by Joan Hess
“You’re saying that what he told me…
“Is nothing more than a pathetic fantasy. John is a brilliant scholar and has published hundreds of articles in the most prestigious journals across the country. He successfully argued in front of the United States Supreme Court on two occasions. There’s a rumor afoot that the new wing of the law building will be named after him.” She paused to allow me the opportunity to gasp in awe, but I managed to restrain myself. “Five years ago he began to develop a few mild eccentricities-nothing too bizarre at first, but later they became more obvious. I eventually took him to the medical complex in Houston, which diagnosed a degenerative neurological disease that impairs him both physically and mentally. He functions well most of the time, but every now and then he does or says something that has absolutely no basis in reality.”
I considered this for a moment. “He sounded perfectly normal when he told me about his assignations at a motel. I didn’t demand details, naturally, but he seemed to have a vivid memory of… what took place and with whom.”
“He sounded perfectly normal when he explained to our daughter that he’d joined a convent and henceforth was to be called Sister Beatrice.” She shook her head and sighed. “Thus far, we’ve been lucky that these episodes have been isolated and have occurred outside the university community. But to tell a virtual stranger that he… Well, it’s clear he’ll have to submit his resignation as soon as he returns home.
Trying not to envision Dean Vanderson in a fetching black habit, I said, “Then he had no assignations with sorority girls at the Hideaway Haven and Jean Hall was not blackmailing him?”
“Oh, Claire, I knew you’d understand!” Eleanor replaced the handkerchief in her purse and once again rewarded me with a dose of sisterly sympathy. “You’ll be relieved to learn that I’ve decided to close the Kappa house for the remainder of the summer. Winkle, Rebecca, and Pippa have been told that they must be out by six o’clock today, and they were looking at the classified ads and calling various apartment complexes when I left. It will be inconvenient for me to drop by every day to supervise the remodeling, but I’ll just have to do it.”
Although I was cheered by her news, I wasn’t ready to dismiss Dean Vanderson’s revelations as the ravings of a neurological degenerate. “If your husband wasn’t being blackmailed, why was there a pink paper cat in his office?”
“You were in his office?” she said, politely incredulous. Since I hadn’t exactly arrived at the law school with a search warrant, I bypassed her question and said, “Yes, and I found a cat hidden under a computer It looked like your basic blackmail note to me: terse, ominous, slightly obtuse. I came to your house last night to ask him about it.”
“How odd,” she murmured as she found a gold compact and made sure her mascara had not dribbled down her cheeks during her less than histrionic confession of her husband’s disability After she’d flicked off an invisible speck, she snapped the compact closed. “Unless, of course, he wrote it as additional proof to himself that he’s not only virile and sexually insatiable, but also an actor in some dark soap opera unfolding around him. He’s become childlike these last few years, and this is the sort of thing that would appeal to his need to see himself as anything other than a pale, plump, middle-aged law professor.”
I did not leap to my feet, point an accusatory finger at her, and utter words to the effect that John had no access to pink construction-paper cats. “And you have a drawerful of the things at home?” I asked in a resigned voice.
“I keep them in a carton in my study, along with the correspondence with National, confidential reports from alumnae, and the endless files. You and I seem to wage the same battle not to drown in all the paperwork, don’t we?” I nodded as she stood up. “There is one thing more I must beg of you, Claire. It’s terribly important that what I told you not become a topic of gossip. John is not well, and were his reputation to be tainted by lurid and unfounded accusations, it might kill him. I can trust you, can’t I?”
