He was unmoved by my dithering. “What were you doing in Arnie’s apartment, Ms. Malloy? The only thing worth stealing is his fancy new camera. It took me more than a week to teach him how to use it, but he finally got the hang of it.”
I couldn’t force my way past him, and I had no desire to retreat into the apartment behind me. It was something of a stalemate. We stared at each other for what seemed a long time, neither of us commenting on the incriminatory object in my hands. I finally decided it was a checkmate and thrust the camera at him. “I simply wanted to assure myself that no one disturbed Arnie’s apartment during his absence. When I saw this, I was concerned that someone might steal it, so I thought I’d keep it for him until his return. However, as long as you’re here, you might as well assume responsibility for it.”
As he reached for the camera, I shoved it into his belly hard enough to throw him off-balance, and darted past him. I clattered down the staircase, fumbling in my purse for my keys, and did not look back until I was inside my car, the doors locked, the windows rolled up tightly, and the key in the ignition switch.
The balcony was deserted. A light shone from behind the curtains in his apartment. While I’d escaped like a gawky heroine, gasping and moaning, imagining his thick fingers encircling my neck or jerking me off my feet, Ed Whitbred had gone inside and most likely opened a beer. If he was to be a villain in the piece, he definitely needed to work on his role.
9
“And he quoted Milton?” gurgled Luanne as she fell back against the bench, laughing so hard that beer sloshed out of her glass. “Why? Did you ask him why?”
I knew what she meant, but I chose to misinterpret it. “I’m sure he felt that the occasion demanded it.”
It was noon of the following day, and we’d met at the beer garden to picnic at our preferred table. Nothing had happened after I’d returned from my disastrous outing to the Airport Arms. Caron and Inez were huddled in the bedroom, too concerned with finances to notice my absence, and Peter Rosen must have been too busy with his distaff counterpart from the campus security force to worry about me.
Jorgeson had called earlier in the morning to tell me that my name had been deleted from all reports of the raid and I need not appear at the arraignment. I spurned his offer to send me my mug shot as a souvenir. There’d been no sign of activity at the Kappa Theta Eta house when I’d walked to the Book Depot, and neither Debbie Anne nor my anonymous caller had deigned to interrupt the ensuing hours of idleness.
Luanne wiped tears from her cheeks and attempted a more decorous voice, although little noises that resembled muffled sneezes erupted periodically. “Here’s this Hell’s Angel with the exterior of-I don’t know-the interior of a comic book, but undeniably with the soul of a poet. Having escaped from the local penal colony, the two of you meet on a moonlit balcony. Do you flutter your eyelashes and softly say, ‘Good night! Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good night till it be morrow’? No, you knock him into the railing and run downstairs. You ought to give up those dreary mystery novels, Claire. Read some romances! Surely Azalea Twilight did one about the raw and primitive pleasure of the motorcycle between one’s thighs, the wind caressing one’s breasts, the taciturn yet incredibly virile hero… No, the guys usually have mysterious scars, not elaborate needlework.”
I frowned at her. “Ed’s no damn easier to characterize than anyone else in this mess. I can’t decide if he’s a potential party guest or a killer, but why should I have any more luck with him than with any of the others? None of the character references have come from what we might consider unbiased sources. The Kappas adored Jean and loathe Debbie Anne. Mrs. Wray espouses the mundane maternal line. Vouching for Ed Whitbred is none other than Arnie, who’d profess adoration for a barnyard animal if there were anything in it for him. Why can’t I have a nice group of disinterested parties?”
Luanne finished her sandwich and wadded up the paper wrapper. “Like some of the professors at the college?”
“I was about to say that very thing.”
When I got back to the bookstore, I called the apartment and let the telephone ring until Caron acknowledged defeat and answered it with a drowsy snarl.
“I need you to watch the store this afternoon, dear I said. “Be here in thirty minutes or kiss your evening plans goodbye.”
“And pass up a Totally Tedious slumber party at Rhonda’s? You mean I can’t do the limbo and run around all night in pink sponge curlers? Dine on generic chips and onion dip made out of the same chemicals as napalm? Make prank calls to the football team? Please don’t throw me in that brier patch, Br’er Mother.”
I was impressed with the quickness with which she went from somnolence to sarcasm. “Just be here,” I said and hung up before she reached her optimum pitch. I needed Debbie Anne’s class schedule. In the past I might have called Peter to see if I could wheedle it out of him with my usual dexterity. Now I would sooner have arranged for an amputation. The registrar’s office would refuse in the middle of my first sentence, citing student privacy. Lieutenant Pipkin of the campus security force would be no more forthcoming-and would report my request to her newest boyfriend.
I called Eleanor Vanderson, who did not obligingly answer the phone on the first ring or any of the next fifteen. She was apt to be lunching on chicken salad with the faculty wives, or playing bridge. I suspected she would be very good at the latter-and would never touch the former unless it contained homemade mayonnaise and slivered almonds. No one answered the phone at the Kappa house.
“I Cannot Believe you’re doing this to me, Mother” Caron said as she and Inez dragged into the store an hour later “Although this country was founded on the economic necessity of indentured servants and slaves, I seem to think Mr. Lincoln put a stop to it more than a hundred years ago. I was planning to go through the yearbook and make a list of potential My Beautiful Self clients. Pippa said she did that when she was getting started. Do you know how much money she’s made in the last three years?”
“She bought a convertible at the end of her first year,” Inez contributed. “Over spring break she went to Cozumel and made enough money while she was there to pay for the entire trip. She did sessions right on the beach.”
Caron disappeared behind the self-help rack, but the barrier in no way diminished her voice. “Pippa’s mother helped her a whole bunch in the beginning by having parties and persuading her friends to have sessions. Her mother has lots of friends because she’s a past member of the Junior League, an active Kappa alumna, something in the hospital auxiliary, and something else at the country club. Decorations chairperson, I think.”
“While you’re burdened with a mother who has to earn a living,” I said as pleasantly as I could. “Perhaps you can drum up some business at Rhonda’s tonight.”
Caron peered over the top of the romances. “After we limbo?”
Inez blinked with the solemnity of a small brown barn owl. “Rhonda’s got this thing about the limbo. It’s almost like an obsession, and if you say you don’t want to or even lock yourself in the bathroom, she’ll literally drag you into the living room and push you under the broomstick.”
“How low can you go?” oozed a disembodied voice from the direction of the cookbooks. “No one can go as low as Rhonda, because she carries all that excess weight on her hips and her center of gravity is lower than everyone else’s.”
“Enough!” I said. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. Don’t take candy from strangers and don’t take one red cent out of the cash register unless you’re making change. You can still go through the yearbook to find victims; odds are good that no one will disturb you in my absence. In truth, the odds are excellent.”