Dear Miss Demeanor

TEN

The events of the last week paled in the onslaught of the Homecoming madness. Most of the students wore some variation of red and gold in honor of the big day, and they chattered like starlings through the first two periods. The freshmen seemed to have either forgiven me for bumping off their principal or forgotten about it. No one paid any attention when I tried to quiet things down, so I settled for an aspirin and a long, solitary visit to the darkroom. Fourteen hours until the dance.

There were three bottles of aspirin beside the coffee pot in the lounge, standard equipment for such holidays. I gulped down another for luck, then slumped on the green-and-mauve, closed my eyes, and lulled myself with a pleasant reverie of books, bookracks, temperate bookbuyers, invoices, and quarterly tax estimates as yet uncomputed. The images evoked a quasi-religious rush of longing.

I kept my eyes closed as a few souls drifted in and out of the lounge, mission unknown. One was, I supposed, Evelyn’s student teacher on her hourly breakdown; another was apt to be a Fury. I really didn’t care. Now that Peter had asked for my help, I couldn’t rally the energy to sniff out clues or grill suspects. That was too unsettling to think about, so I sank further into the plaid to doze.

“Burned out already?” Evelyn said in my ear. “Most of us survive a few years before we seek greener pastures elsewhere.”

Yawning, I went into the lounge to get a cup of coffee. “I think it’s psychosomatic,” I called. “Anything to avoid chaperoning the dance tonight. The thought sends chills down my spine.”

“You’ll be in good company. Sherwood has the boys’ rest room, Miss Bagby and I have the front door, and Jerry has the back door, to keep the smokers contained. Paula has the concession stand during the game, but I imagine she’ll come with her beloved to ensure that he keeps his eyes on her and off the senior girls.”

The coffee almost sloshed out of my cup. “Are you implying that Paula will attend this unspeakable function-even though she isn’t required under penalty of death to do so?”

Evelyn laughed at my expression. “Paula’s sweetness and light on the surface, but she has a stainless-steel interior. When she got fed up with Sherwood, she told him off with the acumen of a professional hit man, and he was so stricken he made nary a wisecrack in Latin for almost two weeks. It was truly amazing, not to mention refreshing. To everyone’s regret, he finally recovered and is now much worse than before. I can count the Latinless sentences on one hand.”

I stared at the formica table, trying to recall a bit of conversation that had occurred at the fatal potluck. “What did Weiss say to Sherwood about a manuscript that provoked a menacing Latin riposte?” I said, wrinkling my nose. “Ars longa, or something like that?”

“Ars longa vita brevae,” Sherwood said from the doorway. “Art is long, life short. I didn’t expect my delphic aside to be taken quite so literally by an unknown hand. Nor did I expect to continue to be your favorite suspect, Claire; I thought we’d resolved that last night, in transitu.”

“But have the sophomores abandoned you?” I said in a futile attempt to divert the direction in which we were aimed. It didn’t work.

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at Sherwood. “Last night? I didn’t realize you two were getting all that cozy.” She raised the other eyebrow at me. “You didn’t mention anything when you called me to discuss the Miss Demeanor shenanigans.”

Sherwood’s eyebrows were up, so I raised mine, too, just to be companionable. “I asked Sherwood to unlock the building for me,” I admitted. “I wanted to look at jerry’s personnel file to see if I could find whatever Weiss was holding over him. Sherwood was kind enough to comply, and we did discuss motives in passing.”

“What did you find in Jerry’s file?” Evelyn asked, thawing to early spring if not out-and-out summer.

I ignored Sherwood’s glower. “I didn’t find anything at all. It was all quite innocent-recommendations, teacher certification, good grades through graduate school, academic awards, that sort of thing. I was wrong when I hypothesized that he didn’t have his degree. Degrees he has, and admirable ones.”

Upon this seemingly innocuous revelation, Sherwood choked and sputtered through a mouthful of coffee and Evelyn turned an unbecoming shade of white. Both of them goggled at me as if I’d mentioned the coach’s propensity for bestiality or the dismemberment of his first seven wives.

“What?” I said, unamused by their antics. “What’s wrong with good transcripts and warm letters from old coaches?”

“Graduate school,” croaked Evelyn.

