The Angel and the Jabberwocky Murders (24 page)

“What
is
that god-awful smell?”

“Watch out, it's oily—don't step in it!”

“Looks like somebody turned over a vat of crankcase grease. How did it get way over here?”

“Where's it coming from?”

“HERE!”
I screamed. “It's coming from
here!
Somebody please let me out of this closet—and hurry!”

I had to wait while one of them went back and looked for a key, which seemed to take forever. Meanwhile, one of the students who worked in the office stayed behind, to reassure me, I guess. “Ms. Harper was in here looking for you,” she said. “Must've been about half an hour ago. Said it was real important.”

“Do you know what she wanted?” The pine-tar fumes were getting to me and I tried to fan them away with the top of a cardboard box.

“Didn't say, just that it was real important. Are you all right, Ms. Pilgrim? You haven't been…well, hurt or anything, have you?”

“Look, don't worry about me. I'll be okay. But I want you to hurry now and call the police—and keep them on the line until I can talk with them. Tell them it's an emergency.” Maybe it wasn't too late to stop Blythe Cornelius.

A few minutes later I heard Violet Ambrose rattling keys in the lock. “What in the world is this vile stuff you've poured on my floor?” she said. “I almost broke my neck trying to straddle it—and God only knows what it's doing to the marble. I just hope it's not going to stain.”

I heard the blessed sound of the latch clicking and the door opened a little at a time, as if Violet were afraid to let me out all at once. “What on earth were you doing in there?” she said, stepping aside as I skidded into freedom.

“Contemplating my navel.”
You autocratic, clabber-faced old moth. Damn!
What was I going to do for car keys if Blythe had taken my purse? “Has anybody seen a brown shoulder bag?” I asked.

They hadn't, but after a hurried search somebody found it in the trash can just outside the front door, complete with everything but my cell phone
and the receipt for Leslie's package!

Captain Hardy had left for the day, the police dispatcher said, so I told Ed Tillman what had happened. I've known Ed since he and my son, Roger, played together as children and I knew he had a level head on his shoulders, but I doubted if he thought the same of me.

“You've got to stop her,” I said. “She's probably over halfway to Miss Corrie's by now. Somebody has to warn them!”

“Now slow down, Miss Lucy Nan, and start over,” Ed told me. And so I did, but I don't think he believed me…until I told him about the tape—my proof, of sorts. While Violet was trying keys in the door, I had taken it from its hiding place and I wasn't letting it out of my hands.

“Stay there, I'll be right over,” Ed told me. “And I'm putting in a call now to the sheriff up there—Alleghany County, isn't it? Meanwhile, why don't you get in touch with this woman, Corrie, and let them know what's going on? You have her number, don't you?”

I did. It was in the little notebook where I kept names of resource people for my history class and for activities at Bellawood, only the little notebook was in my office at the plantation. While Violet scurried about trying to find somebody to clean the floor, I got Corrie Walraven's number from the information operator and hoped I would reach her in time.

The line was busy. With Ed's help, I persuaded the operator to interrupt the call and found myself talking to somebody named Gladys who was on Miss Corrie's party line. “Oh, Lord, yes, I'll free the line, honey! Is anything wrong? Corrie's not sick, is she? Anything I can do?”

Just hang up, I told her, and give me a chance to call. And she did. I had a strong suspicion Gladys would listen in, but it didn't matter because nobody answered the telephone at the little gray house on the mountain.

I called again. And again. Fear and frustration rose like boiling water inside me until I thought I might explode. And that was how Joy Ellen found me. I hadn't had a chance to call her, but somebody else had, and now she came running in looking bleached but unironed, so I guessed she'd heard all the details.

“What's all this about Blythe?” she asked after she saw I was still in one piece. “Leslie Monroe called looking for you and left a crazy message with my student assistant.”

“Leslie? When? What did she say?”

Joy Ellen looked at her watch. “Oh, about two hours ago, I guess. I didn't see it until I got back to my office after class, and she didn't leave a number. I've been looking all over town for you—knew you couldn't have gone far since your car's still here. What in hell's going on, Lucy?”

