Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 07 (6 page)

“And if there was a brass plaque in the vestibule that said as much, nobody’d dare argue. It’s in everybody’s best interest to give those tourists places to see so they feel like they’re getting their money’s worth. You know what those tourists are going to need? A map showing all the important places. I’ll call the shop in Farberville and see what kind of deal they’ll give me.”

“What shop might that be, Sister Barbara?” Brother Verber asked meekly, embarrassed by a growing sense of his own ignorance in such matters as Matt’s baptism and maps of Maggody and whatever else she had in mind.

“The shop that’s doing the Tshirts, coffee mugs, place mats, coasters, and other high-class items. Didn’t I already explain I’ve taken a lease on the hardware store and am aiming to open a souvenir shoppe? I’ve always known I have a keen head for business and was just waiting for the perfect moment to share my God-given talent with the less fortunate. You get to work on that plaque, Brother Verber, and consider some sort of table with an offering plate and a little sign requesting contributions to maintain the church. You can put it next to the postcard racks I ordered for you.”

“Twenty-five years ago Brother Hucklebee was baptizing folks in Boone Creek,” he felt obliged to say. “Up until four years ago, so was I. ‘Member how everybody agreed to chip in on an indoors facility after the water moccasins chased the choir half a mile downstream? I still can see Eula Lemoy, her robe hitched up to her waist, skedaddling across the gravel bar. I laughed so hard I liked to split my britches.”

“Then what we’ll have to do is find the place alongside the creek and put out some sort of historical marker. I’ll just add it to the map.” She took out a pad and wrote a note to herself to stock snakebite kits in the store. “I’ve got to track down Merle Hardcock and finalize the lease agreement. You get busy on what we’ve discussed, and do try to think of some child in need of a new liver.”

Brother Verber sat for a few minutes, lost in thought not of a bilious child but of bushy-tailed tourists lined up outside the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. When he finally got to his feet, it wasn’t to go find a church directory and see if any of the names jogged his memory. Instead, he went back to the rectory and started making calls to learn what was involved in being able to accept all major credit cards.

I was sitting at the desk, the remains of a cheeseburger and onion rings sprinkled in front of me. I’d been forced to seek sustenance from the Dairee DeeLishus because Ruby Bee had called earlier and announced she and Estelle were heading for a flea market outside Starley City and wouldn’t be back until midafternoon. Why she’d bothered to call the likes of me was the only interesting element in the story, but I’d given up musing about it and reconciled myself to lunch as described above.

The case of the transient sign was the only thing on my agenda. I could go fingerprint the pole, but then I’d have to fingerprint the entire local population (we lacked “the usual suspects”) and that sounded like a lot of trouble. I could keep it under surveillance all night from the derelict chicken house. That also sounded like a lot of trouble. No motives came to mind, and Raz Buchanon was the only person in an uproar over this particularly heinous crime. Everybody else was too concerned with rent and grocery money to volunteer for a stakeout.

No, I thought as I leaned back and propped my feet on the corner of the desk, the case would remain a mystery, and somewhere down the road, perhaps it would qualify as a local legend, replete with sinister overtones. Rather than dating every event as before-or-after Hiram’s barn burned, we’d use before-or-after the city limits sign came to life one dark and stormy night and went for a stalk down County 102.

The door banged open, interrupting my pleasantly spooky reverie. I opened my eyes and confronted Dahlia O’Neill Buchanon’s puckery scowl. Her cheeks were puffing like a bullfrog’s and her hands were clinched into massive fists. Every ounce of her quivered quivered with fury, which meant there was a lot of quivering in the room.

“I got to talk to you,” she said in lieu of salutations.

“If the road signs have taken to hiking in front of your house, it’s not my jurisdiction. Call the highway department.”

This disconcerted her, as intended, and a few of the quivers subsided. “Road signs don’t go hiking, Arly.”

“Don’t be too sure of it,” I said as I gestured at the uncomfortable chair I keep to discourage visitors. I was mildly curious to see if it could withstand her bulk, and mildly disappointed when it did. Just mildly, mind you. I am not a mean-spirited person, and to prove it, I asked a seemingly innocuous, neighborly sort of question. “How’s married life?”

