A Conventional Corpse

by Joan Hess

  “Ammie Threety?” I said.

  Laureen put down the program book. “She had some very fascinating concepts for plots. Whether or not she could have put the words on the page is irrelevant now. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go back to the inn until the luncheon.”

  Jorgeson cleared his throat. “I’ll be as quick as possible, ma’am. Ammie took some kind of drag that would have acted within half an hour of ingestion, which implies she took it just before she left the inn. Did she ask any of you for a cold tablet or pain pill?”

  Walter rocked back in his chair. “I never so much as spoke to her.”

  “Yes, you did,” Dilys said. “I noticed the two of you over in the comer. From her expression I gathered you were being very cross with her.”

  “The mousy little thing with the heavy thighs?” said Walter. “For some reason, she thought I might be interested in the book she’s been writing for the last decade. I can assure you that I was not. She looked like the sort to include recipes for biscuits and black-eyed peas and whatever else people around here eat.”

  I gave him a steely look. “What do people in Wyoming eat—roadkill?”

  “Ms. Malloy,” said Jorgeson, “I’ll handle this. The rest of you had coffee with her?”

  Laureen nodded. “Some of us had wine, and I believe Sherry Lynne was drinking club soda. Roxanne insisted that Ammie have a bowl of soup and a sandwich. The woman who owns the inn did not look pleased, but complied. Around eight-thirty, Ammie left. We exchanged publishing gossip for another hour, then went upstairs. If people were creeping around after midnight, I did not hear them.”

  “Why would they do that?” Jorgeson asked in a thoroughly bewildered voice.

  Dilys smiled sweetly. “Standard country house behavior, Constable. All we lacked was a butler and a blizzard.”

  “Although,” Sherry Lynne contributed, “Lily would make a fine Mrs. DeWinter, don’t you think? I’m sure she has a closet filled with diaphanous white gowns. Who knows what’s buried in the basement or tucked away in the attic?”

  Laureen caught Dilys’s hand. “The brochure claims the house was once a haven for ranaway slaves. What if some poor girl who’d been raped by her master gave birth while stopping there? The baby died, and the girl returns every night at midnight to search for it.”

  “No, no, no,” said Dilys. “After she gave birth, she realized the wee thing could never withstand the arduous trip north in the swirling snow. She smothered it.”

  “And threw the body in the cistern in the garden,” said Sherry Lynne. “That would explain why Wimple was so uneasy when we were out there yesterday afternoon. He sensed the presence of a tormented soul.”

  Jorgeson pulled out his notebook and a pencil. “There’s a body in the cistern?”

  “I say it’s in the cellar,” said Dilys. “Less risky.”

  Walter stood up. “Sergeant Jorgeson, you are the stereotypic bumbling police officer off the pages of the frivolous fiction written by these authors. They write it because it’s all they’re capable of, and the public buys it out of ignorance that results from the lamentable state of public education. Edgar Allan Poe would have allowed the raven to peck out his eyes before he would have written a story about a cat that discovers clues or a mindless virgin who agrees to assignations on the moors.” He looked down the table at Allegra. “Or a young woman who has a law degree from Harvard but lacks the perspicacity to notice the man with whom she goes hiking in the mountains has blood under his fingernails and slobbers when speaking of his mother.”

  Allegra gave him a haughty look. “At least my book has a plot. I picked up one of yours, and tossed it aside after ten pages. Perhaps Ammie was listening to one on tape and fell asleep at the wheel.”

  “My books are not easily accessible to denizens of white trash trailer parks or fleshy matrons sprawled on beach towels at Coney Island. I write literature, not mindless whodunits with cardboard characters and words of no more than two syllables. My novels are thematic. If I were to say the word ‘symbol,’ the only thing to come into your minds would be metallic platters.”

  “And,” Dilys cooed, “I’d imagine them squashing your head. We can call it ‘Dahl’s Unfinished Symphony.’”

  “Enough!” snapped Jorgeson. “If any of you remembers anything of importance, call me. On second thought, tell Ms. Malloy and she can call me.”

