be hard on you, staying here where Ted lived. Somebody told me you dated him." She figured this line served the dual purpose of giving Pooky an excuse to be nervy and might also elicit some interesting information.

She was right on the first. Pooky fell on the justification as if it were a life raft. "It
is
strange to be here. I really hadn't thought about Ted much for the last few years and now I keep remembering him all the time. He was really a neat guy. Smart and so good-looking! Captain of the football team and president of the Latin Club. That was a prestigious thing, the Latin Club. I don't think kids take Latin these days. Just as well. I never did get why anybody'd care about a language you couldn't talk in. But I bet Ted could have talked it if he wanted to."

"Did you date him for a long time?" Jane asked. She wound up the vacuum cleaner cord.

"Most of our sophomore year. And part of our junior year. Then Ted — well,
we
—decided it would be better to date other people, too. It was the right decision. I mean, we were just kids, after all." But all these years later the pain was still in her voice.

"Then he dated Lila—" Jane said.

"Oh, just a couple of times. She was such a cold fish, though. Always criticizing other people. Guys don't like that, you know. They like a girl who's cheerful and fun, not somebody who's always whining and complaining. No, mainly he dated Beth."

"Mainly? Did you two still go out together?"

"Sometimes," Pooky hedged. "But I didn't want Beth to know. It would have hurt her feelings. And I wouldn't have done that for the world."

"You liked Beth?"

"We were best friends. She had her jobs and her studying and I had my cheerleading. That took a lot of time. But we spent all the time we could together." This was so unlikely as to be impossible, but apparently Pooky had convinced herself it was true.

Pooky picked up the bottle of window cleaner and spritzed it on the mirror. Jane noticed that Pooky managed to clean the mirror without looking into it. She was a brave person, like Crispy said, Jane realized. She found herself thinking,
brains aren't everything.

"But you must have been awfully upset when Ted killed himself because she broke up with him."

Pooky laughed. "Oh, he didn't kill himself over her."

"Then what was it? Why did he do it?"

Pooky turned, looking troubled. "I don't know. I never could figure it out. Maybe he just couldn't stand it that we were all growing up and going away. Or maybe he was just drunk and feeling sorry for himself. Everybody feels sorry for themselves sometimes. I don't know."

"Crispy thinks it might have been an accident, not suicide," Jane said, starting to gather up her cleaning equipment.

"An accident? But how? Oh, like he didn't mean to start the car then go back upstairs? I don't see how. But maybe — that would be wonderful if it was an accident. I mean, not wonderful, but not so bad."

"Did you know Crispy well in school?"

"Not really well. But I liked her, I guess. Well, I was a little jealous of her, I admit. She and Ted were really good friends. Just friends, I mean, he wouldn't have dated her. She was too fat and sloppy-looking. She really was a mess. I tried to tell her once if she'd go on a diet and stop biting her nails, I'd help her with her hair and stuff, but she nearly bit my head off. She's certainly improved. She looks real stylish now. She probably could do better with her hair. That windblown look is real passe", but it's good with her face shape."

Jane smiled to herself. It was such an irony that Pooky, whose appearance was little short of frightening, always came back to people's looks and fashion sense. Inside herself someplace, she was still the high school knockout. And it was a good thing, probably the only thing that kept her going from one day to the next, one mirror to the next.

Jane touched Pooky's thin arm lightly and smiled. "Thanks for helping me. I've really enjoyed getting a chance to talk to you."

"Thanks. I like talking to you, too. You listen to me. Not many people do. I'm not as stupid as people think." Before Jane could even begin framing a tactful reply to this, Pooky went on, "And I'm going to help you with the rest of the rooms, Jane."

"Pooky, that's very generous of you, but there's no need. I don't mind doing it myself."

"If I don't help you, I'll have to go back to Kathy's room," Pooky said with a grin.

"Okay, I get it. Then let's do Avalon next."

Pooky pushed the vacuum cleaner along the hall as Jane led the way with the rest of the equipment. Jane tapped on Avalon's door and, getting no answer, opened it.

It looked like a tornado had gone through. Clothes were strewn everywhere, drawers gaped open. The dressing table was pulled out from the wall, pictures were hanging crooked, and the top half of the mattress was halfway off the bed.

Jane stopped so suddenly that Pooky ran the vacuum into the back of her foot. "Jane, I'm sor — oh, my God. What happened here?" Pooky whispered.

"Pooky, run down and peek in Kathy's room. See if Avalon's still in there." If Avalon was in
this
room, she was in trouble and Jane didn't want to be the discoverer of any more bodies. She watched Pooky, heart pounding, as she tiptoed down the hall and looked in the partly open door. Jane finally breathed when Pooky looked back and nodded.

She came back and the two of them went into the room. "What's happening here?" Pooky asked, her voice shaking.

"I don't know, but it's something nasty. This isn't a joke," Jane said, hearing a quaver in her own voice.

