Dear Miss Demeanor

corner of her bed nearest the door. One never knows. “The parade is Friday afternoon?”

“Right after school at three-thirty, up Thurber Street and around the square. I was going to walk beside the float and do our class yell, but I doubt anyone will offer to push me in a wheelchair and I couldn’t possibly keep up on crutches. The band would march right over me.”

“You can see so much better from the sidewalk. Are you going to the game and dance? I need some advice about what to expect, and some support while I chaperone.”

“Inez and I have to sell programs at the game to earn pep points. Maybe I’ll sell more doing my Tiny Tim Cratchett imitation. She sucked in her cheeks and held out a cupped hand. “Please, sir, a penny for the crippled children’s fund.”

I almost laughed, but the sparks in her eyes kept me sober. “It will probably work, especially if you wear burlap. What about the dance? Are you and Inez going together-or do you have dates?”

The cupped hand went over her face, muffling the next words. “No, I don’t have a date, Mother. Some geek from my homeroom asked me, but the thought was nauseating. I told him I wasn’t allowed to date until I was thirty. He’s geeky enough to believe it. Inez and I haven’t decided whether to go or not, but after Rhonda finishes telling everyone about klutzy Caron Malloy, I may not show my face in public again-ever.”

“If you handle this carefully, you can win a lot of sympathy. You’ll have all the boys waiting on you, bringing you punch and that sort of thing. It’ll be fun.”

“The geek will sit beside me all night, and I won’t be able to get away from him,” she sniffled. “I’ll end up with pimples and herpes.” She was already dialing for sympathy as I left her room.

The time had come for drastic measures if I was to avoid the Homecoming dance, save Miss Parchester’s reputation, defend freedom of the press, discover the author of the Miss Demeanor blackmail letters, solve two murders-and keep Peter Rosen from locking me away for the rest of my life. I had forty-eight hours, tops. Or forty-eight years, if one used the actuarial tables.

I therefore yelled at Caron to get off the telephone, took several deep breaths, and called Sherwood Timmons.

After a round of diplomatic maneuvers, I asked him if he was willing to let me in the high school that night.

“So you are still on the case of the fiddled books,” he said, sounding delighted. “Occasbo fact furem; the occasion makes the thief. Are we to wear rubber-soled shoes and use penlights to wend our way through the ledgers? Black turtlenecks and smudges on our faces? Incognito et incognita?”

“If you wish,” I said meekly. Personally, I had on a wool jacket and my face was immaculate, but I decided to permit him his fantasies. The case of the fiddled books was no longer my primary motivation to search the office, since Peter had told me the money was still in the account. However, it seemed prudent to allow Sherwood to remain both incognizant and incognito, if he wished. I agreed to meet him in the darkest corner of the faculty parking lot. I then told Caron I had an errand and left her to continue her conversation with Inez about Rhonda-or Rhonda about the float-or the geek about hygienic distances-or something along those lines. She didn’t even wave good-bye.

Sherwood loomed beside me as I climbed out of my car in the parking lot. “I must tell you how charmed I am by our little tryst, Claire. I do hope this will not be the only opportunity we have to get to know each other intimately. In fact, I’ve tucked a bottle of wine in my refrigerator in case we feel the urge for a spot of vino veritas once we complete our breaking-and-entering diversion.”

I removed my elbow from his hand and gave him by best enigmatic smile. “We’re merely entering, Sherwood, in that you possess a key. I realize it’s unimaginative, but it’s also less likely to get us arrested.”

“Indeed. And we won’t have to worry about the despicable Pitts appearing to fumigate, since someone has already exterminated him. De nortuis nil nisis bonum-but it is difficult not to interpret his demise as a gift from the gods.”

“Then you believed all the rumors concerning drugs, alcohol, and back-alley abortionists? I was thinking about it earlier, but I wasn’t around the school long enough to arrive at any valid conclusions about him.”

“Only those on Olympus know for sure.” He unlocked the door and held it open. “Jacta alea est, as Caesar was reputed to mutter; the die is cast.”

The hall stretched like the interior of a monster, the lockers on either side glinting like rippled ribs. I hadn’t cared for Sherwood’s oblique reminder that we were alone, but I couldn’t see him in the role of crazed poisoner. Praying my vision was accurate, I switched on my flashlight and led the way to the office, and the file room beyond.

“Is this the most likely place to find ledgers?” Sherwood breathed on the back of my neck.

“Perhaps you should stay by the door in case someone’s in the building,” I said through the wintergreen haze. “Keep a lookout, listen for footsteps, that sort of thing.”

I waited until he left, then found Jerry’s folder and put it on top of the cabinet. After a quick glance through the doorway, I flipped it open and scanned it for dark, damning hints of an evil past or present. All I found was personal information of the innocuous sort, transcripts from Farber College and a mid-western university, and glowing recommendations from college coaches and professors. Jerry had maintained a high grade point average through graduate school, and had done nothing to disgrace himself that I could discover. Phi Beta Kappa and all that. No accusations of molestation or mismanagement of the team.

After a second glance through the doorway to confirm my sentry’s position, I took out his file and looked at the contents. Nothing beyond the same sort of thing as in the coach’s file. I closed the drawer and went into the main room. “I’m going to look through Weiss’s desk,” I whispered.

