SIX
Nothing much happened over the weekend. Peter called Sunday evening to say the CID was making little progress, but they had confiscated enough poison from the school to wipe out the country, if not the continent. The lab results were not yet in, so they had no theories as to the origin and composition of the cyanide compound. All of the teachers and staff had been questioned again, as had a few students who admitted they’d been in the halls during the second period. I mentioned that I hadn’t been questioned again and was informed that I was not a suspect-or a particularly important witness. What charm the man possessed. The freshman class took me more seriously than he did, even if they overestimated the depth of my desire to avoid the yearbook.
Peter was not especially amused when I asked if he had found Miss Parchester, and his response does not bear repeating. Nor does mine when he inquired about my progress on the layout. The conversation ended on a slightly testy note when he reiterated his order about interference in the official investigation and I laughed. The man requires deflation to keep his head from ploding. It falls in the category of public service.
His utile jibe did, however, remind me of earlier questions about the school newspaper’s most infamous columnist. Said columnist was doing homework on her bed, a bag of potato chips within reach should malnutrition threaten to impair her intellectual skills. The radio blared in one ear, and the telephone receiver was affixed to the other.
I suggested she turn off, hang up, and cease stuffing potato chips in her mouth. After a nominal amount of dissension, we achieved an ambiance more conducive to conversation, albeit temporary and at great personal sacrifice on one party’s part.
“When did you take over the Miss Demeanor column?” I asked.
“Last week. That’s what makes all this So Irritating, Mother. If you don’t do something about this mess, I’ll never get to actually write the column. Bambi said-”
“So you didn’t write any of the previous columns?”
“I intended to do the next one, but then Miss Parchester Absolutely Ruined Things by getting herself accused of embezzlement. This whole mess is incredible.” And her mother’s fault, although the sentiment remained unspoken.
“I’m sure Mr. Weiss agreed with you, as do his widow and daughter.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure about Cheryl Anne,” Caron sniffed. “She hated her father because of what he did to Thud. Inez’s sister said that Thud told one of the junior varsity linebackers that he wished he could meet Weiss in a dark alley some night.”
“Does this have something to do with eligibility?” I remembered the discussion in the teachers’ meeting, but not with any clarity. It hadn’t made much sense.
“Thud’s furious,” Caron said solemnly. “So is Cheryl Anne. In fact, she’s reputedly livid.”
“What precisely is he ineligible to do? Produce an intelligible remark? Walk and count at the same time? Marry Cheryl Anne?”
Her expression resembled that of a martyr facing slings and arrows from a herd of drooling tribesmen. “Football, Mother. Thud is a big football jock, the captain of the team and all that, and plans to get a college scholarship for next year. Mr. Weiss pulled his eligibility, which means he won’t get to play in the Homecoming game.”
“Merely because he’s flunking all his classes? How unkind of Mr. Weiss. After all, what’s a mere education when it interferes with football?”
“It’s our Homecoming game, Mother. If Starley City wins, it will be too humiliating for words. The dance will be a wake. Cheryl Anne is this year’s Homecoming queen-naturally-and she’s told everyone she’ll literally die if the team loses on the most important night of her life.” She eyed the telephone. “I really do need to work on my algebra. Big test on Wednesday.”
“Your devotion to your education is admirable, but it will have to wait another minute or two. Has anyone suggested that Cheryl Anne or Thud might have-r-done something drastic because of the ineligibility problem and the impending ruination of Cheryl Anne’s life?”
“It sounds rather farfetched, Mother, but I could call Inez and ask her if her sister’s heard anything,” Caron said with a flicker of enthusiasm. “Inez’s sister hears Absolutely Everything. She’s a cheerleader.”
Caron was right; it did seem farfetched to poison daddy to ensure a football victory and subsequent festive celebration. Daddy’s demise wouldn’t guarantee that the eligibility would be reinstated nor would Thud’s presence on the field guarantee a victory. Neither of the two had access to the lounge, although it seemed as if cyanide in some form or other was accessible to all. I put the theory (which wasn’t much good, anyway) aside and went on to a more promising line before my daughter commenced a full-scale rebellion.
“I need to speak to the girl who wrote the column before she caught mononucleosis,” I said, raising one eyebrow sternly in case she made a grab for the telephone.
Caron produced the information. I razed her dreams by telling her to stay off the telephone until I was finished, then ducked out the door before her lower lip could extend far enough to endanger me.
