Poisoned Pins

13

It really wasn’t very late, I assured myself as I peered in both directions, then walked past the Kappa Theta Eta dumpster I’d been home by eight the Thorntons would be watching mutant insect thrillers. It was a qualifying as a midnight prowl.

I arrived at the far end of the alley without spotting the motorcycle. Disappointed, but a little bit relieved, I retraced my steps, glancing at the dark windows of unoccupied houses. The parking lots were empty, and the backyards already were sprouting stubble.

I stopped by a high wooden fence behind one of the houses. It was likely to be the enclosed patio where Dean Vanderson met Jean Hall the night of her death, I thought as I eased open the squeaky gate. There were a few battered lawn chairs, a picnic table, a great scattering of crushed beer cans and cardboard pizza boxes-and one large, chrome-infested motorcycle. Admittedly an amateur in such matters, I had no idea whether it was Ed Whitbred’s.

I determined that the back door of the fraternity house was secured by a heavy padlock. The interior was unlit, and as far as I could tell, vacant. I sat down on the picnic table and looked more carefully at the motorcycle, but I was unable to convince myself of its familiarity or lack thereof (I have a similar problem with other people’s pets and offspring).

And where was its driver? Not inside the fraternity house, not ambling in the alley, and not likely to be in one of the bars on Thurber Street, where parking was plentiful in the summer.

I wasn’t wearing my watch, so I had no idea how long I’d been sitting and thinking when I heard footsteps beyond the fence. Crunch, crunch, crunch went the gravel; squeak, squeak, squeak went the gate. Rather than scream, scream, scream, I waited in a mantle of dignified silence until the black-clad motorcyclist was inside the patio, then said, “Hey, Ed, how’s it going.

He located me on my shadowy perch, sighed, and said, “It’s been better. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”

“‘Trying to figure out what’s going on at the Kappa Theta Eta house. I wish I could say I’d worked it out, but I’m still confused. However, I am making progress, and I’m confident it will all tumble into place at some point. That’s what I’m doing here. What are you doing here?”

His small eyes were almost invisible in the less than intrusive light from a lone utility pole on the far side of the alley. “I left my bike here, and I came back to get it,” he finally offered.

“Now, Ed,” I said, mimicking his sigh, “I’ve walked the length of the alley, and my duplex and the Kappa Theta Eta house are the only two currently occupied dwellings. The woman in the apartment below mine is a lovely soul, but she’s not the type to invite veteran Hell’s Angels into her living room. You didn’t come by to see me. That leaves only one destination, doesn’t it?”

“So it would seem.” He sat on the opposite end of the picnic table, nervously toying with the zipper of his leather jacket while, I presumed, trying to concoct a remotely plausible lie.

Taking pity on him (and tiring of the incessant prickling of mosquitoes), I said, “Eleanor Vanderson said something several days ago that now has some significance. She mentioned that Winkie all but awarded you the contract for the remodeling. Now why would Winkie risk the wrath of National by such blatant disregard of its regulations for the bidding process?”

“Winkie?” he said with a puzzled frown.

“You know, the petite housemother who can’t keep her screens in place.” I slapped at a mosquito, trying not to acknowledge any metaphorical parallels. “She keeps stressing the importance of the sorority’s reputation, but I think she’s equally concerned with her own. Housemothers are not allowed to drink, smoke, carouse-or entertain gentlemen in their private rooms. I’m just guessing, but I think housemothers would be especially pressured not to entertain aging bearded motorcyclists who are adorned with a significant number of tattoos.”

He chuckled, but I sensed his heart wasn’t in it. “I wouldn’t know about that, although they sure do have rules for everything else. ‘Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.’ Bear in mind Mr. Thoreau had never dealt with the likes of the Kappa Theta Etas. When Ms. Vanderson officially awarded me the contract, I had to plow through dozens of pages of small print about workman’s comp, bonding, liability insurance, penalties, and assessments. You’d have thought I was adding a wing to the Pentagon rather than painting one shabby house.”