  After he’d stomped out the door, harramphing under his breath, I waggled my finger at the panelists. “This conference is supposed to be a celebration of the mystery novel, not a trap-shooting competition. When we resume after lunch, I would appreciate it if you could focus on an aspect that interests you. If you so much as allude to an attending author’s particular subgenre in a snide way, I will cut you off in mid-word and move on to the next speaker.”

  I took a deep breath, aware I was lecturing some of the most renowned practitioners in the field. “Caron and Inez are out in front of the building. Sherry Lynne, if you’d like to visit Wimple for a few minutes, Inez will go with you.”

  Walter curled his lip at me. “I am more than capable of finding the student union without a Sherpa in blue jeans and sneakers. I shall be there promptly at twelve-thirty for a meal that most likely will include chicken salad, brown lettuce, and doughy rolls.”

  As he headed for the door, the others began to tuck pens and notes into their handbags. Laureen, Allegra, and Dilys agreed that they would like to return to the inn for the next hour. Sherry Lynne decided to look in on Wimple, then announced the necessity of a brief detour by the ladies’room.

  “Has anybody seen Roxanne in the last two hours?” I asked as we walked up the aisle between the folding chairs.

  “No,” said Sherry Lynne, “but this morning at breakfast she said she wanted to go to some of her old haunts.”

  Dilys sniffed. “An excellent choice of words.”

  “Did she mention any place specific?” I said, wincing.

  Allegra held open the door for us. “I believe she taught classes in this building and in another building across the campus. She thought she might drop by the library and see if she still knows anyone. She’s aware of the luncheon, though.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering why she hadn’t attended the panel.

  “I am distressed about Ammie,” Laureen said as we went out to the sidewalk. “So very young. Does that police officer truly have reason to look into what happened? The highway was wet and it was quite dark by the time Ammie and that peculiar woman left. She might have been driving too fast in hopes of getting home before the rain started up again.”

  “The drug in her system may have caused her to doze off. No one involved in the conference seems to have given her anything, however, so I presume we’ve heard the last of it. I’d like to find Roxanne and tell her before she hears people chattering about it at the luncheon.”

  Caron and Inez were perched on the hood of the car, discreetly watching college boys walk by. No one appeared to notice them, which may have contributed to their slumped shoulders and sulky scowls.

  “Have you seen Roxanne Small lately?” I asked them as Dilys, Laureen, and Allegra climbed into the car. “She’s the blond-haired woman who rode here with Walter this morning.”

  “She probably’s at the nearest pawn shop buying an Uzi,” Caron said. “He’s probably doing the same at another shop around the comer. These people are dangerous, Mother. The women talked all the way here about poisonous plants in the garden behind the inn and how to grind up the leaves and make herbal teas. If one of them offers me a cup of any beverage, including water, I will Totally Freak.”

  “Me, too,” Inez said, her nose twitching in alarm.

  “I think you’re safe,” I said. “Caron, take them to the inn for about an hour. Inez, wait here for Sherry Lynne. She would like to visit Wimple, and it’s probably easier to walk than jam six bodies in the car.”

  Caron sighed. “And what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to the foo
tball stadium.”

  ‘Trying out for the team?”

  “Something like that,” I said, then headed up the sidewalk that went past the library, the law school, the administration building, and eventually to the stadium. The thought of being obliged to climb the bleacher steps to the row of skyboxes was somewhat less appealing than a cup of foxglove tea, but I could see no other option. Maintenance was obviously a weekday operation, with no disasters allowed after happy hour on Friday. If Arnie was not in residence (or, equally likely, refused to open the door), I would be reduced to calling campus security to report the presence of a squatter in the president’s skybox. The way things were going, camera crews from the local television stations would show up, and Peter and Leslie would be snickering at me over martinis during the six o’clock news.

  Vodka martinis, that was. Stirred, not shaken.

