Merry Wives of Maggody (23 page)

“Yes, he does. Someone was just asking my opinion about his sexual preferences. He’s wearing a dark red cotton sweater, a fetching cravat, white slacks, and is probably holding Mrs. Jim Bob’s head over a toilet while she pukes.”

“She overdose on piety or something?”

“Something,” I said. “Why did you say that he doesn’t exist?”

“No Social Security number, no tax returns, no passport application, no voter registration, no rap sheet. You got a driver’s license number or car tags?”

I shook my head. “See what you can find out tomorrow from the Mississippi bureaucrats. Maybe the records from that era were destroyed by a fire or are stashed in boxes in the court house basement. What else did you dig up?”

“There’s an outstanding warrant for Bonaparte Buchanon in California,” Les said. “About a year ago, he was accused of drug possession with intent to sell. He agreed to cooperate with the DEA, then vanished. In the past he’s been charged for possession of stolen property, assault, statutory rape, and various misdemeanors.”

“Do the feds want us to take him into custody?” I asked optimistically.

“He was a minnow in a shark tank, peddling small quantities of coke at golf tournaments. The feds are after his supplier. They’ll have to take him if you deliver him to their doorstep, but they aren’t going to expend any manpower or cash. As long as he stays out of California, he’s okay.”

“He’s not okay in my book. What’s the deal with the statutory rape?”

Les consulted his notes. “He was twenty-one and claimed she swore that she was seventeen. She was fifteen. In Missouri, nobody gets too riled up about that sort of thing. He happened to find expensive golf clubs abandoned in the woods. He had no idea how the stolen wallet ended up in his hotel room, and he swore that the receptionist had made an error with the credit card. The assault was reduced to a misdemeanor. There are old rumors in Neosho about joyriding, underage drinking, vandalism, breaking into empty houses. Kid stuff.”

“Buchanon kid stuff, anyway,” I said. “Any more tidbits to brighten my day?”

“Lucas Smithers is out on parole. He got nailed selling pot to an undercover cop in Pine Bluff and did time. He’s a veteran, so the judge went easy on him. I’ll check with his parole officer tomorrow. Not everybody works on Sundays, you know. Sheriff Dorfer canceled my weekend leave. It wasn’t all Murtle’s fault. LaBelle should have smelled the smoke, but she was giving herself a pedicure at her desk. She had to evacuate barefoot with cotton balls between her toes.”

“Sheriff Dorfer’s home, drinking beer in his recliner.”

Les growled as he flipped to another page. “Tommy Ridner had a couple of DUIs and citations for disturbing the peace. He ended up doing a hundred hours of community ser vice, running golf clinics to raise money for underprivileged kids. The cops liked him because every time he ended up in the drunk tank, he used his phone call to order a dozen pizzas. Dennis and Amanda Gilbert are model citizens. Nothing on Kathleen Wasson, but Kale was suspended by the high school in Tibia last year for fighting. Honorable discharge and various commendations for Janna Coulter. The desk sergeant in Fort Sill told me that Natalie Hotz was picked up for shoplifting, but the charges were dropped.” He grinned at me. “It sounds like you’re running a weekend therapy session for wayward golfers.”

“I’d rather be running away. What about Phil Proodle?”

“A while back he had illegal aliens working for him, washing boats and mowing his yard. He was fined, they were deported, and the judge ended up with a party barge. There have been some civil suits involving repossessions. Proodle’s real fond of financing the sale, then tacking on all manner of hidden fees, insurance, escalating payment clauses, late charges, and penalties. The suckers get a month or two behind, and Proodle ends up with their deposits and their boats. He gets away with it because it’s all laid out in the fine print. You need a microscope to read it.” He stood up and put on his hat. “I’ll talk to the Mississippi authorities about Cartier tomorrow, and track down Lucas Smithers’s parole officer. Anything else?”

“A week in Hawaii would be nice.”

“Buy a pineapple and go visit your boyfriend.”

“Yeah.” I waited until Les got in his car before I began to sniffle.

I could jump in my car and drive to Springfield. I knew where Jack hid a spare house key. I’d find a box of stale cookies and crawl into his bed. If I stayed there long enough, he’d come home and find me under the covers. He wouldn’t care that I looked like a sun-bleached manatee.

I forced myself to snap out of it before the sniffling turned teary. after sorting through the computer printouts Les had left, I made notes about Kathleen’s and Natalie’s statements. I was pondering my next move when a category five pain in the ass burst into the PD.

