by Joan Hess
There was a single car in the faculty lot. The main doors were locked. I took out my car keys and tapped on the glass until I saw a figure glide down the hall toward me. The sound had been adequate to rouse the dead; I hoped I hadn’t. The figure proved to be Bernice Dort, clipboardless and less than delighted to let me into the building.
“Whatever are you doing here, Mrs. Malloy?” she asked once I had been admitted a few feet inside.
A bit of a poser. After a moment of thought, I said, “I came by to pick up the pages for the layout. I seem to have left them in the journalism room yesterday afternoon. So silly of me, but I’m a novice at this yearbook business.”
She gave me a suspicious frown, but finally nodded and adjusted her glasses on her nose. “I presume it won’t take long for you to fetch the pages and let yourself out this door. Make sure it locks behind you. I shall be in the third-floor computer room should you require further assistance. In the middle of tragedy, Mr. Eugenia continues to muddle his midterm data cards.”
I waited until she had spun around and marched upstairs, her heels clicking like castanets in a Spanish café. “Thank you, Mr. Eugenia,” I murmured as I hurried down the hall to the office.
The room directly behind the main office was crowded with black metal filing cabinets. As I expected, one was marked “Faculty/Staff.” I was tempted to settle down with a stack of folders, but I was afraid Miss Dort might click into view at any moment. I found the two marked “Platchett” and “Bagby,” copied the home addresses on a scrap of paper, and eased the drawer closed with a tiny squeak.
My mission complete, I decided I’d better find a handful of layout pages (if I could identify them) in case I encountered Miss Dort on exit. The stairwell was gloomy, but not nearly as gloomy as the basement corridor. Some light filtered in through the opaque windows of the classroom doors, and an “exit” sign at the far end cast a red ribbon of light on the concrete floor. A boiler clanked somewhere in the bowels of the building.
I reminded myself that outside the sun was shining, birds were chirping, good citizens were going about their business. My fingers may have trembled as I turned the knob, but I did not intend to meet any psychotic killers or even any adolescent bogeymen. I switched on the light, snatched up a pile of old newspapers and a few pieces of graph paper, switched off the light, and started for the stairs and daylight.
When I heard music.
Country music, those wails of lost love and broken dreams in the best Nashville tradition. It came from the far end of the hall, in the proximity of the teachers lounge. Screams, groans, or howls would have sent me leaping up the stairs like a damned gazelle. Nasal self-indulgence did not.
Frowning, I crept down the hail and stopped in front of the lounge door. The music was indeed coming from the lounge, and below the door there was a stripe of light. The music faded, and a disc jockey reeled off an unfamiliar tide and a tribute to some dead singer. A female vocalist began to complain about her womanizing lover.
It was not the stuff of which nightmares are born. As I opened the door, I considered the possibility that Miss Parchester had chosen the lounge as her port in the storm, and I prepared a bit of dialogue to convince her to return to the meadows.
There was a congealed, half-eaten pizza on the table. An overturned glass lay beside it. A puddle of glittery stickiness looked, and smelled, like whiskey. Another smell hit me, a very unpleasant one that was familiar. An image of Weiss vomiting during the lethal poduck flashed across my mind, unbidden and decidedly unwelcome.
“Miss Parchester?” I croaked. “Are you here?”
The female vocalist began to wail with increased pathos for her plight. I snapped off the transistor radio. “Miss Parchester? It’s Claire Malloy, and I’ve come to help you.”
Silence. The smell threatened to send me out to the corridor, but I gritted my teeth and moved toward the rest room doors. The men’s room was empty. The ladies room was not. Pitts, the reptilian, slimy, disgusting, filthy, incompetent custodian, would never again be berated for failing to wipe down a chalkboard or mop a floor.
I went upstairs to the office and dialed the number of the police station. I asked for Peter, naturally. I told him what I’d found in the teachers lounge, then suggested he trot right over before I had hysterics. I hung up in the middle of the eruption and went to find Miss Dort in the great unknown called the third floor.
