A Conventional Corpse Page 5

  I hadn’t intended to take custody until after the reception, but I nodded. “Does he have any special dietary requirements or preferences?”

  She told me the brand name of a catfood that cost as much as ground sirloin, adding that he could eat as many as six cans a day. She did not offer to pay for them. After making a few kissy noises through the mesh screen of the carrier, she handed it to me and started for the patio.

  Feeling like a native in a safari movie, I trailed after her. “I’m taking the cat,” I called to Lily as I went past her desk, told Sherry Lynne I would be ever vigilant in matters concerning Wimple’s physical and emotional well-being, and was placing the carrier in the backseat of my car when Caron came huffing and puffing up the sidewalk.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded, red-faced from a combination of exertion and indignation, with an emphasis on the latter. “Inez was supposed to leave the car in the student parking lot at school. In that Everyone Else at Farber High except me has a car, it took me a long time to make sure it wasn’t in some obscure corner behind a pickup truck. Sixth period had already started, so I couldn’t burst into her algebra class and ask her where the car was. I called the bookstore but nobody answered. I finally decided to walk over here and find out if Inez had totally screwed up.” She sank down on the low rock wall. “I’m all sweaty, and my mascara is literally dribbling down my face. Any minute now Louis Wilderberry will drive by and see me glistening like a professional wrestler. With my luck, Rhonda will be with him. I can just hear her telling everybody how hideous I looked. I might as well kill myself socially, if not literally. Remind Inez to weep at my gravesight once a week.”

  “Leap into the car,” I said. “It’s your only hope.”

  “What about the authors milling around at the airport?”

  “They’ve already checked in. We encountered a problem with Laureen Parks. By the time I got it straightened out, Inez had to race back to school. I picked up the others.”

  “Do I still get paid?” Caron asked with a calculating look. “I should get a bonus, you know. It may not feel all that hot to you, but you didn’t have to walk up a three-block hill that’s steeper than Mount Everest. I thought I was going to faint before I got to the top. My head was spinning and my tongue was swollen—”

  A yowl from the backseat interrupted the description of her close brush with death. “We have a houseguest,” I said quickly, “but just until Sunday afternoon.”

  “A banshee? Good work, Mother.”

  “The Azalea Inn guarantees a hypoallergenic environment, as in no cat hairs in the carpet. As soon as we get the boxes of books loaded in the back, I’ll drop you and said guest at home. Put him in the porch off the kitchen and make sure the screen-door is latched. Give him some water and a can of tuna fish. I’ll have to go to the grocery store after the reception to buy his preferred brand of exceedingly expensive gourmet catfood. I’m afraid you won’t be able to go to college after all, dear, but perhaps you can become a veterinarian’s assistant or a dog groomer.”

  “You are not funny,” she muttered. “You know cats make me nervous, and the last thing I want to do is break out. I’m not about to so much as let it out of that cage.”

  I parked behind the Book Depot. “Technically, you’ll be doing it for the conference, so I’ll see that you get paid. Let’s get moving—I’m scheduled to meet a maintenance person at four o’clock.”

  Caron continued to mutter during the fifteen minutes it took to load the boxes, but the specter of cash precluded an outright rebellion. When I pulled up to the curb in front of the duplex, she gingerly took the carrier and trudged up the sidewalk to the front porch.

  “Make sure the door’s latched,” I called, then drove to the campus. The bells of Old Main were tolling as I stopped at the loading entrance. A man in a khaki jumpsuit was sitting on the far side of the concrete dock, smoking a misshapen yellow cigarette. As I opened the car door, he stood up and turned around.

  His eyes widened and a broad, gap-toothed grin spread across his face. “Yo, Senator! How’s tricks these days?”

  “Arnie,” I said with a great deal less enthusiasm. Some days it doesn’t pay to get up. Period.

