Poisoned Pins

16

“I’ll shoot you if I must, Claire,” Eleanor said in a conversational tone more suitable for cocktail parties at the country club. “I don’t know exactly what I’ll tell the police, but I’m sure I can concoct some perfectly adequate excuse about mistaking you for a burglar Thanks to you, there are numerous reports on file at the campus security office.”

I reluctantly lowered my hand and turned around to look at the gun in her hand. Although it wasn’t pink, it was small and stylish, the perfect size to be slipped into a beaded bag for an evening at the opera. “For pity’s sake, Eleanor, you aren’t going to shoot me in front of two witnesses.”

She showed me all her teeth and a fair quantity of moist pink gums. “We’re Kappa Theta Etas. We’d never testify against our own sisters. Loyalty is the very basis of our initiation ritual; once we’ve attached our pins, we’re intimately linked, and even in death, we’re steadfast members of Chapter Eternal.”

Winkie and Rebecca nodded grimly, and the latter said, “Besides, I’m going to New York at the end of the summer, not some women’s prison. It would be too dreary.”

“Is John Vanderson sponsoring you?” I asked evenly.

She flinched as Eleanor’s gun wobbled in her direction. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean, Jean had some deal with him, but I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Oh, come now,” I said with a chuckle. “You found the photographs in Jean’s room and sent Dean Vanderson a blackmail note just the other day. On Monday, I believe he said. I saw it in his office.”

“She did?” said Eleanor. The question was aimed at me, but the gun, at least for the moment, was still aimed at Rebecca.

Rebecca spoke quickly. “I did not! Jean must have put the photographs in her purse when she met your husband in the alley. If anybody is in a position to use them, it’s Debbie Anne. She has Jean’s key to the chapter room. Why wouldn’t she have the photographs, too?”

“I don’t think she does,” Eleanor said. After a moment, she pointed the gun at Winkie. “Did you happen to look through Jean’s things?”

Winkie jerked her head back and forth. “No, and I know nothing about this matter. I was aware that Jean and some of the girls were… behaving badly, but she made it clear that I was to mind my own business. If National were to hear of some of the things that have happened right here in the house, they’d revoke our charter. You know how desperately I need the pension, Eleanor”

I decided to aid and abet the erosion of Kappa loyalty. “But why did you return to the house tonight? Did you want to enhance your job security with something to dangle over Eleanor?”

“I was worried that I hadn’t locked all the doors. I may have heard something from one of the girls about Dean Vanderson, but I would never stoop to blackmail.

Well, I did think it was important to make sure that no evidence of misconduct be sent to Jean’s parents.”

“That’s right,” Rebecca contributed, still speaking rapidly and in danger of flubbing her lines. “Jean’s parents might have gone crazy and called National. Her fathers a state senator, and he’s got enough clout to force the local police to reopen the investigation. A thorough search of the house would be a disaster for all of us.”

“Stop!” Eleanor leaned against the wall and rubbed her face with her free hand, a frown deepening on her face as she studied each of us in turn. “This is terribly confusing, all these accusations and lies. I think we need to sit down and talk this over, and reach an agreement about what will be said to National and what need not be mentioned. We’re Kappa Theta Etas, after all.”

It was not the moment to correct her I nodded and said, “Why don’t you put down the gun and we’ll do just that?”

“What about her?” said Rebecca, not bothering to gesture in my direction.

Eleanor hesitated, then pointed the gun at me. “I’ll have to ask you to wait in the chapter room while we deal with this, Claire. Earlier you made rash and injudicious remarks concerning our chapter, and I cannot allow you to leave just now. Winkie, would you be so kind as to retrieve your keys from Claire’s pocket and unlock the door at the top of the stairs? Rebecca, why don’t you make tea in the suite for us? I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

She kept the barrel jammed into my back as we went down to the basement. I was hoping she would have a problem unlocking the chapter-room door, but rather than using Winkie’s unwieldy key ring, she took a single key from her pocket and used it with no lessening of pressure in the middle of my back.

“I’d welcome you to the chapter room,” she said as she shoved me into the room, “but you’ve already seen it, haven’t you? Some sororities have open chapter rooms, but it’s a bother to have to put away the banners and scatter the chairs after the meetings. It’s really quite a lot easier to keep it locked.”

I was not in the proper frame of mind for a lesson in sororal protocol, being more concerned with the current situation. “Let’s get this over with,” I said. “Decide who gets to blackmail whom, and then let me out of here so I can go home and go to bed.”