We were at the main door when the police armada screeched up, blue lights, sirens, ambulance, and all. Peter shot me a dirty look as they hurried past us, but he did not daily to congratulate me on my discovery and quick-witted action. Jorgeson settled for an appraising stare; he did not seem especially surprised to see me. One would almost think Peter had mentioned me on the way over.
Miss Dort and I followed them down to the lounge. She was white but composed, although her lips were tighter than a bunny’s rear end. “This is dreadful,” she said as we entered the room. “Pitts was despicable, but he did not deserve this any more than Herbert did. Someone is on a rampage and must be stopped. The students will be panicked by-” She broke off as Peter came out of the ladies room. “Mrs. Malloy seems to think Pitts was also poisoned with cyanide, Lieutenant Rosen. Is this true?”
“Mrs. Malloy has many thoughts; however, she seldom shares them with me,” he answered. The smile aimed in my direction lacked warmth, as did his eyes. His voice might have halted a buffalo stampede.
“I called you immediately,” I pointed out.
“Did you consider calling me from the Happy Meadows Home?”
There was that.
“Of course I did,” I lied smoothly. “The doctor there said he would call you; it would have been redundant.”
“It would not have been so four days ago. It would have been enlightening.”
There was that, too.
“if you had asked me if Miss Parchester was at Happy Meadows, I would have told you.” I decided to change the subject before it detonated. “Was it cyanide?”
The look he gave me promised future discussion, but Miss Don’s presence deterred him at the moment. “Probably so, but we’ll send samples to the state lab. It looks as though it was introduced through food or drink.”
We all stared at the table. “I would guess it was in the whiskey,” I said. “I can’t imagine poisoning pizza… unless someone sprinkled powder in the mozzarella, or slipped it under the pepperoni. But Pitts must have brought the pizza with him, which would make it all the more difficult. it would be much easier to dump poison in the whiskey bottle and leave it in the lounge. Pitts probably thought it was Christmas in November.”
Peter was unimpressed by my well-constructed theory. “What an expert you’ve become in the modus operandi of murder, Ms. Malloy. How unfortunate the department can’t afford to hire you, but thus far you’ve provided your services at every opportunity and at no charge, haven’t you?”
Miss Don interrupted his petty tirade. “This must be stopped, Lieutenant Rosen. The school will be in an uproar until this killer is apprehended, and the students will be unmanageable. As temporary principal, I have a duty to the school board and the community to operate this school efficiently and with a minimum of disruptions to the educational process. You can’t believe how the press has hounded me-the calls-the interference from administrative paperwork to the ceiling-I don’t know what I shall do.”
Peter took her by the arm and escorted her to the lounge door. “I’ll post an officer at the main door tomorrow to keep out the press, and I’m sure the administration people won’t blame you for this. For now, show me the personnel file on the victim. I’ll need his home address and next of kin, along with whatever there is about his past work record and personal data.” He turned to glare at me. “Ms. Malloy, I will require a statement from you, but not at this time. Wait at your residence.”
“Certainly.” There was no reason to argue about the directive, not when I intended to ignore it. “I shall await your arrival with bated breath,
Lieutenant Rosen. Do you need to write down my address?”
He sighed, shook his head, and left with Miss Dort. I guessed I had ten minutes or so before they returned, so I perched on the mauve-and-green and tried to look inconspicuous. In that my face was still greenish, it was moderately successful. The photographers snapped numerous rolls of film, and the fingerprint men dusted surfaces. The medical examiner came out of the ladies room, his face as green as my own despite his years of experience. Jorgeson directed traffic.
“.Jorgeson,” I said sweetly, “have you received the analysis from the lab concerning the cyanide that killed Herbert Weiss?”
“I guess it won’t hurt to tell you it came from an organic source rather than a manufactured process. The Gutzeit test confirmed the presence of the compound in the peach compote, but we’ve asked for further tests to pinpoint the precise source.” He scratched his chin. “Did you know peach pits contain cyanide, as do apple seeds, cherry pits, apricot pits, and a whole bunch of fruit like that? Gawd, I used to eat apple cores all the time. It seemed tidier. Gawd!”
