“Why did they change their minds?”
Caron ducked behind the science fiction rack. “How should I know? I mean, they change their minds like other people change channels.”
“What do you know about this?” I asked Inez, who’d sidled in more decorously and looked as though she wanted to sidle right back out. “Did something happen while you and Caron were at the drive-in with your parents?”
“Like what?” Caron said with a scornful laugh.
I spotted the top of her head as it wafted in the direction of the gardening section. “Like something that provoked one of your clients to call yesterday and suggest that you were engaged in extortion.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Inez said, blinking somberly and keeping a judicious eye on Caron’s head. “The junior varsity football team went on a retreat, so their girlfriends were kinda bored and some of them went to the drive-in with-”
“One lousy night without a date, and they’re fooling around with the basketball players!” Caron chortled, now approaching the true-crime novels. “All I did was wander around the cars to see who might want to have a My Beautiful Self session. I didn’t say one word about ratting on them to their boyfriends.”
“Not exactly,” Inez said thoughtfully, “but they seemed to be a little bit worried about it. And it’s a good thing you saw Rhonda Maguire coming and hid in the playground until she gave up. My parents would have been upset if you’d gotten in a fight with her.”
Surely the Mad Hatter had come in with them, I told myself and would offer me a refill while the Dormouse gazed dreamily at me from inside the cup. “And why is Rhonda so enraged?”
Inez seemed more concerned about a more substantial life form somewhere in the store. In a voice almost inaudible, she said, “Caron found a tube of Super Glue the night she locked herself in Rhonda’s room.”
“Caron!” I said coldly. “Stop acting as if you were in a maze and get out here this very minute. This is too much.” I waited for a moment, hut heard no response. I came out from behind the counter to stalk her, and was plotting the most advantageous path when a motorcycle roared under the portico and backfired once before dying.
Caron’s face appeared over the classics rack. “What was that, Mother?”
“You may consider it a temporary reprieve from the governor,” I said, “but nothing more.”
“Good morning,” Ed said as he came through the door, dressed as I’d last seen him in a black leather jacket, the helmet in his hand. He looked older, however, and his mouth sagged dispiritedly as he tried to smile at Inez, who promptly scuttled into the racks. To me, he said, “I heard what happened at the sorority house, and I just came from visiting Winkie at the jail. Jeez, what a mess!”
“Indeed,” I said. “Have you talked to Arnie?”
“Why would I talk to him? ‘And from the extremest upward of their head to the descent and dust below thy foot, a most toad-spotted traitor.’ If Shakespeare wasn’t talking about Arnie, I don’t know why not.”
“Rhonda Maguire is a toad-spotted traitor,” Caron intoned from an invisible locale.
“Pay no attention to that girl behind the curtain,” I said, aware that I was mixing cinematic metaphors but too tired to control myself. “What does Winkie think will happen to her?”
“Her lawyer says not much. She was suspicious, but she didn’t participate in anything illegal, and she swears she thought Eleanor Vanderson eventually would allow you to leave.
“Did she?” I said dryly as I remembered her eagerness to unlock the door and her complaisant expression as she watched Eleanor escort me downstairs. Perhaps conspiracy to commit murder was in her job description. Would she have helped Eleanor plant us under the roses shortly before rush? Did Katie the Kappa Kitten say thanks?
Ed grimaced faintly as if he were reading my admittedly twisted mind. “Oh, yeah, and she said several times how kind it was of you to go after the cat. Unnecessary, but kind. Anyway, she won’t be arraigned until early next week, and I was wondering if”-his cheeks reddened and he glanced nervously at the racks, from which fierce whispering emanated-”you might want to ride out in the country sometime. I promise we won’t so much as go past the Dew Drop Inn.”
“I don’t think so, Ed. I suppose I’m not quite ready to be a free spirit on the back of your bike. But come by the store and sling quotes at me whenever you want.”
Caron and Inez emerged only after Ed was gone, and I couldn’t recall when I’d seen either of them so awed. I was hoping they were also speechless, but Caron finally gave me a piercing look and said, “He Asked You for a Date.”
“He asked me to go for a ride,” I said mildly.
“On a motorcycle,” breathed Inez.
I considered pointing out that the encroachment of my fifth decade did not require me to take up an eremitic life of crocheting and counting liver spots. Self-sufficiency did not demand solitude any more than a few new gray hairs precluded companionship. It might have evolved into one of my finer lectures, but instead I said, “You’re grounded until you clean your room and the garage.”
“I was going to clean out the garage anyway,” Caron said with typical-and insufferable-smugness. “I have to do it so I can start earning money for a car. Come on, Inez, a few spiders won’t hurt you.”
“Brown recluse spider bites can cause your skin to rot,” Inez countered as they started for the door. “It’s called necrosis, and if it’s really bad, they-”
“Wait a minute!” I snapped.
“Oh, Mother,” Caron said as her lip shot out and her eyes rolled upward, “is this another hot flash? The plan’s foolproof, and it won’t depend on some toad-spotted traitor to make it work. It’s one hundred percent guaranteed or your money back, and now that Pippa’s dropped out of school and left town, I don’t have to give her what I earned as a My Beautiful Self consultant. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home and start on the garage.”
My fingers may have tightened around the plastic cup, but I kept my voice steady. “What are we talking about, Caron?”
“Night crawlers. They’re these icky worm things that people buy to use as bait. I’ve already sent in a coupon for a starter set, and all I have to do is find some wooden boxes and a lot of dirt. You dump coffee grounds and rotten vegetables on them, and then you sell them for a lot of money.” She frowned at Inez. “This palette stuff is nonsense. I don’t see why I can’t have a red sports car if I want.”
“If the palette stuff is nonsense, then I want my yellow blouse back,” Inez said.
“So you’ll look as though you’re terminally sallow?” The bell jangled as they sailed away to entertain pedestrians with their latest topic of debate. I was in my office, scraping the bottom of the coffee pot and vowing to make some abiding changes in my life, when it jangled less violently.
I came to the doorway and stopped. Peter Rosen stood by the counter, doing his best to appear relaxed despite the thrust of his jaw and the intensity in his brown eyes.
“Do you want to talk, Claire?” he said.
It took me most of a minute to consider. “Yes,” I said at last. “I suppose I do. What happened to the cat?”
“Officer Pipkin took it into temporary custody, despite her husband’s objections. He’s allergic to cat hair Is there anything else you’d like to discuss?”
I nodded.
Joan Hess
Joan Hess is the author of both the Claire Malloy and the Maggody mystery series. She is a winner of the American Mystery Award, a member of Sisters in Crime, and a former president of the American Crime Writers League. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