“I’m afraid it may be a long wait. Did you get a good look inside the ritual closet when you discovered Arnie?” I shrugged. “The Kappa Theta Etas have a very special initiation ceremony, filled with mystery and symbolism. What’s said and done here can never leave this room; the very first vow taken is to honor the sanctity and confidentiality of the ceremony. Then guess what happens?”

I warily noted the brightness of her eyes. “I have no idea whatsoever, Eleanor. Why don’t you go upstairs and-”

“Each pledge steps into a real coffin, and when she senses that she’s ready, she comes out to be welcomed by her new sisters. It’s symbolic of her rebirth as a Kappa Theta Eta!” She giggled at my expression. “Oh, we have more symbols than you can imagine. Periodically during the year, the pledges are lined up in the backyard and sprinkled with a hose to make them grow. When the moon is full, the members wake the pledges and sing to them while they pretend to be roses in the flowerbed.”

“You shouldn’t be telling me your sorority secrets,” I said with heartfelt sincerity, mindful of her remark about certain subjects never leaving the room.

“Then why don’t you tell me what secrets you know? No, let me see if I can guess! You seem to know about John’s sordid little sessions at the motel, don’t you? It took me quite some time to figure it out, but he actually kept the photographs Jean took from inside a closet. I found the little souvenirs in his dresser drawer, along with the pink notes.”

“Including the one that ordered him to meet Jean at the fraternity-house patio on Saturday night?”

She beamed at me. “I am so impressed with your cleverness! Tell me more, please.”

I decided to participate in her maniacal game in hopes that someone might intervene. The odds were slightly more in favor of mummified alumnae staggering out of the ritual closet than of police thundering down the stairs, but there was little else to do. “Don’t be so modest, Eleanor. You acted quickly and cleverly when Debbie Anne came to you to confess about the thefts and shoplifting. Did you pretend to be horrified and tell her to stay at the Hideaway Haven until you took action?”

“I did, I did! I told her she was in great danger from Jean and Rebecca, and that she had to hide until I called National on Monday morning. I even offered to move her car to a different location in case someone might see it at the motel.” She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “Debbie Anne should never have been encouraged to pledge. She lacks initiative.”

I sat down on a folding chair and crossed my legs. “But she called me, didn’t she? That must have annoyed you enough to take her to your house for a lecture.”

Eleanor sat down, but at a distance that precluded any reckless heroics on my part. If we’d constituted a quorum, we could have held a meeting about gun control. Still beaming like a spotlight, she said, “I was annoyed, yes, but the reason I told Arnie to bring her to my house was so that she could clean for me. My housekeeper quit on the very day we were entertaining Judge Frankley. Debbie Anne did a competent job, but she found a newspaper with an article about Jean’s death, and became so agitated that I had to slip her a sedative before I took her to the guestroom on the third floor. It seemed most expedient to leave her there until John was on Ms way to Las Vegas.”

“Why did Arnie agree to this?”

“I paid him, of course. He called me from jail. His accusations were preposterous, but I needed someone to keep an eye on the girl until I decided what to do. I posted his bail and told him to take the room next to hers at the motel. Once Debbie Anne became my houseguest, there was no reason for me to continue to pay for his room-or for his silence. After he delivered her, I asked him to park on Thurber Street and meet me in the alley, hurried him down the back steps, and told him to take a television set out of the closet.” She giggled again at my expression. “If I’d had any idea that you would insist on searching it for Debbie Anne, I would have selected a different place. There was no reason to think anyone would open the door until the middle of August, and I did intend to deal with his remains long before then.”

I looked at the door and tried not to imagine what she would have encountered after two hot months. An even less palatable idea came to mind. “May I assume that’s where Debbie Anne is now?”

“And where you’re going to be, too,” she said, her ebullience fading as she stood up, the gun aimed at my cold, cold heart. “I had to give Debbie Anne a stronger dose of the sedative, but she’ll awaken before too long and you can keep each other company. Eventually you’ll grow too weak to visit, and you might even decide the coffin looks cozy. Now that I think about it, one of the pink robes might make a splendid shroud. There’s no point in pounding on the door or shouting; such activity will deplete the oxygen, and the closet door is very sturdy. No one will be in the house for two months.”

“Forget it, Eleanor,” I said, refusing to rise. “Winkie and Rebecca will figure out what you’ve done, and you cannot count on their continued loyalty in the face of three murders, including that of a Kappa Theta Eta.”