“It’s just plain awful! I keep asking myself if I went and made a terrible mistake when I married Kevvie. It ain’t to say that I don’t love him, because I do, but I don’t know if I can stand it any longer.” She buried her face in her hands and began to sob, her shoulders convulsing and her feet stamping so violently that I glanced at the plastered ceiling.

“Dahlia,” I said loudly to compete with her ululations of despair, “I’m not a marriage counselor. I’m not the right person for you to talk to. Listen to me, please.”

I carried on in that vein until she finally calmed down, took a tissue from a pocket in the cavernous floral tent dress, and blew her nose in a manner reminiscent of a car’s backfiring.

“I know you ain’t a marriage counselor,” she said between hiccups hiccups. “You being a cop, I figure you’re trained to investigate like those private eye fellows on television. They’re mostly in the reruns these days, of course. You know who I mean?”

I didn’t, but I wasn’t about to contradict her and I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask any more “innocuous” questions. “My expertise is geared more toward radar guns and paperwork.”

“But you know how to investigate crimes, doncha? Every time somebody goes and gets murdered in Maggody, you’re the one who solves the case. You snoop around and find little clues and question people just like that nice Perry Mason, except he asks his questions in the courtroom. At least that’s where he did it until he had the accident and had to get hisself a wheelchair. I always felt real bad about that.”

“What are we talking about, Dahlia?”

“I want you to follow Kevin and find out what he’s doing.”

“He’s selling vacuum cleaners in Farberville. If you want to know the ins and outs of it, why don’t you ask for a demonstration in your living room?”

“He already practiced on me so much that the carpet’s worn through and I have nightmares about some of the attachments,” she said in a voice that hinted of an impending eruption of some sort. “He’s up to no good, and I have to know. Our vows said through sickness and health, and richer and poorer, but I didn’t swear to sleep alone every night. His mother says he’s just tuckered out from carrying that case every day, but when he was a stockboy at Jim Bob’s supermarket and stacking heavy cases, he wasn’t ever too tired to make the bed springs squeal, and even when we were trapped all night in that outhouse, he—”

“Have you asked him what’s wrong?” I said hastily.

“I’ve asked him a hunnert times what’s wrong, but he just shakes his head and goes to sleep in the recliner. Last week I got so plum fed up that I dragged him right into the bedroom, yanked off his clothes, and told him in no uncertain terms that I expected him to act like a husband. He wasn’t up to it, if you get what I mean, and afterward, he cried himself to sleep out on the sofa. Now he won’t even set foot in the bedroom except to get dressed in the morning. He rushes out the door without a bite of breakfast, and this morning, he forgot to take the sack lunch I fixed for him. I cried so hard I could barely choke it down.”

“I don’t see what I can do, Dahlia. I’m not a private investigator. I’m the one and only cop in Maggody and I need to hang around town on the off chance someone takes it into his or her head to break the law. Isn’t it likely that Eilene is right and Kevin’s simply tired?”

“There can be only one reason why he’s acting this way.” She paused with an impressively gothic expression, then turned her palms upward and said, “He’s having an affair with another woman. It ain’t necessarily his fault. He’s not as glamorous as Matt Montana, but ever since his voice dropped and he grew a little hair on his chest, he’s been irresistible to most every woman he meets. Some desperate, sex-starved slut from Farberville sunk her fangs in him and is draining him of his precious fluids.” Let’s hit the pause button for a minute here. Kevin is one of the scrawniest, dopiest, most hopelessly inept people I’ve ever known. He may well be responsible for the introduction of the word huh? into the English language. He and Dahlia have managed to intrude into my investigations every now and then and, with their bumbling and stumbling, caused me numerous headaches and nearly brought on their own unnatural and untimely demises. I could imagine him in a lot of roles, but a mesmeric Casanova was not among them. Now hit play.

“An affair?” I said weakly.

