I was halfway up the stairs when I realized I’d forgotten to tell Peter about my encounter with Arnie, maybe because it had had such a dreamlike quality-or nightmarish, anyway. Why had he been hiding beside the Kappa house? He’d admitted he was in what he called a sticky situation, but I couldn’t imagine what it was. I doubted he’d stolen Debbie Anne’s car and run over Jean as she approached the house. Arnie was an ambulatory catastrophe, but he was motivated by the preservation of his pickled condition rather than by innate wickedness.
I went to my bedroom window and looked at the sorority house. All of the lights were ablaze on the ground floor, including those in Winkie’s suite. The top of the screen was visible within a bush. I’d also forgotten to tell her what I’d done or ask Peter to have one of his men replace it. My lapse would allow Katie to sneak back in after a night of terrorizing the town, however, and Winkle would surely notice its absence in the morning.
A campus police car stopped in front of the house. It was too dark to tell if the two officers were the ones I’d encountered previously, but it seemed likely that Peter had sent for them to get a full report about the prowlers. As they disappeared beneath the roof of the porch, yet another car pulled up to the curb. Hoping it might be Debbie Anne returning with a date and an alibi, I waited for someone to materialize.
The driver’s door opened and a man stepped out of the car I caught a glimpse of a round white face and a bald head that glittered in the bath of the streetlight. Massaging his chin and mouth with one hand, he stared at the house for a full minute, then climbed back into his car and drove away.
I went to my kitchen, where I found a note from Caron that stated she was spending the night at Inez’s house. I made a pot of tea, heated the fettuccini, and retired to the living room to eat. I wasn’t confident that Peter would appear before morning, but I was eager to find out if they’d located Debbie Anne. It could have been an accident, I thought as I envisioned her behind the wheel of the white car. The alley was dark and narrow, but the college kids drove down it as if it were an interstate, and on more than one occasion my hatchback had been imperiled.
However, I had no notions where she might go, nor was I inclined to walk the streets until dawn, plaintively calling her name in hopes of coaxing her out of a shadowy hideout. Assuring myself that Farberville’s Finest would do just that, I went to bed.
Peter did not appear at the Book Depot until nearly noon. He hadn’t shaved, I noted with a wince as he nuzzled my neck, although he had changed into a fresh shirt and another of his expensive Italian suits. “Let’s go away next weekend,” he said, displaying a goodly amount of seductive charm. “A loaf of bread, a jug of wine…
“Did you find Debbie Anne?”
He released me and folded his arms. “No, we did not find Debbie Anne, my dear snoop. She didn’t return to the sorority house last night, and hasn’t shown up as of now. She didn’t go to her classes, the library, or her parents’ home.”
“How could she? You’ve impounded her car.”
“It’s one of those official things we do, along with the yellow tape and the fingerprints. The captain saw it on some television show and decided we ought to try it.”
“Whose fingerprints were on the steering wheel?” I asked, refusing to react to his sarcasm. I had more important things on my meddlesome mind. “What about prints on the door handle? Did you find her purse?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, and no.” He gazed at me with an expression not unlike that of a condemned man on the gallows. “Ml you did was have dinner at the sorority house, Claire. It’s evident that you didn’t like them then, and I can think of no reason why you might have changed your mind. They’ve interfered with your sleep, burdened you with their personal problems-and their cat bit you, for pity’s sake!”
“So what’s your point?”
“Furthermore, as far as we know, we’re dealing with involuntary manslaughter rather than a baffling mystery resplendent with red herrings and subtle, provocative clues. Debbie Anne Wray accidentally ran over the Hall girl, and now is sobbing at a friend’s apartment until she gets up the nerve to turn herself in. This is not something in a mystery novel.”
I contemplated mentioning it was right up my alley, in more ways than one, but instead nodded meekly and said, “I suppose not. Did you reach Jean’s aunt?”
He shot me a suspicious look. “She came home around midnight, and the local police officers informed her of the accident. It turns out that Jean’s parents live in California, but when the girl decided to come to school here, she filed some papers to have her aunt appointed her legal guardian.”
“in save having to pay out-of-state tuition?”
“That’s what the aunt said.”
“I’m surprised the registrar fell for that ploy, but I must admit I’m not surprised Jean came up with it in the first place. She’d probably been planning to be a lawyer since birth, her little red face aglow with glee at the thought of suing the doctor for malpractice. Is her body going to be sent back to California?”
“In a day or two.” Peter managed a smile or two, and had either quit suspecting my motives or was concealing it well. After a brief discussion about dinner the next evening, he left and I sat on the stool and tried to convince myself that he was right, that this wasn’t anything more than an unfortunate accident. Debbie Anne would turn herself in, sniveling steadily, and ultimately the judicial system would slap her wrist and admonish her to be more careful in the future.
Then again, her reception at the sorority house might be chilly, to put it mildly, and National would demand the return of her pledge pin and faded pink sweatshirt. No more secret whistles and construction-paper cutouts in her future. No hope of singing the Kappa Theta Eta prayer so sweetly that Eleanor Vanderson would weep.
I was working on a secret whistle that I would share only with regular Book Depot customers when Caron and Inez came through the door. I tried it on them.
“This is not the time for parakeet imitations,” Caron said as she slumped across the counter, covering her head with one arm and speaking in a hollow, muffled voice. “My life is in shambles. I might as well die right now and get it over with. Inez, call the funeral home and ask if they’re running any specials this week. Thll them I’ll need an ivory casket.”
“I don’t think I have a black dress,” I said, frowning, “but I did buy a nice navy one last week.”
She lifted her head far enough to glare malevolently at me. “Navy is not one of your colors, Mother. It makes you look like you’ve got one of those polysyllabic diseases.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Malloy,” contributed Inez. “You really ought to wear earth tones like salmon and peach. For a funeral, you could wear gray, maybe.”
“Thank you.” I awaited the next development with jaded maternal patience.
I was rewarded with another malevolent look and a string of sighs. Caron at last found the energy to stand up. “Don’t you care that my Life Is in Shambles?”
“Not as long as I know what to wear to your funeral. Can I rely on Inez’s advice when I take clothes to the mortuary?”
“You’re not funny, Mother.”
I’d assumed otherwise, but merely said, “What’s the cause of the ruination of your life at the tender age of fifteen? Out of deodorant? Expired subscription to Seventeen magazine? New pimples?”
Inez blinked sternly at me. “You shouldn’t make jokes about it, Mrs. Malloy. Didn’t you see the ambulances and police cars in the alley behind the Kappa house last night? There was a horrible accident and one of the girls was-”