Malpractice in Maggody (2 page)

Jim Bob refilled his glass with whiskey, took a gulp, and said, “How ’bout a two-dollar raise just to keep you ol’ boys honest?”

“Why, Jim Bob, you know I’m as honest as the day is long,” drawled Roy as he pushed his cards away and stood up. “I reckon I’d better go see a man about a horse. There’s another plate of baloney sandwiches in the icebox. Help yourselves.”

Larry Joe started to rise, but Jim Bob snarled, “Did you come to play cards or to stuff your face? Two dollars to stay in. You gonna hold ’em or fold ’em?”

“Oh, okay,” said Larry Joe, settling back down. He unwadded some ones and tossed them into the pot. He was as tall and lanky as Roy was short and round; his height served him well when he bawled out the morons in his shop classes at the high school. It didn’t help at home, though. Joyce didn’t even come up to his shoulder, but she had a way of narrowing her eyes and swishing her ponytail that pretty much got her whatever she wanted.

Jim Bob spread his cards. “Read ’em and weep.”

“Three jacks,” Larry Joe said apologetically as he gathered up the pot.

“So, Mr. Mayor, what do you know about all this construction at the old folks’ home?” asked Roy as he came out of the bathroom.

“Not a damn thing. It’s county property, so they can do whatever they want with it. They sure as hell aren’t wasting any time, are they? I drove out that way this morning, and from all I could tell, they could be building a pyramid to bury some asshole county commissioner.”

“I parked down by the low-water bridge and walked along the edge of the pasture,” volunteered Larry Joe. “Looks like they’re keeping the front part of the building, and taking down the backside, along with some sheds. They’ve already started pouring concrete for a foundation for a good-sized addition. It also looks like they’re aimin’ to fence in two or three acres.”

Roy reached for the whiskey bottle. “Something mighty peculiar’s going on out there, mighty peculiar.”

“Shut up and deal,” said Jim Bob, still smarting from the last hand. He knew he might as well make the most of the afternoon, since there’d be hell to pay when he went home for supper (or dinner, as Mrs. Jim Bob insisted on calling it). If she’d stopped by the supermarket and learned that he wasn’t there, she’d assume right off the bat he’d gone to comfort some lonely trucker’s wife. Which he did whenever the opportunity arose. Admitting he’d been playing poker all afternoon wouldn’t sit much better. At least there was a decent baseball game on later. If he was feeling generous, he’d invite her to watch it with him.

“I can’t tell you what’s going on out there because I don’t know myself,” said Sheriff Harvey Dorfer for the umpteenth time that afternoon, wishing he could rip the telephone cord out of the wall. “All I can suggest is that you call over to the county courthouse and ask them.” He listened to more squawks, then said, “Yes, ma’am, I am the county sheriff. My job is to catch criminals and lock them up. The only dealings I have with the quorum court concern my budget and the possibility of building a new jail. I can assure you, ma’am, that if it happens, it won’t be in your backyard. Have yourself a real nice day.”

He replaced the receiver, took a swallow of tepid coffee, and bellowed, “LaBelle, get your butt in here right now!”

LaBelle, the dispatcher and receptionist, came to his office door. “I was meaning to have a word with you, Sheriff Dorfer. I’m gonna take off early today so I can go by the bakery and pick up some little cakes for my niece’s baby shower.”

“I thought I told you not to put any more of these damnfool calls about the old folks’ home through to me.” He lit a cigar and gazed at her through a billow of pungent smoke. “Was there something in my order that mystified you, LaBelle? Should I have repeated it two or three times, and then asked if you had any questions?”

“I already told you that I do not lie,” LaBelle said snippily. “We are both employees of Stump County and have an obligation to serve the public.”

“Put one more call through and you won’t be an employee of this or any other county. However, to save you from the grief of having to lie, I’m leaving now to track down criminals fishing without a license or polluting our scenic lakes by throwing beer cans overboard.”

“I told you that I have to leave right away.”

“When’s the baby due?”

LaBelle stiffened. “I don’t rightly see that it’s any of your business. What’s more, I have already paid for the cakes from the bakery.”

Harve was about to suggest what she could do with ’em when the telephone rang. He glared at LaBelle, then picked up the receiver.

“What?” He then held the receiver away from his ear so LaBelle could hear the snarly threats. When the voice ran down, he said, “Listen, T-Rex, I don’t know what’s going to happen to the old folks’ home. This is the quorum court’s doing, not mine. From what I heard, they met last week and voted to sell the property. Why don’t you go over to the county courthouse and ask the clerk if any papers have been filed?”