I assured her that she could, escorted her out to the street, and resumed my seat at the counter. I now was withholding from the authorities enough information to alphabetize it and publish a set of encyclopedias. On the other hand, the fact that John Vanderson had not carried on with sorority girls and therefore had not been blackmailed was not likely to overwhelm anybody
The afternoon dwindled along, as did my attempts to put a lot of seemingly unrelated tidbits into tidy little compartments. No one called to threaten me or my child, and no one called to inquire if I was meddling in an official investigation-if there was one. The police were satisfied with an accidental death and a fugitive who would appear sooner or later Although I could vindicate myself with the revelation that Ed Whitbred and Arnie Riggles had indeed prowled in the bushes outside the sorority house, I could find no other reason to tell anyone. With the house closing, Winkle would have to find an apartment for the summer, and she and her hairy Don Juan could daily in a more routine fashion. John Vanderson would resign from his position at the law school and perhaps occupy his time writing fiction. No doubt the New York publishing house that purchased Nebras qué would be enthralled by juris-imprudent porn. Caron would throw her sixteenth birthday party for the benefit of her fellow inmates; I would celebrate my fortieth birthday alone, toasting myself in the mirror while monitoring the ravages of menopause.
It was a splendid foray into self-pity, and I was enjoying myself enormously as I walked home late in the afternoon. As I went past the soon-to-be-vacant sorority house, however, I realized there was a minor glitch in Eleanor’s explanation of her husband’s peculiar behavior He had been on the third floor several nights ago. I tried to tell myself he was engaged in a fantasy, playing detective rather than cowboy or astronaut, but my arguments failed to convince me. He had been there, just as he had stopped at the curb the night of Jean’s death. Eleanor might wish desperately to believe her husband was delusional, that what he’d told me was nonsense-but she could be wrong.
Miss Marple-Malloy was back in business- I hurried home, found the directory, and called Ed Whitbred. “I presume you heard about Arnie,” I said without wasting a precious second of sleuthing.
“Winkie told me,” he said. “She’s upset about the house closing, but I think she’s better off getting away from those leeches. This morning she and Eleanor had a major row over the chapter-room key. Winkie swears her key has been in her possession since the last meeting of the semester, back in May, and Eleanor finally conceded that saintly Jean Hall must have made a duplicate.”
“Will Winkle keep her job?”
“She thinks so. I told her I’d help her look for an apartment, so I’d better-”
“Did you have the film from Arnie’s camera developed?”
“I dropped it off at the drugstore on Thurber Street, but I forgot to pick it up after work. How about I bring it over tomorrow when I-”
“That’ll be fine, Ed. Happy hunting.” I hung up, then went to Caron’s bedroom to see if there were any messages concerning ball or impending court appearances. All I found were dirty glasses, a crumpled potato-chip bag, fuzzy dishes under the bed that might lead to a Nobel Prize in biochemistry, and her calendar The last item indicated that Gretchen was slated to have her palette adjusted within the hour
Idly speculating why Caron’s friends had relented, I made a drink and wandered to my bedroom to stare at the Kappa Theta Eta house. The shadows from the scaffold resembled long diagonal bars across the weathered surface. The effect was fittingly sinister.
When it began to grow dark, I drove to the drugstore. After a spirited debate with a genderless dullard regarding my lack of a receipt versus my willingness to stand there all night and argue, I proffered money for a packet of prints. Once I was in the car I took a deep breath and pulled out the product of Arnie’s arcane activities.
He’d been thorough, capturing not only Pippa in gleeful admiration of her breasts, Jean halfway out of a shirt, Rebecca brushing her hair
in a diaphanous gown, and Debbie Anne in a struggle with a pair of overly tight shorts, but also a dozen more of unknown girls in varied degrees of undress. The backgrounds contained enough pink to identify them as Kappa Theta Etas. Apparently our aspiring Penthouse photographer had lurked in the bushes prior to the end of the spring semester.
Arnie had occupied a position on my list of potential blackmailers, but I mentally drew a line through his name and relegated it to a newly established list of voyeurs. It was odd that he’d selected this particular sorority, I thought as I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the highway. It was the only house open this summer, but during the previous semester he could have chosen any of the sorority houses on campus, some of which would provide stimulating photo opportunities from less prickly sites. Was it just another damn coincidence?