“What happened to the goddamn boat?” Jim Bob roared. “I sent Kevin over to the SuperSaver to get bags of ice, and when he got back, he said the boat was gone.”

I rocked back to avoid intoxication by proximity. “The sheriff impounded it.”

“What the hell does that mean? How am I supposed to win the fuckin’ boat if it’s impounded? You get off your ass and go fetch it! That’s an order, Chief of Police Whatever-your-name is. And don’t give me any shit about how you can’t. Get that goddamn boat back here or you’re fired!”

“Cool it,” I said irritably. “Sheriff Dorfer had the bass boat hauled to the crime lab. The boat will be released when the case is closed.”

“To hell with that! You want to keep your job, you make sure the boat’s in the SuperSaver parking lot tomorrow afternoon. I don’t aim to twiddle my thumbs while the boat’s in Farberville all summer.”

“Why are you so sure you’re going to win it? From what I heard this morning, you’re not exactly tearing up the course. Even Bopeep scored better than you did.”

His jaw began to quiver so violently that he was in danger of biting off his tongue. If he did, I suspected he’d spit it at me. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about scores! All it takes is one lucky shot.”

He abruptly stopped. His eyes slitted, he backed off and sat down in the visitor’s chair. “Sure, them others have a better chance, but I ain’t giving up. There’s no way I can ever afford a boat like that, what with Mrs. Jim Bob redecorating the living room every other week. My overhead’s rising at the SuperSaver ’cause folks are cutting back to basics like beans and potatoes. I’m barely meeting expenses. If I had the boat, I could git away and relax. Otherwise, I’m gonna go plumb crazy like Diesel and take to living in a cave. You understand that, doncha?”

I couldn’t remember when he’d ever attempted to explain himself to me. “If you cooperate, I can close the case and put in the paperwork to get the boat released. If you don’t, all I can do is keep plugging away until I run out of leads. The boat could remain impounded for months, maybe years. Got that?”

“Yeah,” Jim Bob muttered. “What do you want from me? It ain’t like I killed anybody, fercrissake. I barely knew the fat sumbitch.”

“Let’s start with this tontine nonsense,” I said, relieved that he was back to normal. The idea of being on amiable terms with him made my teeth ache.

“Who told you about that?”

“It’s all over town, for pity’s sake. Men are worse gossips than women. For the record, give me the names.”

He said each name as he counted on his fingers. “Ten of us.”

“Tontines are illegal.”

“We signed a contract written up by a lawyer. It’s notarized and everything. Besides, you think anybody’s stupid enough to claim the boat for hisself? This is a small town.”

“How could I ever forget it? I lie awake at night just to count my blessings. Let’s get back to the tournament. You met Tommy on Friday?”

“He showed up in the afternoon with that newscaster fellow and his wife. She had her nose stuck up so high she could’ve stumbled over a ladybug. Soon as she got out of the car, she was bitchin’ about the motel, the humidity, how her cell phone didn’t work. Anything you name, she thought it was there to make her miserable.”

Obviously, Jim Bob would sell his soul to get into her pan ties.

“What about that evening?”

“Everybody ended up at Ruby Bee’s. Most of us in the tontine got booted out of our houses on Thursday, so it wasn’t like we had anyplace else to go. after last call, the party moved out back to Ridner’s room. He had the fanciest damn bar in his trunk and could mix up most any drink. A couple of hours later, the party broke up.”

“Was Natalie Hotz a participant?”

His forehead wrinkled like a bloodhound’s. “Yeah, some of the time, anyway. She and that butch lady had supper and stayed for a while. They left, but then Natalie came back on her own later. I wasn’t paying any attention to her, since she made it clear before the practice round that I’d be wasting my time. She ain’t my type, anyway. No hips, no tits. I saw her cuddling up to Ridner.” He scratched his chin. “She talked to Proodle and a few other fellows. I dunno.”

“Did you see her leave with anybody?” I asked. When he shook his head, I gave up and moved on. “Tell me about yesterday.”

“Everybody showed up at nine thirty or thereabouts. Ridner was making screwdrivers and Bloody Marys, and Proodle was slipping beers to everybody when Mrs. Jim Bob wasn’t watching. Folks began to relax a little bit.” To demonstrate, Jim Bob stretched out his legs and crossed his feet. He looked annoyed when he realized that he couldn’t plop his muddy shoes on the edge of my desk.

