A Conventional Corpse: A Claire Malloy Mystery

by Joan Hess

  “Did she go out there?”

  I gave him an exasperated look. “How should I know? I was in the auditorium until the break. I didn’t see her. For all I know, she went to read resumes at the sperm bank.” Ignoring Jorgeson’s sigh, I went on. “Walter said he would make his own way to the student union, although he ended up here. Laureen and Allegra came back to the Azalea Inn, presumably to their private rooms, and Dilys shopped on Thurber Street. Sherry Lynne went looking for her cat.”

  “So none of them has an alibi?”

  “None of them has a motive.”

  “You just said you thought there was some hostility,” he reminded me. “Maybe you underestimated it.”

  I considered this for a moment. “With the exception of Walter, they were all sitting in this room last night, drinking wine, and later having soup, sandwiches, and coffee. There were no reports of hair being yanked or fingernails ripping flesh. Had there been an incident, I’m quite sure I would have heard about it from Lily one second after I set foot in the inn today.”

  Jorgeson glanced at the doorway. “What about her?”

  “Her name is Lily Twiller and she owns the inn. She was not adequately forewarned about what to expect, and she isn’t taking it very well. As far as I know, her only interaction with Roxanne was to allow her to book a room for two nights. If Roxanne was making blackmail demands because she’d discovered the pastel blue towels were manufactured in sweatshops in North Korea, it’s your problem, not mine.”

  “I suppose it is,” he said. “So what was Arnie Riggles doing in the well?”

  “An excellent question,” said Peter as he came into the room. “I thought we were having herb tea and rice cakes. There’s nothing more amusing than conducting an investigation over a tea tray.”

  Jorgeson stiffened. “The medical examiner here, Lieutenant?”

  “There’s a door at the back of the garden. If the body wasn’t out there on a tarp, we could have our party on one of the stone benches. Ms. Malloy may be unaffected by the sight of blood, but it takes away my appetite, even for rice cakes.”

  “Or borscht?” I asked sweetly.

  “Jorgeson, get the registration cards of all the guests staying here and ask the woman in the kitchen to produce proper credentials. As soon as I’ve finished interrogating Ms. Malloy, I’ll want to take a look at the victim’s room.”

  “I find the word ‘interrogating’ a bit overwrought,” I said as Jorgeson fled. “I spent less than an hour with Roxanne last night, and I have no idea where she was earlier today. As for why she ended up in the cistern . . .” I shrugged most eloquently.

  “But you suspected she was, along with Arnie Riggles, and for some obscure reason, the cat that wasn’t.”

  “Do you prefer to continue acting like a jerk, or would you prefer that I tell you what I know?”

  Peter crossed his arms. “And of course you just happen to know things.”

  I crossed mine. “Up to you, Sherlock. I’m not sure how long we can survive on rice cakes, but I’m willing to find out.”

  After several minutes of silence, in which the only sounds were those of low voices in the garden and the rhythmic cadence of a cleaver pounding a chopping block, I told Peter what I had thus far observed.

  Okay, so I may have skipped over a few details. I did, however, suggest he call Sally Fromberger. It would most certainly brighten her day.

  Chapter

  9

  So you think Arnie threw himself in the cistern to rescue this missing cat?” Peter asked. “A hero without a cause?”

  Overwhelmed with frustration, I sank back. “Whatever. Arnie had minimal involvement. He knew damn well he was supposed to unlock the door of the room at Old Main this morning. He came by my duplex to explain why he hadn’t, and then . . .”

  “Then what?”

  “How should I know? I’d be surprised if he were so gripped with remorse that he attempted suicide. Arnie Riggles is not the type to be haunted by guilt. If he inadvertently set fire to a nursing home, he’d be picking through the site the next morning in order to hold a used denture sale.”

  “Any idea how we might get in touch with his next of kin?”

  “Call Tennessee information and ask for Jack Daniels.”

  Peter winced. “I was thinking of something more local. Do you happen to have his address?”

