Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (31 page)

"You're safe now," he comforted her between gasps. "I rescued you and you're safe."

"Rescued her from what?" asked a woman by the van. Brother Verber scooted Sister Barbara's legs together and tried to figure out the best way to gather her up so he could carry her into the PD. "It was awful," he said without glancing over his shoulder. "Saintly Sister Buchanon was in terrible trouble. Look for yourself how her clothes're all muddy and her hair's tangled with leaves and twigs. Her bare feet are as cold as a banker's heart." He bent way forward, wiggled his arm under her waist, and attempted to hoist her up. He wasn't sure, but he thought he heard something pop in his back. Easing her back down, he studied the situation in hopes of a better idea.

"What happened to her?"

"She was taken hostage by one of Satan's underlings. The ordeal was so horrifying that she's gone into shock." Brother Verber bent her knees and tried to turn her around so he could get a grip on her shoulders. "Speak to me, Sister Barbara," he pleaded as he rethought the idea, having gotten her jammed against the front seat. She groaned obligingly.

He finally got her knees free, raced around to the other side, and opened that door. Offering a silent prayer of apology, he slid his arms under hers and entwined his hands over her bosom. He'd got her halfway out when the pesky woman interrupted him for the third time.

"And who are you?" she asked in a smarmy voice.

"Brother Willard Verber, pastor of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. This is Barbara Ann Buchanon Buchanon, the mayor's wife." All the while he was talking, he was pulling Sister Sister Barbara's body along the seat. "And president of the Missionary Society for three years running," he added as he straightened up and hung on to her for dear life, having not suspected how heavy she was.

"Can you tell us exactly what happened that has left this woman unconscious? Who was her assailant? How long did the ordeal last? Were you the only one to rescue her, or are others on their way here right now?"

Brother Verber caught his breath and turned around to tell the woman to mind her own business. The last thing he expected was to find himself staring into a television camera. And the woman -- why, she was the reporter who'd been up at Raz's shack when the crop circles appeared.

"Was she sexually assaulted?" she asked.

"I don't know for sure," he said, confused. "She said he'd grabbed her and took her to his cave. It was all squalid and wet. When the moon came out, she could make out bones scattered on the floor. He laid her on a smelly blanket and hunkered down to watch her all night. This morning he disappeared into the woods, even though it was pouring rain. At first she was too scared to move a muscle, but after a while, when he didn't come back, she crept out of the cave and stumbled down the ridge." He smiled modestly, wishing he had a free hand to smooth down his hair instead of having them clamped on Sister Barbara's honeydews. "I found her and carried her the rest of the way to my car."

The woman frowned, although not enough to wrinkle her forehead. Behind her, the camera whirred steadily.

"Who did this too unspeakably vile thing to Barbara Ann Buchanon Buchanon, the wife of the mayor of Maggody and one of its leading citizens?"

"Bigfoot," said Brother Verber, surprised he hadn't already said as much. He was going to launch into a more precise description of his heroic rescue when an elbow poked him in his belly with so much force that the air whooshed out of his lungs.

"You fool!" snapped saintly Sister Barbara.

Earl Buchanon stood at his bedroom window, tugging at the waistband of his boxers and frowning. What in hell's name was Eilene doing out there in the field in the middle of the night? Sure, it was warm, but that didn't explain what she was doing just standing out there in the alfalfa, her face lifted like she was a kid catching snowfiakes on her tongue.

He thought real hard about going out there to order her to stop her foolishness and come back to bed. There was something about her expression that made him uneasy, though.

He reminded himself of the Rotary club prayer breakfast at seven and the appointment at the bank afterward. Refinancing the acreage along the creek had to be a sight more important than his wife's craziness out there in the moonlight. Hell, he was secretary of Rotary this year; the meeting couldn't get under way till he read the minutes. He climbed back in bed, pulled a pillow over his head, and within a minute was sound asleep.

I put down my fork and sighed contentedly. "There's something magical about your lemon icebox pie. It's the only conceivable reason for anyone to travel across the galaxy to come to Maggody." I was laying it on thick, but there was one last piece in the pan.

"I use real lemons," Estelle said from her stool at the end of the bar.

"And I don't, Mrs. Fannie Flagg?" Ruby Bee went into the kitchen.

"Then why were you buying bottled lemon juice at the SuperSaver last week?" Estelle said, although not loudly enough to be heard over the racket from the jukebox or, more significantly, through the kitchen doors. "I'm still feeling a little peaked," she said to me. "I've never been bulky like your mother, and I have a very delicate digestive system. Those chili dogs gave me terrible heartburn, not to mention gas. There I was, my hands and ankles taped together, tape over my mouth so I could hardly breath, having to kick the door when I needed to use the bathroom, and -- "

"We've heard this story a million times," Ruby Bee said as she came back through the door and took a plate of ham and beans to a customer at the far end. "We've heard it so many times I can recite it in my sleep. Lucy Fernclift didn't hurt you any more than she had to while she tried to figure out what to do. She could have gotten in her car and upped and left town. You'd have been a skeleton before Arly found you."