I told her as much as I knew. “What did Leslie say? Blythe couldn't have reached her that soon. That was before she knew where to find her.”

Joy Ellen plunked herself on a bench outside the dean's office and shrugged out of her jacket. “Said she remembered something about Blythe…the night before D.C. was killed.”

I paced in front of her, too antsy to sit. “Well, what about her?”

“Leslie said she remembered seeing Blythe knocking at D.C.'s door that night. It was kind of hot, she said, and she was lying in bed with her door open trying to get to sleep when she heard somebody walk past.”

“How did she know it was Blythe?”

“Not much doubt about it. Leslie had left a note on Blythe's door asking her to check on D.C. because she was in such an emotional state, then D.C.'s door opened and Blythe went on inside. Didn't stay long, but Leslie said she could hear them talking. After a few minutes, Blythe went on back downstairs.”

“Then later Blythe claimed she hadn't seen D.C. that night, so Leslie must have known she was lying,” I said. “That must have been when Blythe gave D.C. the fictitious message that her lover would meet her in the old shed.

“But why didn't Leslie say something about this before?” I asked, listening to Miss Corrie's telephone ringing on and on.

“D.C. had been gone for at least a couple of days before anybody became concerned,” Joy Ellen said. “And then we didn't know what had happened until the girls came upon her there in that old stone shed, remember?”

“Remember? How could I ever forget?”

“Blythe told the police she'd only left the infirmary to get that sick girl some pajamas,” Joy Ellen continued. “Claimed she didn't see D.C. that morning at all.” She shrugged. “Maybe Leslie thought she'd just imagined seeing her—dreamed it or something.”

Leslie couldn't let herself believe their beloved Aunt Shug could possibly have had anything to do with D.C.'s death, and no doubt did her best to block the idea out of her mind—yet her mind had trouble accepting it. Soon after that happened, Leslie began having a recurrence of her emotional problems. Now the fear for her life, the awful threat hanging over her must have jarred her back to rationality.
Leslie Monroe saw what she saw, heard what she heard, and now she knew the truth.

I sat with my hand on the telephone. There was no use calling anymore. Miss Corrie wasn't there. Maybe she and Nettie had taken Leslie somewhere for safety's sake. And Augusta would be nearby. Oh, God, I hoped so!

I stayed long enough to give my story and Londus Clack's taped conversation to Ed Tillman. He had contacted the Alleghany County Sheriff, he told me, and Captain Hardy was on his way over, but Ed already knew everything I had to say and the tape would tell the rest. Nettie McGinnis had been like a second mother to me since we moved into the house next door over twenty years before, and I was responsible for sending Nettie and her niece to Miss Corrie's. If anything happened to either of them, I didn't think I could bear it.

“I need your cell phone,” I whispered, taking Joy Ellen aside.

“Why? What for?” she bellowed.

I explained, as quietly as I could, what I planned to do. “It may be too late to warn them, but I have to try. I want you to tell Ed I'm in the rest room,” I said. “Tell him I'm not feeling well…tell him I have a galloping gallbladder—I don't care, but try to stall him as long as you can.”

Joy Ellen gave my shoulder a squeeze as she put the phone into my hand. “Good luck—and be careful!” she said under her breath.

I had no idea what kind of car Blythe drove, so I made a quick stop at Willene Benson's before leaving town. She met me at the door with a puzzled smile. “Lucy! Come in and see what I'm going to put in that lovely frame you gave me.”

I didn't have time to pad the blow. I told her what Blythe had done, and what I
thought
she had done as quickly as I could. “What kind of car does she drive, Willene? I want to be on the lookout for her.”

She stammered the description so I had to ask her to repeat it. If I had slapped the woman I don't think she would have been more stunned. “It's a Buick—tan, I believe. I'm afraid I don't know the year. Why, it hasn't been much more than an hour since she phoned me, Lucy. Asked me if I'd feed her cats for a day or so. Seemed sort of abrupt, I thought, but then Blythe has been acting a little strange lately…and did you notice that print in the frame you gave me? It's the very same one she has in her living room…”

I gave her Joy Ellen's cell phone number so she could call me if she happened to hear from Blythe again, and she was still rambling as she followed me out the door. “…still, I can't believe Blythe could be capable of killing anyone! Are you sure about this, Lucy? That has to be a mistake.”