  “I just described the extent of my interaction with Arnie,” I said as I stood up. “Yesterday he carried boxes of books into Old Main and was made aware that he needed to make sure the door was unlocked this morning. I have not laid eyes on him since then. The evidence indicates that he came by my duplex this morning after Caron and I left, and allowed a cat worth fifty thousand dollars to escape into the neighborhood, where it was undoubtedly ran down by a Kappa Kappa Killer. I suggest you call the maintenance office for details about Arnie’s personal life. If the campus switchboard can’t help, try the secretary at the English department. Just leave me out of it—okay? I may have to deal with pesto, but not with you and your sperm count.”

  “Claire,” he said, as if there was anything he could say at this point. He shrugged, as did I. We stared at each other.

  Jorgeson appeared in the doorway. “Just heard from the emergency room, Lieutenant,” he said. “The Riggles guy is okay, but refuses to offer much information, claiming that he won’t talk to anybody but Ms. Malloy here. The woman in the cistern, Roxanne Small, died from injuries resulting from impact. Her body cushioned his fall.”

  I was very glad I had not ingested any of Lily’s tea, since I might have embarrassed myself. “Arnie fell on her?” I squeaked.

  “Survival of the fittest,” Jorgeson said without emotion. “No indication of a cat, by the way.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” I said as I tried to wiggle past him. “Pussy wasn’t in the well after all. Just Arnie and Roxanne.”

  Peter caught my arm just as my knees buckled. “You’d better sit down, Claire. You’re not making much sense.”

  “I am making perfectly good sense,” I protested. “Ding, dong, bell; you can go to . . .”

  He looked at Jorgeson. “See if that woman in the kitchen can provide a glass of brandy.”

  “How thoughtful,” I said, “but a bit early in the day. Don’t you think we ought to search Roxanne’s room?”

  His eyebrows rose. “I hate to break it to you, Miss Marple, but police investigations tend to exclude civilians who are snooping around out of idle curiosity. Why don’t you wait here until I’ve determined what further questions I might have? After that, we’ll go to the hospital and find out the secrets Arnie wants to share with you and only you.”

  He stomped out of the parlor, followed by Jorgeson, whose ears were bright red and quivering like rose petals caught in a breeze. I remained on the sofa for a moment, then went out to the porch and glared at the cracked concrete pillars holding up the bridge over the railroad tracks, and at the profusion of weeds on the far side of the street. I was wondering how hard it might be to hop a freight train to France, or at least Topeka, when Caron pulled up in my car.

  “What Is Going On?” she said as she joined me. “Did that woman fall in the well? Does this have anything to do with the cat? The door was latched this morning when I left, you know. I may not have tweaked the creature’s whiskers, but I scooted in a can of cat food and a bowl of fresh water before I came here to transport these creepy people, who spend all of their idle moments debating ways to kill people. Allegra Cruzetti listed half a dozen poisons I might slip into Rhonda’s next milkshake. Ms. Parks thought drowning might be more cost-effective, while Mr. Dahl favored a blunt instrument or defenestration. Ms. Knoxwood suggested a crochet hook in the ear. I am seriously freaked, Mother.”

  “I can understand why,” I said. “Does the luncheon seem to be going well?”

  Caron pulled herself together and managed a shrug. “I dropped them off at the door of the student union. It’s not like I could park out front and suggest we
all hold hands on the stairwell. The closest parking is about forty miles away, and the oxygen’s rumored to be thin. I wish you’d explain.”

  I sat down on a wicker sofa. “It seems as though the blond woman you brought on your second run this morning ended up at the bottom of the cistern, along with Arnie Riggles, who survived.”

  “Arnie Riggles?” she said, horrified. “Isn’t he the one who—?”

  “Yes, and then some. He’s not inherently evil, though, and I’m afraid the police may assume he’s responsible for what happened to Roxanne Small.”

  “What’s a cistern?”

  “Once upon a time, a repository for rainwater.”

  “What was she doing out by this cistern?”

  “A very good question,” I said with a sigh. “She’s not going to provide any answers, however, and I doubt the authors will be of any use. None of them seems to be grieving over the untimely death of a beloved editor.”

