Caron turned pink and said it ought to be better soon. Miss Dort nodded as if making a mental note to be transferred to a form, curled her lips at me, and started to march away.
I caught up with her at the curb, “This is my first parade,” I said, despising myself for the ingratiating tone. “I understand the kids take the float competition very seriously.”
“I am a judge, Mrs. Malloy, and I can assure you that I take the float competition very seriously. Class spirit brings the students together. It makes their formative years more meaningful, and encourages them to think fondly of their alma mater in years to come. I have not missed one of my class reunions in thirty years.”
“Neither have I,“ I murmured as I crossed my fingers behind my back. Maybe I hadn’t missed any of them; I’d never inquired. “You seem to be holding up well in the middle of all these tragic occurrences. The school continues to mn well, and the students have already fallen back into their normal routines.”
“Herbert Weiss was a great man as well as an inspirational leader of students and faculty. He will be sorely missed by all concerned.” She leaned forward to peer around a pregnant woman. “It is three-thirty-seven now; the parade seems to be off schedule. Perhaps I ought to walk down the hill to find out what the problem is.
“Oh, they’ll be along any minute,” I said confidently. “I suppose you’ll miss Herbert most on Thursdays.”
She pulled off her glasses and watched them swing from the pink cord around her neck. After another glance around the pregnant woman, she pulled herself erect and looked me in the eyes. “I suppose I shall, Mrs. Malloy.”
“You must have been panicked by the letters in the Dear Miss Demeanor column,” I continued, “and willing to do almost anything to stop them. But framing Miss Parchester wasn’t exactly the most humane route, was it? It caused all kinds of grief, and ultimately led to Mr. Weiss’s murder.”
“It was an unfortunate choice of actions.”
“Your idea?”
“No, Herbert’s. He was such an imaginative man. I do believe I hear the band in the distance; they’re only eight and a half minutes late, which isn’t too bad for this developmental stage. They do get caught up with themselves at times.”
I heard the strains of an unfamiliar tune, but I wasn’t about to be distracted by the promise of a parade. “So Herbert suggested you fiddle with the ledgers to make Miss Parchester look guilty, merely in order to halt publication of the
“Neither of us condoned taking money from student accounts. That would be unthinkable, a violation of trust. Listen, they’re playing a Sousa march.”
“But it wasn’t unthinkable to frame a little old lady who’d taught for forty years?” I said. Sousa be damned.
“Herbert had a truly creative mind,” she said in a distracted voice as she tried to peer past the protuberant tummy. “It’s surprising that he did not deduce the identity of the author of those letters. He could have disciplined his daughter at home, and saved both of us a great deal of worry, not to mention his time involved in devising and implementing the plan to stop the Falcon Crier. Luckily, my experience in bookkeeping proved to be a great value, although I was obliged to struggle with Emily’s system before I could make revisions.
“What a shame to waste valuable time framing little old ladies.”
“So we discovered,” she murmured. “They’ll probably begin the school fight song before they reach the square. It gives me tingles right down to my toes to hear the strains of ‘Fight With All Thy Feathers, Falcons.’ It’s such a rousing tune that I just want to burst forth into song whenever I hear it.” Her shoulders quivered with anticipation, and her lips lingered lovingly over the lyrics.
I wondered if she put equal enthusiasm and dedication into all her extracurricular activities. It was obvious that she and Herbert could have reached great levels of efficiency, if not ardor, in their lovemaking. Did she record climaxes on a monthly basis with little checks and/or ?s? I decided that she filled out all the “How-was-the- service?” cards and mailed them to corporate headquarters, even when postage was not guaranteed.
The crowd gasped at some unseen spectacle. Bernice stood on her tiptoes, straining to catch her first glimpse of the big event.
“Miss Dort,” I said in a stern voice, “has it occurred to you that Emily Parchester is out there somewhere, frightened and alone, ashamed that someone might consider her guilty of a dastardly crime?” When I received a perfunctory nod, I upped my volume to compete with the growing noise of the crowd. “You did that to her, simply to cover up your affair. You’ve driven her into hiding, and I for one am terribly worried about her.”
“If she knew she was innocent, then she shouldn’t have poisoned poor Herbert.”
“She didn’t poison poor Herbert!”
“Who did?”
“Well, you might have,” I said. “You might have slipped into the kitchenette and dumped powdered peach pits in the compote.”
The pregnant woman turned to stare at us, then spun around and waddled away in an indignant huff. Bernice moved closer to the curb, but glanced back with a tight smile. “I had no reason to murder Herbert Weiss, Mrs. Malloy. I do not wander around educational institutions with powdered peach pits in my pocket, nor do I slip into kitchenettes to sabotage little jars of peach compote. I have personal standards.”
“Prove it,” I snapped.
“You prove it, Mrs. Malloy. I have floats to judge, and I do think I can see the tippy-top of the junior effort. Someone told me, in the strictest confidence, naturally, that its theme is ‘Barbecue the Bantams.’ Very clever, don’t you agree?”