LaBelle waggled her fingers and fled to the front room. After pushing a button on her phone that would automatically transfer all calls to Harve, she grabbed her purse and headed for the parking lot.

And so it went in Maggody, Arkansas (population 755 or thereabouts). For the next week, construction proceeded at a boggling rate in and around the former county old folks’ home. The new addition rose almost overnight, and truckloads of immigrants appeared to pound in shingles on the roof. Exterior walls were going up as interior walls from the older section were being torn out and thrown into Dumpsters. Plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, and wallpaper hangers arrived early and left late. No one had spotted the limo again, but the woman in the convertible came daily. The grounds around the structure were enclosed by an eight-foot chain link fence topped with curls of barbed wire. A dozen flatbed trucks from a landscaping service delivered pallets of sod, followed by thick shrubs and good-sized trees that required special machinery to plant.

But most intriguing of all, a uniformed security guard had been assigned to prevent any unauthorized person or persons from so much as setting foot on the property. He had a clipboard in his hand, a gun strapped to his belt, and a bad-tempered German shepherd on a leash.

A
s I drove past the city limit sign into Maggody early Saturday afternoon, I could swear I heard a heavy metal door (the kind used in maximum-security prisons) slam shut behind me. There was no point in looking in the rearview mirror. When I got back to my so-called efficiency apartment above the antiques store, I dumped everything out of my duffel bag, including clothes, a can of bug spray, a deck of cards, withered wildflowers, and a couple of books I’d been meaning to read since ’long about high school. I stuffed the dirty clothes into a pillowcase and headed down the rickety wooden steps to the Suds of Fun Launderette across the road. I was moving furtively, since I knew my arrival back in Maggody would be shooting sparks along the grapevine—which happens to run right through the middle of Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill. It’s a wonder the two-steppers don’t end up in a pile of flailing arms and legs on the dance floor.

Cinatra Buchanon was behind the counter, swatting flies with a rolled-up tabloid. The blotches on the newsprint indicated a high rate of success. She glanced up and then, having assured herself I wasn’t an armed robber with a fetish for quarters, returned to her business.

“Can you give me some change?” I asked as I pulled a couple of dollar bills from my pocket.

“Reckon so.” She put down the tabloid and opened the cash register. “Back in town, are you?”

“Looks like it.”

She eyed my bulging pillowcase. “You didn’t take much in the way of clothes, considering you was gone for two weeks. Did you go to one of those nudist camps where everybody runs around buck-naked?”

“Just ordinary camping,” I said. “Shorts, a pair of jeans, T-shirts, a bathing suit, and a sweatshirt. It can get nippy by the lake at night.”

“No pajamas?” she asked slyly.

“It was the darndest thing. I took three flannel nightgowns, but somehow, beavers got in my tent and dragged them away. A few days later, I saw where they’d gnawed them into strips and used them to reinforce a dam. I wish I’d had a camera with me.”

Cinatra’s eyes widened. “Why, I bet you could have sold photographs to one of those newspapers like the
Weekly World.
Just imagine—beavers stealing nightgowns! I never heard of such a thing!”

We both shook our heads at the loss of this potential windfall, then she gave me a handful of quarters and I retreated to the back of the room. I managed to cram everything into two machines, and was thumbing through an ancient copy of
Field and Stream
when Ruby Bee, who happens to be my mother as well as proprietor of the aforementioned bar & grill, came marching in.

“And just when did you get back, missy?” she demanded.

“About half an hour ago.”

“It didn’t occur to you that I’ve been chewing on my nails for most of two weeks, waiting to hear about this camping trip? Were you planning to buy a postcard at the supermarket and mail it to me so I’d know you were back?”

Although the idea appealed, I said, “No, I was planning to do my laundry, stop by the PD to check the mail and messages, and then go over to the bar for a cold beer and a grilled cheese sandwich, followed by a slice of pie.”

“So your dirty underwear is more important than your own flesh and blood? Do you know how many diapers I changed before you was finally potty-trained? How many nights I walked the floor with you while you howled like a coyote pup? How many biscuits I’ve made and motel rooms I’ve cleaned so you’d have a decent place to live? Is this how you show your gratitude?”

I could see from the corner of my eye that Cinatra was thoroughly enjoying the exchange. I lowered my voice and said, “I ought to be there in an hour, unless you’re getting ready to tell me about fresh corpses stacked behind the remains of the Esso station or an invasion of little silver men with big almond-shaped eyes. In that case, I’ll throw aside this magazine, collect my gun at the PD, and come out blazing.”