“Until Tommy made his hole-in-one,” I prompted him.

“Lucky bastard hollered like he’d taken a piss on a pot of gold. A lot of players quit, but others kept on playing just in case Ridner’s hole-in-one didn’t count for some reason. Mrs. Jim Bob has so many damn rules that nobody was sure.”

“Did you know Tommy had to be present Sunday afternoon to officially win?”

“I didn’t bother to read the crap, I just filled it out and wrote a check. I didn’t much care when Mrs. Jim Bob announced it at supper. Ridner didn’t look like he was gonna fall over dead from a heart attack.” Jim Bob got up to pour himself a cup of coffee.

He took a taste and spat it out. “You ought to take a hard look at Proodle. He was whimpering like a baby when he found out. Just don’t go thinking I had anything to do with Ridner’s murder. Maybe I ain’t grieving over it, since it means I have another chance to win the boat. Can you get on with this? I’m getting a bellyache from all your dumb-ass questions.”

I was getting a bellyache, too. It had been more than an hour since breakfast, after all. “But you boys were up to partying afterward, weren’t you?”

“It sure as hell wasn’t a celebration,” Jim Bob said sourly. “Yeah, everybody went to Ruby Bee’s. This time Ridner was buying pitchers, like he damn well should have. Nobody was feeling real kindly toward him. Natalie finally had to drag him off to a corner and talk to him before he got his ass whupped. after that and a lot more beer, things got friendlier. When Ruby Bee announced last call, everybody left. I didn’t know about Ridner ’til you showed up this morning. Is that all?”

“I wish it were,” I said with a sigh, “but you seemed to have forgotten about the bet. The stoplight’s city property, Mr. Mayor. What if a shot had gone crooked and broken a window? And standing in the middle of the road in the dark? You all could have been flattened by a chicken truck.”

He pursed his lips as he tried to concoct a story that I might buy (if I had the IQ of a rock). “It wasn’t nothing but a friendly little bet. I didn’t believe for a minute that anyone would actually be able to hit the stoplight. Hell, I wasn’t sure anyone could hit a golf ball. We were just blowing off a little steam, that’s all. Getting some fresh air before we got in our trucks. Come to think of it, I was protecting Maggody from drunken drivers. That’s one of my responsibilities as mayor.”

This from a man who’d once driven his riding mower into Boone Creek while wearing nothing but a red bra around his neck. “Names,” I said.

“Hell, I dunno. Pretty much everybody that was in the bar.”

“Did Kale Wasson participate?”

“Yeah, but that kid can’t hold his liquor. Ridner had to help him grip the club, and we all stood way back when he swung. Took him three tries to even hit the ball.” Jim Bob sniggered. “It rolled about twenty yards and then stopped in the middle of the road. It looked like an RV had laid an egg.”

“Tommy Ridner won, right?”

“Yeah, the dickhead got lucky again. I’d had enough, so I went on home and snuck in through the garage. I started thinking of Cartier up in the guest room, sleeping on clean sheets and soft pillows, while I was stuck in the utility room on a wobbly cot, with an old army blanket and the stink of ammonia. The bastard’s lucky I was too drunk to go upstairs and throw him out the window.”

“Was his car in the garage when you got there?”

Jim Bob shook his head. “I’d have fallen over it if it was. Look, I got to get back to the guys and tell ’em about the boat.”

He ducked out the door and swaggered away in the direction of Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill. I went outside and looked at the stoplight.

When it switched from green to red, the yellow light remained unlit. I doubted that would cause havoc during rush hour. The only time we had an increase in traffic was when a rare funeral procession was headed toward a cemetery. Most Buchanons preferred to be buried in one of the small family plots scattered over Cotter’s Ridge. At least I hoped they were buried.

I walked over to the parking lot. The competitors had chosen a spot about fifty feet from the target. Eventually Tommy had been declared the winner and collected the pot from Proodle. The pot may have been the last straw.

Tommy must have decided to stumble down the road to examine his prize. He had his driver with him (he would have done better with a chauffeur along). Gloating, he’d climbed into the boat so he could snuggle in the padded leather seat and caress the dashboard. Someone had followed him, or guessed where he might go.

“Thinkin’ of taking up the game?” Roy said from the porch of his antiques store.

I went across the highway and sat down on the pew. “The wake must be over. Did you run out of booze?”