  Chapter

  4

  Arnie was among the more ignominious of the great unwashed, in matters of both personal hygiene and ethics. His black hair, partially hidden by a greasy blue baseball cap, did not look as though it had been washed since our last skirmish, when he’d been caught peeping through windows at the Kappa Theta Eta sorority house next door to my duplex. I’d first encountered him when he’d been hired to drive a beauty pageant queen and a state senator in a Thurberfest parade. He’d shown up drunk, forcing me to take over, and he’d never quite sobered up enough to figure out my role in the fiasco. I’d long since quit trying to explain the political realities to him. His alcoholic haze was as impenetrable as his pungency.

  “You know, Senator,” he continued with a hiccup, “I was thinking about you the other night when I was watching C-Span and they were talking about the Asian economic crisis. Do you realize how much it’s gonna take to bail out the Japanese?”

  I opened the hatchback. “Do you have a dolly?”

  He sucked on his lip for a moment. “Come to think of it, I brought one with me like I was supposed to, but not ten minutes ago some frat boys offered me a tidy sum for it. Something about moving kegs of beer. Maintenance has lots of them, so I figured nobody’d notice. Dollies, that is—not kegs or frat boys. Pardon my imprecision.”

  “Okay, Arnie,” I said, sighing, “I’ll set the boxes on the platform and you can carry them inside. Do you have a key to Room 130?”

  He jangled a heavily-laden key ring at me. “I have keys to everything on the whole darn campus, including the college president’s skybox at the football stadium. I’ve been living there since the season ended. It’s got all the amenities, including a TV set, a bathroom, and a little refrigerator. I nailed a blanket over the window so no one will notice a fight at night. The carpet’s an ugly shade of mauve, but I’ve learned to put up with it. I’m hoping it’ll be remodeled next season. I’m partial to earth tones, like chestnut and Saharan sand.”

  I stared at him. “You’re kidding?”

  “Senator, have I ever been anything but honest with you? Just don’t go spreading it around.”

  Arnie had been anything but honest with me, but I let it go. “I don’t have time to unpack the boxes—and I’d better not find any of them opened when I get here in the morning. You wouldn’t want to find a horde of campus cops pounding on the door of your cozy little aerie, would you? There should be a table in the back of the room. Stack the boxes on it, and make sure you lock the door when you’re finished.” As I set the first box on the dock, I gave him a hard look. “And if some frat boys wander by and discover a sudden yearning for popular fiction, give them directions to the Book Depot as opposed to free samples. Got it?”

  “I am wounded that you could say such things, Senator,” Arnie said, wiping his eyes with a grubby handkerchief, “considering all we’ve been through together. Someday in the future you’ll look back on this moment and remember what you said to Arnie Riggles, a constituent and loyal supporter, and be overwhelmed with remorse.”

  ‘Trust me, Arnie,” I said as I unloaded another box, “should I ever look back on this moment—and that won’t happen until well into this new millennium—I won’t even be whelmed.”

  I left Arnie scowling at the boxes and drove to the Azalea Inn. Had I dared think things would go smoothly? Hubris, thy middle name is Malloy. Thus far, everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. The last thing left was the weather, and damned if raindrops weren’t splattering my windshield as I parked.

  April showers bring many things—flowers, income tax forms, Easter, and daylight savings, for example—but they do keep people inside. I eased my way through bodies clotting the hallway, doing my best not to make parallels with Sally Fromberger’s veins and clumps
of flaxen-hued cholesterol. Lily looked a bit tense when I found her behind a serving table with trays that had been ravaged, leaving only limp sprigs of parsley and crumbles of cheese. Wine bottles littered the tables like a defoliated glass forest.

  I spotted a bottle with a few inches of its contents intact. As I looked around for a cup, I said, “Are any of the people on the organizing committee here? I should recognize them, but I missed a lot of meetings.”

  Like all of them.

  “No,” Lily said shrilly, “and Dr. Shackley called to say he and his wife were detained at a cocktail party. Sally assured me that she would handle registration at the door, but not one person affiliated with the organization of this conference has so much as said hello. I did not agree to be in charge of this behemoth!”

  I poured myself a glass of what proved to be rosé. I dislike rosé. “And our authors?”

  “They’re out there,” she said, swiping her hand at the bodies mingling in the same fashion as salmon spawning in the immediate upstream. “People were supposed to present reception tickets at five o’clock. At four-thirty, they stormed the door. I asked to see badges or proof of registration, but they would not be held back. We could be feeding the homeless.”

