“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.”