“It’s where you go after undergraduate school,” I said. “I went to one myself, although I never got around to writing a dissertation. It’s not a topic for ‘The Twilight Zone’ or ‘That’s Incredible.’”

“Jerry is a coach,” Sherwood said, proving he too could croak. The pond was filling up; all we needed were lily pads.

“Jerry is indeed a coach, and probably a very good one,” I said as tolerantly as I could. “He also has a doctorate in English literature, which is more than I can say after my three years of tuition, research papers, and white wine from a jug.”

“A doctorate?” they croaked in unison. Lily pads couldn’t be too far in the future, along with dragonflys and cattails.

“There’s something you two aren’t telling me. Why don’t you calm down, sip some coffee, unstick your eyelids from your foreheads-and tell me what you find so incredible?”

They looked at each other, shook their heads, looked at me, shook their heads, and looked at each other again. I was on the verge of an acerbic comment on the now-predictable pattern, followed by a repetition of my question in one-syllable words, when Evelyn found her voice.

“Jerry is a high school football coach. He’s on the same salary scale as the rest of us, and it is determined by experience, continued professional training-and educational level. No school would ever hire a coach with a master’s degree, much less-” she gulped “-a doctorate, even if it were in physical education. He’d hardly warrant the top of the pay scale for two classes of general health, one drivers’ ed, and study hall. They hardly hire any teachers with graduate degrees, since there are plenty with bachelor’s floating around the market. So much cheaper that way.

Sherwood managed to find his voice, and it was laden with glee. “All Weiss had to do was call central admin and tell them about the degree, and our boy Jerry would find himself with his thumb out on the county line. Empta cidora experientia docet; painful experiences may teach, but not coaches with doctorates. Ooh, how delightful!”

“Sherwood,” said Evelyn, “you do know you will not breathe one single word of this to anyone, don’t you? If you so much as drop a hint in ancient Etruscan, I will call a press conference about your situation with that editor.”

“The manuscript?” I prompted in a small voice, hoping they had forgotten my presence.

“Et tu, Brute? It was poppycock, and you know it,” Sherwood growled at Evelyn. “Nothing was proven.

“It wasn’t?” I said.

Sherwood grimaced so intently that his goatee trembled. “It sure as hell wasn’t, Ms. Malloy. There was absolutely no basis for that slanderous allegation-everyone in my field uses the same reference texts and it’s conceivable that a few phrases might sound somewhat similar. Similar-not plagiarized.”

“An editor accused you of plagiarism, then returned your manuscript with a nasty letter?” I took a drink of coffee while I considered the implications. “Weiss found out, probably through Pius’s channel, and used it to make your life miserable and your career tenuous. You must have been furious.”

Evelyn gave me a sad smile. “Sherwood told me about the letter the day after it arrived, and Weiss alluded to it for the first time that same afternoon. Sherwood’s been frantic for weeks to learn how Weiss found out and what he intended to do, but it wasn’t a motive for murder. The allegation was slanderous; it would have caused some degree of difficulty with other editors and certainly made it more of a battle to get published, but it wasn’t life-and-death.”

“No wonder you despised Pitts,” I said to Sherwood.

His grimace eased. “I did. He was a despicable snitch, among his other qualities. He must have heard Jerry and Paula talking about the transcript and reported to Weiss, who simply sent for a copy. Holy Achilles, I wonder what Weiss had on the others..

“Something worthy of murder?” I said under my breath. The two must have heard me, for we all ended third period in a collective sigh.

At the end of the last period Caron informed me that I would have to drive her to the parade, since her ankle hurt and she wasn’t about To Hobble Anywhere. As always, Inez was there to some degree. We parked behind the bank, made it to the square without too much hobbling, and found a flower box on which to sit.

Both sides of the street were beginning to crowd with students, parents, whiny children, and babies asleep in strollers. The sky was clear; the sunshine warm. I had about six hours until the dance.

Bernice Dort appeared behind us, sans clipboard. “How’s your ankle?” she asked Caron. “I received a note that you were unable to participate in your physical education class, but one of the office monitors told me that you’d hurt yourself. I hope it’s nothing too serious to prevent your participation in the freshman intramural volleyball tournament next week?”