  “The Thurber Farber Food Foundation can afford it,” I said, then assessed the sunroom. Laureen Parks had appropriated an antique wicker chair that resembled a throne, and was surrounded by admirers, some of whom were literally sitting at her feet. Dilys Knoxwood was deep in conversation with a man in a clerical collar, undoubtedly debating the scruples (or lack thereof) of the bishop in her last book. Walter Dahl was slumped in a less-imposing chair in a corner, slurping red wine and gazing morosely at what I presumed he saw as the moral decay of the tatters of societal integrity. Sherry Lynne Blackstone appeared to be having a lovely time with her fans, although I noted that she was drinking club soda and taking surreptitious peeks at her wristwatch.

  This left only one author unaccounted for. I stuck my head out the back door, but the garden was uninhabited. Not remarkable, since the rain had proceeded from spitty to steady. I made my way down the hall to the sitting room, where I spotted Allegra Cruzetti perched on a sofa, hemmed in on three sides by aspiring authors eager to know how to get an agent. Her face seemed pale in comparison with what I’d seen at the airport, and her eyelashes were flickering faster than bat wings.

  I forced my way into the room. “Okay,” I said loudly, “let’s save these questions for tomorrow, please. Ms. Cruzetti has been traveling all day. She deserves a chance to relax and get her bearings before she’s peppered with questions.”

  They quieted down, and after exchanging contrite looks, left the room. Allegra looked up with a grateful smile.

  “It was getting tight in here,” she said. “I’m used to having people from the publicity department nearby to keep the crowds at a civilized distance. I wouldn’t have agreed to do this conference if I’d been warned that I was on my own and at the mercy of . . . well, fans . . .”

  “Why did you agree to do it?” I asked bluntly.

  “My editor was enthusiastic at the prospect. I’m not sure why, though. I certainly can’t expect to draw the crowds I did in Atlanta and New York. I’d hoped to spend the next few weeks at my condo in Jackson Hole, doing nothing more strenuous than gazing at the mountains from my hot tub, but Roxanne was insistent that I come.” She began to twist a comer of one of her scarfs around her finger. “I’m hardly in a position to argue with her. If she hadn’t gone to bat for my book, it would have drifted in and out like a wave on a deserted beach. She worked hard with me, demanding revisions and helping me add secondary plot lines that initially seemed only tangential, but the bottom line is that she was right. I owe my success to her.”

  “You most certainly do,” said a honied voice from the hallway. “Allegra, darling, how are you holding up?”

  Allegra gasped, as though she were one of the salmon that had inadvertently flopped onto the shore. “Roxanne?”

  “C’est moi” said a fragile ash-blond woman as she swept into the room in a glitter of swirls and expensive jewelry. “I wanted to surprise you!” She bent over to kiss Allegra’s cheek. “How was the tour? Are you exhausted? I’d planned to meet you in Philadelphia, but my husband insisted that we go to Bermuda that very same weekend. Men are so—oh, I don’t know—immutable. Are you well?”

  “I suppose,” she responded without conviction.

  The woman turned to me. “I’m Roxanne Small, Allegra’s editor. I thought it would be fun to surprise her, as well as my other authors. Lily, and such a dear she is, has agreed to accommodate me for the weekend. It’s a veritable homecoming for me, as well as an opportunity to see my authors in action. You must be Sally. When I learned you were having this conference, I was thrilled. I did my master’s degree at this very college.”

  “Oh?” I said, obscurely wishing I were Sally, who was grazing on over-cooked green beans and Jell-O on a plastic tray and wondering when the IV bag might next be replaced.

  Roxanne gave me a look that indicated she was cutting me some slack for the moment. “My great-aunt had a farm a few miles out of town. I visited every summer, and for reasons I can never explain, I developed a fondness for the quaint, rustic ambiance of Farberville. My bachelor’s degree is from Radcliffe, but I have a master’s degree in literature from Farber College, if you can imagine the incongruity. And you, dear? Did you go to college?”

