“She what?” I leaped to my feet so suddenly that I was in danger of an unscheduled swan dive. “She was pimping for you?”
“She merely arranged introductions,” he repeated patiently.
I battled to regain my balance in all senses of the phrase. “She arranged introductions to girls with whom you subsequently had sex? Her nubile young friends? At the Hideaway Haven with its porn movies and waterbeds? Why don’t you tell me your definition of a pimp, Dean Vanderson?”
My words had been spewing out rather raggedly, but he seemed to get the gist of them. “Jean was providing a service, and until I conceded to the first blackmail demand, I’d given her nothing but avuncular advice and a part-time job. Actually, Eleanor suggested that. As for the girls, I often insisted on showing my appreciation for their youthful enthusiasm and lack of inhibitions. One particular girl was so delightfully inexperienced and reticent in her attempts to be introduced into the sweet mysteries of love that I rewarded her most handsomely. I’m an educator and aware of the importance of positive reinforcement in learning situations.”
I clutched my hands behind my back to restrain myself. “Were all these girls Kappa Theta Etas?”
“They did not wear their sorority pins, Mrs. Malloy.” He brushed back the pale peach fuzz on his head and nodded at me. “I really must attend to my guests. I have met the conditions you stipulated, and I hope you intend to adhere to our arrangement.”
“Take one more step and I’ll go sit in Judge Frankley’s lap and tell him the entire story,” I said, still so appalled that I was trembling. “Do you admit you called my house and made threats to my daughter?”
“She has a very disconcerting manner on the telephone. If I may ask, what precisely constitutes a color analysis? Is there truly a reason why I should pay ten dollars when I wear dark suits and white shifts every day? The only item that ever varies is my tie.”
It was sheer lunacy, I thought, as well it should be. I was standing beside a pool conversing with the man in the moon, who was worried about his palette. Romping with coeds thirty years younger was not a problem, and blackmail was pesky-but the color of his tie? Was dark red too adventurous? Dare he try green and navy stripes?
“I’ll check and get back to you,” I said numbly, then went past him and through a gate to the driveway. I made it to my car, rolled up the windows and locked the doors, and rested my forehead on the steering wheel. I waited to see if I was going to laugh or cry, but at last decided I was much too confused to do anything at all.
I’d been told Jean Hall kept the pledge class busy with picnics, parties, and community activities. No one had mentioned less innocuous but more profitable endeavors. Was Dean Vanderson the only self-righteous satyr on the campus? And, most important, did National know about this? Was it right there in the pledge handbook, along with the rules, regulations, and secret whistle? Was it a sanctioned fund-raising activity for the spring semester?
A fist knocked on the window. Before I could scream, which I fully intended to do, a concerned male voice said, “Are you all right, ma’am?’
I exhaled and determined the voice belonged to a policeman barely out of his teens. “I’m fine, thank you. I was just thinking for a moment before I drove home.”
He drew circles with his finger until I reluctantly rolled down the window. “Would you step out of the vehicle, ma’am?”
“Under no circumstance will I step out of the vehicle, sir. That would make it impossible to drive home, and as soon as you move back, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
“I’m asking you again to step out of the vehicle,” he said with a good deal less cordiality in his voice. “If you refuse to comply, I’ll be forced to take action against you.”
“You’re going to drag me out of my car and sling me on the pavement? Is this because you don’t think I parked close enough to the curb, or because ordinary, law-abiding citizens are not allowed to sit and think, but must instead cater to whatever idiotic whim overtakes an officer of the law?” It was good, but based on his deepening scowl, not good enough. I continued, “And why are you here, anyway? This is a residential neighborhood, not a housing project with crack dealers and fences and gang members on every corner. Look right there, Officer. Is there a vicious killer on that deserted corner? I think not.”
“I’m on a security assignment because of a prominent public figure visiting in this area. I’m going to say this one last time. Step out of the vehicle, ma’am, and keep. your hands in sight at all times.”
I did as requested, but I expressed my vexation in colorful detail throughout the time it took him to find that I could indeed walk a straight line, touch my nose with my eyes closed, and watch his fingertip flitter in and out of view. My driver’s license and registration were examined carefully, and verified via his radio. All the while, I wanted to tell him there was a philandering potential killer inside the yellow house not a hundred yards away, dining on quail and conversing with a prominent public figure on genteel subjects such as torts (but not, I should think, tarts).
“This never happened to Miss Marple,” I snarled as I took back my license and registration. “She didn’t have to deal with overly zealous policemen who ought to be home with a baby-sitter rather than out harassing the citizenry.”
“Do us both a favor and move to St. Mary Mead,” he said as he went to his car.
Grumbling like the boiler at the Book Depot, I drove home and parked in the garage. There were no traces of successful decomposition on the kitchen floor, nor in the child’s bedroom. A note on the coffee table informed me that her resolution to never set foot outside had been cruelly undermined by an invitation to accompany Inez and her parents to a triple-header at the drive-in movie theater. I made a drink and flopped across the sofa, the evening’s events swirling in my head like brown water gurgling down the drain.
The Kappa Theta Etas with their expansive gums, even teeth, bright eyes, pink cashmere sweaters, expensive athletic shoes, and twenty-four-karat gold pins were not quite as nice as their reputation purported. Some of them were earning their dues and tuition at the Hideaway Haven, while at least one of them was immortalizing the climactic moments with a camera. Dean Vanderson had mentioned the blackmail cutouts; did one “Katie the Kappa Kitten Says Thanks!” include a handwritten “For being such a generous old goat”?
Had Jean Hall been too greedy? Vanderson claimed to have met Jean shortly before her death and given her whatever sum she demanded. He’d left her in a patio, supposedly alive and well and significantly richer. She’d tucked her ill-gotten gains in her purse and walked down the alley toward the Kappa Theta Eta house. Someone driving Debbie Anne’s car had run over her, either accidentally or with purposeful malice. A second blackmail victim? As far as I knew, Jean’s purse was still missing, and more strangely, her sorority pin. This implied an extraordinarily composed hit-and-run driver had gotten out of the car, grabbed the purse, and then dallied long enough to take the pin off the chest of the corpse. It seemed more likely that either Dean Vanderson was wrong or I’d failed to notice it. There had been a lot of blood, I reminded myself with a shudder. It certainly could have been as blinding as the cluster of jewels and chains.
Also missing was Debbie Anne Wray. Had she answered the telephone at the Vandersons’ house-or had I suffered a mild concussion? Dean Vanderson had sounded truthful in his denial that she’d ever been there. Eleanor was at her garden club at the time. Could Debbie Anne have broken into the house? Those in the midst of committing burglaries rarely pause to serve as social secretaries, but no one, including myself, had accused Debbie Anne of being Mensa material.