Caron turned pink and said it ought to be better soon. Miss Dort nodded as if making a mental note to be transferred to a form, curled her lips at me, and started to march away.

I caught up with her at the curb, “This is my first parade,” I said, despising myself for the ingratiating tone. “I understand the kids take the float competition very seriously.”

“I am a judge, Mrs. Malloy, and I can assure you that I take the float competition very seriously. Class spirit brings the students together. It makes their formative years more meaningful, and encourages them to think fondly of their alma mater in years to come. I have not missed one of my class reunions in thirty years.”

“Neither have I,“ I murmured as I crossed my fingers behind my back. Maybe I hadn’t missed any of them; I’d never inquired. “You seem to be holding up well in the middle of all these tragic occurrences. The school continues to mn well, and the students have already fallen back into their normal routines.”

“Herbert Weiss was a great man as well as an inspirational leader of students and faculty. He will be sorely missed by all concerned.” She leaned forward to peer around a pregnant woman. “It is three-thirty-seven now; the parade seems to be off schedule. Perhaps I ought to walk down the hill to find out what the problem is.

“Oh, they’ll be along any minute,” I said confidently. “I suppose you’ll miss Herbert most on Thursdays.”

She pulled off her glasses and watched them swing from the pink cord around her neck. After another glance around the pregnant woman, she pulled herself erect and looked me in the eyes. “I suppose I shall, Mrs. Malloy.”

“You must have been panicked by the letters in the Dear Miss Demeanor column,” I continued, “and willing to do almost anything to stop them. But framing Miss Parchester wasn’t exactly the most humane route, was it? It caused all kinds of grief, and ultimately led to Mr. Weiss’s murder.”

“It was an unfortunate choice of actions.”

“Your idea?”

“No, Herbert’s. He was such an imaginative man. I do believe I hear the band in the distance; they’re only eight and a half minutes late, which isn’t too bad for this developmental stage. They do get caught up with themselves at times.”

I heard the strains of an unfamiliar tune, but I wasn’t about to be distracted by the promise of a parade. “So Herbert suggested you fiddle with the ledgers to make Miss Parchester look guilty, merely in order to halt publication of the Falcon Crier. The police have already determined that the money’s been there all along.”

“Neither of us condoned taking money from student accounts. That would be unthinkable, a violation of trust. Listen, they’re playing a Sousa march.”

“But it wasn’t unthinkable to frame a little old lady who’d taught for forty years?” I said. Sousa be damned.

“Herbert had a truly creative mind,” she said in a distracted voice as she tried to peer past the protuberant tummy. “It’s surprising that he did not deduce the identity of the author of those letters. He could have disciplined his daughter at home, and saved both of us a great deal of worry, not to mention his time involved in devising and implementing the plan to stop the Falcon Crier. Luckily, my experience in bookkeeping proved to be a great value, although I was obliged to struggle with Emily’s system before I could make revisions.

“What a shame to waste valuable time framing little old ladies.”

“So we discovered,” she murmured. “They’ll probably begin the school fight song before they reach the square. It gives me tingles right down to my toes to hear the strains of ‘Fight With All Thy Feathers, Falcons.’ It’s such a rousing tune that I just want to burst forth into song whenever I hear it.” Her shoulders quivered with anticipation, and her lips lingered lovingly over the lyrics.

I wondered if she put equal enthusiasm and dedication into all her extracurricular activities. It was obvious that she and Herbert could have reached great levels of efficiency, if not ardor, in their lovemaking. Did she record climaxes on a monthly basis with little checks and/or £s? I decided that she filled out all the “How-was-the-service?” cards and mailed them to corporate headquarters, even when postage was not guaranteed.

The crowd gasped at some unseen spectacle. Bernice stood on her tiptoes, straining to catch her first glimpse of the big event.

“Miss Dort,” I said in a stern voice, “has it occurred to you that Emily Parchester is out there somewhere, frightened and alone, ashamed that someone might consider her guilty of a dastardly crime?” When I received a perfunctory nod, I upped my volume to compete with the growing noise of the crowd. “You did that to her, simply to cover up your affair. You’ve driven her into hiding, and I for one am terribly worried about her.”