"Wait a minute," I protested. "I had to confirm Lucy's true identity before I confronted her. She did have a gun, you know."

"I knew that all along," Ruby Bee said, then clapped her hand over her mouth and gave Estelle the wide-eyed look of a frog confronting a gig.

"You did?" I said, wishing I had one. I reached for my fork, but it was snatched away at the last second.

Estelle arched her eyebrows. "We just happened to see it when we cleaned the rooms the other morning. I was going to tell you, but I didn't have a chance because I was kidnapped and locked in a closet and subjected to atrocities. It may have slipped Ruby Bee's mind."

"I was distracted by the murders and reports of Bigfoot," she said as she discovered a whole new reason to go back in the kitchen, leaving me to glare at the swinging doors. She returned to drop an order pad in the drawer beneath the cash register, then came back to her customary station by the beer taps and said, "Did you ever find Cynthia's purse?"

"It was in the trunk," I said, "and covered with McMasterson's and Sageman's fingerprints. I took it to her at the hospital last week. She wasn't nearly as thrilled as the ladies in billing."

"She got her Indians wrong," Estelle announced.

"Her Indians?" I said. I could see from Ruby Bee's expression that she wasn't doing any better than I was. "In the hospital?"

"In her past life. She told us she was an Apache warrior who scalped Custer, but I looked it up in my encyclopedia. It was the Sioux what scalped Custer."

"Oh," I said, but only because something was expected of me.

Ruby Bee was more willing to pursue it. "What about her being a Viking with a red beard?"

Estelle patted her own indisputably red hair. "Only if she could buy Clairol back then."

I decided to change the subject before they started explaining whatever they were discussing. "Rosemary called this morning to tell me she was sending me an autographed copy of Rosemary T.: The Extrinsic Paradox. She said all of Sageman's books went out of stock within hours after the story broke. None of the bookstores in Little Rock can order a copy anymore."

"I hope Dahlia's not disappointed," said Ruby Bee.

I knocked on the edge of the bar (walnut). "She and Kevin are being real quiet these days. I don't think Eilene believed their story about going camping, and neither do I, but the last thing I want to hear is a detailed explanation for their three-day absence."

"There's been some talk," said Estelle, then gave Ruby Bee one of their significant looks that supposedly conveyed all kinds of subtle messages. They were about as subtle as an avalanche in the Swiss Alps, but I busied myself with my beer.

Ruby Bee took my glass from my hand and refilled it without any editorials -- for a change. "I heard Mrs. Jim Bob's likely to lose the election at the Missionary Society. How long has she been president, Estelle? Two years, or has it been three?"

After all these years they'd perfected their routine. "I don't rightly recall," countered Estelle. "Didn't Brother Verber tell that television reporter it was three?"

"He might have," she said. "Was that before or after he described how she was taken prisoner by Bigfoot hisself?"

"After, I seem to think."

They looked at me. I shrugged and said, "Diesel Buchanon's not bothering anybody. Squirrels and rabbits are not endangered species, and he promised me he'd stay out of the Lambertinos' backyard. When we have a hard freeze in the fall, he'll come down off the ridge. Maybe Mrs. Jim Bob will invite him over for Sunday dinner."

We debated the possibility until I realized it was almost time to follow the school bus to the county line. I slipped off the stool and started for the door, warmed by the knowledge I'd be protecting little Buchanons so they could grow up and become just like Uncle Diesel.

"Hold your horses," said Ruby Bee. "Estelle and me was talking about all the things that happened after the crop circle first showed up in Raz's field. Now, you already told us how Raz made the circle and how Jim Bob and the town council made the orange lights. You never said what happened across the creek from Raz's that first night."

Now that her boyfriend was serving time for the slaughter of several thousand dollars' worth of livestock, Darla Jean McIlhaney was sweeping the PD on a daily basis and picking wildflowers to brighten up the decor. I shrugged and said, "Reggie Pellitory set off a cherry bomb and waved a flashlight. Anything else was nothing more than collective hysteria. You have seen the same airplane fly over every night, haven't you?"

"Maybe," Ruby Bee conceded. "Wasn't there something else we meant to ask about, Estelle?"

She set down her sherry. "I can't rightly recall. Maybe it'll come to us when Arly gets back from her vacation. Doncha want to give her the present we picked out?"

"Present?" I said curiously as I went back to the bar. "You didn't need to buy me a present just because I'm taking off for a week."

"I just hope you don't lose your job because of it," Ruby Bee said as she ducked behind the bar.

I glanced down at my badge. "Someone else is going to apply for this job? I don't think so."

Ruby Bee reappeared with a bottle of calamine lotion. "Reckon you'll find a use for this down in Lantana, Florida."

"I don't have -- " I stopped and took the bottle from her hand. "Reckon I might," I said, then walked across the dance floor and out into the bright lights of Maggody (pop. 755), a little town in the Ozarks where nothing ever happens.