Free Punish the Sinners by John Saul

a week his class won’t be any different from the others.”
    “I don’t know,” Judy said, suddenly thoughtful. “Janet says he’s completely different in Latin than he is in psychology. She says it’s like having two different teachers.”
    “Really?” Karen was suddenly curious. “What do you mean?”
    “I’m not sure,” Judy said. “I guess he teaches Latin the same way the nuns do, making you stand up to recite, and all that Janet says she thinks it’s because he doesn’t really know Latin very well, and he’s trying to cover up.”
    Karen giggled. “Maybe he’s just crazy, and he’s trying to cover that up by teaching psychology. Youknow what they say about psychologists—most of them need one.”
    Now both girls laughed, but in the middle of the laughter Judy thought she heard a click, as if someone had picked up the other phone in the kitchen,
    “Well, I have to go now,” she said, cutting into the laughter. She hoped Karen would pick up her signal. “So I’ll come over an hour earlier on Saturday, and help you get ready, all right?”
    There was a short silence while Karen tried to fathom why Judy was breaking off their conversation so suddenly. And then, with the antennae that teen-agers share, she knew what was happening. “That’ll be great,” she said. “If I can get Penny and Janet to come early too, it’ll almost be like having two parties. See you tomorrow.” She hung up the phone, congratulating herself on how quickly she had caught on and helped Judy fool whoever was eavesdropping on them.
       Judy Nelson replaced the phone on its cradle, then stuck her tongue out at the instrument, as if it had been responsible for her mother’s violation of what Judy regarded as a personal and confidential conversation.
    But the click she had heard had not been her mother picking up the downstairs phone; rather, it had been Inez finally replacing the receiver. Now she was back in the living room, and she was fuming. She glanced at her husband, and saw that he was still intent on the baseball game. Well, there wasn’t any use in trying to talk to him anyway. He would simply rebuke her for listening in on something that was none of her business, then tell her that, since tapping telephones is illegal, she couldn’t use anything she had heard against Judy. That, she thought, is what I get for marrying a lawyer. Purposefully, Inez moved to the stairway. George Nelson glanced up.
    “Going upstairs?” he said.
    “I have to talk to Judy,” Inez said, certain that if she told her husband what she was going to talk about, he would stop her. “It won’t take a minute.”
    “Tell her if she wants, I’ll beat her at backgammon in about a half hour,” George said. Then his eyes locked once more on the TV screen. Inez stared at him for a moment, then shook her head grimly. There would be no cozy games between father and daughter
this
evening, not if she had anything to do with it. She marched up the stairs, entered Judy’s room without knocking, and closed the door behind her.
    From the bed, Judy looked at her mother, and was about to complain about her having come in without knocking, when she realized something was wrong. Her mother was angry. And then she knew. The phone. The click hadn’t been her mother picking up the phone. It had been her mother hanging up. She had heard the wrong part of the conversation.
    “I see you know why I’m here,” Inez began. Judy weighed the chances of bluffing it out. Just how much had she said about the dress? She tried desperately to remember. Too much.
    “Do I?” Judy countered.
    “I think you do,” Inez could feel her temper rising. “I heard you talking to Karen just now.”
    Judy stared defiantly at her mother.
    “You bought that dress, didn’t you?” Inez demanded, her voice accusing.
    “Which one?” Judy stalled.
    “Don’t talk to me that way, young lady,” Inez snapped. “You know very well which one. The one I distinctly told