  Caron rolled her eyes. “There were no bleeding hearts in the car, as far as I could tell. They were discussing an expedition to the basement at midnight. I’m supposed to buy candles and a magnifying glass before I pick them up after the panel. Candles are easy, but I don’t have a clue where to find a magnifying glass. I can just imagine myself at Wal-Mart, asking for the forensics aisle. I am not getting paid Nearly Enough for this, Mother.”

  “Nor am I, since I’m unable to sell any books. I should go over to the hospital and see if Arnie has the key to the bookroom. If not, you’d better start finding ways to fix cat food casseroles, because that’s all we may be eating for the rest of the month.”

  “Excuse me while I throw up.”

  I held out my hand. “Give me the car key, dear, then go back to the duplex and scout around for the cat. Sherry Lynne does not have big hair, but I suspect she has quite a temper.”

  She gazed at the line of official vehicles, marked and otherwise. “Is Peter in charge of the investigation?”

  “As we speak, he and Doctor Watson are searching the victim’s room.” I waited until she pulled the key out of her pocket and gave it to me. “Put a bowl of fresh cat food on the top step, then start knocking on doors along the alley and listening for acrophobic meows from treetops. Earlene and Inez can figure out how to get the authors from the student union back to Old Main.”

  Caron’s shoulders were drooping as she went down the walk and around the comer. I sat for a moment, praying for a slow-moving train, then got in my car and drove to the hospital. I presumed I could sail into Arnie’s room and ask a few hard questions, but I was informed at the lobby desk that he was allowed no visitors, and that a police officer was stationed by his door.

  As intimidated by the pink-haired volunteers as I was by the idea of being gunned down in a hospital corridor, I returned to my car and rested my head on the steering wheel. Roxanne had not come home to Farberville to commit suicide. Push had come to shove, so to speak. Arnie was not likely to have submitted a manuscript in the past and then nursed a grudge when it had been rejected. He certainly had no reason to put his hands on Roxanne’s derriere and send her plummeting twenty feet. I was likely to be the only person Arnie feared—and well he should. Now that I thought about it, he was damned lucky to have an armed guard outside his door. At the moment, not even I would scale three floors in the fashion of a sticky-palmed Spider-Man to slither into a room and switch an IV.

  Later, maybe.

  None of the authors had much of a motive to kill Roxanne, I reminded myself. But were they repressed murderers, as Jorgeson had implied rather bluntly? Plotting murder, pondering method and means, choosing a weapon least likely to be detected, contriving a way to escape accusations—these were daily warm-up exercises. In truth, they seemed to do it at the drop of a hatpin dipped in curare. The announcement of a dead body had been met with academic interest rather than grief. I had a feeling they would all be making notes as they flew out of the Farberville airport, and eighteen months from now I would be reading five novels concerning bodies in the cistern, and in a couple of cases, mummified babies in the basement.

  Resentment had been simmering the previous evening, but I’d sensed nothing that might result in murder. Sherry Lynne, Laureen, and Dilys were clearly jealous of Allegra’s preferential treatment by Paradigm House, and Walter most certainly bore a grudge; none of this, however, had seemed likely to result in anything more lethal than deftly-flung darts dripping with sarcasm.

  The only thing that had happened since then was Ammie Threety’s fatal accident.

  Earlier in the day Roxanne had said she was going to make a condolence call on Ammie’s parents, perhaps out of genuine sadness—or perhaps for another reason. It was possible that she had learned something that had led her to determine the accident hadn’t been quite so . . . accidental. She might have discovered a reason to suspect that one of the authors staying at the Azalea Inn was involved. All of them had been in their rooms during the late morning break. When Roxanne returned, had she suggested a private talk in the garden?

  I gazed with unfocused eyes at the bland facade of the hospital until I finally remembered the name of the town Ammie had mentioned. It was no more than twenty-five or thirty miles away, which meant I could make a condolence call of my own and return in time to ascertain that the pesto pasta and whatever else Lily intended to serve would be ready for the convention attendees—and that a recently-severed human head would not be a centerpiece, replete with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme jutting out of each ear. I had no idea where Lily might find such a thing, but it did not seem beyond her capabilities, should she wish to make a statement, organically-correct or otherwise.

