Poisoned Pins

14

I was sitting in Winkle’s suite when the paramedics and campus cops arrived. Rebecca had dressed and taken charge of the proceedings, which was fine with me. I could hear her cool, decisive voice from the foyer, but I made no effort to follow any of the conversations. A wine bottle and mismatched glasses were on the coffee table, and Katie was clutched in Pippa’s arms.

“I might as well pack my bags,” Winkie said morosely, but with a lack of sincerity that made me wonder if she was less than horrified by the idea-or secretly confident that it would not happen. “This is inexcusable. Men in the chapter room, and that besotted fool in the ritual closet. Eleanor will be on the phone to National in the morning, and I’ll be out on the street by noon.”

Pippa nuzzled the captive cat. “I just don’t understand how that man got in there, unless he…

“Took the key from Jean’s purse,” I said.

Winkie hiccupped, and with a giggle touched her lips with fluttery fingertips. “Which means he and Debbie Anne are in this together, doesn’t it? One or the other, perhaps both of them, ran Jean down, stole her purse, and used her key to get into the chapter room and the closet. ‘What an odd place for him to choose to hide, if that’s what he was doing.” She hiccupped and giggled once again. “Are you certain Debbie Anne wasn’t in there with him? The two might have found it exciting to come up with a few rituals of their own.”

“I think we’d have heard about it,” I said dryly. My wits were dulled by now, but I battled back a yawn and replayed her remarks-hers and Rebecca’s and someone else’s. “It’s possible there are several keys to the chapter room. You have the original. Jean Hall had a duplicate made. But doesn’t Eleanor Vanderson have a complete set of keys?”

“Of course not,” Winkie chided me. “She has keys to all the exterior doors, the bedrooms, and the main-floor storage rooms, but National allows only one key for the basement. Security is vital, quite vital.”

Pippa’s dimples were mere shadows on her pale cheeks, and she spoke with the solemnity of an IRS auditor. “And you’ve got to promise not to ever tell anyone what you saw in there, Mrs. Malloy.”

As if the world’s citizens were panting to know how many folding chairs were in the Kappa Theta Eta chapter room, I thought sourly. I was about to expound on this when a campus cop stepped into the doorway. To my delight, he was middle-aged, paunchy-and unfamiliar.

“We’ve sent the trespasser to the detox unit at the city hospital,” he said. “According to his driver’s license, which was revoked eight years ago, his name’s Arnold Riggles and he’s itinerant. He’ll be interrogated whenever he’s sobered up, and if he remembers anything, he can tell us what he was doing here. Miss Faulkner took a quick look around and said nothing had been disturbed. She claims she doesn’t know how he got there or why. Do any of you ladies have anything to say that can’t wait until the morning?”

We shook our heads, and Katie sneezed her denial. He said the investigation would continue in the morning, stressed the need to make sure the house was secured, and promised frequent passes by patrol cars. After a bit more thumping and muttered comments in the foyer, the front door was slammed and Rebecca joined us.

“Have you put a curse on the Kappa Theta Etas?” she asked me as she poured a glass of wine and curled up at the end of the couch, regarding me with the same meditative glint I’d seen in Katie’s eyes. “Up until last week, nothing much happened. Now, every time I leave the house for an audition or to shop, I find myself wondering if I’ll return to a pile of ashes.”

“Rebecca!” Winkie said. “You of all people-”

“I was joking, Winkle,” Rebecca cut in.

Pippa dumped the cat and stood up. “I’m going to bed. I have a really tough exam in Abnormal Psych in the morning. Good night, all.”

“Would you wait a minute?” Rebecca said to me, then followed Pippa out of the room. Alter a hushed conversation, she returned to the doorway and crossed her arms. “It was awfully clever of you to figure out there was someone in the closet, Mrs. Malloy. Thanks so much for warning us.”

“I’m sure Arnie will be equally grateful if and when he sobers up,” I said.

Pippa reentered and handed me my key ring. With a dutifully apologetic smile, she said, “It was my fault, and I’m really sorry for not finding it the first time. I went back and crawled around and around and around the tree until I found it in a hole. I do hope you’ll forgive me.”

“I do,” I said hastily, and then left before I found myself in possession of a pink paper cat and yet another invitation to dinner. I hadn’t put a curse on the Kappa Theta Etas. Quite the contrary. Vowing to forget the entire matter and dedicate myself to more important concerns, such as bankruptcy and involuntary celibacy, I returned home.