  Chapter

  7

  One of my least favorite activities is perspiring; it’s followed closely by strenuous breathing, with mottling a distant third. Well, there may have been some intimate moments when such things seemed an appropriate state of affairs, but hiking across the campus was not one of them—and I will not elaborate.

  I cut across the administration building parking lot and turned down the hill toward the football stadium. It rose from the asphalt like a metallic soup tureen. On the west side, a tier of windowed skyboxes divided the bleachers below from those bumping the stratosphere, which were charmingly nicknamed the “nosebleed section.”

  On weekdays, the stadium parking lot is filled with vehicles of endless variety, although those from the more expensive end of the spectram were apt to be parked at the lots adjoining houses bearing Greeks. Now it was pretty much empty. I arrived at a chainlink fence that was padlocked. Scaling it would not be decorous, especially if I were confronted by a campus cop while my ramp was exposed to hither and yon.

  I continued around the comer and along a sidewalk. Gates, all padlocked, were designated with signs identifying the sections to which the ramps led. I was feeling a bit discouraged when I found a gate without a padlock. There was not a sign designating it as “Arnie’s Private Entrance,” but I had a feeling it was.

  I glanced over my shoulder in true criminal fashion, then slipped inside and ducked into a concrete tunnel. I knew where the skyboxes were—approximately twenty feet above me—but I had no idea how to get to them. I went to the end of the tunnel and peeked out at a vast green expanse of plastic grass with symmetrical white lines in some sort of pattern that no doubt had significance to the game. Like Rocky (the boxer, not the buck-toothed flying squirrel), I could stand in the middle of the field and bellow Arnie’s name, but prudence overruled whimsy and I went back up the tunnel.

  After a while, I found a set of double doors with a sign forbidding entrance by anyone without a pass. The doors were closed, but not padlocked. I walked up what seemed like an endless flight of concrete steps to a corridor, one side exposed to the street—and to all who walked or drove by—and the other side lined with doors.

  “Arnie,” I muttered as I prowled down the corridor, “come out, come out, wherever you are.” There were small brass plaques on some of the doors, proclaiming corporate ownership of the best seats in the stadium. Students were welcome to sit on plywood benches in the adjoining county (or time zone). Go, team, go.

  The president’s box had a somewhat flashier plaque, although of a generic sort. I was about to knock on the door when a black woman with layers of tattered clothing came down the corridor, squeezed past me, and went into the next skybox. While I was pondering this, a ferrety man dressed in a camouflage jacket, a knitted skull cap, and sunglasses came out of yet another door and scurried toward the far end of the corridor as if pursued by demons yelping at his heels.

  It was fairly obvious what was going on. I knocked on the door, waited a few seconds, then pounded on it with my fist. “Arnie Riggles!” I said as loudly as I dared, considering my visibility. “Open up right now or your scrawny buttocks will end up with stripes just like the faux-grass in the stadium. Do you know what one up the middle of your back would make you resemble?”

  The black woman stuck her head out her door. “He ain’t here. I heard him leave last night, and he hasn’t come back, far as I can tell. His television’s always blaring when he’s here. I don’t know why that boy listens to the news the way he does. It don’t have anything to do with the likes of us.”

  “Do you have any idea where he was going?”

  “This ain’t a sorority house, honey.” She closed her door.

  Wondering how many of the three dozen skyboxes were inhabited and how much rent Arnie was collecting from the heretofore homeless, I retraced my way across the parking lot and up the hill to the administration building. Somewhere on the campus was the maintenance office, and inside it, several people with all the charm and acumen of Arnie. They might be watching whichever sport was dominant on TV and drinking beer, but surely one of them would have a key to Room 130.

  I rattled the doors of the administration building. Sorry, Monday through Friday, eight to five o’clock. I was desperate enough to gaze speculatively at a dorm only a block away, but I had no idea how to disable an elevator. Starting a fire in a laundry room seemed extreme.

  I was envisioning myself returning a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of books as I started for the student union. I’d get full credit, but I’d be obliged to pay shipping. Sally’s conference was going to cost me a substantial amount of cash—cash I didn’t have. The Thurber Farber Endowment for the Arts was not likely to reimburse me.