  She sounded as though she expected me to confess to a high school diploma in agronomy. “English lit,” I said, “mostly medieval.”

  “I never found Chaucer all that interesting,” Roxanne said dismissively. “Allegra, you look positively worn. Should you be in bed for the night?”

  “It’s five-thirty,” Allegra said with a trace of sullenness. “I can usually make it until seven, sometimes, eight.”

  Roxanne patted Allegra’s cheek with a bit more intensity than might be called for. “I can tell that you’re exhausted, you worn thing. I’m so excited that we’re here together in Farberville. I do hope you’ll have an hour of free time tomorrow so that I can show you Uncle Bediah’s farm. There was a tire swing on an old oak tree that has left an indelible mark on my memories of a carefree childhood.”

  She was dressed in a pastel blue suit that surely cost more than the antique credenza behind her. She wasn’t exactly gaunt, but it was hard to imagine she’d ever consumed more than a dozen calories at any one meal. Her shoulder-length hair brushed her shoulders, her complexion was dewy, her makeup applied by an expert hand. Small pockets of quilted softness were evident, however, and I put her age at thirty-five or more, despite the Alice-in-Wonderland packaging.

  “And,” she said breathlessly, “I understand that dear, dear Laureen Parks is here, as well as Sherry Lynne Blackstone and Dilys Knoxwood. Tomorrow night we must all put on our pajamas and have a party. I’m sure Sally here can arrange for chips and dip, sodas, cookies, and fingernail polish. It’s so wonderful to escape the suffocating sophistication of New York! There’s something so refreshing about the hinterlands!”

  I wondered if I could find a way to lure her to a particular skybox for a truly heady dose of the hinterlands. “I’m not Sally,’ I said. “She’s in the hospital. I’m Claire Malloy, the bookseller for the conference. I wish we’d known you were coming, Ms. Small. Many of our registrants hope to be published some day. They’d have been thrilled if we could have scheduled you for a session.”

  She clutched my hands. “That’s why I didn’t tell a soul. Fortunately, my husband is at a plastic surgeons’ symposium in Palm Springs, so he doesn’t even know I’m not spending the weekend reading dreary manuscripts in our apartment on Park Avenue. The idea of sneaking down here was too delightful to resist. The entire time the limo was taking me to the airport, I felt like a fifteen-year-old at summer camp, stealthily paddling across the moonlit lake to spy on the boys. I’m sure you must have similar memories, even though yours may involve more of a pond.”
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  I opted to disengage my hands and change the topic. “So you have a master’s degree from Farber College, Ms. Small? Is this the first time you’ve been back since then?”

  Allegra stood up before an answer was forthcoming. “This most definitely calls for another glass of wine. Shall I bring you one, Roxanne? Red or white?”

  She frowned. “A glass of Chardonnay might be nice, but I’ll fetch it myself. You wait here, and when I get back, we’ll have a long, lazy chat about your tour.” She looked at me. ‘Tours can be grueling, and Allegra was such a trouper. Media from dawn to midnight, bookstores, squealing fans, canceled flights, botched hotel reservations. I worried myself sick the entire time she was on the road. I was popping Prozac tablets as if they were candy.”

  “Allegra was telling me that you helped her with her manuscript,” I said to Roxanne as I led her toward the sunroom.

  “I’ve always been that kind of editor. Some of my colleagues simply buy the manuscripts and cross their fingers, but I work with my authors every step of the way. Rewrites, revisions, copyedit, and then final production. I talk with the art department, publicity, marketing, and sales to make sure Paradigm is doing everything appropriate for the end product, from print media to personal appearances. I’ve had eleven books on the New York Times best-seller list in the last five years. Quite a record, if I say so myself.”

  I opted not to point out that she herself had not actually written the books so warmly received by the book-buying public. “I can’t promise there’s any Chardonnay.”

  “I can tolerate Chablis, as long as it isn’t that California soda pop,” she said, then darted away to kiss Laureen Parks. “Darling, isn’t this a wonderful surprise?”

  Laureen recoiled, splashing wine on her skirt. “Roxanne?”