  Almost an hour later, I drove across a low-water bridge and saw a bullet-riddled sign boasting of Hasty’s population of two hundred and forty-three. The town itself was nothing more than a convenience store, a gas station, a few trailers on cinder blocks, a shabby church, a half-dozen squalid tract houses, and a building identified by a faded sign as “Bobbie Jo’s Cafe and Bait Shoppe.” The only evidence of life was a raw-boned hound asleep in the middle of the road, where it was likely to be as safe as anyplace else in town.

  I went into the café. Four men in their twenties, two with stringy yellow hair and two with stringy brown hair, all apt to have crawled out from under the same rock as Arnie, glanced up at me, then resumed their discussion, which seemed to involve the annihilation of Bambi’s kith and kin. The waitress, as raw-boned as the hound and not appreciably more animated, approached the booth with a coffee pot in one hand and a mug in the other.

  “You wanna eat?” she asked without enthusiasm. “We’re out of the daily special, but you can have a burger and fries. Soup of the day is chicken noodle. The tuna salad platter comes with a slice of tomato and a scoop of cottage cheese.”

  Wondering if the tuna salad had been prepared with the previous day’s unsold bait, I shook my head. “I’m looking for a family named Threety.”

  “You from the police?”

  “No,” I said, wondering if I could explain myself in words of no more than two syllables. Conversation had stopped at the nearby table, and I was being regarded with less than admiration. “You heard about their loss?”

  “Reckon I did. Ammie was a good girl, my second cousin once removed. We was all hopin’ she would finish college and get a good job, but then she had to drop out to run the store on account of her pa’s health. My stepbrother Burnett dated her while they were in high school, and he used to tell us how she was always reading books and writing stories. Darn shame what happened to her.” She set down the mug and filled it. “Dam shame.”

  One of the men swaggered over to the booth as if he was preparing to collect a blue ribbon at the county fair. “I don’t recollect you explainin’ why you’re here.”

  I took a sip of coffee and tried to ignore the implicit threat in his posture. “Ammie registered for a convention at Farber College, and was at a reception last night. When I heard about the accident, I felt like I
should come by and tell her family how sorry we all are.

  The waitress gave him a shove. “You go on back and talk about dawgs, Ed. This lady is just being nice, which is something you don’t know beans about.” She waited until he retreated, then said, “You sure you don’t want a hamburger or a tuna salad platter, honey? It won’t take five minutes.”

  “Just directions to the house,” I said meekly, keeping an eye on Ed and his cohorts, who were muttering among themselves. I took a dollar bill out of my purse. “Will this cover the coffee?”

  “It ain’t worth a dime. Go down to where the Ferncliffs lived till their house burned down, and then—”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know where the Ferncliffs lived. Is it a county road?”

  “Not hardly,” she said. “Keep an eye out for Hester’s House of Curls. Turn left at the next intersection and go about a mile. The Threety place is on the right, just past the pond. You can’t miss it.”

  I’ve always taken that trite expression as a challenge rather than a reassurance. “Thanks,” I murmured, leaving the dollar bill on the table in the obscure hope of ensuring safe passage. “Are Ammie’s parents dealing with their loss?”

  “What’s it to you?” said one of the men. He punctuated his question with a belch, to the amusement of his friends.

  The waitress tucked the bill in her pocket. “I’m sure they’d appreciate a visit. Kinfolk are gathering, and the preacher is there, but them hearing about Ammie’s last evening is likely to lighten their hearts—assuming you ain’t gonna say anything that might distress them.”

  “Of course not,” I said, reacting to the edge in her voice. “By the way, did anyone else come by here today to ask for directions?”

  “Not here, but Burnett was telling me about some Yankee woman at the gas station this morning.”

  “Saw her myself,” said one of the rednecks at the table in the middle of the room. “Tight ass.”

  The man now identified as Ed chuckled. “Damn straight. We don’t see many like her around here. Her tits weren’t much, but I’d bet my paycheck that—”