Free OUT ON A LIMB by Joan Hess Page B

failed to notice I was pregnant and given birth to Skyler while reading a mystery novel.
    The morning crawled by minute by minute. A few students purchased the slim yellow study guides that just might get them a passing grade in their lit classes. A sorority girl admitted she had no idea what was on her reading list, so I loaded her up with paperbacks that she would never read. Sally Fromberger went by twice, dressed in a utilitarian raincoat and a plastic bonnet.
    By half past twelve, I was staring at the telephone. Anthony Armstrong’s death was none of my concern. I was worried only about Miss Parchester, whose sturdy shoes might begin to squish as the rain continued, but all I wanted to hear was that she’d come down from the tree and gone to her house in a quaint neighborhood in the historic district. Finnigan Baybergen had sworn he would send her up the key.
    The telephone finally rang. “What?” I said as I snatched up the receiver.
    “Breathe deeply,” Luanne said, then refused to answer my disjointed questions until I subsided. “Jessica doesn’t know much. Adrienne found Anthony’s body when she arrived home last night at midnight. He’d been shot twice in the chest. She called 911. We may or may not hear the tape on the six o’clock news, depending on the whim of the prosecutor’s office. She has been questioned, as has another family member. Jessica’s hair, by the way, looked as though she’d draped a weasel over her head.”
    “Another family member?” I said.
    “That’s about it.”
    “And Miss Parchester?”
    “None of that came up. Adrienne choked out a few sentences, then dashed away when her mascara began to dribble.”
    “Why did she come home at midnight?” I asked.
    “She didn’t say,” Luanne said with an exasperated sigh. “Don’t you have enough to deal with as it is? You are not Nancy Drew.”
    I gazed at the rack of mystery novels. “I could have been, if I’d had a blue roadster and a boyfriend named Ned Nickerson.”
    “Why don’t you worry about a boyfriend named Peter?”
    “One of these days, I will,” I said uncomfortably. “Have you heard from Caron?”
    “Six times, thus far. Is this the first time she’s ever laid eyes on a baby? I used to baby-sit every weekend before I went off to boarding school. The pay wasn’t much, but the perks were good once the brats were in bed. I experimented with every brand of makeup available in the poshest department stores, as well as a few outfits. Some of those silk negligees were downright scandalous.”
    “I’m one hundred percent cotton,” I said. “Can you see after Caron and Skyler?”
    “Cheeseburgers and shakes in half an hour. We’ll have a diaper drill before we go. Listen, Claire—Anthony Armstrong’s death is none of your business. It’s likely that Miss Parchester will come down from the tree now that the project is halted until all this is resolved.”
    In that I can be a patient woman when I choose, I waited forty-five minutes before I hung up the Closed sign and drove to Phase Two. The KFAR van was not present. A few unprepossessing cars were parked in the lot. Signs alerting us that we were trespassing had been placed along the back of the parking lot. The rain had stopped, but the sky remained gray and unfriendly.
    “Miss Parchester?” I called as I approached the tree. “How are you?”
    Howie emerged from behind a building and cut me off. “Don’t make me have you arrested,” he said. “Everybody gets mad at me, especially Miss Parchester. I’m just doing my job, you know.”
    “And how many noble souls have been arrested thus far?”
    “One yesterday afternoon, and three more later. I was warned to expect a lot more today. I guess the rain’s been keeping them away.”
    “But Anthony Armstrong is no longer issuing orders,” I pointed out.
    “The word I got is to keep seeing that trespassers are arrested and taken to the police station,” he said. “Mr. Armstrong’s wife