Merry Wives of Maggody (36 page)

“Where are the trophies?”

“Brother Verber has them for safekeeping.” She glanced at her clipboard. “We changed the time because most of the golfers didn’t show up this morning. He’ll be here at two o’clock sharp, prepared to say a few words about our worthy cause and the responsibility of good Christians to help the needy.”

“No lunch?”

“We are trying to raise money, not squander it. Our bud get was not planned to accommodate another free meal. To celebrate the finale, Eula is bringing a sheet cake, and my girls will serve punch made from cranberry juice and ginger ale. One could easily mistake it for pink champagne.”

One in a million, maybe. I wandered over to Janna, who was scribbling in a notebook. “Feeling better?” I asked her.

“Yes, thank you. I simply needed to rest. When Natalie returned from her visit with Cora, she was most solicitous. She went to the supermarket and bought a brand of antihistamines guaranteed not to make you drowsy.” She added a notation. “I’m revising Natalie’s workout schedule. She let her game slip this weekend. I think an additional session in the weight room every day will help. There’ll be no more beer or pretzels when we get back.”

I left her to it. Amanda was seated in an aluminum lounge chair upwind from the pigsty. In a display of mourning, she wore modest pink shorts and a blouse that covered her midriff. She put down a magazine when I approached.

“Thanks for not getting me in trouble yesterday,” she said. “I feel like such an idiot. I guess I just snapped from the stress. If you hadn’t been at Tommy’s house, I would have watered the furniture and vacuumed the ceilings. I’m not the sort of person who can sit and wait. Please don’t think badly of me, Arly.”

“Why would I do that? By the way, I’m going to lift the ban on leaving town after the ceremony. I’m sure you’re all sick of Maggody by now.”

“Well… it might be nice to go home. I have so many details to attend to. I have an appointment with my lawyer tomorrow. He’s promised to make it all as easy as possible for me.”

“I hope he does.” I moved on to Darla Jean and her group.

“Ready for this to be over with?” I asked them.

“I’m counting down the seconds,” Heather said. “At least we had something to do the first day, what with lunch and the supper. Yesterday we got positively drenched hauling everything to car trunks.”

“Now we’re watching the weeds grow,” Billy Dick said with a yawn.

“Mrs. McMay says we have to stay here so we can load the tables and chairs,” Darla Jean said morosely.

“And take down the tent,” said a boy with blinding braces.

I looked sternly at Billy Dick. “You’d better stick to
watching
the weeds grow. If I catch you in possession of a particular weed, there’ll be hell to pay.”

He gave me an innocent smile. “I’m in training for football. We take up practice in August, you know. Coach would bench me if I got caught smoking or drinking.”

“Billy Dick’s been building up his arm muscles by bending his elbow,” Heather said, giggling.

“Have not!”

“I saw you Saturday morning,” she retorted.

“Have you seen Frederick Cartier this morning?” I asked before the spat escalated. They all shook their heads.

I returned to Lottie’s table in time to see Eileen drive a ball in the direction of Humper County. Her ensuing remark might have been enough to get her booted out of the Missionary Society.

“She’s determined to win,” Lottie said blithely. “They all are. It was so tense around here earlier that I felt as though I should have worn a combat helmet. I’m not sure some of these marriages will survive.”

“Because of a boat?”

“It’s much more complicated than that, Arly. This town is still living in the era when women didn’t have the right to vote. The Nineteenth Amendment was passed almost a hundred years ago.”

She was about to continue when we heard a whoop from somewhere on the golf course. Lottie dropped the clipboard and clutched my arm. “Is someone hurt? Has that madman come back? Do something, Arly!”

Janna joined us as a second whoop came from beyond the sprawling brush and oak trees. Birds were frightened into flight.

I froze, straining to hear more noise. Elsie McMay hurried to the edge of the tent, the teenagers on her heels.

“Do you think somebody made a hole-in-one?” gasped Darla Jean.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Billy Dick said. “That, or they found a nest of rattlesnakes.”

Proodle groaned so loudly that we all turned around. “Please, God, let it be rattlesnakes,” he said, his eyes turned upward. “Or copperheads, or a wild boar. Maybe a bear. A bear would be good.”

“It’s unlikely,” I said, “that two foursomes simultaneously ran into bears, boars, and snakes.” I glanced at Lottie’s watch. “At precisely noon.”