“If she knew she was innocent, then she shouldn’t have poisoned poor Herbert.”

“She didn’t poison poor Herbert!”

“Who did?”

“Well, you might have,” I said. “You might have slipped into the kitchenette and dumped powdered peach pits in the compote.”

The pregnant woman turned to stare at us, then spun around and waddled away in an indignant huff. Bernice moved closer to the curb, but glanced back with a tight smile. “I had no reason to murder Herbert Weiss, Mrs. Malloy. I do not wander around educational institutions with powdered peach pits in my pocket, nor do I slip into kitchenettes to sabotage little jars of peach compote. I have personal standards.”

“Prove it,” I snapped.

“You prove it, Mrs. Malloy. I have floats to judge, and I do think I can see the tippy-top of the junior effort. Someone told me, in the strictest confidence, naturally, that its theme is ‘Barbecue the Bantams.’ Very clever, don’t you agree?”

I glared at her back, which was all I was offered. When that paled, I returned to the flower box and sat down next to Caron. She and Inez made several unkind comments about the junior effort, and more about the Homecoming court creeping by in convertibles. The girls looked faintly blue in their low-cut gowns, but their smiles remained steadfast and their waves gracious. Cheryl Anne was in the last car, ever the modest reigning royalty of FHS despite the two kindergarten children on either side of her. The boy was wiping his nose on Cheryl Anne’s dress; the girl openly bawling.

With a hint of satisfaction, Caron explained that they were crown bearers. It rather reeked of child abuse, but I let it go. The mayor went past in an antique car, followed by a junior-high band playing an arrangement never before heard by human ears. The sophomore float proved to be “Make Baked Beans of the Bantams,” which Caron and Inez found, amidst giggles and snorts, Too Juvenile for words.

In the middle of this, I thought I saw pink bedroom slippers flash by in the crowd across the street. I poked Caron and muttered, “Look over there. Could that be Miss Parchester?”

“That is the drill team, Mother. Bambi McQueen’s in the third row, and she can’t even shake her pom-poms in the correct sequence. She’s doing red-gold-red-gold, while everyone else does red-red-gold-gold. Her knees are too low, her hemline’s crooked, and she has dumpy thighs. I don’t know why they let her on the drill team.”

“Over there by the post office door,” I insisted, despite an urge to assess Bambi’s thighs for dumpiness. “I can’t see any faces, but I keep getting glimpses of fuzzy pink slippers.”

“Some child dropped its cotton candy. Now the cheerleaders look a lot better than the drill team, don’t you think?” She turned to Inez to discuss Inez’s sister Julianne’s talents in comparison to the mere distaff mortals dressed in crotch-length skirts and sweaters that would leave indentation in their flesh.

I stood up and tried to peer over heads at the other side of the street. Miss Parchester wasn’t tall enough to tower over anyone out of elementary school; I was going to have to rely on the fuzzies on the sidewalk. There was a flash of plastic on a head, and perhaps the point of a furled umbrella. Very promising, I told myself as I began to push through the crowd and find a way to cross the street. All I had to do was grab the fugitive, drag her away for a quiet chat, and assure her that she was no longer suspected of embezzlement. Or murder-for the most part.

At this point, with my toe in the gutter, the full regalia of the Farberville High School Marching Falconnettes took over the pavement. Brass horns, tubas, clarinets, drums-the whole schlemiel right out of River City, and it started with a P and rhymed with T and basically translated into serious blockade problems.

I was hopping up and down, trying to see over a sea of plumed hats and tuba bells, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It started with a P and stood for Peter, as in Rosen.

“Are you looking for a potty?” he asked politely. “There’s one in the drugstore behind us, and I think it’s free. If not, I’ll be glad to loan you a dime.”

“That’s not funny.”

“But you are, with this imitation of a human pogo stick.” He gave me a look that forebode all sorts of problems. “What’s going on, Claire? You’re not the sort to be possessed by demons, nor are you one to make a spectacle of yourself-without cause. You’re behaving manically, and you must have a reason.”