  The luncheon would not start for another half hour. I sank down in the grass and tried to think. Since Arnie was not at the skybox, there was no point in sending in campus security (excluding petty vengeance, which, frankly, was an attractive idea). Could a locksmith be persuaded to tackle a door on university property on the say-so of a frantic woman with no legitimate ties to the campus beyond a plastic-coated conference badge? If I threw myself on the floor in front of the English department secretary, would she relent? Was it possible the unseen Dr. Shackley might have a key? Had any of the designer-clad students ambling by made a passing grade in Burglary 101?

  “Mrs. Malloy!”

  Startled, I looked up at Inez, who was running toward me like a newborn colt, her knees wobbling and her eyes wide with panic. She collapsed a few feet away from me, wheezing in an alarming way. “The most terrible thing”—she gasped—”terrible! I didn’t know what to do! Then I remembered you said something about the stadium.” She broke off, clutching her diaphragm as she straggled to catch her breath. “I ran all the way.”

  “That I can see,” I said in what I hoped was a comforting voice. “It can’t be all that terrible. I haven’t heard any sirens or seen clouds of black smoke.”

  “Not yet,” she said as she struggled to sit up. She pulled off her glasses and dried them on her shirttail, then replaced them on her nose and gave me a look she’d obviously learned from Caron, the master of lingual capital letters, and bespoke of the Propinquity of Doom. “I took Sherry Lynne to your apartment so she could see that the cat was okay. She was real nice about having to walk. I got out the key you keep, hidden under that flowerpot, and we went upstairs. It was awful.”

  “Did that damn cat get into the apartment and shred all the upholstery?”

  “Worse.”

  “Please don’t tell me it staked out its territory in a particularly pungent way. If it pissed in the furnace vent, we’ll be gagging until Christmas—assuming I’m not evicted on Monday.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Malloy, when I saw Sherry Lynne’s face, I could have died on the spot. She thinks it was all Caron’s fault, but I’m sure it isn’t. I feel awful, just like the prosecutor in Courting Disaster when she finds the bones in the shed—”

  “Bones?” I squeaked, recalling the downstairs tenant’s outrage the previous evening. Surely not.

  “It was her sister. The serial killer had been
stalking her in order to—”

  I grabbed Inez’s shoulders and squeezed them until she lapsed into silence. “You are hot, you are winded, and you are upset. I understand, and I deeply appreciate your effort to find me. Will you please get to the point?”

  Inez removed my hands and gave me a solemn look. “The back door to the porch was open. The cat was gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Even Inez realized this was a truly stupid question. “We don’t know, Mrs. Malloy,” she said carefully. “Sherry Lynne said she was going to search the alley, then go to the Azalea Inn to see if Wimple might be in the garden. I figured it would be better to find you than to go with her. Caron said something about driving by Rhonda’s to see if Louis Wilderberry’s car was there. Don’t get angry; she’ll get the authors to the student union for the lunch thing.”

  I had no theory how Wimple had unlatched the door, but in Sherry Lynne’s books, he played the piano and sent faxes to Europe. A latch would be a piece of codfish cake.

  “Compose yourself,” I said to Inez, wishing I were a latter-day Fagin who could assign her to stake out the skyboxes. “The luncheon starts in thirty minutes. You need to splash cold water on your face and calm down.”

  She stood up. “Whatever. Sherry Lynne’s really, really upset, though. I told her you’d know what to do. I mean, you’ve solved all these murders. Finding a cat can’t be that hard.”

  I thought about the neighborhood, replete with bushes and trees and open basement windows, that stretched for blocks around my duplex. I thought about the traffic on Thurber Street, particularly aggressive on the weekends. I thought about the tens of thousands of readers who’d vicariously adopted Wimple (and his cohorts) as their own. I thought about my glimpse of a glint in Sherry Lynne’s eyes. A frosty white glint, as if reflecting off an iceberg in the North Atlantic that might sink us all.