The door was unlocked and all the lights were blazing away. Caron sat cross-legged on the floor, a calendar spread in front of her. She poised a pencil above it, saying, “Okay, I’ll put Merissa down for Thursday morning, but Ashley can’t do it that afternoon.” She glanced up at Inez, who sat on the couch amid a great flutter of pages torn from a notepad.

“If Tara switches to Saturday,” Inez said with a frown, “then Ashley can have Friday afternoon. But that means we’ll have to juggle the schedule for the rest of the weekend.”

“Hi, girls,” I said cautiously. “Are you planning an invasion? If so, you ought to call CNN and give them some warning. And remember, I don’t want to see any nuclear weapons on my credit-card bill.”

Caron crossed out an entry before scowling at me. “We are arranging the schedule for about a dozen My Beautiful Self analyses, Mother It’s very complex, and would be a whole lot easier without interruptions. Look, Inez, some of them may have to change their plans. I Cannot Accommodate every last person who has a dentist appointment or wants to go to the mall.”

Inez peered at one slip, then another, her face wrinkling with dismay until she resembled a distressed Pekinese. “But if Charlene has to baby-sit all afternoon Friday…

“She can find a substitute!” Caron banged down the pencil and stalked into the kitchen. “You want a soda?”

I considered asking Inez about the sudden demand for Caron’s expertise, but I was afraid I’d hear an answer that would result in indigestion and insomnia. It was well past three o’clock. I went to bed, a pillow over my head to drown out the sporadic outbursts from the boardroom of Caron Malloy, Inc.

The following morning I dallied over the morning paper and several cups of tea, hoping to hear the sound of Ed Whitbred’s motorcycle so that we could discuss Arnie’s unseemly appearance. It was remotely possible that I was hoping-but with less sanguinity-that Lieutenant Rosen might have seen a report of the most current nonsense at the Kappa Theta Eta house and feel motivated to call for details.

When the telephone finally rang, I carefully put down my cup and blotted my lip with a napkin before I picked up the receiver. “Yes?” I responded melodiously.

“Is Caron there?” said an unmelodious and much younger female voice.

“She’s asleep, and I have no idea when she’ll rouse herself. If you like, I can take a message.”

There was a distinct sniffle, then the voice said, “You tell her that my dad’s a lawyer, and he says what she’s doing is blackmail or extortion or something like that, and she’ll be in really big trouble if she keeps this up.”

“Who is this? What are you talking about?”

“Just give her the message.”

I couldn’t persuade my hand to record a single word of the alarming conversation with the latest anonymous caller My telephone was becoming a veritable pipeline that spewed out threats and dire warnings. I went to Caron’s room and shook her shoulder, but all I received in response to my questions was a grumpy, mumbled admonishment to leave her alone. Her co-conspirator kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, and although I suspected she was emulating an arboreal American marsupial (more specifically, a Thdelphis virginiana), I returned to the kitchen, gulped down an aspirin with a mouthful of tepid tea, and left them to be dragged away to a juvenile detention facility by someone with more persistence than I.

Once at the Book Depot, I took out a piece of paper and amused myself making yet more notes of noticeably little help. I made one list of potential blackmailers, grimly adding Caron Malloy, and a second of potential blackmailees. Everyone who qualified for neither list went into a jumble at the bottom of the page, and I was trying to devise categories for them when the door opened.

For her morning outing, Eleanor Vanderson had chosen a robin’s-egg-blue seersucker suit with a crisp white blouse. Her accessories included a white belt and pumps, a swirly blue-and-purple scarf draped artfully around her neck, a slender silver watch, and a white straw purse. Clearly, she was in harmony with her palette and destined for chicken salad and bridge. Others of us, having chosen frayed denim shorts and one of Caron’s old gym-class T-shirts, accessorized with a cheap watch and a tarnished wedding ring, also cheap, felt destined for nothing more dainty than a hamburger and a diet soda. However burdened as I was with the knowledge of her husband’s dirty little secrets, I deserved no better.

“Oh, Claire,” she said as she came to the counter and squeezed my hand, “you must be ready to bulldoze down the sorority house-and I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you’d already arranged it. It’s been one nightmare after another for you, hasn’t it? The screams, the purported prowlers, that dreadful accident in the alley, that pledge pestering you with her calls, and now this incident last night!”

