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.