The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders (18 page)

But the next morning my sore throat was gone and Augusta—thank goodness—was angelic enough not to say “I told you so!”

The basket-weaving ladies visited with the girls in the classroom while a few of us carried their supplies inside, and Joy Ellen laughed when I told her about Tommy Jack Evans's comeuppance the day before. “Poor Tommy Jack! He really blew it this time, but you know what? He's probably telling the truth.”

She leaned closer as we walked. “We had another surprising development last night,” she whispered. “When the Drama Club met to assess their festival earnings, Shameka Dawson swore she'd taken that Frankenstein dummy down.”

“Down where?” I asked.

Joy Ellen shook her head at me. “From the Tree House. Shameka was in charge of putting it away, but she and her friends were in a huge hurry to get to a party at the university, so she just untied it and left it on the platform. After all, it was only some old stuffed clothes and a mask.”

I remembered Augusta's warning of the night before. “Do you think somebody
put it back up?
”

She nodded. “Somebody who knew Londus couldn't stand loose ends. They found a half-filled trash bag on the platform, too. Looks like whoever did it wasn't taking any chances. Probably left a trail of litter on the Tree House steps to lure him up there.”

So rested he by the Tumtum tree, and stood awhile in thought…

Miriam Platt waited at the door to tell me the same thing. “Do you believe Professor Hornsby killed Londus, Miss Lucy?”

I said I couldn't think of a reason he would, unless the janitor “knew something on him.”

“Sounds more like something his wife would do,” Miriam said. “She was the one who was sneaking around in the middle of the night.” Miriam helped me lift the basket of oak splits to a table. “I heard the police let her go, but they told her not to leave town. Looks like the professor's gonna be in there awhile. Wonder if she'll wait for him. I wouldn't.”

And neither would I, but I wouldn't have come looking for that manuscript, either. I still couldn't figure out why she did it.

For the next hour and a half we wove baskets and laughed at stories until our fingers hurt and our sides ached. Annie's specialty was scary tales: witches who shed their skin and flew up the chimney, ghosts that couldn't cross water. I had heard one of her stories from my grandmother. It happened over a hundred years ago, she said, to a girl who one dark night took a dare to stick a knife into a grave. When she bent over to shove it through the dirt, it pierced the hem of her long dress, and the poor girl thought the dead person had reached up and grabbed her. She died of fright right then and there. Both Mimmer and Annie swore it was true.

Annie's sister Willie told funny stories about people she knew, like the old woman who was caught without her teeth when the preacher came to call, and the two neighbor ladies who competed for the same man's affections by cooking him good things to eat until he got so fat neither one of them would have him.

During the time they were there, Augusta had observed closely and laughed at the stories along with the rest of us, and I didn't think anyone had been aware of her until the sisters took their leave.

“I didn't want to say nothin' in front of them girls,” Annie whispered as I walked with them to their car, “but I sensed a spirit back there in that room—a good spirit, mind you, so you got no cause to worry; but I'll be John Brown if I didn't hear her laugh…and she smelled just like strawberries.”

After class Augusta and I went over to Emma P. Harris Hall to collect Leslie's study lamp and some of the other things Nettie thought she might need. Augusta had suggested we take Blythe a jar of the chow-chow, so as soon as I had stowed Leslie's things in my car we dropped in for an impromptu visit.

Blythe's two cats, Miranda and Mabel, tried to wrap themselves around my ankles when I stepped inside, and I had to spend an equal time admiring each. Blythe had been going through her recipe file before we arrived, and I saw what looked like the ingredients for a congealed fruit salad assembled on her kitchen counter.

“I thought I'd have Willene over for dinner tomorrow,” she said. “She's moving back into her own place, you know, and I wanted to welcome her home.” Blythe frowned at the slightly bent recipe card and held it at arm's length. “See if you can make this darn thing out, will you? This was Aunt Dorothy's Sunday standby, but I haven't made it in ages.”

I read the ingredients aloud. “Where are your glasses?”

“I think they're in there on the end table, but they get so steamed up and smudged when I cook, I don't like to wear them.” Blythe opened a can of pineapple and measured the juice. “Did you say six or eight ounces of liquid?”

“Eight.”

She muttered something under her breath. “Well, drat it, Lucy! I can't even read the measurements. Better bring me the blasted things.”

I sneaked a look at Augusta, who seemed to be getting more nearsighted by the day, yet steadfastly refused to admit it. Just last week she had sworn she saw a billy goat in the yard across the street and I had to take her over there to prove it was a planterful of ivy. “Vanity! Vanity!” I mouthed in her direction. Naturally she ignored me.

I finally located the bifocals among an array of quaint relatives on the cluttered end table. Above it on the wall hung a sepia portrait of a family gathering in a carved wooden frame. The house behind them was like many homes of that period, a two-story frame with whirls of Victorian trim; a cedar tree in the side yard reached the top of the gable. The photograph looked a lot like some I'd seen in our own family album: children in blousy white clothing sitting cross-legged on the lawn; small-waisted ladies with hair swept high; solemn men with bad haircuts and bushy mustaches.