I eased my hand out of reach and folded my arms to cover my incriminating lists (which, regrettably, incriminated only me). “It’s not been an auspicious beginning for the summer,” I said, aware that I was mirroring her superficial smile and speaking with an identical undertone of sisterly sympathy. They were finally getting to me, I thought with an edge of hysteria as we continued to twinkle at each other. I’d seen the chapter room. I’d seen the ritual closet. I’d toured the house and eaten their spaghetti. I was becoming Kappa Theta Eta-ized, and before long I would crave pink cashmere. The bookstore would be home to a fluffy white cat. I would become increasingly distraught that Caron had not selected a silver pattern shortly after her birth. Had Eleanor clutched my hand with the secret handshake? Were her lips puckered just a bit? Would I need gum augmentation?

She must have sensed that I was not a sane woman, in that she retreated a few steps and gazed thoughtfully at the store. “This is so charming, Claire. I can’t think why I’ve never been here before, but I certainly will make a point of coming by in the future. I love the way you’ve arranged all this to create a warm, cozy feeling.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s something I’d like to discuss with you,” she continued, “but it’s very painful for me and I’m hoping we might find a place with complete privacy, a place where we won’t be disturbed.”

“This may be it. No one has set foot in here all morning, and I have no reason to believe anyone will in the foreseeable future.”

“I’m so sorry to hear business is slow, but surely things will pick up before too long. Would it be inconvenient if we sat in your office?” She gave me the look of a poster child from a Third World country.

I led her to the office, took a dozen books off the chair and dumped them in a corner, squinted unhappily at the blackened crust in the coffee pot, and finally settled behind the desk to regard her over a stack of invoices, a cup filled with stubby pencils, several self-help books on the gentle art of organization, and a scattering of dried roaches.

“This is so difficult.” Eleanor took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed the corner of her eye. “After the party ended last night, I asked John what you two had been discussing out by the pool. Initially, he refused to tell me, but I persisted, and this morning, while I was driving him to the airport, he finally related the gist of it. Oh, Claire, I can imagine how you must have felt as he told you those… repulsive stories, but surely you realize what they were.”

“Surely,” I said obediently, if also blankly.

“I suggested he cancel his trip to Las Vegas, but he became so upset that I reluctantly kissed him goodbye and let him go. I’ve already spoken to his physician, and the very first thing we’ll do when John returns is schedule a complete evaluation of his medication.” She dabbed the other eye, then gave me a brave, quivery smile. “I’m so glad you understand, Claire. These last few years have been a living hell for me, and sometimes I wonder if that’s why I’ve immersed myself in the sorority. My grandmother never tired of reminding me that the best cure for personal troubles is a worthwhile charity in need of a chairperson.”

“You’re saying that what he told me…

“Is nothing more than a pathetic fantasy. John is a brilliant scholar and has published hundreds of articles in the most prestigious journals across the country. He successfully argued in front of the United States Supreme Court on two occasions. There’s a rumor afoot that the new wing of the law building will be named after him.” She paused to allow me the opportunity to gasp in awe, but I managed to restrain myself. “Five years ago he began to develop a few mild eccentricities-nothing too bizarre at first, but later they became more obvious. I eventually took him to the medical complex in Houston, which diagnosed a degenerative neurological disease that impairs him both physically and mentally. He functions well most of the time, but every now and then he does or says something that has absolutely no basis in reality.”

I considered this for a moment. “He sounded perfectly normal when he told me about his assignations at a motel. I didn’t demand details, naturally, but he seemed to have a vivid memory of… what took place and with whom.”

“He sounded perfectly normal when he explained to our daughter that he’d joined a convent and henceforth was to be called Sister Beatrice.” She shook her head and sighed. “Thus far, we’ve been lucky that these episodes have been isolated and have occurred outside the university community. But to tell a virtual stranger that he… Well, it’s clear he’ll have to submit his resignation as soon as he returns home.

Trying not to envision Dean Vanderson in a fetching black habit, I said, “Then he had no assignations with sorority girls at the Hideaway Haven and Jean Hall was not blackmailing him?”

“Oh, Claire, I knew you’d understand!” Eleanor replaced the handkerchief in her purse and once again rewarded me with a dose of sisterly sympathy. “You’ll be relieved to learn that I’ve decided to close the Kappa house for the remainder of the summer. Winkle, Rebecca, and Pippa have been told that they must be out by six o’clock today, and they were looking at the classified ads and calling various apartment complexes when I left. It will be inconvenient for me to drop by every day to supervise the remodeling, but I’ll just have to do it.”

