The Class Menagerie jj-4 (19 page)

"What's up, Crispy?" she asked bluntly.

Her face was pale, and she.looked downright haggard. "Oh, Jane. I've figured something out. It's awful. So awful. But it explains almost everything. It was all in the notebook and I just didn't understand—"

"Lila's notebook? The one that disappeared."

"Oh, Jane. You didn't buy that, did you? I didn't leave it where anybody could pick it up."

"You still have it? Why on earth—"

"Ladies, the hot dogs are done to perfection!" Trey Moffat said, catching up with them. "Best in the world. Come along!" He hustled them back down the slope.

"Wait! There's something Crispy and I have to sort out," Jane said.

"It will wait," Crispy said. She glanced at her watch. "Two o'clock. Behind that little house up on the hill," she said. Jane could barely hear her for Trey's blustering about the magnificent job of cooking his group of men had done.

Jane found herself being handed a plate and shoved into a line of people taking potato salad and baked beans. She lost sight of Crispy for a moment, then spotted her talking to Avalon. She still looked preoccupied and sad. Or maybe the expression was anger. Jane glanced around for Mel, thinking she really should report her brief conversation with Crispy to him at the first opportunity, but he wasn't anywhere in sight.

As she sat down with her plate, one of the kids winged a Frisbee down the middle of the table, sending catsup, mustard, and assorted other condiments flying. There were a few minutes of chaos as a result and by the time the miscreant had been caught and sternly admonished and the catsup had been mopped off Jane's blouse, Crispy had disappeared.

Jane abandoned her plate. Shelley was the only familiar face near her now. Jane wriggled through the crowd still surrounding the food table and made her way to where her friend was sitting. "Shelley, have you seen Crispy?"

Shelley caught the alarm in Jane's voice. "She was here a minute ago. I don't know where—"

"Mel. Have you seen Mel?".

"No. What's wrong?"

"I don't know. But I'm worried. Crispy's figured something out. She's mad about it. And now she's disappeared. I need to find Mel."

Shelley stood up. "We'll find him. We'll find both of them. Run over and see if either of them is with that group down at the fireplace near the basketball courts. I'll check the one by the lake."

They tore off in opposite directions. Jane knew she was getting weird looks as she shoved her way through the crowd she was searching with increasing panic. But she didn't care. "Excuse me. Have you

seen Crispy? Have you seen Detective VanDyne?" she asked of everyone.

But nobody knew who Jane was, few remembered Crispy, and none acknowledged knowing any detective. As Jane glanced around a last time, she saw Shelley and Mel hurrying toward her. She ran to meet them. "I can't find Crispy."

"Jane, what's happened?" Mel asked with hypnotic calm. "Why are you looking for her?"

Jane took a deep breath. "I spoke to her a few minutes ago. She said she'd lied about losing the notebook and she'd figured out what something in it meant. She said it was something awful."

"What?" Shelley asked.

"There wasn't time for her to tell me. Trey came up just then and practically dragged us back to eat. She said to meet her later."

"Where?" Mel demanded.

"Behind the visitor center — the little farmhouse— up on the hill."

Before Jane had finished speaking, they'd all taken off running up the hill. "Crispy! Are you there?" Jane yelled breathlessly as they crested the hill. The three of them headed around behind the visitor center.

Mel, in better shape, was in the lead. "Not here!" he shouted back. Jane, trailing, changed course and rushed in the entrance door at the east end of the building.

Crispy was sprawled on the floor, her legs and arms askew as if she were a doll that had been flung down in a child's rage.

22

Jane shrieked for Mel as she flung herself toward Crispy. Being careful not to move her limbs or get near the blood pooling beneath her head, Jane gingerly put her fingers to Crispy's neck. She thought there was a pulse, but it could have been the pounding of her own heart echoing in her fingers.

"Run down to the police car in the parking lot," Mel ordered Shelley. "Tell the officer to call for an ambulance and crime scene unit." He knelt on the other side of Crispy and did as Jane had done, touching her throat with his fingers.

"Is she alive?" Jane whispered, her voice clogging in her throat.