Rosie’s mother was reluctant to allow me to speak to her, but I finally persuaded her that I was not a girlfriend with a weekly gossip report. Rosie came on the line with a timid, “Yes?”
I gave her a hasty explanation of my current position at the high school, then asked how she chose the letters to answer in her column.
“There’s a box in the main office,” she told me. “I emptied the box every week and answered all the letters. I made a pledge in the first issue, so it was vital to my journalistic integrity.”
I had rather hoped Caron would mellow with age, but it seemed we might have a few more years of tribulation if this was the norm. “I found your column very a musing, Rosie. Some of it rather puzzled me, though. What did you think about the Xanadu Motel letters?”
“I thought somebody was bonkers, but I felt obligated to answer as best I could. It was vital to my- “Of course it was,” I said quickly. “Did you have any idea who wrote those letters? Any clues from the handwriting?” “The letters were confidential, Mrs. Malloy,” she said, sounding scandalized. “Even if I had been able to guess the identity of the correspondents, I would never divulge the names. That would compromise my-”
“Indeed,” I said. I wished her a speedy recovery and a good night’s rest, then retreated to my bedroom. There wasn’t any reason to link the peculiar letters in the
She then swung into a more familiar routine of club meetings, unsigned tardy slips, and illicit behavior in halls and rest between classes, all of which made her tidy little world go round.
I went to the teachers’ lounge for a shot of caffeine. As I entered, Evelyn caught me by the arm and pulled me back into the hallway. “I need your help,” she whispered. “We’re going to get Pius. The filthy slime has gone too far, and I’m going to expose his nastiness once and for all. Now that Weiss is no longer around to protect him, Pitts will get exactly what he deserves.”
It was mystifying, but certainly more interesting than Miss Dort’s announcements or the watery coffee in the lounge. Evelyn was flushed with anger; her dark eyes sparkled with an expectancy that bordered on mayhem. Once I had nodded my acquiescence to whatever she had in mind, she hurried into her classroom and returned with her student teacher. The quivering girl was told to go into the ladies room in the lounge and make a production of checking her lipstick and hair in the mirror.
“Is Pitts in the ladies room?” I asked.
“Worse. I’ll show you where the beast is-and what he’s doing.”
She led the way around the corner into the dark area of the hallway where I’d had the conversation with the Latin pedant. We entered the custodian’s door and tiptoed through a labyrinth of paper towels, murky mops and buckets, odoriferous boxes of disinfectants, and the other paraphernalia necessary to combat youthful slovenliness.
Beyond the storage mom was Pitts’s private domain, a dismal room with a chair, a coffee table, and a sagging cot covered with a tattered blanket. Yellowed pinup girls gaped over their exposed anatomies, pretending astonishment at having been snapped in such undignified poses. The calendars below were from former decades, but I supposed Pitts hadn’t noticed.
In one corner was Pitts himself He failed to notice our entrance, in that he had one eye and all of his attention glued to a hole in the wall. Evelyn glanced back at me to confirm my perspicacity as a witness, then crossed the room and tapped his shoulder.
He spun around, his lips shining moistly in the dim light. “Why, Miz West! What’re you all doing in here?”
“The more important question is: What are you doing, Mr. Pitts?”
“Nothing. Gitting ready to mop the hall like I always do on Monday morning. Then I got to repair a broken window in Mr. Weiss’s office and see about the thermostat in the girls’ gym. Don’t want those girls to get cold in them skimpy gym suits, do we?”
“Imagine all that work. Wouldn’t it be more entertaining to peek at the women teachers in the ladies room?”
“Now, Miz West,” he began in an awful whine, “I don’t know why you’d say something like that. I wouldn’t never-”
Evelyn brushed him aside with one finger and put her eye to the hole. “What a delightful view, Pitts. I’d always presumed you received your jollies smoking dope with the sophomore boys, but now I see you’ve branched out into visual amusements as well. I am going upstairs to report this to Miss Doff, the superintendent of schools, the head of custodial maintenance, the school board, and anyone else who will listen.”
“Now, Miz West-”
“You will be dismissed, Pius, and it will be a day of celebration for the entire school. A holiday, with dancing in the halls, followed by a touching ceremony in which you will be literally booted through the back door, never to be seen here again.”
“I didn’t make this hole. I jest found it and was trying to see where it went is all I was doing, Miz West. That’s the honest-to-gawd truth-I swear it.” He ducked his head and shuffled his feet in a cloud of dust. I waited to see if he actually tugged his forelock in classic obsequiousness, although it would have had to be unglued first.