Although I was cheered by her news, I wasn’t ready to dismiss Dean Vanderson’s revelations as the ravings of a neurological degenerate. “If your husband wasn’t being blackmailed, why was there a pink paper cat in his office?”

“You were in his office?” she said, politely incredulous. Since I hadn’t exactly arrived at the law school with a search warrant, I bypassed her question and said, “Yes, and I found a cat hidden under a computer It looked like your basic blackmail note to me: terse, ominous, slightly obtuse. I came to your house last night to ask him about it.”

“How odd,” she murmured as she found a gold compact and made sure her mascara had not dribbled down her cheeks during her less than histrionic confession of her husband’s disability After she’d flicked off an invisible speck, she snapped the compact closed. “Unless, of course, he wrote it as additional proof to himself that he’s not only virile and sexually insatiable, but also an actor in some dark soap opera unfolding around him. He’s become childlike these last few years, and this is the sort of thing that would appeal to his need to see himself as anything other than a pale, plump, middle-aged law professor.”

I did not leap to my feet, point an accusatory finger at her, and utter words to the effect that John had no access to pink construction-paper cats. “And you have a drawerful of the things at home?” I asked in a resigned voice.

“I keep them in a carton in my study, along with the correspondence with National, confidential reports from alumnae, and the endless files. You and I seem to wage the same battle not to drown in all the paperwork, don’t we?” I nodded as she stood up. “There is one thing more I must beg of you, Claire. It’s terribly important that what I told you not become a topic of gossip. John is not well, and were his reputation to be tainted by lurid and unfounded accusations, it might kill him. I can trust you, can’t I?”

I assured her that she could, escorted her out to the street, and resumed my seat at the counter. I now was withholding from the authorities enough information to alphabetize it and publish a set of encyclopedias. On the other hand, the fact that John Vanderson had not carried on with sorority girls and therefore had not been blackmailed was not likely to overwhelm anybody

The afternoon dwindled along, as did my attempts to put a lot of seemingly unrelated tidbits into tidy little compartments. No one called to threaten me or my child, and no one called to inquire if I was meddling in an official investigation-if there was one. The police were satisfied with an accidental death and a fugitive who would appear sooner or later Although I could vindicate myself with the revelation that Ed Whitbred and Arnie Riggles had indeed prowled in the bushes outside the sorority house, I could find no other reason to tell anyone. With the house closing, Winkle would have to find an apartment for the summer, and she and her hairy Don Juan could daily in a more routine fashion. John Vanderson would resign from his position at the law school and perhaps occupy his time writing fiction. No doubt the New York publishing house that purchased Nebras qué would be enthralled by juris-imprudent porn. Caron would throw her sixteenth birthday party for the benefit of her fellow inmates; I would celebrate my fortieth birthday alone, toasting myself in the mirror while monitoring the ravages of menopause.

It was a splendid foray into self-pity, and I was enjoying myself enormously as I walked home late in the afternoon. As I went past the soon-to-be-vacant sorority house, however, I realized there was a minor glitch in Eleanor’s explanation of her husband’s peculiar behavior He had been on the third floor several nights ago. I tried to tell myself he was engaged in a fantasy, playing detective rather than cowboy or astronaut, but my arguments failed to convince me. He had been there, just as he had stopped at the curb the night of Jean’s death. Eleanor might wish desperately to believe her husband was delusional, that what he’d told me was nonsense-but she could be wrong.

Miss Marple-Malloy was back in business- I hurried home, found the directory, and called Ed Whitbred. “I presume you heard about Arnie,” I said without wasting a precious second of sleuthing.

“Winkie told me,” he said. “She’s upset about the house closing, but I think she’s better off getting away from those leeches. This morning she and Eleanor had a major row over the chapter-room key. Winkie swears her key has been in her possession since the last meeting of the semester, back in May, and Eleanor finally conceded that saintly Jean Hall must have made a duplicate.”

“Will Winkle keep her job?”

“She thinks so. I told her I’d help her look for an apartment, so I’d better-”

“Did you have the film from Arnie’s camera developed?”