Ruby Bee blinked. “Well, nothing that serious, but there’s something real strange going on out on County 104. Everybody in town’s all atwitter about it.”

“If they’ve been twittering for two weeks they can twitter for another hour. I’ll be over there as soon as I can.”

She huffed at me, but when I merely picked up the magazine, she spun around and marched out with the same indignation, giving Cinatra a dirty look for good measure. Ruby Bee was short and comfortably plump, with the benign countenance of a grandmother, but there were plenty of truckers and good ol’ boys who’d learned not to rile her unless they wanted to find themselves sprawled in the gravel in front of the bar & grill.

After I’d finished my laundry, I dropped it off at my apartment and walked over to the PD. The two rooms were stifling. I opened both windows and the back door before I settled down at my desk to sift through the mail. It consisted of flyers and catalogs, with only one letter from some organization that no doubt had overestimated both my salary and my charitable instincts. I hit the evil eye of the answering machine, then fast-forwarded through dozens of incoherent messages that seemed to concern the old folks’ home. Sheriff Dorfer hadn’t called, since I’d warned him about my vacation.

Of course I hadn’t told him any details, and I had no intention of elaborating for Ruby Bee and Estelle, either. Jack Wallace was a very interesting man—tall, loose-limbed, with a slow grin and just a hint of shagginess that intrigued me. Divorced, with two children. Even when he and I had first met under less than ideal circumstances—I’d mistakenly suspected him of kidnapping one of our teenage girls at a neglected woodland retreat with the unlikely name of Camp Pearly Gates—I’d found myself nurturing adolescent fantasies unbecoming to a woman (and a chief of police, to boot) in her early thirties. On our second encounter here in Maggody, the town had been overrun by Civil War reenactors, but Jack and I managed to find time for a few games of Scrabble.

Interpret that as you prefer.

Then two weeks at the lake, in a leaky tent, eating steaks and canned beans and cornbread, sometimes talking until dawn, other times doing a lot less talking.

I had a pretty good idea how I felt about him, but I wasn’t worried about it. We’d both had bad marriages, so we weren’t about to scamper off to a wedding chapel in Vegas, or even to city hall to hunt up a judge. I knew Ruby Bee was in a dither, torn between the fear of me leaving Maggody and the allure of seeing me as a respectable married woman producing grandchildren on a regular basis.

As I walked across the dance floor and sat down on a stool, Ruby Bee looked as though she was restraining herself from leaping over the bar. Estelle was at the opposite end on her favorite perch, convenient to the ladies’ room and situated so she could keep an eye on the booths along the wall. She could also, if she craned her neck, see who all was sneaking around the Flamingo Motel out back. Privacy’s hard to come by in a town the size of Maggody; as a teenager, I’d gotten away with very little—which is why I’d gotten away as soon as I’d graduated from high school. After college, the police academy, several years in psychotically sophisticated Manhattan, and the divorce, I’d discovered that you can go home again. It’s not, however, something I’d recommend to the faint of heart. Manhattan to Maggody is one helluva hop, skip, and jump.

“It’s about time you got here,” said Estelle, lifting her chin so she could stare down her nose at me. “You don’t know what’s going on, do you?”

“Not even if it’s been on the front page of the
Starley City Shopper,
” I said, “or on CNN, for that matter. I do know roughly what time the sun sets, how many incompetent boaters run out of gas on the lake every day, and the best remedy for chigger bites. I know that if you don’t keep your food locked in the trunk of the car, the racoons will get it. I’ll bet you didn’t know that the damn varmints can open a jar of peanut butter.”

Ruby Bee set down a mug of beer in front of me. “Estelle is referring to the county old folks’ home.”

“A fire?” I asked. “An epidemic? Have there been deaths out there?”

“There is no ‘out there,’” Ruby Bee said, somewhat appeased by the seriousness of my reaction. “They tore it down.”

“They didn’t exactly tear it down.” Estelle reached behind the bar and found her private stash of sherry. “Not all of it, anyway. The front part’s still there, but the backside is new. And the yard is something to behold, or it was until they planted all these bushes and trees so you can’t see much from behind the fence.”

“Fence?” I said.

Ruby Bee grimaced. “A sight taller than Booker Tee Buchanon, and topped with barbed wire. Now there’s the guard with a gun and a dog. I heard that a couple of the teenagers went over one night and darn near got their butts chewed off just for looking around. I won’t mention any names, but I heard Darla Jean and Billy Dick are sitting real gingerly on the picnic tables in front of the Dairee Dee-Lishus.”