“And now you’re trying to convince me that you went to the house after dark to shake the scaffold? I wasn’t born yesterday, Ed. I was born… earlier than that, and I’ve learned to recognize taurian excrement when I hear it. You and Winkie have something going, don’t you?” I said all this with the confidence of a teenage entrepreneur In that it was sheer speculation, I felt I’d presented it well, and I waited expectantly for him to collapse on the table top and blubber out an admission of guilt.

“I went by there tonight to drop off some paint chips. She’s supposed to show ‘ em to Ms. Vanderson tomorrow and get back to me.”

I barely stopped short of shaking a finger at him. “This is not the time for fairy tales, Ed. I’ve been sitting here for hours, working on a very good theory to explain Winkie’s problem with the screens and all these sporadic manifestations of an unidentified prowler In the interim, my foot has gone to sleep and I’ve donated several pints of blood to an endless stream of mosquitoes. You didn’t park in front of the house; you chose to come through the alley and hide your motorcycle behind a fence. The last thing I need is this nonsense about paint chips!”

“They want white, but they can’t seem to decide if they want bone white, antique white, shell white-”

“I’ll find proof,” I interrupted with an edge of petulance caused, no doubt, by anemia. I started to stand up, but sank back down as an idea struck. Had Jean Hall found proof? She had already been blackmailing one person, and with her light summer course load, surely she’d had enough free time for additional victims. I frowned at the fence, trying to imagine her in an avaricious confrontation with Winkie. Jean Hall, seated and gloating as Dean Vanderson leaves. The gate creaks open, and in comes Winkle. Money is tendered, then Winkle tells Jean to wait for a few minutes while she trots back to the house and positions herself in Debbie Anne’s car. Several problematic issues came to mind, the most obvious being why conduct business in the patio rather than the suite. Winkie was hardly wealthy. Debbie Anne might object to handing over her keys and taking the rap by default. There were more holes in this than in the fence, I concluded.

I opted to disarm him with a new topic. “So, Ed, why was your best friend Arnie in the bushes the night Jean was killed?”

“Arnie in the bushes? What are you talking about?” He came over to my end of the table, braced himself with his knuckles, and loomed over me like a leather monument. “What was he doing?”

“That’s what I asked you,” I said, resolving not to shrink. “I was walking home, contemplating nothing more complex than dinner, when Arnie hissed at me. He emerged from the bushes, begged me not to tell anyone, flashed his camera in my face, and drove away before I could demand an explanation.”

Ed turned away and sat down on the steps that led to the back door, muttering unpleasantly under his breath. What little I could hear consisted of such phrases as ‘low-down sumbitch” and “filthy little rodent” and other less decorous descriptions of good ol’ Arnie Riggles. I could offer no rebuttal, since I was in full agreement.

When Ed finally calmed down, I said, “If he suspected that you and Winkle were… behaving indiscreetly, he could have been trying to get evidence to blackmail her Something like that would be enough to ruin her career with the Kappa Theta Eta organization, and she’s within one year of retirement and the pension fund. Is there any way he might know?”

“He made a snide remark regarding her size, and I felt the need to discourage any further ones,” Ed said reluctantly. “A couple of times I saw a green truck in the alley near the Kappa house, and asked him about it. The first time, he cackled and said he’d been at a female mud-wrestling match out in the country somewhere. The other, he just said it wasn’t his truck. I decided to forget about it rather than try to figure out what he’d be doing in the alley so late.”

“So you do admit that you and Winkie are having a relationship?”

“I seem to have admitted it. We met in line at a movie theater during spring break, had coffee, started talking about this and that, decided to catch another movie later in the week. We’re both misfits in our own ways”-he held up a hand to repudiate any arguments I might proffer-”and we have a lot in common. Then one of the girls who lives in town told Winkie she’d seen us, and made some snippy remarks concerning my personal habits and mode of transportation. Winkie freaked and decided we couldn’t be seen together in public anymore. We met a couple of times at motels, but then she became paranoid about that and suggested we confine ourselves to late-night trysts in her suite. Randolph was right when he said, ‘Stolen sweets are always sweeter: stolen kisses much completer’”

“Were you climbing out Winkie’s kitchen window, when Debbie Anne came up the path alongside the house?”