“I dropped it off at the drugstore on Thurber Street, but I forgot to pick it up after work. How about I bring it over tomorrow when I-”

“That’ll be fine, Ed. Happy hunting.” I hung up, then went to Caron’s bedroom to see if there were any messages concerning ball or impending court appearances. All I found were dirty glasses, a crumpled potato-chip bag, fuzzy dishes under the bed that might lead to a Nobel Prize in biochemistry, and her calendar The last item indicated that Gretchen was slated to have her palette adjusted within the hour

Idly speculating why Caron’s friends had relented, I made a drink and wandered to my bedroom to stare at the Kappa Theta Eta house. The shadows from the scaffold resembled long diagonal bars across the weathered surface. The effect was fittingly sinister.

When it began to grow dark, I drove to the drugstore. After a spirited debate with a genderless dullard regarding my lack of a receipt versus my willingness to stand there all night and argue, I proffered money for a packet of prints. Once I was in the car I took a deep breath and pulled out the product of Arnie’s arcane activities.

He’d been thorough, capturing not only Pippa in gleeful admiration of her breasts, Jean halfway out of a shirt, Rebecca brushing her hair in a diaphanous gown, and Debbie Anne in a struggle with a pair of overly tight shorts, but also a dozen more of unknown girls in varied degrees of undress. The backgrounds contained enough pink to identify them as Kappa Theta Etas. Apparently our aspiring Penthouse photographer had lurked in the bushes prior to the end of the spring semester.

Arnie had occupied a position on my list of potential blackmailers, but I mentally drew a line through his name and relegated it to a newly established list of voyeurs. It was odd that he’d selected this particular sorority, I thought as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the highway. It was the only house open this summer, but during the previous semester he could have chosen any of the sorority houses on campus, some of which would provide stimulating photo opportunities from less prickly sites. Was it just another damn coincidence?

I drove by the Hideaway Haven twice before persuading myself to bounce across the pockmarked lot and park at what was optimistically designated as the office. Through the dusty window I could see a stumpy orange-haired man in a stained T-shirt and plaid shorts. A cigarette smoldered between his lips, and ashes trickled down his belly. He appeared to be reading a tabloid, although it was as likely that he was unable to meet the literacy challenge and was merely looking at the pictures.

There was no delicate way to handle it, I told myself as I cowered in the car and perspired like a woman eighteen hours into labor Not even one of my role models from a cozy novel could find a way to transact this distasteful business without some tiny slip of her composure. I slunk down further as a car pulled in beside me. Its driver seemed familiar with the process and was in possession of a key within minutes. His buxom companion sauntered after him as he hurried to a nearby room. The lack of luggage suggested professional services rendered at an hourly rate.

I, on the other hand, had all the time I wanted to explore my motives for sitting in my car outside the office of the Hideaway Haven. Was I in the throes of a quest for truth and justice? Was this indicative of my dedication to law and order? Was I genuinely concerned about Debbie Anne Wray-or any of the blasted Kappa Theta Etas, their lovers, or even their painters? Or could it be that I was going to show Lieutenant Peter Rosen that I was not the least bit interested in his extracurricular activities and was perfectly content to meddle in someone else’s official investigation?

I snatched up the packet and went into the office. “Excuse me,” I said coldly, “but Pd like you to see if you recognize any of these girls.”

“What are you-a high school principal?”

I spread out the photographs. “I do not care to discuss my personal life. Have any of these girls ever rented rooms here?”

Clearly daunted by my steely demeanor, he studied each photograph with great care, occasionally whistling softly or holding one so closely his breath clouded it. He licked his lips so often that soon his chin was glistening, but no more so than his beady little eyes. I was finally getting somewhere, I told myself smugly as I waited for his response.

“No, never seen any of them.” He picked up the tabloid and flipped it open. “Can you believe this about Elvis? I for one think he’s deader’n a doornail, but people keep seeing him all the time. I don’t see how he can keep popping up like this if he’s dead.” He scratched his head with enough enthusiasm to send flakes of dandruff adrift.

“Elvis is dead, and you have seen these girls before,” I retorted, a shade less smugly but determined to hear the truth if I had to shake it out of him. “If you refuse to admit it, I will call the police and report indications of prostitution and drug transactions on these very premises.

He wrenched one eye off the “actual artist’s depiction” of Elvis entering the White House. “You got no proof.”

“No, but I’ll tell them I do, and once they start poking around, I’m sure they’ll find plenty of evidence. If nothing else, there must be enough violations of the health and fire codes to close you down.”