"Barely." He put his head down almost on the tiled floor and peered at Crispy intently. He said, "She's been struck hard on the side of the head."

"My God!" Beth said from the west doorway. Because of the partitions that held the displays, they hadn't seen her coming until she rounded the comer.

At the same moment, Pooky came skidding in the east door and gasped at the scene. "We saw you running up here. What's happened?"

"Somebody's tried to kill Crispy," Jane said,

"Ladies, out of the way, please. Each of you take a door and keep everybody out but the medics. Now!" Mel ordered.

Jane knew she shouldn't touch Crispy, but took her hand anyway. "Crispy, hang on. Help is coming," she said, hoping Crispy could hear or sense the comfort. She put the back of Crispy's hand to her cheek. It felt as cold as marble.

Crispy's eyelids fluttered and her lips pursed as if she were attempting to form words. "Mmmmeee—" she said.

Jane leaned closer. "Who did this to you, Crispy?"

"Meet—" Crispy tried again with an enormous effort.

"You met someone. Yes. Who did you meet?"

Crispy tried to shake her head, but her face crumpled in agony at the movement. "Meet…. Trey…." she forced out.

"You met Trey?"

"No-o-o—" It began as a word, but ended as a whimpering exhalation.

Jane could hear sirens in the distance and the babble of excited, alarmed conversation outside the building. Above it, she heard Shelley saying very loudly and firmly, "Step back! Get out of the way! The medics need to get through. Clear a path. Harry! Sylvia! Stop dithering around like dummies and get the hell out of the way!"

Suddenly a mob of people in white coats was filling the room, bumping into exhibits, giving orders, clanging around shiny, dangerous-looking equipment. Jane was lifted from the floor and nearly thrown aside. Mel caught her as she crashed against a plastic trash container. She let him hold her up for a moment, then leaned back against the wall, trying not to look at what they were doing to Crispy.

"Come on, Jane. You can't help here," he said.

"I can't leave her," Jane said.

A wiry little blond woman in white had balled her fist and struck Crispy on her breastbone. Jane felt her stomach roll and leaned over the trash barrel to be sick.

But nothing came except a bitter taste at the back of her throat and a rush of freezing sweat on her face and neck. She was afraid to move for fear she'd keel over. Mel came behind her and put a strong arm around her waist, but let her hang there, shaking with horror and shame.

She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, forcing herself to calm down. After a moment, she risked opening her eyes again. Her vision had stopped lurching and swimming. A moment more and she'd stand up….

Among the wads of picnic trash, discarded visitor brochures, and empty soft drink cans in the basket, there was something red. Shiny and red. Even before she plunged her hand in to get it, she knew exactly what it was.

Lila's notebook!

She staggered upright and handed it to Mel. "The notebook," she said, barely trusting herself to speak.

He flipped it open. The yellow pages had been torn out, leaving only a ruffle of ragged paper at the top of the pad. "Shit!" he said as he stuffed it into his pocket.

"Everybody out of the way." One of the medics was pushing the two of them toward the east door. Four others were gently lifting Crispy.onto a gurney. She had a tube in her throat, tubes running into her arms, wires seemingly snarled all over. The three burliest men surrounded the gurney and started angling it out the west door. One held two bottles of liquid aloft. Another was running sideways and rhythmically

squashing a rubber bellows that connected to a tube

that went down Crispy's throat.

Jane leaned against Mel and sobbed.

"I'm all right," she said testily to Shelley. "Really! Now stop fussing over me."

"Getting nasty, huh?" Shelley said, setting a fresh cup of coffee in front of her. They were sitting at Jane's kitchen table.

"I hate to admit this, but I don't exactly
know
how I got home," Jane said.

"I drove you."

"I thought so, but I wasn't certain. Where's my car? What did you do with the res^t of them?"

"Your car will be brought along whenever a couple of officers are free to bring it. With the help of the police, I stuffed the others into cabs and sent them back to Edgar's. I seriously considered drowning them all and being done with this, but there were too many cops around."

"Edgar must be berserk by now. At least he won't have to throw the party tonight, — even though he's probably made all the food already." Jane knew she was meandering mentally, but it seemed a pleasant alternative to thinking about Crispy.