“I do believe I can. Neither is aware that I, in my capacity as an alumna and a chapter sponsor, had to stop Jean Hall from threatening everything dear to Kappa Theta Eta. Using Katie the Kappa Kitten like that is an inexcusable violation of our creed!”

“Is that why you took the time to remove her sorority pin?”

“She was no longer worthy of it, but the process through which a girl is expelled is long and painful for everyone from the local chapter level to the judicial branch of National. It was so much more expedient to do it myself. Jean was in no condition to protest, was she?

In any case, I shall encourage Winkle and Rebecca to think Debbie Anne committed the crime and fled the state, and I suspect they won’t question it too seriously.

Winkie is very keen to keep her job for one final year, and Rebecca’s a lovely girl, so wonderfully ambitious and talented, and hardly apt to confess her involvement to the police.” She tapped her foot impatiently, but her voice remained cool and courteous as she said, “Please cooperate with me on this, Claire. We both know how difficult it is to get bloodstains out of a carpet. I’d like to be home in time for John’s call, and I’m sure Winkle and Rebecca have their own plans for the evening.”

She might have been inviting me to contribute to her favorite charity (presumably the Red Cross Bloodmobile), and she’d clearly chaired one too many committees in her day. If she’d been angry or frothing at the mouth, I might have been less terrified; as it was, locking me in the closet was merely the next item on the agenda after the treasurer’s report. The heavy metal door to the chapter room was closed, and I doubted Winkie and Rebecca could hear a shot. After a nice cup of tea, Eleanor would assure them she intended to release me, wave a warm farewell from the door, and go home to await a long-distance call from her husband.

“Claire,” she said with a flicker of irritation, “let’s not make this any more awkward than necessary.”

“It is rather awkward for me.”

Her finger tightened on the trigger. “I do wish you’d take this in the proper spirit.”

I could think of only one thing that might distract her. I rose unsteadily and took a step, stopped, and with my eyes widened to their roundest and my eyebrows arched, pointed at the corner behind her. “Oh, look!” I trilled. “It’s dear little Katie!”

She turned involuntarily, and I grabbed a metal chair and swung it at her. At the last critical moment before it slammed into her face, I knew from her look of deep disapproval that Caron Malloy would never be invited to become a Kappa Theta Eta.

I was beginning to wonder if Peter intended to remain in front of his office window in perpetuity. His back had rippled for a while, and the muscles in his neck had been visible for the first hour or so after dawn. Every so often his hands had curled into bloodless white fists. Now he was motionless.

“Why didn’t you tell me what was going on?” he said. This particular question had been posed numerous times during the lengthy interview. I took a sip of cold, scummy coffee and said, “Nothing was going on until I went to the Hideaway Haven. Even then, I didn’t have absolute proof that Jean was blackmailing John Vanderson, thus giving Eleanor a motive to intervene on his behalf-if it was on his behalf. She’s spooky about the sorority. Then again, the sorority’s pretty darn spooky.”

“But you knew a lot of things that might have helped us,” he said, still staring out the window as if wishing to see workmen erecting a gallows. “You knew Arnie was skulking in the bushes, as was this biker who was having an affair with the housemother. John Vanderson admitted he met Jean the night she was killed, and also admitted he’d been in the house.”

“But Eleanor told me he was-”

“Delusional,” Peter continued smoothly. As I mentioned, we’d repeated this particular conversation for several hours, and we were confident of our lines. “Rather than allow us to investigate the allegations, you chose to do so on your own. And broke into the house to save a cat, no less.”

“To save a cat, no less.” It was my turn to sputter, but before I could begin, Jorgeson came into the office.

“I interviewed the third girl, Pippa Edmondson,” he said, his ears quivering in response to the tension, which had to be as thick as fog. He put a paperback book on the corner of the desk. “She asked me to return this to Ms. Malloy, and said Caron could keep some case of color strips. According to the Faulkner girl, who’s spilling everything she can think of like Niagara Falls, Pippa’s a kleptomaniac. Whenever anything disappeared in the house, the girls would wait until she went to class and then just retrieve their things from her room. Jean threatened to have her kicked out of the sorority unless she agreed to utilize her talents around town and focus on items of value.”

“Rebecca made her return my keys,” I said as I stashed the book in my purse. “I suppose she thought it might keep me from suspecting them of their other activities. Did she admit she sent the blackmail cat to Dean Vanderson?”