I glared at her back, which was all I was offered. When that paled, I returned to the flower box and sat down next to Caron. She and Inez made several unkind comments about the junior effort, and more about the Homecoming court creeping by in convertibles. The girls looked faintly blue in their low-cut gowns, but their smiles remained steadfast and their waves gracious. Cheryl Anne was in the last car, ever the modest reigning royalty of FHS despite the two kindergarten children on either side of her. The boy was wiping his nose on Cheryl Anne’s dress; the girl openly bawling.
With a hint of satisfaction, Caron explained that they were crown bearers. It rather reeked of child abuse, but I let it go. The mayor went past in an antique car, followed by a junior-high band playing an arrangement never before heard by human ears. The sophomore float proved to be “Make Baked Beans of the Bantams,” which Caron and Inez found, amidst giggles and snorts, Too Juvenile for words.
In the middle of this, I thought I saw pink bedroom slippers flash by in the crowd across the street. I poked Caron and muttered, “Look over there. Could that be Miss Parchester?”
“That is the drill team, Mother. Bambi McQueen’s in the third row, and she can’t even shake her pom-poms in the correct sequence. She’s doing red-gold-red-gold, while everyone else does red-red-gold-gold. Her knees are too low, her hemline’s crooked, and she has dumpy thighs. I don’t know why they let her on the drill team.”
“Over there by the post office door,” I insisted, despite an urge to assess Bambi’s thighs for dumpiness. “I can’t see any faces, but I keep getting glimpses of fuzzy pink slippers.”
“Some child dropped its cotton candy. Now the cheerleaders look a lot better than the drill team, don’t you think?” She turned to Inez to discuss Inez’s sister Julianne’s talents in comparison to the mere distaff mortals dressed in crotch-length skirts and sweaters that would leave indentation in their flesh.
I stood up and tried to peer over heads at the other side of the street. Miss Parchester wasn’t tall enough to tower over anyone out of elementary school; I was going to have to rely on the fuzzies on the sidewalk. There was a flash of plastic on a head, and perhaps the point of a furled umbrella. Very promising, I told myself as I began to push through the crowd and find a way to cross the street. All I had to do was grab the fugitive, drag her away for a quiet chat, and assure her that she was no longer suspected of embezzlement. Or murder-for the most part.
At this point, with my toe in the gutter, the full regalia of the Farberville High School Marching Falconnettes took over the pavement. Brass horns, tubas, clarinets, drums-the whole schlemiel right out of River City, and it started with a P and rhymed with T and basically translated into serious blockade problems.
I was hopping up and down, trying to see over a sea of plumed hats and tuba bells, when I felt a hand on my shoulder. It started with a P and stood for Peter, as in Rosen.
“Are you looking for a potty?” he asked politely. “There’s one in the drugstore behind us, and I think it’s free. If not, I’ll be glad to loan you a dime.”
“That’s not funny.”
“But you are, with this imitation of a human pogo stick.” He gave me a look that forebode all sorts of problems. “What’s going on, Claire? You’re not the sort to be possessed by demons, nor are you one to make a spectacle of yourself-without cause. You’re behaving manically, and you must have a reason.”
I will admit that I should have told him about the pink fuzzies. I was the one who had concluded that confession was good for the soul, if not the ego, and that I would jeopardize the relationship if I continued to hide things from him. But I wanted to talk to Miss Parchester, and I wanted to do it alone. Okay, I wanted to do it first. She would be thoroughly spooked by a cop. I needed to calm her down, reassure her that the judge’s reputation was as safe as her own, and convince her she could come back to school-in time to chaperone the dance.
It would mean a great deal to her, this opportunity to show the students that she was, as always, above reproach. Having justified myself to myself, I gave Peter what I hoped was an enigmatic smile.
“I thought I saw an old classmate across the street, but the band cut me off at the pass. It’s not important; I’ll probably run into her some other time. Why don’t you come sit with Caron, Inez, and me?”
The flower box proved adequate for four bottoms. The band finally passed on, in the literal sense, and was replaced by the senior float, “Bye-bye, Bantams.” The girls looked rather nervous, sensing competition from the upper classmen, but they managed a few catty comments about the unevenness of the lettering on the banner.
Peter gave me a wry smile and put his hand over mine, just as if I weren’t a treacherous, conniving, faithless quisling. He looked startled at my sigh, but I could only shake my head and look away as I tried to convince myself, as Caron would say, to Do The Right Thing.
As the moral dilemma raged, Jorgeson came over. “We lost her, Lieutenant. We spotted her in that jam of people across the street, and tried to sort of surround her without her noticing, but it didn’t work so well. That dame can scamper like a frightened puppy, and the uniformed officer couldn’t bring himself to tackle someone who resembles his grandmother. Said it was too cruel.”
Peter glanced at me, then stood up and pulled Jorgeson a few steps away. ‘Does the uniformed officer with the unsullied conscience realize this woman is wanted in a murder investigation, that she may well have poisoned two people in the last eight days?” he said loudly enough to be heard over “Flaunt Thy Feathers, Falcons” or whatever. “Tell him to report to me in one hour. Now, alert all the patrol cars to watch for her on the sidewalk in at least a six-block radius.”
Jorgeson saluted with one finger and hurried away to do as ordered, the back of his neck noticeably red against his navy jacket. Peter sat down next to me, harrumphed under his breath like an asthmatic whale, and stared fiercely at the rows of boy scouts straggling in front of us.