“What about the killer?” Proodle said as if pleading with me to buy an upscale party barge instead of a used canoe. “You should have caught him, Chief Hanks! He’s out there with an ax, slaughtering people hand over foot. What if he comes this way?” When I failed to respond, he bolted for his car and dove across the front seat. His anguished cry lingered in the air.

Everybody else started jabbering at me to do something, anything, save the golfers, protect them from certain death, find the bodies, call for help, organize a posse, etc. When they ran out of suggestions, I said, “Let’s wait here, okay? As Lottie told me earlier, these golfers are determined to win. Some of them seem to have gone to extremes.”

“Like killing each other?” asked Elsie, her voice trembling.

“Could be,” I said, although I didn’t believe it.

Not very much, anyway.

Seventeen

J
im Bob was the first to come stumbling down the fairway, swinging a golf club like a sword. “I did it! I did it! I goddamn did it!” He tripped over a rough spot, scrabbled to his feet, and resumed his triumphant charge with a clump of mud on his chin.

“Did what?” Billy Dick said.

Heather punched his arm. “Made a hole-in-one, you moron!”

“Him?” Janna said. “Is this for real?”

He stumbled into a table and sprawled in front of us. “I made a hole-in-one!” he gasped. He grabbed Lottie’s ankle. “Write it down!”

“Wait just a minute!” yelled Mrs. Jim Bob, approaching briskly with a driver in one hand and her purse in the other. She saw Jim Bob, who was bent over, gasping. “Did I hear him a few minutes ago? Is he in need of medical assistance?”

“I made a hole-in-one,” he grunted.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Her hand tightened around the club. “I made a hole-in-one at precisely noon. He’s drunk. You may record it, Lottie.”

“I made mine first—at eleven fifty-nine!” Jim Bob said. He was so agitated that his face resembled a puffer fish. Not an appetizing sight.

“I made mine at eleven fifty-eight!” Mrs. Jim Bob countered.

“Mine was first, so I win the bass boat!” She looked more like a great white shark.

“No way!” he snarled. “I win the bass boat!”

“Nobody wins the blasted boat!” Proodle said as he pushed his way through the crowd. “Don’t you morons know the boat’s impounded? Do I need to define the word for you? It’s in a pound surrounded by a chain-link fence and barb wire.”

The remainder of the golfers picked their way through various botanical entanglements and approached. The college boys were joking and shoving each other, apparently handling their disappointment well. Natalie kept her face lowered as she joined the increasingly rowdy group. Jim Bob and Mrs. Jim Bob continued to shout at each other, and at Lottie, who was hanging on to the clipboard for dear life. Proodle tried to drown them out by shouting the word “impounded” at them as if it were his mantra. The men had dark expressions as they came out from behind a line of scrub oaks. Audley, Eileen, Cora, and the other wives looked as though their soufflés had sunk. They all felt the need to voice their opinions at the top of their lungs.

I watched at a safe distance. As long as the violence kept to bloody noses and black eyes, I wasn’t about to jump in. It was getting tedious when Lottie climbed onto a table and blew a whistle loudly enough to set dogs howling in Tibia.

“Your attention, please!” she said. “We are not going to get this settled by behaving in an uncivilized manner. We will allow each claimant to make his or her case. Arly and I will then consult with the hole monitors to verify the details.”

“Why her?” demanded Jim Bob.

Lottie regarded him through her bifocals. “Because she is an unbiased party.”

“Unbiased, my ass.”

“That’s a violation of the obscenity rule!” Mrs. Jim Bob said as she shoved him aside. “He received two warnings on Saturday. The rules on the registration form make it clear that a third violation results in expulsion. He cannot win the boat.”

He stuck his face in hers. “I already won the boat when I made the hole-in-one fifteen minutes ago. What ever happens now don’t count for squat.”

“The boat’s been impounded,” Proodle added for good measure.

“Nobody can win the boat!”

“Stuff it!” Earl roared at him. “The boat ain’t gonna be impounded forever. Jim Bob won fair and square.” His tontine cohorts all nodded.

“The Missionary Society claims title to the boat,” Crystal said.

“It’s going to pay for a memorial park to benefit the community.”

Mrs. Jim Bob moistened her lips. “A generous share of the profit from the sale, that is. This tournament is meant to raise money for golf widows, not to give certain parties an excuse to loll about in the middle of a lake. We cannot have menfolk missing Sunday morning ser vices out of sloth. Sloth is a deadly sin, as we all know.”