Jorgeson nodded. “Yeah, she said over the last two years she and Jean Hall had redirected upward of thirty thousand dollars from house accounts to their personal accounts. This spring Jean realized they’d better replace the missing funds before the books were audited, so she supervised some nasty fund-raisers. Vanderson wasn’t the only libidinous professor to be caught with… his pants down and required to pay for it. Did you look at the photographs, Ms. Malloy?”

“I never did,” I admitted with a shrug.

“Just as well. They might have diminished your respect for the sorority. The Faulkner girl had taken over the operation. She said she went back to the house to search once more for that particular set of photographs, but she figured she could bluff the dean without them,”

“Has Debbie Anne Wray recovered consciousness?” Peter said without turning.

“Not yet, but the doctor said she’ll come around okay. They got Arnold Riggles sobered up and transferred him to our jail, but he claims he doesn’t remember anything since”-Jorgeson cleared his throat-”he made a bet with a certain senator. We’ll see if his memory improves when he starts aching for a drink.” He nodded at Peters back and edged out of the room.

I was getting bored with the scene. “Listen, Peter, I’ve already said that I was on my way to call you when Eleanor pulled a gun on me. That was partly my fault. I didn’t realize she was guilty until she mentioned the name of the motel. Only then did it occur to me that the manager must have called her, and after she missed me in the parking lot, she followed me home and waited to see what I’d do.”

“Which was to keep sticking your nose into the case until it was in peril of being shot off.” His shoulders rose and fell as he sighed. “I suppose we’ve been over this before, haven’t we? You don’t give a damn what I say to you-as a cop or as a person; I’d have more luck with a pink construction-paper cat. Schedule a time with Jorgeson to give an official statement, and then you can go out in search of your next corpse.”

“All right,” I said and stalked out of the room. I didn’t bother to speak to Jorgeson; he would call me when he had time to take a statement. I flew out the door, and blindly started for the Book Depot, making no effort to temper my anger or analyze its cause. Despite my lack of sleep, I was going to open the store and snatch customers off the sidewalk.

I was not too distraught to detour past the doughnut shop for a sweet roll and a large cup of coffee, and I was devouring same when the bell jangled.

“Mother,” Caron said as she pounded across the room, “I have this incredible way to make money this summer! This time I won’t have to beg a bunch of bitches to make appointments, then listen while they cancel with Really Stupid reasons about-”

“Why did they change their minds?”

Caron ducked behind the science fiction rack. “How should I know? I mean, they change their minds like other people change channels.”

“What do you know about this?” I asked Inez, who’d sidled in more decorously and looked as though she wanted to sidle right back out. “Did something happen while you and Caron were at the drive-in with your parents?”

“Like what?” Caron said with a scornful laugh.

I spotted the top of her head as it wafted in the direction of the gardening section. “Like something that provoked one of your clients to call yesterday and suggest that you were engaged in extortion.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Inez said, blinking somberly and keeping a judicious eye on Caron’s head. “The junior varsity football team went on a retreat, so their girlfriends were kinda bored and some of them went to the drive-in with-”

“One lousy night without a date, and they’re fooling around with the basketball players!” Caron chortled, now approaching the true-crime novels. “All I did was wander around the cars to see who might want to have a My Beautiful Self session. I didn’t say one word about ratting on them to their boyfriends.”

“Not exactly,” Inez said thoughtfully, “but they seemed to be a little bit worried about it. And it’s a good thing you saw Rhonda Maguire coming and hid in the playground until she gave up. My parents would have been upset if you’d gotten in a fight with her.”

Surely the Mad Hatter had come in with them, I told myself and would offer me a refill while the Dormouse gazed dreamily at me from inside the cup. “And why is Rhonda so enraged?”

Inez seemed more concerned about a more substantial life form somewhere in the store. In a voice almost inaudible, she said, “Caron found a tube of Super Glue the night she locked herself in Rhonda’s room.”

“Caron!” I said coldly. “Stop acting as if you were in a maze and get out here this very minute. This is too much.” I waited for a moment, hut heard no response. I came out from behind the counter to stalk her, and was plotting the most advantageous path when a motorcycle roared under the portico and backfired once before dying.

Caron’s face appeared over the classics rack. “What was that, Mother?”

“You may consider it a temporary reprieve from the governor,” I said, “but nothing more.”