I drove by the Hideaway Haven twice before persuading myself to bounce across the pockmarked lot and park at what was optimistically designated as the office. Through the dusty window I could see a stumpy orange-haired man in a stained T-shirt and plaid shorts. A cigarette smoldered between his lips, and ashes trickled down his belly. He appeared to be reading a tabloid, although it was as likely that he was unable to meet the literacy challenge and was merely looking at the pictures.
There was no delicate way to handle it, I told myself as I cowered in the car and perspired like a woman eighteen hours into labor Not even one of my role models from a cozy novel could find a way to transact this distasteful business without some tiny slip of her composure. I slunk down further as a car pulled in beside me. Its driver seemed familiar with the process and was in possession of a key within minutes. His buxom companion sauntered after him as he hurried to a nearby room. The lack of luggage suggested professional services rendered at an hourly rate.
I, on the other hand, had all the time I wanted to explore my motives for sitting in my car outside the office of the Hideaway Haven. Was I in the throes of a quest for truth and justice? Was this indicative of my dedication to law and order? Was I genuinely concerned about Debbie Anne Wray-or any of the blasted Kappa Theta Etas, their lovers, or even their painters? Or could it be that I was going to show Lieutenant Peter Rosen that I was not the least bit interested in his extracurricular activities and was perfectly content to meddle in someone else’s official investigation?
I snatched up the packet and went into the office. “Excuse me,” I said coldly, “but Pd like you to see if you recognize any of these girls.”
“What are you-a high school principal?”
I spread out the photographs. “I do not care to discuss my personal life. Have any of these girls ever rented rooms here?”
Clearly daunted by my steely demeanor, he studied each photograph with great care, occasionally whistling softly or holding one so closely his breath clouded it. He licked his lips so often that soon his chin was glistening, but no more so than his beady little eyes. I was finally getting somewhere, I told myself smugly as I waited for his response.
“No, never seen any of them.” He picked up the tabloid and flipped it open. “Can you believe this about Elvis? I for one think he’s deader’n a doornail, but people keep seeing him all the time. I don’t see how he can keep popping up like this if he’s dead.” He scratched his head with enough enthusiasm to send flakes of dandruff adrift.
“Elvis is dead, and you have seen these girls before,” I retorted, a shade less smugly but determined to hear the truth if I had to shake it out of him. “If you refuse to admit it, I will call the police and report indications of prostitution and drug transactions on these very premises.
He wrenched one eye off the “actual artist’s depiction” of Elvis entering the White House. “You got no proof.”
“No, but I’ll tell them I do, and once they start poking around, I’m sure they’ll find plenty of evidence. If nothing else, there must be enough violations of the health and fire codes to close you down.”
He plucked the cigarette butt from his mouth and gaped at me as if I’d arisen from the page in front of him and, like the Peoria housewife, claimed to be capable of spontaneous combustion. “But that’s lying, lady.”
“It most certainly is, and I must warn you that I’ve had a great deal of practice at it and will be quite convincing. Would you like to take another look at the photographs?”
“Maybe I ought to ask Doobie,” the man said as he dropped the butt and ground it out on the floor. “He’s usually on the night desk, but he wanted to switch so’s he could watch some fool basketball game. Won’t take more than a minute.” He gathered up the photographs and disappeared through a doorway, the door closing behind him before I could protest.
As I waited, I became aware that I might as well have been on the screen of the drive-in movie theater. The darkness outside emphasized the lights of the office, and I knew I was visible from the far reaches of the parking lot, if not the highway. Unlike the Kappa Theta Etas, I was not haunted by the specter of a tainted reputation, but the thought of having to explain my presence at the Hideaway Haven was so chilling that goose bumps dotted my arms and whatever hackles I possessed rose on my neck. I was tempted to hide behind the lurid pages of the tabloid, then considered the additional hardship of explaining both my presence and my reading material to anyone who drove by. Such as a cop.
Nearly fifteen minutes had passed by the time the manager returned, the photographs in his hand and a deeply distrustful look on his face. I closed the tabloid, thus doomed never to find out the facts about Bigfoot’s amorous attack on a Canadian farmwife, and smiled expectantly.
