‘‘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.