“Good morning,” Ed said as he came through the door, dressed as I’d last seen him in a black leather jacket, the helmet in his hand. He looked older, however, and his mouth sagged dispiritedly as he tried to smile at Inez, who promptly scuttled into the racks. To me, he said, “I heard what happened at the sorority house, and I just came from visiting Winkie at the jail. Jeez, what a mess!”

“Indeed,” I said. “Have you talked to Arnie?”

“Why would I talk to him? ‘And from the extremest upward of their head to the descent and dust below thy foot, a most toad-spotted traitor.’ If Shakespeare wasn’t talking about Arnie, I don’t know why not.”

“Rhonda Maguire is a toad-spotted traitor,” Caron intoned from an invisible locale.

“Pay no attention to that girl behind the curtain,” I said, aware that I was mixing cinematic metaphors but too tired to control myself. “What does Winkie think will happen to her?”

“Her lawyer says not much. She was suspicious, but she didn’t participate in anything illegal, and she swears she thought Eleanor Vanderson eventually would allow you to leave.

“Did she?” I said dryly as I remembered her eagerness to unlock the door and her complaisant expression as she watched Eleanor escort me downstairs. Perhaps conspiracy to commit murder was in her job description. Would she have helped Eleanor plant us under the roses shortly before rush? Did Katie the Kappa Kitten say thanks?

Ed grimaced faintly as if he were reading my admittedly twisted mind. “Oh, yeah, and she said several times how kind it was of you to go after the cat. Unnecessary, but kind. Anyway, she won’t be arraigned until early next week, and I was wondering if”-his cheeks reddened and he glanced nervously at the racks, from which fierce whispering emanated-”you might want to ride out in the country sometime. I promise we won’t so much as go past the Dew Drop Inn.”

“I don’t think so, Ed. I suppose I’m not quite ready to be a free spirit on the back of your bike. But come by the store and sling quotes at me whenever you want.”

Caron and Inez emerged only after Ed was gone, and I couldn’t recall when I’d seen either of them so awed. I was hoping they were also speechless, but Caron finally gave me a piercing look and said, “He Asked You for a Date.”

“He asked me to go for a ride,” I said mildly.

“On a motorcycle,” breathed Inez.

I considered pointing out that the encroachment of my fifth decade did not require me to take up an eremitic life of crocheting and counting liver spots. Self-sufficiency did not demand solitude any more than a few new gray hairs precluded companionship. It might have evolved into one of my finer lectures, but instead I said, “You’re grounded until you clean your room and the garage.”

“I was going to clean out the garage anyway,” Caron said with typical-and insufferable-smugness. “I have to do it so I can start earning money for a car. Come on, Inez, a few spiders won’t hurt you.”

“Brown recluse spider bites can cause your skin to rot,” Inez countered as they started for the door. “It’s called necrosis, and if it’s really bad, they-”

“Wait a minute!” I snapped.

“Oh, Mother,” Caron said as her lip shot out and her eyes rolled upward, “is this another hot flash? The plan’s foolproof, and it won’t depend on some toad-spotted traitor to make it work. It’s one hundred percent guaranteed or your money back, and now that Pippa’s dropped out of school and left town, I don’t have to give her what I earned as a My Beautiful Self consultant. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home and start on the garage.”

My fingers may have tightened around the plastic cup, but I kept my voice steady. “What are we talking about, Caron?”

“Night crawlers. They’re these icky worm things that people buy to use as bait. I’ve already sent in a coupon for a starter set, and all I have to do is find some wooden boxes and a lot of dirt. You dump coffee grounds and rotten vegetables on them, and then you sell them for a lot of money.” She frowned at Inez. “This palette stuff is nonsense. I don’t see why I can’t have a red sports car if I want.”

“If the palette stuff is nonsense, then I want my yellow blouse back,” Inez said.

“So you’ll look as though you’re terminally sallow?” The bell jangled as they sailed away to entertain pedestrians with their latest topic of debate. I was in my office, scraping the bottom of the coffee pot and vowing to make some abiding changes in my life, when it jangled less violently.

I came to the doorway and stopped. Peter Rosen stood by the counter, doing his best to appear relaxed despite the thrust of his jaw and the intensity in his brown eyes.

“Do you want to talk, Claire?” he said.

It took me most of a minute to consider. “Yes,” I said at last. “I suppose I do. What happened to the cat?”

“Officer Pipkin took it into temporary custody, despite her husband’s objections. He’s allergic to cat hair Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?”

I nodded.