Joan Hess - Poisoned Pins

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-”

“I wasn’t making jokes about that. I know what happened, and it’s not in any way amusing.” I began to realize the source of Caron’s eloquent and well-dramatized misery. She wasn’t mourning Jean’s death by any means. “This has to do with your Beautiful Self, doesn’t it?”

“Pippa’s thinking about dropping out for the rest of the summer and going with some friends to France or someplace dumb like that. She says she’s too upset about Jean to stay in the house.”

“And you can’t continue doing the analyses without her?”

“Not if she takes her kit with her,” Caron said with the long-suffering resignation characteristic of the age. “If you’d lent me the money in the first place, I wouldn’t be in this situation, but you wouldn’t so much as invest one lousy dollar in my career Now there’s no way I can buy a car at the end of the summer. All along, you’ve encouraged me to be resourceful and industrious, and you’re the one who said-”

“That’s enough,” I said evenly. “I did not tell you to do something that goes beyond the ethical pale by exploiting your friends. If you want to earn money, line up some baby-sitting jobs or yard-work. Run errands for people. Clean houses.”

She stared at me as if I’d suggested she rob graves in order to sell the body parts. “You’re telling me that I ought to scrub other people’s toilets or rake their leaves or wipe their babies’ noses? I can’t believe it, I really can’t! Come on, Inez, let’s get out of here before Mother decides I ought to ride bulls in a rodeo.”

Inez dutifully followed Caron out the door, and no doubt would nod just as dutifully until indignation faded and some degree of calculation replaced it. In the interim, the pedestrians on the sidewalk could be entertained by a lengthy tirade of artistically colorful phrases, explosive sighs, and accusations of parental perfidy likely to provoke a visit from the Department of Child Welfare.

Two uneventful hours later, the telephone rang, and I answered it with some hesitancy, hoping it wasn’t a social worker.

“Mrs. Malloy?” whispered a voice. “This is Debbie Anne Wray.”

“Debbie Anne,” I said, clutching the edge of the counter to prevent myself from toppling off the stool to shatter like a cheap vase, “where are you?”

“I can’t tell you. I was just calling to ask you to let my mama know I’m all right. They might have her line tapped so they can trace calls. It’s long-distance, but I swear I’ll pay you back when all this is oven Every last penny of it.”

“I’ll make the call for you, but you must tell me where you are, Debbie Anne, so that I can come pick you up. You’re in trouble, and hiding out is not going to help the situation.”

“Golly, Mrs. Malloy, you think I don’t know I’m in trouble? I should have stayed home and maybe gone to the junior college like my friends, but my mama insisted I go to school in Farberville, and look where it’s got me!”

“Where?” I said cleverly.

“In a passel of trouble, that’s where. Please won’t you call my mama for me? If the police call her first, she’ll most likely have a heart attack right there in the middle of the kitchen.” She rattled off a telephone number, waited until I regained a semblance of consciousness and found a pencil, repeated it, and added, “Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Malloy. She’ll never find me, and even if she figures it out, she’ll be too scared to come here. Once she’s been arrested, I’ll come right to your store and pay you back for the call.”

“Who is this ‘she’ you keep mentioning, Debbie Anne?”

“I’d like to tell you, but I promised I wouldn’t. If I did, I’d be in worse trouble than I already am. Why, they could arrest me, you know, and lock me up tighter’n bark on a tree-especially if she lies about it and they believe her. In the end everybody’ll know it was her idea, but I don’t aim to sit in jail until she admits it.”

I closed my eyes and sought inspiration, but nothing was forthcoming (except an embryonic headache). However, I was a wily and well-seasoned inquisitor, and she was but a freshman in more ways than one. I took a wild guess. “I don’t think Winkle would want to see you in jail. She’ll admit it.”

“Huh? I’m talking about Jean Hall, Mrs. Malloy. Somebody just drove up, so I’ve got to go. Have a nice day.”