I handed Blythe the eyeglasses. “Your old family home looks like the one where my daddy grew up. Do you know when it was taken?”

“Don't you just love it?” Blythe dumped pecans into a bowl. “That was made right around the turn of the last century, I think, and the house was somewhere in Columbia—long gone now, of course.” She put on bifocals and studied the recipe. “That's my grandmother on the end. Bet she didn't weigh more than ninety pounds.”

I snatched a stray pecan. “Disgusting, isn't it? But then they didn't have pizza.”

“Listen! What's that?” Blythe put a warning hand on my arm.

I heard running footsteps in the hall and somebody pounded on the door. “Aunt Shug, come quick! Something awful's happened!”

Debra Hodges stood outside the door looking like she would crumble if you touched her. “Oh, Miss Lucy, am I glad to see you. Hurry—please!” She latched onto my arm and pulled me into the hall. “It's Celeste. She's gotten one of those horrible Jabberwocky poems!”

“That's it!” Kemper Mungo said to his cousin. “You're coming home.”

Again we had collected in the shabby lounge at Emma P. Harris Hall, and Celeste, who sat next to me on the sofa, slowly raised her eyes. “Whatd'ya mean by that?”

“Just what I say. This has gone far enough. You're on somebody's hit list, Celeste, and until we find out who's responsible, you're not safe at Sarah Bedford.” The muscles in Kemper Mungo's face were as taut as a banjo string, and the expression in his eyes, just plain scary.

Blythe sat on the other side of Celeste with an arm about her shoulders. “Your cousin's right, but Thanksgiving holidays are less than three weeks away. Maybe we can work something out between now and then.” She looked from Kemper to Captain Hardy with an expression that begged for understanding.

“She could commute,” I suggested. “Leslie's driving over here every day from Nettie's. Couldn't they come together?” I looked at the frail girl who sat across from us fiddling with her car keys. “What do you think, Leslie?”

She smiled slightly. “I'd be glad of the company.”

This was not the best of situations for somebody with Leslie's emotional problems, but the detective had asked her to stay since she had been there when Celeste collected her mail.

Kemper paced the floor, shaking his head. He cast a long shadow. “That's not good enough. What's to stop them from getting to you during the day?”

Captain Hardy said something to Sergeant Acree, then turned to Celeste. “I believe we can come up with a plan to at least allow you to attend classes safely.”

Celeste seemed relieved and started to say something, but her cousin still scowled. “When Weigelia hears about this, Vesuvius will sound like a burp in comparison!” he said. “I don't know what we can do unless I go to classes with her myself.”

“God forbid he should learn anything,” Celeste whispered aside to me.

The captain spoke in a low, calm voice. “This might be the next-best thing,” he said. “We'll assign a plainclothes police-woman to accompany Celeste on campus. Sue Starnes. She's new to the force and looks young enough so that nobody should question it.”

“I thought this creep was locked up,” Celeste said. “How did he manage to put that in my mailbox?”

“Somebody else could have done it,” I said.

“Like Monica Hornsby. She's out and about again, I hear.” It was obvious Celeste meant this for the captain.

“When was the last time you collected your mail?” he asked.

Celeste frowned as she thought. “About a week ago, I guess. Probably last Friday. My sister lives here in Stone's Throw and we talk on the phone three or four times a week, and I see my boyfriend on weekends. There really isn't a reason for anybody to write.”

“A lost art,” Blythe said, looking rather sad about it.

“In that case, Clay Hornsby could've been the one to put it there,” Kemper said. “He wasn't arrested until Monday.”

“But why? What does he have against me?” Celeste directed this to her cousin, as though he might have the answers. “I mean I understand the problem with the stolen manuscript, or the thing with D.C. getting out of hand. I can even see why he might've killed poor old Londus if he thought he knew something…but what have I done? It doesn't make sense.”

Her roommate, Debra, had been sitting quietly on the arm of the sofa looking in need of moral support, and I would have given her some if I'd had it to spare. When she spoke, I almost had to strain to hear. “What if they've arrested the wrong person?” she said.

Blythe shook her head and sighed. “Well, at least this should be the end of it.”

“What do you mean?” Celeste asked.

“I looked up those verses in the library when all this came about, and if they're taken in order, this should be the last one except for a repeat of the first verse at the end,” Blythe explained. “Of course none of them make any sense.”

“Amen to that,” Kemper said. “Had to read that thing in high school. Went on far too long if you ask me.”

“So if you count backward, discounting the first and last verses, Carla Martinez must've gotten the third one—the verse that mentions the Tumtum tree, but there's a verse
before
that one. Could there have been another victim we don't know about?” I asked the captain. “And was the verse Celeste got from the same book as the others? The same typeface and all?”

He hesitated, and I knew he was wrestling with the decision to answer me. Finally he relented. “As far as I can tell it is. A copy like the other two, not an actual page from a book.”

Kemper finally sat down—much to my relief, and everyone else's, too, I imagine. “The envelope—did it have your name on it?” he asked Celeste.

She shook her head. “No, it was blank.”

“Then how did—who distributes the mail around here?”