“Lock your doors!” I called to her as I hurried to the car. If Blythe were to phone her I wondered if Willene would tell her she had seen me.

Although Joy Ellen had given me her word she would try to stall the local police as long as possible, I stiffened whenever a car approached, prepared for sirens and blinking lights. I had promised Ed Tillman I would wait for him, and neither he nor Captain Hardy were going to be happy about me taking things into my own hands. It was dark when I drove past the turnoff to Kings Mountain where Ben and I had picnicked days before. How different it was from the last trip to Miss Corrie's for our afternoon of soap-making, when it had seemed more like a family outing than a class field trip. Now, as I sped through sleeping farmland, I felt a gray chill inside and out. Tonight I was alone, and I was frightened. “What am I going to find when I get there?” I asked aloud.

“I can't answer that, but whatever it is, we'll face it together,” a voice spoke beside me. Augusta!

“Am I glad to see you! But what made you come back?” If I hadn't been driving, I would have hugged her. “And is Leslie all right? I haven't been able to reach them.”

“They reached their destination safely, and I lingered long enough to see that they weren't in any immediate danger. Corrie Walraven is a capable woman and a kind one as well. When I left they were picking out nut meats for an applesauce cake.” Augusta rolled down her window and let the wind blow her autumn-gold hair.

“But Blythe Cornelius is on her way there,” I said. “Augusta, she means to kill Leslie! Leslie needs your protection more than I do right now.”

The angel nodded. “I'm aware of that, Lucy Nan, but you are my first priority, and I sensed that something was dreadfully amiss back at the college.”

“That would be putting it mildly,” I said, and told her about being locked in the closet in Sarah Bedford's Main Hall. “You must have heard me hollering,” I joked.

“I try to keep my nose to the ground and my ear to the grindstone,” she said, adjusting the mirror on the car's visor.

That sounded extremely painful to me, but I was currently concentrating on the turnoff for Interstate 40 in Hickory, North Carolina, and so I let it pass. I had thought briefly of phoning Eva Jean Philbeck to ask if she remembered Blythe Cornelius, but I didn't want to take the time. I hoped that her family was safe, and was glad I hadn't told anyone there remained another living victim of Blythe's deranged scheme.

We drove past farmhouses set back from the road and framed by dark silhouettes of trees. The lights from their windows looked warm and inviting and I couldn't help but feel a bit envious. “I suppose families are gathered around their supper tables—safe and together,” I pointed out, “and here we are driving blindly into only God knows what.”

“That assumption is correct,” Augusta said, closing her window against the chilly night. “You do, however, possess the power and intelligence to make wise choices, Lucy Nan…and, of course, you have me.”

I thought about my children, Roger and Julie, and of how important they were in my life, and of how I looked forward to watching Teddy grow up. “Well, if anything happens to me, I'm going to really be pissed to miss out on the rest of my life,” I replied.

“That's exactly why I'm here, but you must be aware that you're responsible for your own decisions,” Augusta said. “And using vulgar language doesn't add to your advantage.”

“Huh!” I said, and glanced over to find her smiling. “I don't suppose you told anyone where you were going,” she added.

“Then you suppose wrong. Every police department between Stone's Throw and Alleghany County probably knows where I am by now. I just hope no one has mentioned it to Roger.” My son was the more protective of our two children and I didn't have the time or the inclination to explain my actions on a daily basis. And Ben wasn't going to be thrilled about it, either, I thought. Well, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. He would be there if I needed him. And that was enough.

Near Statesville we merged into the main highway, Interstate 77, which would take us closer to where both Virginia and Tennessee border North Carolina before we turned off on Highway 21. There the road became steeper, climbing past stubbled fields and into woodlands.