Just then, they heard a scream from the next room.

They could smell the problem before they saw it. The scream had come from Beth's room and Jane and Crispy nearly collided as they ran toward the room from opposite directions. A horrible, skunklike smell was already wafting into the hall.

The room was empty, but the smell was so intense it almost knocked Jane out of the room. She took a deep breath and plunged back in. Beth was shrieking and pounding on the bathroom door from the inside. Jane, heart pounding wildly, tried to open the door but it was locked.

"Unlock the door!" she shouted, trying not to retch. "Calm down! Just turn the little knob." Oh, God, if she could just get one clean breath of air!

They heard Beth frantically scrabbling at the door, then suddenly it flew open and Beth stumbled out, nearly knocking Jane over.

Jane was hard on her heels.

The others gathered in the hall attempted to approach Beth, but reeled back immediately. The smell was coming from her. "In my deodorant," Beth gasped.

She was wrapped in a big towel and had another around her wet hair. She was sort of backing in circles, trying to get away from herself.

Crispy grabbed her arm and started giving orders.

"Jane, open the windows. The one in her room first. Everybody, go open your windows! Beth, come to my room and get in the shower quickly. Wash the stuff off, for God's sake!"

Avalon and Kathy were already bolting for their own rooms, gagging. Breathing through her mouth, Jane plunged into Beth's room and flung open the window. It was a cool morning and she gulped the air as if she'd nearly drowned. Then she ran back into the hall and started opening other bedroom doors to get to the windows. Within moments, she had everything open.

"What on earth—" Edgar said from the top of the stairs. "What in hell is that stink!"

"Another joke, Edgar," Jane said. "If you have an attic fan, you might want to turn it on until we get the smell out. And bring me a plastic bag, would you?"

Jane picked up a handful of cleaning rags and went first to Crispy's room. The shower was running, foul-smelling steam was pouring out the half-open bathroom door, and Crispy, standing outside it with her hand over her nose, was saying, "Use all the soap you can find. Pour the whole bottle of shampoo over yourself if you have to. It's getting better. It really is."

Jane went back to Beth's room and, taking another deep breath, went into the bathroom. The offending deodorant, the kind with liquid and a rolling ball for application, was on the bathroom floor where Beth had thrown it down. Hector had found it and was sniffing at it as if it were merely a mildly interesting odor. "Hector! Get away from that thing!" she said, shoving him out the door. Then she flung herself at the plastic bottle, capped it, and wrapped it in several layers of cleaning rags. Jane returned again to Crispy's room, Hector trying to trip her the whole way. The smell

v-» IUI
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had diminished somewhat. "Is she okay?" Jane asked Crispy.

Crispy looked pale and stricken. "I think so."

Edgar knocked at the bedroom door before poking his arm into the room. He was holding the plastic bag Jane had asked for. Jane tossed the whole wad of deodorant bottle and rags into the bag. "Triple bag it, Edgar, or it'll stink up the whole neighborhood."

"What is it?"

"A trick with deodorant."

"Somebody
used
it? Smelling like this?"

"I imagine she just unscrewed it and took a quick swipe before the smell hit her. I think you better report this to the police. It could be harmful. Poison or something."

"No, don't!" Beth shouted from behind the bathroom door. The shower had stopped running. "It's just a foul odor. I'm perfectly all right."

"You're sure?" Edgar called to her.

"Absolutely sure."

"Edgar, before you decide, come look at Avalon's room," Jane said.

"All right, start from the beginning," Mel said.

Mel had said he would take an official report from Edgar in a moment, but first wanted to speak to Jane privately. They were in the driveway, sitting in.his car where they couldn't be overheard. Jane was still gasping the fresh air as if she'd never smelled it before and wondering if she'd ever get the lingering odor out of her hair and clothing. Mel wasn't getting too close. She'd made some rough notes while waiting for him to arrive and consulted them. "First, Pooky's and Avalon's purse contents were exchanged. I told you about that earlier."

"Anything missing or tampered with?"

"Apparently not."

"When did this happen?"

"The day they got here. Wednesday afternoon sometime. The next thing was the alarm clocks overnight. Cheap wind-up ones had been hidden in people's rooms and set to go off every couple of hours. I think I told you about that, too."

"Who got them?" Mel asked wearily.

"Beth, Mimi, and Kathy."

"Okay, nobody hurt. No property damage," Mel said as he made a note. "Next?"

"I guess the next thing was the doorknobs. Apparently there's a screw in the outside half that holds it together. Somebody took the screws out of a couple, so that when the people in the rooms tried to open the doors, the doorknobs and the shafts came away in their hands."

"Could have been dangerous if there had been a fire," Mel said. "But not inherently dangerous."

"The doorknobs turned up in a flour canister in the kitchen. Along with all the Screws," Jane added. "So there was no real damage done. I guess the next thing was that Crispy's underwear disappeared. Sometime while the police were here yesterday morning."