Abashed, he cleared his throat before saying, “I was so preoccupied with what had just happened that I didn’t even see her until we collided. She has a good set of lungs, doesn’t she?”

“She certainly does,” I said absently, trying to keep straight the sequence of events in the sorority yard. “But you couldn’t have knocked down Eleanor Vanderson the following night. It was no later than nine o’clock, and therefore much too early for an illicit liaison. Could that have been Arnie?”

“It might have been, but I don’t think he’s blackmailing Winkie. Someone else may be, though. A month ago I spotted one of those idiotic pink paper cats in the wastebasket and fished it out. Whoever sent it had taken a felt pen and drawn semicircles over the eyes so it looked as if it were asleep. The written message was a reminder that she had only a year until her retirement. I asked her about it, but she said it was a little joke and clammed up. She’s been skitterish ever since then, drinking too much, taking by the handful what she says are mild tranquilizers, and continually fretting that the curtains aren’t drawn tightly.”

I had known her for no more than a week, but I had noticed how nervous she was when she prattled on about the sorority’s reputation. Unlike Dean Vanderson, she was not taking blackmail with composure and a vague aura of contempt. “Arnie can’t be behind it,” I said, mostly to myself. “He’s only been around recently, and he has no access to the paper cats. And he’s the last person I’d accuse of being aware of the sorority’s rules-and being devious enough to take advantage of them.”

“Or sober enough, anyway,” Ed said wryly. “But you caught him snooping in the bushes with a camera, so he must be up to something. I’d like to wrap my hands around his scrawny neck and choke it out of Mm.”

“What a great idea, Ed. Why don’t you do it, and call me afterward?”

“He never came back to his apartment after the gambling raid, so I called the jail. The desk sergeant said he’d been released on bail. I don’t care if he drowned in a creek, but I’ve got to go down to the unemployment office tomorrow and hire another assistant.” He rose and put on his helmet. “I hope you don’t feel obligated to speak to Ms. Vanderson about all this. Winkle’s under so much pressure now that she’s liable to flip out if she loses her job.”

“I see no reason to tell anyone,” I said, adding yet another tidbit to my growing list of things I ought to pass along to the authorities. “But wait! You have Arnie’s camera. Why don’t you have the film developed? Then we’ll know if Arnie’s into blackmail, or was merely astray on his way to the nearest bar.”

He agreed to do so, wheeled his motorcycle out to the alley, and rocketed away in an explosion of gravel. I walked back toward my apartment, having some difficulty imagining Winkie and Ed in passionate abandonment, the dragon and mermaid on his back rippling convulsively. National would surely frown on an alliance between a housemother and a biker, no matter whom he quoted.

What a busy girl Jean had been, what with pledge-class picnics, lectures at the law school, pimping for her sisters, and blackmailing the dean, her housemother, and quite possibly other people. Of the two remaining Kappa Theta Etas, Rebecca was the logical successor to that particularly heinous throne. She’d even needled Pippa about motel rooms, as if challenging me to decipher her innuendo. Little did she know she was dealing with a woman renowned for both her deductive prowess and her dedication to meddling to the bitter end.

When I arrived home, I gazed at the telephone for a long while, debating whether I should call Lieutenant Peter Rosen and tell him what I’d learned. Scowling, I finally continued into the kitchen and put on the tea kettle. It was much too late; the bleary-eyed patrons at the drive-in theater were well into the third movie by now. None of my revelations were particularly urgent. Dean Vanderson had a motive to kill Jean, as did Winkle… and Ed. Rebecca might have decided to take control of a lucrative business. Pippa was a less plausible suspect, but possible. And I couldn’t completely rule out Debbie Anne Wray, owner and presumed operator of the lethal vehicle.

“Where can she be?” I demanded of the whistling tea kettle. “She doesn’t know anyone outside the sorority. She has no other friends and she’s not with her family. The two campus police officers searched the house thoroughly, and-” I stopped conversing with the kettle as I realized they hadn’t, not by a long shot.

