Poisoned Pins

I opted to disarm him with a new topic. “So, Ed, why was your best friend Arnie in the bushes the night Jean was killed?”

“Arnie in the bushes? What are you talking about?” He came over to my end of the table, braced himself with his knuckles, and loomed over me like a leather monument. “What was he doing?”

“That’s what I asked you,” I said, resolving not to shrink. “I was walking home, contemplating nothing more complex than di

Ed turned away and sat down on the steps that led to the back door, muttering unpleasantly under his breath. What little I could hear consisted of such phrases as ‘low-down sumbitch” and “filthy little rodent” and other less decorous descriptions of good ol’ Arnie Riggles. I could offer no rebuttal, since I was in full agreement.

When Ed finally calmed down, I said, “If he suspected that you and Winkle were… behaving indiscreetly, he could have been trying to get evidence to blackmail her Something like that would be enough to ruin her career with the Kappa Theta Eta organization, and she’s within one year of retirement and the pension fund. Is there any way he might know?”

“He made a snide remark regarding her size, and I felt the need to discourage any further ones,” Ed said reluctantly. “A couple of times I saw a green truck in the alley near the Kappa house, and asked him about it. The first time, he cackled and said he’d been at a female mud-wrestling match out in the country somewhere. The other, he just said it wasn’t his truck. I decided to forget about it rather than try to figure out what he’d be doing in the alley so late.”

“So you do admit that you and Winkie are having a relationship?”

“I seem to have admitted it. We met in line at a movie theater during spring break, had coffee, started talking about this and that, decided to catch another movie later in the week. We’re both misfits in our own ways”-he held up a hand to repudiate any arguments I might proffer-”and we have a lot in common. Then one of the girls who lives in town told Winkie she’d seen us, and made some snippy remarks concerning my personal habits and mode of transportation. Winkie freaked and decided we couldn’t be seen together in public anymore. We met a couple of times at motels, but then she became paranoid about that and suggested we confine ourselves to late-night trysts in her suite. Randolph was right when he said, ‘Stolen sweets are always sweeter: stolen kisses much completer’”

“Were you climbing out Winkie’s kitchen window, when Debbie A

Abashed, he cleared his throat before saying, “I was so preoccupied with what had just happened that I didn’t even see her until we collided. She has a good set of lungs, doesn’t she?”

“She certainly does,” I said absently, trying to keep straight the sequence of events in the sorority yard. “But you couldn’t have knocked down Eleanor Vanderson the following night. It was no later than nine o’clock, and therefore much too early for an illicit liaison. Could that have been Arnie?”

“It might have been, but I don’t think he’s blackmailing Winkie. Someone else may be, though. A month ago I spotted one of those idiotic pink paper cats in the wastebasket and fished it out. Whoever sent it had taken a felt pen and drawn semicircles over the eyes so it looked as if it were asleep. The written message was a reminder that she had only a year until her retirement. I asked her about it, but she said it was a little joke and clammed up. She’s been skitterish ever since then, drinking too much, taking by the handful what she says are mild tranquilizers, and continually fretting that the curtains aren’t drawn tightly.”

I had known her for no more than a week, but I had noticed how nervous she was when she prattled on about the sorority’s reputation. Unlike Dean Vanderson, she was not taking blackmail with composure and a vague aura of contempt. “Arnie can’t be behind it,” I said, mostly to myself. “He’s only been around recently, and he has no access to the paper cats. And he’s the last person I’d accuse of being aware of the sorority’s rules-and being devious enough to take advantage of them.”

“Or sober enough, anyway,” Ed said wryly. “But you caught him snooping in the bushes with a camera, so he must be up to something. I’d like to wrap my hands around his scrawny neck and choke it out of Mm.”

“What a great idea, Ed. Why don’t you do it, and call me afterward?”

“He never came back to his apartment after the gambling raid, so I called the jail. The desk sergeant said he’d been released on bail. I don’t care if he drowned in a creek, but I’ve got to go down to the unemployment office tomorrow and hire another assistant.” He rose and put on his helmet. “I hope you don’t feel obligated to speak to Ms. Vanderson about all this. Winkle’s under so much pressure now that she’s liable to flip out if she loses her job.”

“I see no reason to tell anyone,” I said, adding yet another tidbit to my growing list of things I ought to pass along to the authorities. “But wait! You have Arnie’s camera. Why don’t you have the film developed? Then we’ll know if Arnie’s into blackmail, or was merely astray on his way to the nearest bar.”

He agreed to do so, wheeled his motorcycle out to the alley, and rocketed away in an explosion of gravel. I walked back toward my apartment, having some difficulty imagining Winkie and Ed in passionate abandonment, the dragon and mermaid on his back rippling convulsively. National would surely frown on an alliance between a housemother and a biker, no matter whom he quoted.

What a busy girl Jean had been, what with pledge-class picnics, lectures at the law school, pimping for her sisters, and blackmailing the dean, her housemother, and quite possibly other people. Of the two remaining Kappa Theta Etas, Rebecca was the logical successor to that particularly heinous throne. She’d even needled Pippa about motel rooms, as if challenging me to decipher her i

When I arrived home, I gazed at the telephone for a long while, debating whether I should call Lieutenant Peter Rosen and tell him what I’d learned. Scowling, I finally continued into the kitchen and put on the tea kettle. It was much too late; the bleary-eyed patrons at the drive-in theater were well into the third movie by now. None of my revelations were particularly urgent. Dean Vanderson had a motive to kill Jean, as did Winkle… and Ed. Rebecca might have decided to take control of a lucrative business. Pippa was a less plausible suspect, but possible. And I couldn’t completely rule out Debbie A

“Where can she be?” I demanded of the whistling tea kettle. “She doesn’t know anyone outside the sorority. She has no other friends and she’s not with her family. The two campus police officers searched the house thoroughly, and-” I stopped conversing with the kettle as I realized they hadn’t, not by a long shot.

I turned off the burner, locked the front door, and went down the stairs to the front porch. Only one bedroom light was still on in the sorority house, and after a moment of calculation, I decided that Pippa was awake. Tapping on her window would result in yet another bout of screaming. The Kappas were rather edgy these days.

My knuckles were sore by the time Pippa opened the front door. “Mrs. Malloy?” she said as she gestured for me to come inside. Her hair was wrapped around sponge rollers hidden, for the most part, by a lacy pink cap; a phrenologist would have had a stroke at the possibilities. “Is something wrong? Did you see another prowler?”