Joan Hess - Poisoned Pins

Inexplicably irritated by the lack of an uproar next door, I changed into more comfortable clothes, snatched up a paperback, and returned to the living room to swill scotch and read something that made a semblance of sense.

It ended with a tidy denouement in the drawing room of the country house, seconds before the constable came through the door, delayed as usual by the impenetrable snowdrifts. The villain, overwhelmed by the relentless logic of the wily amateur sleuth, had crumbled like a chunk of feta cheese and confessed all. Maybe I ought to move to St. Mary Mead and take up knitting, I thought as I put down the book and went to fetch another from my bedroom. I could knit Caron a Camaro.

I was contemplating my next foray into felonious fantasy when I heard what sounded like an airplane landing in the alley. Smiling at the absurdity of the idea, I selected a book and reached for the light switch. As the noise sputtered to a stop, I recognized it. The alley was not too narrow for a motorcycle, not even one the size of Ed Whitbred’s behemoth.

I peered out the window, but what little patch of pavement I could see was as deserted as the corner of Washington and Sutton streets. The motorcycle had not stopped behind my house, and it sounded as though it had gone past the sorority house. But it had not gone all the way down the alley and dwindled into the distance as its driver turned onto Thurber Street.

II switched off the light, returned to the sofa, and tried to re-immerse myself in a charmingly ordinary pastime. After I’d read the same page three times, I acknowledged that I was listening for the motorcycle-or, more ominously, for footsteps on my stairs. Blaming my nervousness on my reading matter, I put aside the book and made sure my doors were locked. All the fraternity and sorority houses were closed for the summer, with one notable anomaly. The Baptist student center, incongruously set between two of the rowdiest fraternity houses, was also closed.

I’d characterized Dean Vanderson as a wounded animal, but I was pacing like a caged one. Why had the motorcycle stopped in the alley-now more than an hour ago? Was someone breaking into one of the unoccupied houses?

There had to be a thoroughly innocent reason why the motorcyclist was parked somewhere in the alley. However, if he didn’t start his engine and drive away soon, I was in peril of pacing to death. I wasn’t going to relax until that second proverbial shoe hit the asphalt.

Twenty minutes later, berating myself with a goodly amount of acrimony, I went out the back door and down the stairs to the alley.

It really wasn’t very late, I assured myself as I peered in both directions, then walked past the Kappa Theta Eta dumpster I’d been home by eight the Thorntons would be watching mutant insect thrillers. It was a qualifying as a midnight prowl.

I arrived at the far end of the alley without spotting the motorcycle. Disappointed, but a little bit relieved, I retraced my steps, glancing at the dark windows of unoccupied houses. The parking lots were empty, and the backyards already were sprouting stubble.

I stopped by a high wooden fence behind one of the houses. It was likely to be the enclosed patio where Dean Vanderson met Jean Hall the night of her death, I thought as I eased open the squeaky gate. There were a few battered lawn chairs, a picnic table, a great scattering of crushed beer cans and cardboard pizza boxes-and one large, chrome-infested motorcycle. Admittedly an amateur in such matters, I had no idea whether it was Ed Whitbred’s.

I determined that the back door of the fraternity house was secured by a heavy padlock. The interior was unlit, and as far as I could tell, vacant. I sat down on the picnic table and looked more carefully at the motorcycle, but I was unable to convince myself of its familiarity or lack thereof (I have a similar problem with other people’s pets and offspring).

And where was its driver? Not inside the fraternity house, not ambling in the alley, and not likely to be in one of the bars on Thurber Street, where parking was plentiful in the summer.

I wasn’t wearing my watch, so I had no idea how long I’d been sitting and thinking when I heard footsteps beyond the fence. Crunch, crunch, crunch went the gravel; squeak, squeak, squeak went the gate. Rather than scream, scream, scream, I waited in a mantle of dignified silence until the black-clad motorcyclist was inside the patio, then said, “Hey, Ed, how’s it going.

He located me on my shadowy perch, sighed, and said, “It’s been better. What are you doing here, if I may ask?”

“‘Trying to figure out what’s going on at the Kappa Theta Eta house. I wish I could say I’d worked it out, but I’m still confused. However, I am making progress, and I’m confident it will all tumble into place at some point. That’s what I’m doing here. What are you doing here?”

His small eyes were almost invisible in the less than intrusive light from a lone utility pole on the far side of the alley. “I left my bike here, and I came back to get it,” he finally offered.

“Now, Ed,” I said, mimicking his sigh, “I’ve walked the length of the alley, and my duplex and the Kappa Theta Eta house are the only two currently occupied dwellings. The woman in the apartment below mine is a lovely soul, but she’s not the type to invite veteran Hell’s Angels into her living room. You didn’t come by to see me. That leaves only one destination, doesn’t it?”

“So it would seem.” He sat on the opposite end of the picnic table, nervously toying with the zipper of his leather jacket while, I presumed, trying to concoct a remotely plausible lie.

Taking pity on him (and tiring of the incessant prickling of mosquitoes), I said, “Eleanor Vanderson said something several days ago that now has some significance. She mentioned that Winkie all but awarded you the contract for the remodeling. Now why would Winkie risk the wrath of National by such blatant disregard of its regulations for the bidding process?”

“Winkie?” he said with a puzzled frown.

“You know, the petite housemother who can’t keep her screens in place.” I slapped at a mosquito, trying not to acknowledge any metaphorical parallels. “She keeps stressing the importance of the sorority’s reputation, but I think she’s equally concerned with her own. Housemothers are not allowed to drink, smoke, carouse-or entertain gentlemen in their private rooms. I’m just guessing, but I think housemothers would be especially pressured not to entertain aging bearded motorcyclists who are adorned with a significant number of tattoos.”

He chuckled, but I sensed his heart wasn’t in it. “I wouldn’t know about that, although they sure do have rules for everything else. ‘Any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.’ Bear in mind Mr. Thoreau had never dealt with the likes of the Kappa Theta Etas. When Ms. Vanderson officially awarded me the contract, I had to plow through dozens of pages of small print about workman’s comp, bonding, liability insurance, penalties, and assessments. You’d have thought I was adding a wing to the Pentagon rather than painting one shabby house.”

“And now you’re trying to convince me that you went to the house after dark to shake the scaffold? I wasn’t born yesterday, Ed. I was born… earlier than that, and I’ve learned to recognize taurian excrement when I hear it. You and Winkie have something going, don’t you?” I said all this with the confidence of a teenage entrepreneur In that it was sheer speculation, I felt I’d presented it well, and I waited expectantly for him to collapse on the table top and blubber out an admission of guilt.

“I went by there tonight to drop off some paint chips. She’s supposed to show ‘ em to Ms. Vanderson tomorrow and get back to me.”