I turned off the burner, locked the front door, and went down the stairs to the front porch. Only one bedroom light was still on in the sorority house, and after a moment of calculation, I decided that Pippa was awake. Tapping on her window would result in yet another bout of screaming. The Kappas were rather edgy these days.

My knuckles were sore by the time Pippa opened the front door. “Mrs. Malloy?” she said as she gestured for me to come inside. Her hair was wrapped around sponge rollers hidden, for the most part, by a lacy pink cap; a phrenologist would have had a stroke at the possibilities. “Is something wrong? Did you see another prowler?”

‘‘Get the key to the chapter room.”

She dimpled uneasily at me. “Winkie has the only one, and she’s asleep. Besides, I’d be in really awful trouble if I let you go in there. Only Kappas are allowed to go into the chapter room. There’s stuff that’s incredibly secret.”

“Get the key, Pippa.”

Rebecca came into the foyer. She wore a pink nightshirt and her face was glistening with cream, but she was by no means drowsy. “Get the key to what?” she asked.

Winkie emerged from her suite, dressed in the gaudy peignoir I’d seen before. “What’s going on, girls? It’s much too late to have-Claire?”

My hope that I could take a quick, discreet look around the chapter room was not to be realized. “I think it’s possible that Debbie Anne may be hiding in the chapter room,’ I said. “Everybody agrees she has no friends outside the sorority and no place else to go. The campus police searched the upstairs, but not down there.”

“She couldn’t have a key,” Rebecca said with a trace of scorn. “There’s only the one, and it’s in Winkie’s possession at all times. Unless you’re accusing her of collusion with our errant pledge, you’re wrong, Mrs. Malloy.”

I wasn’t in the mood to deal with minor details like keys. “I’m not sure whom I’m accusing, or of what. Why don’t we check the chapter room and whatever other rooms are in the basement, and then I’ll go home and you can go back to bed?”

Rebecca shook her head. “No one except members and pledges is allowed in the chapter room. If you and Winkie want to wait here, Pippa and I can go downstairs and make sure Debbie Anne’s not huddled behind the furnace. I’m the ranking house officer, and I must insist the rules not be violated.”

I crossed my arms and glowered at all three of them. Just once, I thought, it would be nice if my suspects behaved according to the traditions of crime fiction. They should have been so overwhelmed with my relentless logic that we already would be halfway down the stairs, a dog howling mournfully in the distance, the key clutched in someone s sweaty hand, the stairs creaking, our path illuminated by a flickering candle-or at least a single dim bulb swinging crazily from a frayed cord. I wanted melodrama, not obduracy.

“Do the rules also cover what goes on at the Hideaway Haven?” I said abruptly.

Pippa and Rebecca exchanged startled looks. Winkie, in contrast, gurgled and staggered backward until she hit the edge of the desk hard enough to topple the vase of plastic flowers.

“How did you…?“ she gasped.

Ignoring her, I said to Rebecca, “Either you get the key or I call Eleanor Vanderson right now. It would be a pity to disturb her.” I paused to slather on emphasis lest they miss the point. “Not to mention her husband.”

“So it would,” said Winkie, her voice tinny and her white fingers entwined in the collar of her peignoir “My keys are in my handbag on the coffee table, Pippa. Please fetch them and allow Claire to satisfy herself and leave. I’m sure she won’t mention what she sees in the chapter room, and National need never hear about it. It will be our little secret, won’t it?”

“Go ahead,” Rebecca ordered Pippa. “You and Winkie can wait in her suite until we’re finished with this idiotic mission.”

Shortly thereafter she and I went to the basement, although there was ample light and the stairs failed to produce any sounds whatsoever.

“This is the door to the chapter room,” muttered Rebecca. She continued down a hallway, opened an unlocked door, and explained without enthusiasm, “This is where we store props for the rush skits.” A second door opened into the furnace room, a third into a. cavernous room containing a single trunk and a few pieces of lumber. Costumes hung from metal racks in yet another, and the final room was devoid of anything except mouse droppings and a fuse box.