He plucked the cigarette butt from his mouth and gaped at me as if I’d arisen from the page in front of him and, like the Peoria housewife, claimed to be capable of spontaneous combustion. “But that’s lying, lady.”

“It most certainly is, and I must warn you that I’ve had a great deal of practice at it and will be quite convincing. Would you like to take another look at the photographs?”

“Maybe I ought to ask Doobie,” the man said as he dropped the butt and ground it out on the floor. “He’s usually on the night desk, but he wanted to switch so’s he could watch some fool basketball game. Won’t take more than a minute.” He gathered up the photographs and disappeared through a doorway, the door closing behind him before I could protest.

As I waited, I became aware that I might as well have been on the screen of the drive-in movie theater. The darkness outside emphasized the lights of the office, and I knew I was visible from the far reaches of the parking lot, if not the highway. Unlike the Kappa Theta Etas, I was not haunted by the specter of a tainted reputation, but the thought of having to explain my presence at the Hideaway Haven was so chilling that goose bumps dotted my arms and whatever hackles I possessed rose on my neck. I was tempted to hide behind the lurid pages of the tabloid, then considered the additional hardship of explaining both my presence and my reading material to anyone who drove by. Such as a cop.

Nearly fifteen minutes had passed by the time the manager returned, the photographs in his hand and a deeply distrustful look on his face. I closed the tabloid, thus doomed never to find out the facts about Bigfoot’s amorous attack on a Canadian farmwife, and smiled expectantly.

“Doobie ain’t seen any of them,” he reported, avoiding my eyes and speaking with all the animation of a dead Elvis. “He sez they’re welcome anytime, dressed or otherwise, and in particular that piece of angel food cake with the black hair, but he ain’t seen any of them. But”-he held up a grimy hand to stop me from retorting-”Doobie sez Hank might have been on duty some of the time, so you can come back next week and ask him. Hank took his wife to a bowling tournament over in Sallisaw, on account of it being her birthday.”

“It took all this time for Doobie to say that?” I said.

Once again dandruff rained softly on his shoulders as his fingernails dug into his scalp. “Doobie studied the pictures real carefully before he decided he hadn’t seen them girls. We get all kinds of college kids out here, especially on the weekends, and they all look the same, a bunch of Kens and Barbies in designer clothes and fancy athletic shoes.

As I put the photographs back in the packet, I decided to take one last shot. “There’s someone else who might have been here frequently,” I began, then proceeded to describe John Vanderson.

The manager flinched, his eyebrows furrowing for a second, his lips suddenly in need of a lick. “No, nobody like that.”

I’d seen the recognition in his eyes, the same flicker I'd seen in Winkie’s when I’d rattled off the description in her suite. I said as much, but he steadfastly denied having seen John Vanderson, and at last took his tabloid and went into the back room. This time the door slammed a sullen goodbye, although I suspected in his mind it was a more colorful idiom involving areas of his anatomy-or mine.

Lacking the courage to storm after him, I went back to my car As I reached for the handle, I heard a faint groan, and swung around to stare at the impenetrable darkness of the parking lot alongside the building. “Hello?” I called tentatively. “Is someone hurt?”

A second groan was as slight and insubstantial as the breeze that carried it. It was not the whimper of a sick animal, I decided as I moved toward the corner, crushing the packet in my damp hand, keenly conscious of my vulnerability and my inexperience in dealing with mishaps at brothels.

A few cars were parked in front of motel units, but heavy curtains kept any light from spilling onto the pavement. Across the narrow lot stretched a vast field that undulated like a serene expanse of ocean, dotted only by stubby, skeletal trees and the rotted remains of a car.

I stopped in the oblong of light from the office, shielded my eyes, and peered for some indication of the location of the groaner. “Is someone there?” I called.

Headlights came to life, blinded me, startled me as if I were a deer on the highway, left me rooted and unable to so much as blink. An engine roared. Tires dug into the gravel, spinning and shrieking. The headlights charged me. What flashed before me was not an encapsulated version of my thirty-nine years of life, but a much more vivid image of what I’d resemble if I didn’t move pretty darn soon. Pancake batter came to mind.

I flung myself into the side of the building. The headlights veered at me, then swept past while gravel pelted me like hail. I peeled myself off the wall in time to see swirling taillights as the car squealed onto the highway and sped away.