I was beyond bewilderment. “And the residents?”

“They was shuffled away, most of ’em to a nursing home in Starley City. Dahlia’s granny is back at home, and nobody’s real sure about Petrol. One of the old ladies got into a scuffle and fell and broke her hip. An ambulance took her to the hospital in Farberville. Mrs. Pimlico, who was the supervisor, got a job at a tattoo parlor in Branson. The aide, Vonetta, ran off with a one-legged truck driver.”

I took a gulp of beer. “So what’s going on out there?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to find out,” said Estelle. “Nobody here knows anything, not even Jim Bob. I took it upon myself to call Sheriff Dorfer, but he just barked at me and banged down the phone.” Her eyes narrowed as she crunched down on a pretzel. “He’d better hope folks don’t recollect his behavior when election time rolls around.”

“Has anybody just gone out there and asked?” I said.

Ruby Bee rolled her eyes. “Weren’t you listening when I said there was a guard? He stands right at the road with a clipboard. If your name’s not on it, you can’t so much as turn around in the driveway. He doesn’t even speak English.” She took a breath and stared at me. “So that’s why you need to stop sitting around on your behind and go out there to investigate. You are the chief of police, unless I missed something.”

“County 104 is not in my jurisdiction,” I said, shaking my head. “Whatever’s going on out there is county business.”

She leaned forward. “If you’re planning to have supper here tonight—pot roast, fried okra, collard greens, and lemon meringue pie—you’d better go put on your uniform and your badge and find out. The same goes for breakfast tomorrow. I’m serving fresh blueberry pancakes, along with bacon, ham, fried eggs, grits, and biscuits with cream gravy. ’Course you can always get a burrito at the Dairee Dee-Lishus if you want to.”

“No, she can’t,” chimed in Estelle. “The surly Mexican that owns it went on a month-long vacation to his niece’s wedding. The teenagers still hang out on the picnic tables, but they have to buy sodas at the supermarket or bring them from home.”

“This is blackmail,” I said coldly.

“No,” said Ruby Bee, who watches way too many crime shows on TV, “it’s more like extortion. If you want to live on canned soup and baloney sandwiches, it’s up to you. You can stand to lose a few pounds after all those steaks and potatoes at Tablerock Lake.”

“And peanut butter sandwiches,” Estelle added.

Without a word, I pushed aside my beer and left. I almost mowed down Fibber Buchanon at the door, but he had enough sense to get out of my way. Having never been a prosecutor (or watched the right shows), I didn’t know if what had been presented was blackmail or extortion, but I wasn’t pleased with either. And I was damn fond of fried okra, as Ruby Bee knew too well.

By the time I reached my apartment, all three hundred square feet of it, I’d calmed down. At least I hadn’t been grilled about my week with Jack. I knew I would be eventually. Ruby Bee and Estelle were talented inquisitioners who would utilize their skills to leave no rock unturned, be it a pebble or the size of Gibraltar. It was the price I’d have to pay for blue plate specials and cold beer. I put on my uniform and my shiny badge that looked as though it had come from a cereal box, repinned my dark hair back into a bun, considered and then rejected the idea of lipstick, and drove out to County 104.

Once I saw the chaos of the construction site, I pulled over to plan my approach. A red brick wall was being constructed across the front, with an opening for a driveway paved with matching brick and lined with flower beds and low shrubs. Trucks and vans were parked both inside and along the edge of the county road. Workmen scampered around like agitated elves.

As promised, a guard in a uniform was standing at the foot of the driveway. A German shepherd was seated on its haunches, doing nothing more ominous than watching the mockingbirds in a tree. It was, however, a very large dog, which meant it probably had very large teeth.

I put on my best cop expression and walked across the road. “I’m Chief of Police Arly Hanks,” I said, smiling politely. “And you are…?”

He consulted a clipboard.
“No se le permite entrar a esta propiedad.”

I shrugged and said, “Sorry, but I don’t speak Spanish. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll just go up there and find someone who can answer my questions.”

“Tengo mis órdenes. Usted debe irse ahora.”

The guard, who was hardly a rough-and-tough bandito stereotype, looked no happier than I about the situation. He was short, pudgy, and in his very early twenties. He tried not to stare at my badge, but the tiny wisp of a beard on his chin was quivering and sweat was beading on his forehead. Had it not been for the dog, I would have patted him on the shoulder and continued past him.