“A sloth is also a mammal that hangs upside-down in trees,” Roy said. “I don’t reckon it’s deadly, though. Just slow and lazy.”

“Precisely!” Mrs. Jim Bob said.

Lottie blew her whistle again. “I want everyone to sit down right this minute and be quiet. We will mind our manners and watch our language.” They must have feared after-school detention, because they did as ordered. “Now then, we shall wait for the hole monitors to return. No talking, understood?”

I held up my hand. When she nodded at me, I said, “As long as we’re waiting, there are a few things I’d like to clear up. Let’s begin with the bass boat. Not only is it a fancy and very expensive toy, it’s also responsible for two deaths.”

“Boats don’t kill people,” one of the college boys said. “Golf clubs do.”

I glared at him. “Take your buddies and leave before I think of something to charge you with. Public drunkenness comes to mind.”

He gave me a look of disbelief. Rather than mention that public drunkenness was epidemic, he and the other two boys trudged up the slope. Seconds later, they drove off. I spotted Raz on his porch, cradling a shotgun. Just what I needed.

“No,” I continued, “boats don’t kill people, as a rule. This boat is different. This boat is very, very valuable. It’s a whole lot more valuable than it was the day Proodle sold it to a man who calls himself Da King, who’s currently serving time at the state prison.”

“No, he’s not,” Proodle said, then stopped.

“Did you think he was threatening you on the phone?” I asked.

“He wasn’t, unless you were accepting collect calls from the Cummins Unit. Whoever it was really had you scared. What was it: broken kneecaps, pulverized organs, decapitation?”

“Worse,” Proodle said. “But it had to be this King man. He spoke in a hoarse whisper, like a knife scraping sandpaper. He called two weeks ago and demanded that I return his boat. He knew I’d repossessed it and put it on the lot for sale.”

I held up my finger. “Or he told someone about it. A fellow inmate, for instance. The only person here who’s done prison time in this state is Luke. Did you happen to run across Da King while you were chopping cotton?”

Luke shrugged. “Yeah. Everybody there knew he was furious about losing the boat. It’s all he ever talked about. I was damn glad I had nothing to do with it. He’s one mean dude.”

“Do you know why he cared so much?” I asked.

“Not really. It was expensive, but he was a heavy-duty drug trafficker. Before he got caught, he was pulling in several grand a week. He had a real thing about it, though. I finally got sick of listening to him and pointed out he could afford to replace it. He damn near scalped me with his teeth.”

“He must have named the boat for his sweetheart,” Elsie contributed brightly.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “He bought the boat not only for status, but also as a safe deposit box. The crime squad found a box welded under the deck, way at the front end of the boat. The box contained twenty kilos of cocaine, estimated street value of more than half a million dollars.”

“Half a million dollars?” Jim Bob gurgled.

“It doesn’t come with the boat,” I said.

Proodle’s mouth fell open and his eyes bulged like marbles.

“In the Ranger? I can’t believe it. Don’t go thinking I knew anything about that, missy. The boys cleaned it up and put it back on the lot. I never touched it.” He stood up and began to back away.

“Luke knew. That’s why he pretended to be King and made the calls. Last night he said he was gonna feed my liver to the geese in the park!”

“Wait just a friggin’ minute!” Luke sputtered. “I’ve never called you. It must have been somebody in Da King’s organization. I wouldn’t know what to do with a kilo of cocaine if it fell on my head. And I’m afraid of geese, on account of being attacked when I was a kid.”

I gestured at Proodle to sit down. “I don’t think Luke made the calls. It would have been in his best interest to lie low and wait. He didn’t come to Maggody for the boat. You want to elaborate, Luke?”

“I heard about the golf tournament.” His attempted smirk was unconvincing, but I gave him points for quick thinking. “I haven’t played in years, and I thought it sounded fun. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do.”

“What about me?” Bopeep squeaked. “You told me that you wanted to move in because I excited you and made you feel like a real man.” Her forehead crinkled as she worked on it for a moment.

“Reckon that was the day after the local newspaper mentioned the golf tournament. You were using me, weren’t you? You slime bag! You want to know the truth? I felt sorry for you ’cause you’re a loser. You and your itsy-bitsy prick.”