We returned to the door of the chapter room. Feeling as if I were about to be ushered into the innermost sanctum of a shrine, I was almost reluctant to follow Rebecca into the room. I don’t know what I expected, but the haphazard rows of metal chairs, a couple of tables, and a droopy banner riddled with Greek letters and stylized pink roses failed to impress me.

“This is it?” I said.

“She’s obviously not here.” Rebecca stepped backward to force inc out of the room. “You saw for yourself that there’s no place to hide. There’s no way she could survive down here unless she brought food and water and only availed herself of a bathroom in the middle of the night.”

I remembered something Debbie Anne had told me. “What about the ritual closet?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I just assumed all sororities have them,” I lied smoothly “I’m not going to count the candles or divulge the color of the high priestesses’ gowns, but I think we ought to take a quick look. If Debbie Anne heard us coming, she might be hiding in there now.”

“Don’t be absurd! It’s already been explained to you that she couldn’t have a key in the first place. Winkie has the only key. At noon the day of meetings, she gives it to the president so the room can be prepared, and it’s returned to her right after the meeting. Pledges never touch the key.”

“But Jean Hall had it for several hours every week,” I pointed out. “If she had a copy made, she might have kept it in her purse. The purse disappeared the night she was killed. You’re convinced Debbie Anne is the culprit, so why couldn’t she have taken Jean’s purse and now have her key?”

Rebecca stewed on it for a moment, then shrugged and allowed me to reenter the room. “Let’s get this over with, okay?” she said as she headed for a door along the back wall. As we wound through the chairs, she slowed down and eventually stopped, her nose twitching like that of an amorous rabbit. “What’s that nasty smell?”

I could smell it, too, and it brought back memories of my torturous tenure in the Farberville lockup. “It seems to be coming from the closet,” I said, measurably less eager to explore the sacred room. “Maybe we ought to call the authorities.”

“National would have a fit if they found out the police were in the chapter room, let alone if they were allowed to look inside the ritual closet.” She wound her hair around her neck and stared at the door, her mouth flattened unattractively as she seemingly considered the available options.

I held out my hand. “Give me the key, Rebecca. It’s likely that an ammonia-based cleaning solution spilled inside the closet. Tomorrow you and Pippa can mop it up without any illicit tourists to unsettle you.”

She complied, then edged away as I fit the key into the lock and opened the door. The stench roiled out like tear gas, causing my eyes to flood. I made myself stay long enough to see the body on the floor, then shut the door and retreated as far as I could within the room.

Rebecca coughed and said, “What is it?”

“Arnie Biggies is in there,” I said, gulping for air. “He’s unconscious but not necessarily dead. We’ve got to pull him out and do what we can until an ambulance can get here.” I wiped my eyes and cheeks and ordered my stomach to stop convulsing. “We’ll both stand by the door When II say so, you open it and I’ll grab him. As soon as I have him out, shut the door and go call for an ambulance.

It was not something I want to remember, this extrication, but it was accomplished and Rebecca ran out of the room, alternately gagging and whimpering. The worst of the stench was contained within the closet, but Arnie’s jeans were soaked with urine and a veritable plethora of new smells made me feel as if I’d been whisked to the Dismal Swamp.

As I studied Arnie’s inert form, saliva bubbled out of his slack lips. He wiggled into a more comfortable position and began to snore. I came to the cold-hearted conclusion he was drunk. How he’d managed to end up in the Kappa Theta Eta ritual closet was a bit of a poser, but Arnie was a man of amazing slyness, and I wouldn’t have checked myself into the butterfly farm if I’d found him in a baptismal font-or in Eleanor Vanderson’s bed.

I retreated to the hallway to wait for the paramedics and campus officers to come storming down the stairs to collect a despicable drunk. Ed Whitbred had said Arnie had not come to his apartment since his arrest. How had he gotten from a locked cell to a locked closet?

A low, throaty growl interrupted my futile thoughts. I looked over my shoulder. At the top of the stairs sat Katie the Kappa Kitten, her fuzziness silhouetted by the foyer lights, her amber eyes unblinking as she considered how best to rid the Kappa Theta Eta house of this latest intrusion of vermin.