"Did she find it?"

"Oh, yes," Jane told him about the display of it in the living room, with the additional items added.

"So, nothing really stolen that wasn't returned. No property damage. Next?"

"Pooky's room was searched and messed up and an antique pen set that she was bringing along to another classmate was stolen. We found it in a wastebasket, unharmed. No property damage," she said before he could.

i. c.v jin ^nurcnm

"Next?"

"Avalon's room was wrecked this morning."

"Wrecked?"

"No, sorry. Messed up horribly. Drawers open, bedclothes yanked off. But she says nothing is missing. And nothing was torn or broken, for all the mess it was. And then the deodorant trick on Beth."

"My lab man says he's pretty sure it's something you can get in fishing and hunting stores. Something you either attract animals with or scare them off, I don't remember which he said," Mel murmured.

"What do you think?" Jane asked.

He smiled at her. Dazzlingly, she thought. "About what? Practical jokes in general? They're dumb and these aren't even particularly elaborate or funny. Not like slipping a horsehair into someone's cigarette."

"You think
that's
funny? The male mind never ceases to amaze me. No, I mean what do you think about these jokes?"

"I don't know. I'm just taking the report. What do you think, Jane? You've gotten to know these women. Who do you think's doing it?"

"I have no idea. It obviously wasn't Lila, though. Some of the jokes didn't happen until after she was dead."

Mel went down the list, ticking off names. "Victims of the tricks were Pooky, Avalon, Beth, Mimi, Kathy, Avalon, Pooky, Beth, Crispy, Pooky, Avalon, Beth. Seems fairly evenly distributed. Do you really call these women by these silly names? I mean, to their faces?"

Jane ignored the question. "Mimi and Kathy had the least done. Just the alarm clocks."

"Could either one of them be doing the tricks and just included herself to avoid suspicion?"

' I PtC

"In theory. I can't imagine Mimi doing tacky, vulgar things, though. Certainly not the underwear trick. And she was really angry when the antique disappeared. She's the one who bullied everybody into forming search parties to look for it. Besides, she's just too nice to do stupid, nasty things."

Mel cast her a questioning, if not downright doubtful, glance. Jane started to object to his suspicion of her judgment, but caught herself. Actually, what did she know about Mimi? That she seemed very pleasant, open, and honest. But then, she'd also been told by at least two of the others what a wonderful actress Mimi was. Maybe it was all an act, carefully planned and rehearsed.

"What about Kathy? Is it her kind of thing?"

"I don't think so. She's vulgar, but has no sense of humor at all, not even a bad one that would think up practical jokes. And if she were to play jokes, they'd have a point. Some kind of ecological or antinuclear reference. She's terribly intense and certainly smart enough to plan better, more politically pointed tricks if she wanted to."

"Okay, let's examine this another way. What the point was. Trading the purse contents—"

"Sheer nuisance value," Jane said. "Maybe also to embarrass one or both of them by pointing out to someone else just what was in her purse. But neither of them seemed to have anything they shouldn't."

"The alarm clocks," Mel went on.

"Nuisance again. Or maybe, at a big stretch, to make sure somebody was awake all night? I don't know."

"That was the night of the murder."

"Yes, but you said she was already dead by midnight, and the clocks didn't start going off until around two in the morning."

, "The underwear trick?" Mel said,

"Nuisance first. Crispy didn't know it was going to be returned and had to go buy more — remind me to tell you something else about that trip to the store. The return of her lingerie was clearly meant to embarrass her and it did. She was angry and humiliated."

"The antique?" Mel asked, then answered himself. "That might have been a genuine theft and the person had to hide it someplace until she could retrieve it and get it out of the house."

"I don't think so. It was 'hidden' in an empty wastebasket in the utility room. Just sitting there in the bottom, all by itself. If someone really meant to conceal it, it would have been easy to cover it up." A little breeze had sprung up and Jane pulled her sweater closer, shivering. She pulled the collar up and sniffed it. "Either the smell is going away or I'm getting used to it."

"I think it's blowing away. I can't smell it either anymore.- I'll let you go inside in just a minute, Jane. You're sure nothing's missing from Avalon's room?"

"She says not. It's not like it was her home. It might take you forever at home to discern that something's missing. But when you're traveling, you only have a limited number of your belongings with you. It's fairly simple to take inventory."

"Then the deodorant stunt. What on earth was the point of that?" Mel asked.

"I suppose to cause Beth embarrassment. Again, it worked very well. She's a very reserved, dignified person and there she was, running around in the hallway, screaming and gagging, dressed only in a towel. As practical jokes go, that one was magnificent. Maybe it was the grand finale. I hope so."

Mel tapped his pen on the steering wheel absently. Jane wondered once again who'd given him such a nice writing implement. "Let's turn it one more direction," he said. "Let's look at the geography. Three of the tricks required off-site preparation.".