Joan Hess - Dear Miss Demeanor

“Miss Parchester is still at large, and Miss Zuckerman is tucked safely in her hospital bed. As for the funeral, I’ll make a point of attending-it will be the one time I know exactly where you are and what you’re doing.”

I didn’t much like that, but I decided to let it go. “Mrs. Platchett takes this cup thing pretty seriously. She was more upset at me for borrowing her cup than she was about the deviled eggs.”

“Why was she upset about the deviled eggs?” he asked, not sounding especially concerned about my welfare.

“Well, she wasn’t upset about the deviled eggs, because Pitts hadn’t poked them. Did you know that broccoli doesn’t take fingerprints?”

“Actually, it does, but we can discuss the technical aspects later. Why did she think Pitts might poke the deviled eggs?”

“He poked everything.” I rubbed my forehead, which was beginning to ache. “I think I’d better have some more coffee.”

“I think you may recover,” he said with a smile. “Will you please tell me why I stumbled on to a stoned bookseller in the basement of the high school?”

I told him why. We agreed that I had erred in my decision to test the contents of the cigarette, and that I should have called him. I drank more coffee, my head propped on his shoulder, and told him about the problem of Jerry’s transcript, Paula’s reaction, and Thud Immerman’s reinstatement. None of it amazed him, although he did seem interested.

“Paula’s not as sweet as she acts,” I said, snuggling into his chest. “She might have murdered Weiss to protect her future, or she might have persuaded Jerry to do the dirty deed in order to protect her virtue.”

“He wasn’t in the lounge, and neither was she.”

“The murderer did have to enter the lounge between ten and ten-fifteen, when Evelyn came in to use the ladies room.” I glanced at the closed door of said establishment. “If I’d known about the hole, I might have murdered Pitts myself.”

“The hole was discovered the day after Weiss’s funeral, so it could have been a motive in the second murder. We just can’t find a decent motive for Weiss’s murder, except vengeance.”

“Meaning Miss Parchester?”

“I’m sorry, Claire. I don’t enjoy the idea of chasing some elderly lady around Farberville to question her about her recipe for peach compote, but she did have a reason to be angry at Weiss. I do need to ask her a few questions, if only to permit her to prove her innocence.”

“I know,” I said, sighing. The fuzzy pink slippers must have been wearing thin, considering the miles they’d done in the last six days. The hospital, the parade, the dance, probably the football game, and the school. The woman had been everywhere, but was nowhere to be found-while the judge rotated in his grave. “What are you going to do about the marijuana in Miss Zuckerman’s desk?”

“Ask her, although I would imagine she confiscated it from one of her students.”

“And failed to turn it in to the authorities? If she’s like her sister Furies, she’s probably a stickler for regulations. Maybe she found it the day of the potluck and did not have an opportunity to deal with it.”

He nodded. Before he could say anything. Caron limped into the lounge. “Mr. Chippendale is frantic, Mother. He sent me to search for you, because the band members took off their shirts and he thinks they may take off more. He says they are virtually Out of Control, although I don’t know what he expects you to do.”

“Call in the cavalry,” I said, smiling at Peter. “Surely you can strike a chord of fear in their atonal souls.”

We went to the gym. We didn’t, however, jitterbug until dawn. Actually, it was more like three in the morning.

I went the Book Depot the next morning and opened up for business, the ledgers having hinted at the desirability of earning a few dollars, if not an actual fistful or more. I sold books, straightened shelves, filed invoices, and griped long-distance about delayed orders. It was all fairly normal until Caron and Inez limped through the door, gasping and panting. As always, normalcy fled in the face of post-pubescent theatrics. I could not.

“Did you hear about Cheryl Anne and Thud?” Caron demanded.

“No, I heard about a fire at a university press and something about an order shipped to Alaska by mistake, but nary a word about the queen and the jock.”

“They Broke Up.” Caron folded her arms and stared at me, willing me to blanche, grab the edge of the counter, and beg for further details. “They’ve been going steady for Two Whole Years,” she added when preliminary fireworks failed to explode.

“A blessing for the future of the human race,” I said. “I cringe at the thought of the offspring those two might have conceived.”

Inez gulped. “It was terrible, Mrs. Malloy. They had a big scene in the parking lot after the dance, and Cheryl Anne told Thud to drop dead, preferably in the middle of the highway.”

“In front of a truck,” Caron added.

“He was furious.” Inez.

“He called her dreadful names.” Caron.

“Slut.” Inez, with a shiver.

“Cheap little whore.” Caron, without.

“She told him he was a miserable football player, that he ought to play against twelve-year-old girls.” Inez.

“He said he’d played with little girls too long.” Caron.

“He said he was ready for a real woman.” Inez.

The Abbott and Costello routine was giving me a pain in the neck, physically as well as metaphorically. I held up my hand and said, “Wait a minute, please. I really am not interested in an instant replay of their witticisms, no matter how colorful they may have been. May I assume Cheryl Anne was upset because Thud failed to win the game single-handedly and ensure a Homecoming celebration fraught with significance and glistening memories?”

Caron and Inez nodded, enthralled by my perspicacity.

“And,” I continued, “she was especially upset because she had worked so hard to see that he was eligible to play?” More nods. “By the way, how did Thud convince Miss Dort to reinstate him?”

“Nobody knows,” Caron said, widening her eyes to convey the depth of her bewilderment. I wasn’t sure if it came from the inexplicable behavior of her elders or the failure of the grapevine to ascertain the gory details.

“It’s sheer mystery,” Inez said. She attempted the same ploy, but she looked more like an inflated puffer fish. She needed practice. And perhaps contact lenses.

I shooed them out the door and sat down behind the counter. There were too many unanswered questions drifting around the corridors of Farberville High School, too many petty schemes and undercurrents. Too many bits of conversation that might-or might not-have relevance. Way too much gossip.

I called Evelyn, my primary source of gossip. “Who has a key to the building?” I asked once we’d completed the necessary pleasantries. “Very few,” she told me. “Mr. Weiss decided several years ago that loose keys sank ships, or something to that effect. All of the teachers were required to turn in their keys.”

“Sherwood has one.”

“Sherwood lives next door to a locksmith. His copy is illicit, but it’s saved both of us a lot of hassle when we’ve forgotten a stack of tests or one of the dreaded must-have-first-thing-in-the-morning forms.”

“Have you heard of anyone else with a copy?”

“No,” she said after some thought. “Weiss had one, naturally, as did Bernice. Perhaps school board members, although I don’t know why. Head of maintenance, but no one on the level of Pitts.”

“Miss Parchester or the Furies?” I said without much hope.

“Of course not. None of the teachers except an anomaly like Sherwood would want to have an illicit copy of the key. If something happened in the building after school hours, I certainly would like to be able to swear, under oath or polygraph, that I didn’t have access.”