After the final room had been searched, we repeated the process on the second floor, found nothing more intriguing than a solitary mouse, and returned to the first floor.
“We’d better check the basement,” I said.
Winkie stiffened. “This is the door that leads to the basement,” she said as she gestured at a door that had been painted pink and was almost invisible. “There is only one key, and it is in my possession at all times. Furthermore, I have a clear view of the door from the rocking chair in my living room. I promise you that no one can go down there without my knowledge.”
Officer Terrance glanced at me, then said, “If there was a prowler, he’s gone now. Everything’s okay, but I would like to say it’s not wise to allow the girls to leave things in their rooms all summer You’re asking for trouble.”
“Normally, we don’t allow it, but since the house is occupied this summer, I didn’t insist they remove all their belongings. I didn’t realize how many of the girls have computers these days. When I was in school, we shared a portable typewriter”
“We’ve had a lot of thefts on the campus this month,” he said. “Not just in the dorms and houses, but in the departments, classrooms, maintenance sheds, you name it.”
“Better get your exterior locks re-keyed,” added Michaels.
“I did exactly that three days ago, after Debbie Anne and our house corps president were attacked outside the house. There’s no way this man could have a key unless..
“Unless he has Debbie Anne’s,” I finished for her
“Oh, my goodness,” she gasped. “Then we’re not safe here! This man could murder us in our beds! My God, Claire, I’m responsible for the welfare of the girls.”
The look they exchanged this time was weary, leaving me to be skeptical as Terrance said, “We’ll patrol the house every hour If there was a man on the third floor, he knows he was seen and he’s long gone. Besides, you have Ms. Malloy here to keep a surveillance on your house, night and day.”
They left, but Winkie seemed so distraught that I offered to stay with her until Pippa and Rebecca returned. I was leery of accepting her invitation for tea in her suite, but she assured me that Katie was curled up on her little bed. I called my apartment to let Caron know what I was doing, but the line was busy and I doubted she’d be overcome with worry about someone who insisted on wearing an inappropriate palette.
“Debbie Anne called me early this afternoon,” I said when we were settled with tea in her suite. “She wanted me to call her mother”
“She called you? Are you and her mother acquainted in some way?”
“Debbie Anne’s afraid her mother’s telephone line has been tapped by the authorities and they could trace her call.”
‘Where is she?”
“She wouldn’t tell me. The odd thing is that she spoke as if she were unaware of Jean’s death.” I could have added more, but I wanted to assess Winkie’s reaction to each tidbit.
“But how could she not be? It was her car, and she must have been driving. Rebecca borrows Pippa’s car on occasion, and I’ve let Jean use mine when hers was in the shop, but I can hardly imagine anyone wanting to borrow Debbie Anne’s old clunker. Last fall some of the girls signed a petition to forbid her from parking it in front of the house. They felt that it made the house look disreputable, as if we were on the verge of putting rusty pickup trucks on concrete blocks, scattering broken appliances in the yard, and raising farm animals. Even though I ordered them to forget such foolish snobbery, Debbie Anne cried for days.”
“Unless she’s a skillful actress, she doesn’t know what happened,” I said. “When I first saw the flashlight on the third floor, I wondered if she was hiding up there. But it was a man, the same one who parked briefly in front of the house last night while the police were here. He’s short and plump, with a round white face and a basically bald head. Does he sound like anyone you know?”
“And he was on the third floor tonight?” Without waiting for an answer Winkie went into her kitchen, opened and closed the refrigerator, and returned with the decanter and two wineglasses. “This has been too much- all the excitement, the police, the ambulance, prowlers in every nook and cranny. Will you join me?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said as I watched her slosh wine into the glasses. She’d withdrawn her emotions and was the epitome of indecipherable blandness, but it was clear she had a good idea of the identity of the man I’d described. And wasn’t going to tell me. “Even if this mysterious man”-I gave the phrase a bit of emphasis-”had access to Debbie Anne’s house key, he couldn’t have used it to open bedroom doors, could he? They’re all keyed differently.”
She handed me a glass and sat down in the rocking chair “Yes, they are. Each girl has two keys-one for the exterior locks and one for her bedroom. It doesn’t make any sense, and I’m beginning to wonder if you might have seen a reflection in the window, perhaps from a car driving through the campus. As for this face, it was nothing more than the man in the moon shining back at you. You did say you’d been drinking beer, dear.”
I took a deep swallow of wine, and when I could trust myself said, “So I did, and in any case, it wasn’t Debbie Anne. Do you have any idea where she could be hiding? Does she have any friends from her hometown who’re going to summer school? Is there a professor she might have gone to?”
“The police asked me those questions last night, and all I could say was that we have sixty-seven girls in the house, and I cannot keep track of their friends and confidantes. On the rare weekends when there were no pledge activities, Debbie Anne went home. The pledges are strongly encouraged to involve themselves in Kappa projects in order to strengthen the bonds of sisterhood in anticipation of initiation. Jean was the pledge trainer last year, and she did a marvelous job. She organized picnics, treasure hunts, outings to rest homes and child-care centers, parties with fraternity pledge classes, all sorts of things. I can’t remember when a pledge class has been so busy.”
It sounded more like isolation to me, an attempt to erase or at least minimalize their individual personalities and mold them into genuine Kappa material. All that enforced togetherness would have driven me into the nearest built-in closet. I’d endured two years in a dormitory, but I’d done so at a civilized distance, eschewing floor meetings and popcorn parties, and moved into an apartment as soon as it was permitted by the in Iota parent’s policy of the college.
The squeaks of the rocker were barely perceptible as Winkie gazed at the wall above my head. Her eyes darted not from flock to flock, but from thought to thought, as if she were filling in a crossword puzzle in her mind.
As tempting as it was, I reminded myself I could not shake her until she relented and told me what she suspected. “Debbie Anne said something else that troubles me,” I said conversationally. “Not only was she unaware of Jean’s death, she seemed frightened by the idea that Jean might accuse her of something that would end in arrest.”
“Jean? I find that impossible to believe. Jean was one of the few girls who never came home drunk, never failed to sign out for the weekend, never was late for our Monday-night dinners, never skipped a chapter meeting or a house meeting. She was so very responsible, unlike Debbie Anne, who more often than not claimed she’d lost track of the time or had a flat tire or some silly excuse.” She finished her wine, refilled her glass, and sat back to regard me with the smile of a used-car salesman who’d just closed a deal. “Jean Hall was a girl of impeccable character and breeding. No one ever so much as breathed a word against her.”
But someone did run her down in the alley, I considered mentioning, but kept it to myself. Winkie was not going to offer me anything that might explain Debbie Anne’s slightly incoherent avowal that Jean had coerced her into something illegal. Girls of impeccable character and breeding didn’t do that sort of thing; they simply became Kappa Theta Etas.