Her telephone call added to my confusion. If she had been telling the truth, she hadn’t been driving her car, and had gone into hiding for another reason-one that had to do with illegal activity instigated by that lovely girl Jean, who was in no condition to be questioned.
The anonymous call was equally bewildering. Arnie? The man-in-the-moon prowler? Some unknown figure who lacked the imagination to come up with an innovative threat? After all, I was minding my own business, or at least what business there was on a Sunday afternoon in June; it was hardly my fault that prowlers kept popping out of the Kappa shrubbery like possessed prairie dogs.
A growing sense of petulance provoked me into closing the bookstore several hours earlier than I’d intended. I took the long route home in order to avoid passing the sorority house, although I couldn’t prevent myself from glancing at it as I approached my porch. Rebecca and Pippa sat on the top step, surrounded by unopened textbooks, notebooks, bags of chips, and cans of soda, clearly more interested in painting their fingernails than in the quest for knowledge.
I veered across the lawn and said, “Have you heard from Debbie Anne?”
Rebecca shook her head. “I’m not sitting here waiting for her to walk up the sidewalk so I can give her a welcoming hug. After what she did to Jean, she’d better have taken the first bus home to her little redneck enclave amid the pigsties and chicken coops.” Her lovely blue eyes brimmed with tears, and her lovely voice with bitterness. “Jean and I were best friends since our first semester, and we shared a room until last year when we both moved into private rooms. It was going just great- until that pious little bitch pledged Kappa Theta Eta and ruined everything!”
“Pious?” I echoed.
“She didn’t approve of anything, not even some of the boring public relations stuff the pledge class has to do every year. Apparently in her hometown, nobody ever smoked a cigarette or drank a glass of decent French wine, much less partied past midnight. Right before spring break, Jean bribed one of the Betas to take Debbie Anne out and get her good and drunk, but she drank half a martini, gagged on the olive, and threw up all over his front seat. What’s that supposed to do for our reputation?”
I had no answer for that. “Debbie Anne did tell me that she was pressured to do things she felt were wrong.”
“Such as?” Rebecca said with a faint sneer that reminded me of Jean.
“She said she couldn’t tell me because I wasn’t in the sorority. Her faced turned red, however, and she implied they were things that would upset her preacher”
Pippa giggled. “She was probably thinking of the Bedroom Olympics weekend. What a prude!”
“You have to consider her background,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound prudish. “But you’re convinced she was driving her car when Jean was struck?”
Rebecca leaned back and regarded me coolly. “Winkie tried to convince us it was an accident, as did Mrs. Vanderson, but I won’t buy it. There’s light in the alley, and it’s too narrow for someone to be driving very fast. It’s obvious that Debbie Anne did it on purpose. She murdered Jean out of jealousy.”
Trying to mask my surprise, I said, “I would have said it was more a case of wistfulness than of jealousy.”
“Everybody in the house knew how jealous she was. She stole silk blouses from Jean on at least two occasions, and she pretended to be overcome with astonishment when Jean’s tennis bracelet just happened to turn up in her desk drawer Maybe in the beginning she just wanted to be like Jean, but became so obsessed that eventually she had to be Jean. When she realized she couldn’t, she slandered her and finally killed her.”
I certainly had no need to probe delicately to ascertain her opinion of Debbie Anne. I shifted my attention to Pippa, who was not dimpling.
“It might have been an accident,” she said in response to my implicit question, “but Debbie Anne’s awfully moody and reserved. She never contributed to the conversation or told jokes, and it was like a total waste of time trying to teach her to play bridge. One night I found her hunkered in the shower as if she were in a catatonic stupor. A real spook, if you ask me.”
“A real bitch,” growled Rebecca.
“And neither of you has any idea where she might be?” I asked with faint optimism.
Pippa gave me a facetiously sad look. “And neither of us cares. Mrs. Malloy, I don’t know if Caron’s said anything to you, but you really shouldn’t wear black. It tends to emphasize all those wrinkles around your nose and chin, and it makes your complexion look ashy.”
“How nice of you to notice,” I said as my fingernails dug into my palms. “Caron mentioned that you were thinking about dropping out of school for the remainder of the summer I presume you’ve changed your mind?”
“You what?” Rebecca turned on her so abruptly that fingernail polish splattered on her knee and dribbled onto the porch like viscous pink blood. “You’re damn well not going to split for the summer, honey! We’re both going to stay right here at the Kappa Theta Eta house for the duration, especially after what happened to Jean.” She caught my bright-eyed look and forced a melancholy smile. “I lost one of my best friends, and I cannot bear to lose another so soon.”
It sounded like a line from Tennessee Williams, and the setting was appropriate: decaying mansion, dusty summer afternoon, sisterhood gone awry, tumultuous emotions poorly disguised. All we needed was a surly male in a stained undershirt and a clattering streetcar.
I hesitated, but Rebecca was wiping the polish off her knee with a tissue and Pippa was shriveling into the woodwork. To the latter, I said, “It was kind of you to lend Caron your color analysis kit.”
“Oh, it was nothing, and I feel sorry for her. I know what kind of psychological damage can be caused by feelings of economic deprivation, and it’s important to feel a part of one’s peer group at such a vulnerable age. I just hope she can make enough money this summer to buy a car and successfully integrate herself into her self-perceived community.”
I repressed the urge to point out that Caron was neither economically deprived nor noticeably vulnerable, despite her incessant complaining to the contrary. Her relationship with the infamous Rhonda Maguire was the root of all evil, and I was disinclined to listen to a spate of psychobabble from someone who dimpled- sympathetically, no less.
“Please let me know if Debbie Anne comes back,” I said and headed for my apartment. I was halfway through the downstairs door when a cacophony of rumbles, rattles, wheezes, and clanks caught my attention. The green truck pulled to the curb, and visible through the bug-splattered windshield was none other than Arnie Riggles. He lurched across the passenger’s seat and disappeared, but after a moment the window on that side began to descend in tiny jerks.
I had several questions for him, and it seemed an auspicious moment to pose them. Before I could rally sufficient enthusiasm, however, Rebecca hurried down the sidewalk and began to converse through the window. She spoke rapidly and urgently, pausing for what had to be responses from the pit of the passenger’s seat, and then reacting with increased urgency. Stunned, I could only watch as she stepped back and Arnie resurfaced behind the steering wheel and drove past my house and around the corner. I looked back in time to see Rebecca and Pippa entering the sorority house. What on earth could strikingly beautiful, perfectly packaged Rebecca have to discuss with someone as vile and oily as Arnie?
This was the second time he’d slipped away before I could inquire into the parameters of his involvement, and I decided it was high time to have a little talk with him. The mere thought was enough to make my skin itch as if I’d rolled in poison ivy and the pustules were emerging. Rather than retreat to the bathtub, I reminded myself that I was the only person with any desire to help Debbie Anne, whether or not she deserved it.