“Which is why I want you to follow him and get me the name and address of the woman who’s trying to steal my beloved and destroy our marriage. Then I’ll march up to her door and tell her how the cow ate the cabbage, and if she doesn’t swear to give him up, I’ll knock her upside the head or shoot her through the heart or—”

“Wait a minute! You don’t know for sure that he’s seeing another woman, so let’s not get all excited about exterminating her just yet.” I glanced out the window in hopes I might see a white-coated attendant approaching the PD, an extra-large butterfly net over his shoulder for her, or even a medium one for me. Reminding myself that I was the one responsible for the basic parameters of the situation (I hadn’t packed my bags and flagged down a Greyhound bus several years ago), I looked back at her smoldering eyes, ham-sized arms, and bloodless fists. A calm, soothing voice seemed called for. “Now, Dahlia, I am not going to tail Kevin on his appointed rounds. I realize that you’re unhappy, and maybe you have a good reason for worrying. If your talk with Eilene wasn’t helpful, why don’t you find someone else who can give you advice?”

She rose as if she were a thundercloud appearing over the ridge, and I could definitely feel the barometric pressure plummeting. “I reckon I can think of someone else who can give me advice. I’m gonna have a nice talk with the man at the pawn shop in Hasty, and let him give me advice about which gun to buy and how many bullets it takes to kill a man-eatin’ harlot!”

I was still gaping as she swept out the door and continued down the road. Most of the time, folks in Maggody mind their own business (and their neighbors’) in a mundane fashion, but at other times, everybody turns downright queer.

This appeared to be one of ‘em.

Dahlia was without a car, and I decided to call Eilene and warn her not to loan hers to her homicidal daughter-in-law. I looked up the number and was reaching for the telephone when it rang, I reacted as if it’d hissed at me, but I finally took a deep breath, picked up the receiver, and admitted the caller had reached the Maggody PD.

“This is Patty May Partridge,” whispered a voice.

“This is Arly Hanks,” I whispered back.

“We got a terrible problem out here at the county old folks home,” she continued in the same insubstantial voice, “and Miz Twayblade’ll skin me alive if she finds out that I called you. She’s awful worried about losing our license, but I think when you lose a resident, that’s a lot worse.”

“So who’d you lose?”

“Adele Wockermann. Every day after lunch, all the residents are supposed to take a nice little nap so Tansy and me can clear the tables and help the cook clean up the kitchen. Well, today the dishwasher was leaking all over the floor, so Miz Twayblade had to mop right alongside us until the plumber could get here and do something. Usually she sits out at the desk and keeps an eye on things, but what with the flood in the kitchen and all, there wasn’t nobody to notice Miz Wockermann was gone until I went in at two to fetch her roommate’s tray.”

“What does her roommate say?”

After a pause, Patty May said, “She didn’t say anything about it. Miz Twayblade sent Tansy and me to search outside. We went all the way to the edge of the woods without catching sight of anybody, and then we got in our cars and drove both ways down the road for miles.”

I rubbed my face and tried to calculate how far an octogenarian, or perhaps a nonagenarian, could get in a maximum of two hours. “Stop whispering, okay? This is quite a bit more serious than a license, which Miz Twayblade will lose in an ex officio minute if anything’s happened to Mrs. Wockermann. I’m going to notify the sheriff’s department. What’s she wearing?”

“I don’t know,” Patty May said, sniffling but speaking in a more normal fashion. “She wadded up her robe and gown and pulled the blanket over ‘em so no one would notice she’d left. Her dark brown coat isn’t hanging on a hook inside the closet. Her spending money, just a couple of dollars, is gone from her drawer. I can’t tell what else is missing—except for Miz Wockermann, of course.”

“Is there any vital medication she needs?”

“Not really. We give her vitamin supplements and calcium pills. Missing them shouldn’t cause her any harm. Actually, she’s one of our feistiest patients, all the time complaining and getting into arguments about which television show should be on in the lounge. Two times last week she started food fights in the dining room. Last spring she crept around in the middle of the night and switched all the dentures. You can’t imagine what a time we had trying to match the sets to the mouths!”

“And I don’t want to.” I badgered Patty May until I had a decent description of the prodigal prankster, swore not to reveal my source to her supervisor, and then hung up on her and started calling area law enforcement agencies. In the middle of one call, it did occur to me that Ruby Bee and Estelle had also disappeared, and I’ll admit I stuttered until I convinced myself it was just a coincidence.

Once everybody’d agreed to cruise for Adele Wockermann, I grabbed my purse and went out to my car. The sun was shining, but there was a bite to the wind and the forecast had mentioned a chance of rain. Even if Adele Wockermann was mentally competent, she could hardly fare well once the sun went down. First the county home, I decided, and then some cruising of my own.