Free Caught Dead in Philadelphia by Gillian Roberts

left again. I understan’ you usually spend that hour in the teachers’ lounge, but not yesterday.”
    â€œBecause I stopped smoking, and I didn’t want to be around—”
    â€œYou could go home and be back here in time for class.”
    â€œYou make me sound like a professional assassin! Don’t you need a motive?” I began to doubt my own innocence. I must be guilty to be treated this way.
    He shrugged. “It’ll appear. Eventually.”
    â€œListen, talk to Gus Winston. I had lunch with him. And then I saw him when I went down to the office. I’m sure he’ll remember.”
    â€œHe has. So what? There were about forty minutes in between. Anyway, why’d you find it necessary to leave your class unattended and go to the office?”
    â€œTo call Liza. To remind her where she should be. I was understandably furious. She’d done this before.”
    He pulled his feet off the desk and leaned toward me. “Let’s get this straight. You were angry with her, but at the same time you lied—white lie or what have you—to protect her?” He shook his head sadly. “Furthermore, it’s mah impression you called Fargo, North Dakota, not your home.”
    â€œHelga Putnam is so worried we’ll abuse the office—use up too many pencils or rubber bands or ditto masters, or make toll calls—that I said ‘Fargo’ just to hear her gasp. It was a joke.”
    â€œOr a sure-fahr way to make her remember where you were, then.”
    â€œLike an alibi?” I couldn’t believe this. “Do you really think I killed Liza Nichols?”
    He stood up to leave. He turned back to me when he reached the door, and he looked depressed. “I really think, Miss Peppah, that you ask too many questions and you don’t give nearly enough answers.”

Five
    Mackenzie left me alone. Maybe he hoped I’d take a cyanide tablet and lighten his caseload.
    I listened to the end-of-day noises in the outer office. Someone ran the duplicating machine. Someone laughed and dropped a ring of jangling keys.
    I spent seven minutes feeling sorry for myself, wishing I could retroactively cancel my decision to stop smoking. If my habit had only persisted one day longer, if I had only inhaled one user-friendly cigarette in the teachers’ lounge on Monday, at alibi time, I wouldn’t be on my way to the gallows. I never realized that not smoking could kill you, too.
    But seven minutes of rewriting history is long enough. There were no more sociable noises coming from outside Havermeyer’s stuffy office. Just the occasional taps of Helga Putnam’s typewriter.
    Luckily, my eleventh-grade class had completed
The Scarlet Letter
a few weeks earlier, and Hester Prynne was fresh on my mind. If she could walk the streets wearing her scarlet
A
, then I could face Igor out there.
    Helga eyed me slyly, lowering one eyelid, pursing her lips with distaste for my dastardly deeds, but I held my head high and glided toward the telephone. How inspiring, how useful, the classics could be.
    I wasn’t going to wait in the suburbs while Mackenzie shuffled and bumbled around. He didn’t seem too swift, and even with great detectives, there were cases that dragged on forever. This was going to be one of them if Mackenzie kept focusing on me. Meanwhile, I was getting back to my normal life. I dialed Beth’s number.
    â€œI’m staying home tonight,” I told her. “I love you and appreciate all you want to do, but home’s much easier and more convenient.”
    Beth made major use of words like “dangerous” and “foolish.” But Beth had always considered anything urban to be blighted.
    â€œBeth, thank you. I know you care, but if nothing else, I have to feed Macavity.”
    Back in my deserted classroom, I gathered up a textbook and the pile of sympathy notes I’d take to Liza’s mother. I straightened