The pregnant woman turned to stare at us, then spun around and waddled away in an indignant huff. Bernice moved closer to the curb, but glanced back with a tight smile. “I had no reason to murder Herbert Weiss, Mrs. Malloy. I do not wander around educational institutions with powdered peach pits in my pocket, nor do I slip into kitchenettes to sabotage little jars of peach compote. I have personal standards.”
“Prove it,” I snapped.
“You prove it, Mrs. Malloy. I have floats to judge, and I do think I can see the tippy-top of the junior effort. Someone told me, in the strictest confidence, naturally, that its theme is ‘Barbecue the Bantams.’ Very clever, don’t you agree?”
I glared at her back, which was all I was offered. When that paled, I returned to the flower box and sat down next to Caron. She and Inez made several unkind comments about the junior effort, and more about the Homecoming court creeping by in convertibles. The girls looked faintly blue in their low-cut gowns, but their smiles remained steadfast and their waves gracious. Cheryl Anne was in the last car, ever the modest reigning royalty of FHS despite the two kindergarten children on either side of her. The boy was wiping his nose on Cheryl Anne’s dress; the girl openly bawling.
With a hint of satisfaction, Caron explained that they were crown bearers. It rather reeked of child abuse, but I let it go. The mayor went past in an antique car, followed by a junior-high band playing an arrangement never before heard by human ears. The sophomore float proved to be “Make Baked Beans of the Bantams,” which Caron and Inez found, amidst giggles and snorts, Too Juvenile for words.
In the middle of this, I thought I saw pink bedroom slippers flash by in the crowd across the street. I poked Caron and muttered, “Look over there. Could that be Miss Parchester?”
“That is the drill team, Mother. Bambi McQueen’s in the third row, and she can’t even shake her pom-poms in the correct sequence. She’s doing red-gold-red-gold, while everyone else does red-red-gold-gold. Her knees are too low, her hemline’s crooked, and she has dumpy thighs. I don’t know why they let her on the drill team.”
“Over there by the post office door,” I insisted, despite an urge to assess Bambi’s thighs for dumpiness. “I can’t see any faces, but I keep getting glimpses of fuzzy pink slippers.”
“Some child dropped its cotton candy. Now the cheerleaders look a lot better than the drill team, don’t you think?” She turned to Inez to discuss Inez’s sister Julianne’s talents in comparison to the mere distaff mortals dressed in crotch-length skirts and sweaters that would leave indentation in their flesh.
I stood up and tried to peer over heads at the other side of the street. Miss Parchester wasn’t tall enough to tower over anyone out of elementary school; I was going to have to rely on the fuzzies on the sidewalk. There was a flash of plastic on a head, and perhaps the point of a furled umbrella. Very promising, I told myself as I began to push through the crowd and find a way to cross the street. All I had to do was grab the fugitive, drag her away for a quiet chat, and assure her that she was no longer suspected of embezzlement. Or murder-for the most part.
At this point, with my toe in the gutter, the full regalia of the Farberville High School Marching Falconnettes took over the pavement. Brass horns, tubas, clarinets, drums-the whole schlemiel right out of River City, and it started with a P and rhymed with T and basically translated into serious blockade problems.
I was hopping up and down, trying to see over a sea of plumed hats and tuba bells, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It started with a P and stood for Peter, as in Rosen.
“Are you looking for a potty?” he asked politely. “There’s one in the drugstore behind us, and I think it’s free. If not, I’ll be glad to loan you a dime.”
“That’s not funny.”
“But you are, with this imitation of a human pogo stick.” He gave me a look that forebode all sorts of problems. “What’s going on, Claire? You’re not the sort to be possessed by demons, nor are you one to make a spectacle of yourself-without cause. You’re behaving manically, and you must have a reason.”
I will admit that I should have told him about the pink fuzzies. I was the one who had concluded that confession was good for the soul, if not the ego, and that I would jeopardize the relationship if I continued to hide things from him. But I wanted to talk to Miss Parchester, and I wanted to do it alone. Okay, I wanted to do it first. She would be thoroughly spooked by a cop. I needed to calm her down, reassure her that the judge’s reputation was as safe as her own, and convince her she could come back to school-in time to chaperone the dance.
It would mean a great deal to her, this opportunity to show the students that she was, as always, above reproach. Having justified myself to myself, I gave Peter what I hoped was an enigmatic smile.
“I thought I saw an old classmate across the street, but the band cut me off at the pass. It’s not important; I’ll probably run into her some other time. Why don’t you come sit with Caron, Inez, and me?”
The flower box proved adequate for four bottoms. The band finally passed on, in the literal sense, and was replaced by the senior float, “Bye-bye, Bantams.” The girls looked rather nervous, sensing competition from the upper classmen, but they managed a few catty comments about the unevenness of the lettering on the banner.
Peter gave me a wry smile and put his hand over mine, just as if I weren’t a treacherous, conniving, faithless quisling. He looked startled at my sigh, but I could only shake my head and look away as I tried to convince myself, as Caron would say, to Do The Right Thing.
As the moral dilemma raged, Jorgeson came over. “We lost her, Lieutenant. We spotted her in that jam of people across the street, and tried to sort of surround her without her noticing, but it didn’t work so well. That dame can scamper like a frightened puppy, and the uniformed officer couldn’t bring himself to tackle someone who resembles his grandmother. Said it was too cruel.”
Peter glanced at me, then stood up and pulled Jorgeson a few steps away. ‘Does the uniformed officer with the unsullied conscience realize this woman is wanted in a murder investigation, that she may well have poisoned two people in the last eight days?” he said loudly enough to be heard over “Flaunt Thy Feathers, Falcons” or whatever. “Tell him to report to me in one hour. Now, alert all the patrol cars to watch for her on the sidewalk in at least a six-block radius.”
Jorgeson saluted with one finger and hurried away to do as ordered, the back of his neck noticeably red against his navy jacket. Peter sat down next to me, harrumphed under his breath like an asthmatic whale, and stared fiercely at the rows of boy scouts straggling in front of us.
“Will you still take me dancing?” I asked.
A series of harrumphs ensued, punctuated with sighs and dark looks from under a lowered brow. “I have to coordinate a dragnet all over the damn town tonight. Beat the bushes. Search dumpsters. Find a suspect who has once again eluded us, although it seems she might have been apprehended had we been given a discreet tip.”
“The dance doesn’t start until ten-thirty.”
“Perhaps you can persuade your old classmate to go with you.”
“The sight of policemen was likely to frighten her, and she needed to be approached by a friendly, familiar face. I was going to convince her to turn herself in at the station.”
“Class of what?”
“Nineteen aught three. We rode dinosaurs to school, wrote in cuneiform, and eagerly awaited the invention of the jitterbug.”
“Well, tonight you’ll have a wonderful chance to jitterbug till dawn. I will be occupied at headquarters those same hours, bawling out the uniformed officer and eagerly awaiting the apprehension of Miss Emily Parchester.”