I will admit that I should have told him about the pink fuzzies. I was the one who had concluded that confession was good for the soul, if not the ego, and that I would jeopardize the relationship if I continued to hide things from him. But I wanted to talk to Miss Parchester, and I wanted to do it alone. Okay, I wanted to do it first. She would be thoroughly spooked by a cop. I needed to calm her down, reassure her that the judge’s reputation was as safe as her own, and convince her she could come back to school-in time to chaperone the dance.

It would mean a great deal to her, this opportunity to show the students that she was, as always, above reproach. Having justified myself to myself, I gave Peter what I hoped was an enigmatic smile.

“I thought I saw an old classmate across the street, but the band cut me off at the pass. It’s not important; I’ll probably run into her some other time. Why don’t you come sit with Caron, Inez, and me?”

The flower box proved adequate for four bottoms. The band finally passed on, in the literal sense, and was replaced by the senior float, “Bye-bye, Bantams.” The girls looked rather nervous, sensing competition from the upper classmen, but they managed a few catty comments about the unevenness of the lettering on the banner.

Peter gave me a wry smile and put his hand over mine, just as if I weren’t a treacherous, conniving, faithless quisling. He looked startled at my sigh, but I could only shake my head and look away as I tried to convince myself, as Caron would say, to Do The Right Thing.

As the moral dilemma raged, Jorgeson came over. “We lost her, Lieutenant. We spotted her in that jam of people across the street, and tried to sort of surround her without her noticing, but it didn’t work so well. That dame can scamper like a frightened puppy, and the uniformed officer couldn’t bring himself to tackle someone who resembles his grandmother. Said it was too cruel.”

Peter glanced at me, then stood up and pulled Jorgeson a few steps away. ‘Does the uniformed officer with the unsullied conscience realize this woman is wanted in a murder investigation, that she may well have poisoned two people in the last eight days?” he said loudly enough to be heard over “Flaunt Thy Feathers, Falcons” or whatever. “Tell him to report to me in one hour. Now, alert all the patrol cars to watch for her on the sidewalk in at least a six-block radius.”

Jorgeson saluted with one finger and hurried away to do as ordered, the back of his neck noticeably red against his navy jacket. Peter sat down next to me, harrumphed under his breath like an asthmatic whale, and stared fiercely at the rows of boy scouts straggling in front of us.

“Will you still take me dancing?” I asked.

A series of harrumphs ensued, punctuated with sighs and dark looks from under a lowered brow. “I have to coordinate a dragnet all over the damn town tonight. Beat the bushes. Search dumpsters. Find a suspect who has once again eluded us, although it seems she might have been apprehended had we been given a discreet tip.”

“The dance doesn’t start until ten-thirty.”

“Perhaps you can persuade your old classmate to go with you.”

“The sight of policemen was likely to frighten her, and she needed to be approached by a friendly, familiar face. I was going to convince her to turn herself in at the station.”

“Class of what?”

“Nineteen aught three. We rode dinosaurs to school, wrote in cuneiform, and eagerly awaited the invention of the jitterbug.”

“Well, tonight you’ll have a wonderful chance to jitterbug till dawn. I will be occupied at headquarters those same hours, bawling out the uniformed officer and eagerly awaiting the apprehension of Miss Emily Parchester.”

The conversation was clearly going nowhere, and I was clearly going to chaperone the Homecoming dance alone. I was saved from further remarks by the appearance of “Broast the Bantams,” accompanied by hordes of goose-stepping freshmen yelling unintelligible things about the future of the freshmen, class of ‘90. They seemed to be predicting they would do “mighty finey.”

“That doesn’t rhyme,” I pointed out to Caron once she and Inez had ceased their shrieks.

“Nothing rhymes with ‘ninety,”’ she said. “We had to come up with something to yell at pep rallies and this sort of thing, but no one could produce a single acceptable rhyme.”

“I’ll have to agree with that. Who thought up ‘mighty finey’?”

“I did, Mother.”

Peter glowered from one side of me, Caron from the other. Miss Don was undoubtedly displeased with me, as was a nameless pregnant woman, the denizens of the lounge, a paranoiac Parchester, and the staff of Happy Meadows.

I told Caron and Inez to find a ride home, gave Peter a shrug, and exited to my bookstore, where there were no storms in the port. The jackhammer provide a pleasant drone that precluded thought. It was exactly what I needed.