He nodded tersely. “I thought I saw movement at the end of the hall. Can’t be sure. How much longer will you be?”

“Just a few minutes.” I started for the inner sanctum, then stopped and went back to peer down the hall. “Did you really see someone down there? I don’t especially want to be caught riffling Weiss’s desk if there’s a policeman in the building.”

“Perhaps it’s your policeman, dear sleuth. At least he wouldn’t pull a gun on us and shoot us on the spot.”

“Don’t count on it,” I murmured, deciding my lookout was too caught up in his assignment to be credible. I went into Weiss’s office and sat down behind the desk. The drawers on either side were filled with forms, copies of memos, thick state regulation manuals, and other officious stuff. The middle drawer was crammed full of stubby pencils and confiscated goodies. A plywood paddle, worn shiny from use. Thumbtacks and ancient, lint-covered mints. A packet of letters held together with a rubber band-and addressed to that paragon of propriety, Miss Demeanor.

I jammed the packet in my pocket. And without a flicker of remorse, since they were already hot property, stolen from the journalism mailbox. By the principal, presumably. Who’d been murdered. Over a handful of letters?

My sentry coughed nervously. Ordering myself back to business, I dug through the drawer, but found nothing else of any significance. I went out and told Sherwood I wanted to take a quick look at Bernice Dort’s desk.

He turned around, his face as garish as a Toulouse-Lautrec portrait in the spray of my flashlight. “One wonders if you’re the least concerned about the journalism ledgers and poor Miss Parchester,” he said softly. “Prima facie, one might think you’re searching for something else, something to do with the faculty’s private business. Now why would one arrive at that conclusion, my dear sleuth?”

I put my hand in my pocket. “I’m just checking things out, Sherwood. This is the first time I’ve been able to-to look around the office.”

“For what?” He came toward me, his eyes inky shadows and his voice disturbingly calm. “Were you looking for something that might incriminate one of us? A letter, perchance, about me? Did you overhear a conversation in the lounge while you were innocently snooping in Pitts’s sty?”

I edged around the counter, mentally cursing myself for the wonderful scheme that had landed me here-with him. I have an aversion to being menaced, particularly in a minty miasma. “I don’t know anything about that, Sherwood. I went in Pitts’s room out of curiosity, to see if there was any evidence that the rumors were true. I didn’t eavesdrop at the vile little hole.” Not much, anyway.

“Suggestio falsi, Ms. Malloy. I think you heard me discuss the distressful situation with Evelyn. That’s why you looked so guilty when I caught you outside the room, and that’s why you’re suddenly so nervous, so worried that you shouldn’t have come here with me, alone.”

Bingo with a capital B. “Don’t be absurd,” I whispered, trying for an irritated edge to my voice. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I don’t want to know. If I thought you’d murdered Weiss or Pitts, I wouldn’t have called you tonight.”

“I would hardly murder Weiss over that idiotic accusation, even if I were perturbed that vax audita perft litern scripta monet- the voice perishes but the written word remains.” He laughed, but it lacked a certain essence of mirth. “What’s that you’re clutching in your pocket?”

A diversion seemed timely, so I took out the packet and showed it to him. “I found this in Weiss’s drawer, which explains why the journalism mailbox was empty. Why do you think he’d take the letters and stash them in his desk?”

“You’ll have to figure that out on your own,” he said, this time chuckling with some degree of sincerity. “Evelyn and I have wondered how long it would take the others-and particularly someone with your reputation-to deduce what’s been happening.”

“So you also know about the blackmail scheme?” I said. Enough retreating. I slammed down the packet and came around the counter, fists clenched, eyes narrowed. “Why won’t Evelyn tell me the bare outline-if she’s so damn sure it has nothing to do with the murders? For that matter, why won’t you?”

“Because it’s irrelevant, and Evelyn’s determined not to encourage any gossip. She’s gripped with some dreadful malaise called integrity; I tried to convince her otherwise, but she refused to tell me any of the juicy details, such as the identities of Aphrodite and her boyfriend. But she persisted, to my regret. Now, I do think we ought to depart before we get caught, don’t you? I’d so hate to spend the night in the pokey.”

I was about to persevere with the questions when a door closed in the distance. Remembering my experiences a couple of days ago, with the music that led me to murder, I will admit I shivered-like a wet dog in a blizzard. “Did you hear that?”

My gallant sentry looked rather pale. “Someone in the building, obviously. A policeman?”

“Policemen don’t prowl around in the dark. Earlier I wondered if Miss Parchester might have taken refuge in the building, maybe hiding in empty classrooms or closets until the building empties in the afternoon. I think we ought to take a look.”

Ever so gallant, he gestured for me to precede him.

An hour later, we returned to the office. We’d been down every corridor, opened every door, peered into every nook (and there were a lot of them), and basically searched the entire building for the intruder. If Miss Parchester was determined to elude us, she was doing a fine job of it.

“Are you ready to leave?” Sherwood demanded, gallantry by now replaced with peevishness. “I have three sets of papers to grade, and we’ve wasted half the night. Tempus fugit when you’re having fun.”

I considered a lecture on the tedium of detection, but settled for a sigh. ‘Yes, let me get the Miss Demeanor letters and we’ll go. I left them on the counter in the office.”