“Doobie ain’t seen any of them,” he reported, avoiding my eyes and speaking with all the animation of a dead Elvis. “He sez they’re welcome anytime, dressed or otherwise, and in particular that piece of angel food cake with the black hair, but he ain’t seen any of them. But”-he held up a grimy hand to stop me from retorting-”Doobie sez Hank might have been on duty some of the time, so you can come back next week and ask him. Hank took his wife to a bowling tournament over in Sallisaw, on account of it being her birthday.”
“It took all this time for Doobie to say that?” I said.
Once again dandruff rained softly on his shoulders as his fingernails dug into his scalp. “Doobie studied the pictures real carefully before he decided he hadn’t seen them girls. We get all kinds of college kids out here, especially on the weekends, and they all look the same, a bunch of Kens and Barbies in designer clothes and fancy athletic shoes.
As I put the photographs back in the packet, I decided to take one last shot. “There’s someone else who might have been here frequently,” I began, then proceeded to describe John Vanderson.
The manager flinched, his eyebrows furrowing for a second, his lips suddenly in need of a lick. “No, nobody like that.”
I’d seen the recognition in his eyes, the same flicker I'd seen in Winkie’s when I’d rattled off the description in her suite. I said as much, but he steadfastly denied having seen John Vanderson, and at last took his tabloid and went into the back room. This time the door slammed a sullen goodbye, although I suspected in his mind it was a more colorful idiom involving areas of his anatomy-or mine.
Lacking the courage to storm after him, I went back to my car As I reached for the handle, I heard a faint groan, and swung around to stare at the impenetrable darkness of the parking lot alongside the building. “Hello?” I called tentatively. “Is someone hurt?”
A second groan was as slight and insubstantial as the breeze that carried it. It was not the whimper of a sick animal, I decided as I moved toward the corner, crushing the packet in my damp hand, keenly conscious of my vulnerability and my inexperience in dealing with mishaps at brothels.
A few cars were parked in front of motel units, but heavy curtains kept any light from spilling onto the pavement. Across the narrow lot stretched a vast field that undulated like a serene expanse of ocean, dotted only by stubby, skeletal trees and the rotted remains of a car.
I
stopped in the oblong of light from the office, shielded my eyes, and peered for some indication of the location of the groaner. “Is someone there?” I called.
Headlights came to life, blinded me, startled me as if I were a deer on the highway, left me rooted and unable to so much as blink. An engine roared. Tires dug into the gravel, spinning and shrieking. The headlights charged me. What flashed before me was not an encapsulated version of my thirty-nine years of life, but a much more vivid image of what I’d resemble if I didn’t move pretty darn soon. Pancake batter came to mind.
I flung myself into the side of the building. The headlights veered at me, then swept past while gravel pelted me like hail. I peeled myself off the wall in time to see swirling taillights as the car squealed onto the highway and sped away.
15
The manager and his unseen pal Doobie did not rush out to ask me if I was all right, and in fact did not so much as poke their noses out of the back room to ascertain if the window was shattered and the floor splattered with blood from my mangled corpse.
Massaging my shoulder with one hand while picking gravel from my elbow with the other, I made it to my car and eased awkwardly into the driver’s seat. Once the doors were locked, I inventoried the innumerable throbs, and concluded nothing was broken or even seriously damaged, with the exception of my amiable nature and sense of humor What a lovely target I’d made, I thought angrily as I removed a chunk of gravel from my raw knee. Had I been invisible to a pie-eyed drunk or had someone tried to frighten me-or kill me in the same fashion he or she had killed Jean Hall?
A station wagon pulled in next to me. Two teenage girls, both dressed in skimpy shorts and skimpier halters, tramped into the office, banged on the silver bell, and exercised their magenta-lined lips until the manager emerged from the back room. After some discussion and a great deal of hilarity, a second man came out the same door, his arms laden with beers and his porcine face contorted with a leer