“Rosalee Burkhalter,” Blythe said.

“How did Rosalee Burkhalter know whose box to put it in?” he asked.

“Apparently she didn't,” Blythe told him. “But anybody can get back there. Girls leave messages in each other's boxes all the time. The door's never locked.”

Kemper turned to the detective. “Exactly what did this verse say?”

“Sergeant Acree copied it down.” Captain Hardy nodded to the young policeman, who flipped through his notepad looking glad for something to do. “Read it,” the captain said.

“And hast thou—” The young policeman turned red, then shrugged. “I'm afraid I can't pronounce all this.”

“Want me to try?” I held out my hand and he seemed relieved to turn over the notebook.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

Kemper glared at me. “You gonna tell me you know what that means?”

I threw up my hands. “Hey, I didn't write it. It's just nonsense verse. It's meant to poke fun.”

“Well, whoever's sending them is dead serious,” Captain Hardy said.

“I never was a scholar of Lewis Carroll's works,” Ellis admitted the following Monday, “but I don't think those verses mean a damn thing except some nutcase has a thing for jumbled verse and killing people.”

Nettie wet a finger to knot a thread. “The verses aren't the only thing that's jumbled. I think there's a twisted logic behind all this. Whoever is responsible is convinced it's for a reason.”

“Well, they're smart enough not to leave any prints,” I whispered aside to her. “Kemper said the only ones they found on the note were from Celeste and her roommate.”

My neighbor had stitched together the squares for our friendship quilt and added the backing. Now we gathered around the quilting frame she had set up in the back of Joy Ellen's classroom, where students sat elbow to elbow talking softly among themselves. Now and then a quilter let go with a muttered swear word when the thread broke or a finger was jabbed, and occasionally, laughter sprang in quiet little bunny hops around those clustered there.

Celeste sat at the far end serenely drawing her needle in and out in tiny straight stitches. Her “bodyguard,” Sue Starnes, sat a little apart from the rest of us sewing bright scraps together—for a pillow cover, she said. She was introduced as an interested student who was auditing the class, but I think everybody knew why she was really there.

Celeste had moved back home with Weigelia and her husband, Roy, over the weekend and would be commuting to class with Leslie until the police were convinced of Clay Hornsby's guilt, and her classmates had rallied around her. I saw one student I had considered to be a bit of a self-centered snob glance up at Celeste with a worried frown, then smile when their eyes met. Debra Hodges touched her roommate's arm and whispered something that made her laugh; and Celeste's fellow students surrounded her, I noticed, as they walked from one class to another.

At least one positive thing had come from all this, I thought. We were stitching together more than quilting squares here.

Finally Celeste herself came out and asked what some of us were reluctant to put into words. “Do you think it's an ethnic thing?” She looked around at the quilters, who suddenly became absorbed in their work. “I mean, I'm black, and one of the girls was Jewish.”

“If case you haven't noticed, I'm black, too,” one of the girls spoke up. “Does that mean I'm next?” She laughed. “With all the sisters here at Sarah Bedford, he's gonna have his work cut out for him!”

“And several of the girls here are Jewish,” Miriam Platt said. “But what about D.C.? Where did she fit in?”

The girl next to her made a face. “Do they have a category for pain in the butt?”

“D.C.
was
different, but in another way,” Joy Ellen said after the groaning subsided. “She must have been extremely unhappy—or lonely, to say the least.”

Celeste smoothed her stitches with a slender brown hand. “Maybe we shouldn't be talking about her. After all, the poor girl
is
dead.”

“And she's just as unlikable now as she was when she was alive,” Miriam said, snipping off her thread.

“I wonder if Celeste might have a point,” I said to Ellis after class. “Carla Martinez was probably of Hispanic heritage. Maybe there's more here than we realized. Could we be dealing with some kind of kooky white supremacist? Somebody who's pinpointing at random students of different ethnic groups?”

“No way! Think about it, Lucy Nan. D. C. Hunter was as white bread as they come. It all comes down to that confounded Jabberwocky thing.”

Nettie was riding home with her niece and Celeste, and Ellis and I had stopped at the campus snack shop to get a sugar fix. In the process of growing up together, the two of us had progressed from jawbreakers and BB Bats to anything chocolate, with or without ice cream on top.

Now Ellis licked chocolate sauce from the back of her spoon. “There are other verses,” she reminded me. “You told me yourself it might have started even before that girl fell from the Tree House.”

“Probably, but who would know?”

“What about that lady who lives in the dorm? Maybe she would remember,” Ellis suggested.

“Blythe? She hasn't been here that long, and she wasn't even in town when Carla Martinez was killed.” I polished off my cookies and cream. “Who do we know who goes
way
back…”

Ellis hesitated with her spoon in midair.
“What? Who?
You've thought of somebody. Tell me!”

I smiled. “Dean Holland. He spends most of his time in La-La Land, but Blythe says he can quote “The Thanatopsis” word for word. Remember that thing? It goes on forever. Maybe he can tell us something about the Jabberwocky.”

“Do you think we could get Augusta to go with us?” Ellis asked.

“Just try and keep me away,” a voice behind us said.