Shelley stirred her coffee. "That's not exactly true. About the party."

"Shelley! You can't mean the party is still going to happen! Is Trey crazy?"

"No, Trey's on the very brink of being arrested. And the party has become an inquest or inquisition or something. It's not a party anymore. It's a place where all the suspects and witnesses and possible witnesses have been told to show up if they value their freedom."

"Trey," Jane said. "Crispy said she was going to

meet Trey. Or I was supposed to meet him. I don't know what she meant."

"I couldn't hear her," Shelley said. "What were her exact words?"

Jane took a gulp of coffee. Too big a gulp. It scalded her mouth slightly. But the pain seemed to clear her mind. "She said 'Meet* and I asked who she'd met. And she said 'Meet Trey.' And I said something like, 'Did you meet with Trey?' and she said, 'no.' And that's all she said. Shelley, was she alive when they took her away?"

"I don't know. I think she must have been or they wouldn't have been in such a rush to get her to the hospital."

"Could we call the hospital and ask? Do you know where she was taken?"

"I tried already while you were in the bathroom chucking up everything you've ever eaten in your life. They wouldn't give me a hint. They just said it was a police matter and to make my inquiries through them."

"Then let's do that."

"Jane, you know Mel will call you as soon as he can. And nobody else in the department would tell you anything. Tell me again. Exactly what did Crispy say?"

Jane repeated what she'd already told her and added, "I don't get it. When I asked her if she'd met with Trey, she tried to shake her head and she definitely said 'no.' So why was she talking about Trey at all? What could he possibly have to do with this?"

"I can't imagine."

"Maybe she wanted
me
to meet him. Maybe she'd told him something she wanted me to know, but didn't have the strength to tell me herself."

"I don't think so. At least, when I eavesdropped on Mel questioning him, he vehemently denied having had any conversation with her at all."

"But that's not true," Jane said. "I was talking to her when he came up and hustled us to the food. He spoke to both of us. In fact, he was just dragging us into the mob when she told me to meet her behind the visitor center."

"Hmmm. So he either lied, or he just snagged the two of you without paying any attention to who you were. I think that's more likely."

"Why?"

Shelley considered. "Because he's too dumb and nice to lie well. And because he was genuinely horrified at being questioned and was spilling his guts to every question. And because he's a minister." She said the last with a self-mocking smile. "I know that ministers
can
lie. But they're marginally less likely to, I'd think."

"Didn't anybody see him with us? How did they know to question him at all?"

"I don't know. Maybe just because he was in charge of the picnic. Or maybe someone did see him dragging you two to the festivities. I didn't get in on the beginning of the questioning and one of Mel's minions noticed me snooping and ran me off before I could learn anything more."

The phone rang and Jane nearly upset her chair as she leaped to answer it. "Oh, Katie. Yes. No, there's nothing wrong. I just tripped. Okay, but come get your things right now while I'm home so I can lock up after you."

"She's spending the night with Jenny," Jane said to Shelley. She glanced at the kitchen clock. "Quarter after three. What time do I have to be back at Edgar's?"

"Never."

"Why? Has he hired more help?"

"No, but I'll help. We can manage."

"Shelley, I'm not an invalid. I'm really fine."

"Then why do you look so dopey?"

"Do I?" She thought for a minute. "I have this weird feeling that I know something I don't know. I've had it since we talked last night."

"When did it start?" Shelley asked. It was a measure of their long friendship that Shelley understood the feeling Jane was floundering around in.

"I think it was when we were talking about what each of them had to lose and were doing a sort of minianalysis of each one. There's something you said about one of them and a few minutes later, I thought, 'That's not true and I know it.' But I can't bring it back—"

"Which one?" Shelley asked.

'That's the problem. I don't remember. But it's one of those things like Pooky-being stupid."

"She's not?"

"It was an example. I don't know if it was Pooky or somebody else. And there's something about that yearbook that Mimi brought along that keeps nudging at the back of my mind. Maybe if I'd look at it again—"

"Leave it alone," Shelley advised. "If you don't consciously try to capture it, it might pop into your head. Things usually do."