“I suggest you throw them away in the future,” I said without sympathy. Time was of the essence, in that Peter was apt to be displeased if he returned to find me grilling his minion. “Are we assuming the cyanide came from peach pits?”
“I don’t think the lieutenant wants you to assume anything. Mrs. Malloy. He’d probably demote me if he found out I even talked to you. You’d better run along and wait for him at your house.”
“I shall run along. Don’t worry about demotion, Jorgeson; there’s no reason why the lieutenant should ever know about our little chat, is there?” I gave him a beady look, then gathered up the newspapers and graph paper and went upstairs, wondering if Miss Parchester’s recipe included such toxic ingredients as peach pits. Surely it would have been noticed over the years.
I took a few turns in the corridor to avoid the office. Once in my car, I checked the addresses and drove to Mrs. Platchett’s house, a respectable little box in a respectable little neighborhood. She came to the door in a bathrobe, her head covered with brisdy pink rollers. “Mrs. Malloy,” she said through the screen, “how interesting of you to drop by unannounced. Is there something I can do for you?”
I considered a variety of lies, then settled for the truth about Pius’s untimely demise and Miss Parchester’s escape from Happy Meadows. She was appalled, although it was difficult to decide which bit of information caused the greater grief. It proved to be the latter.
“Emily is wandering around Farberville with some wild notion that she will investigate Mr. Weiss’s death?” Mrs. Platchett said, shaking her head. “Great harm is likely to happen to her. She is too trusting for her own good, and easily taken advantage of by anyone who claims an interest in the Constitution. You must locate her at once, Mrs. Malloy.”
“I thought she might have come to you.” I peered over her shoulder at the interior of the house. “Are you sure she’s not hiding in a back room?’’
“She is not here.” Unlike some of us who shall remain nameless, Mrs. Platchett was not amused by the idea that she would aid and abet an alleged felon. “If you wait on the veranda, I will call Mae and see if she has heard from Emily. but it is almost inconceivable that she would make contact with either of us, and Tessa is still at the hospital. Emily knows we could not hide her from the authorities. It is against the law, and possibly unconstitutional.”
I nodded. “Please don’t bother to call Miss Bagby. Her apartment is on my way home, and I can stop by to speak to her in person.” I hesitated for a minute. “Ah, do you happen to have any peaches, Mrs. Platchett? I know it sounds strange, but it may help Miss Parchester.”
Unconvinced and visibly in doubt of my sanity, she disappeared into the house and returned with a lumpy brown bag. She handed it to me and watched through the screen door as I climbed in my car and drove away.
Mae Bagby invited me in for a cup of tea, although she did so in a listless fashion, murmuring that the funeral had drained her. I told her about Pitts. She closed her eyes, then took a swallow of tea and said, “This is truly dreadful, Mrs. Malloy. First poor Mr. Weiss, and now Pitts. Whatever are we to do?”
“The police will be unobtrusive tomorrow and finished with the crime scene by the next day. I suppose the students will appear to seek knowledge and the teachers to offer it to them.”
“I don’t know if I can bear to return to the school,” she sighed. “It’s not only the events of the last few days that motivate me to consider early retirement from my profession. The school has changed so much in the last forty years, and always for the worse. The students are so unconcerned about academics and morals, and they blithely break the law by consuming alcohol and drugs. Some of them actually engage in sexual activity to the point of promiscuity. It is all I can do to interest them in biology, in the discovery of the glories of nature. Perhaps I shall inquire about retirement.”
I made a sympathetic noise, then asked if she had chanced upon the errant Miss Emily Parchester. Miss Bagby was as perturbed as Mrs. Platchett, but as firm in her avowal that she could not, under any circumstances, however justified, friendship or not, hide a fugitive. I gave her my telephone number in case the fugitive appeared, patted her shoulder, and drove home to conduct an experiment worthy of a Nobel Prize.
I was sitting on the sidewalk with the peach and a hammer when Peter pulled up to the curb. He almost smiled at what must have been a peculiar picture, then remembered his role as Nasty Cop. Slamming the car door hard enough to spring a sprocket, he stomped up the walk and glowered down at me. “I called earlier, but you were not here. I thought I told you to go home and wait for me.
I took a bite of peach. Yummy. “You did. What if I’ve been sitting out here since I arrived home?”
“I drove by several times.”
“It takes me awhile to scurry home with my tail between my legs.” I wondered where Mrs. Platchett bought her produce. Peach juice dribbled down my chin. I wiped it on my sleeve, finished the last bite of peach, and picked up the hammer. “I’ll account for my whereabouts in a moment, but first I want to see how hard it is to get out the pit.”
“And why would you want to ascertain that information?” he snapped, unmoved by my quest for knowledge.
“Peach pits contain cyanide; everyone knows that. Because the peach compote contained an organic cyanide compound, it does seem probable that the pits are implicated-if they’re not impossible to extract.”
“Not everyone knows the chemical structure of peach pits. When did you chance upon it? High school chemistry-or more recently?”
Lacking an acceptable answer, I ignored the remark and smashed the seed with a mighty blow. It bounced into a pile of dried leaves. “Damn, this is harder than it looks,” I said as I crawled across the walk and started to dig through the leaves.
Peter leaned over and picked up the peach pit. “Let me try,” he said in a grudging voice-since he hadn’t thought up the brilliant experiment.
I handed him the hammer and sat back to watch him smash the seed. His expression was enigmatic, to say the least, but his single blow was forceful enough to shatter the outside covering and expose an almond-shaped pit. He studied it for a second, then handed it to me. “It isn’t difficult. Anyone could do it.”
“Not little old ladies with tremulous hands and poor eyesight,” I said. “It takes the male touch to pulverize an innocent pit. We of the opposite persuasion lack the temperament. I really can’t see delicate Miss Parchester on her hands and knees on the sidewalk, smashing peach seeds to collect the pits.”
“Ah, Miss Parchester. Couldn’t you have told me where she was-before she disappeared? You knew damn well that I wanted to question her, Claire. The fact that you knowingly failed to tell me her whereabouts borders on a felony.”
As Mexico borders on France. “I felt responsible for her,’ I admitted in a wonderfully contrite voice. “I thought I could clear things up before you dragged her to th
e station to book her.”
“But instead you lost her. Now she’s playing Miss Woodward-Bernstein, and liable to dig herself into more trouble. If we’d had her tucked away in a cell, she couldn’t have been a suspect in the custodian’s murder. But of course she’s trotting around town, no doubt with a purse full of compote and peach pits, and might have visited the high school during the funeral. I’ve issued a warrant. Good work, Ms. Malloy.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Rosen.” I snatched up the hammer, put the pit in my pocket, and started for the house. “I’ll give you a call when I determine who really killed Weiss and Pitts. In the meantime I have to wait for an important call.”
“I have to take your statement. Now.”
I faltered in midstomp. “No more sarcasm. I confuse it with the warm glow that comes from impacted wisdom teeth.”
We went upstairs. He took my statement, then apologized and made amends. I accepted the apology, allowed amends, and generally forgave him for his boorish behavior. But I then shooed him away, worried that Caron might call while he was there. An apology was one thing, Miss Parchester another. And I was going to clear her name.
EIGHT
Caron’s vigilance was not rewarded. She complained about it straight through dinner, then retreated to her room to sulk in solitude when I failed to offer adequate sympathy. I spent the night envisioning Miss Parchester supine in a pond or ditch, her slippers a-twitch in her death throes. It did nothing to contribute to sleep, and I was not in a jolly mood the next morning as I arrived at what threatened to become my permanent classroom. I longed for the Book Depot, the jackhammer, my crowded office, the antiquated cash register with the sticky drawer, and the rows and rows of lovely books. It didn’t do a damn bit of good.