Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 07 (14 page)

He went to the door of his office. “Miss Vetchling, would you be so kind as to hunt up the personnel file on Kevin Buchanon?”

“If I can find the strength, Mr. Dentha. I had only a bowl of soup for supper last night, and a cup of tea and a cracker for breakfast. I had to empty my checking account to pay my rent on the first of the month.”

“I feel dreadful that the regional office is dragging its heels, Miss Vetchling. I’ll call over there as soon as I have a look at the Buchanon file.” He returned to his desk, and after she’d set down the file and limped bravely back to the front room, he wasted a few minutes wondering what she’d do if she learned her check had arrived three weeks earlier. Its paltry sum had saved him from a broken kneecap, or so his bookie had sneered. The memory of the confrontation was enough to set Dentha’s heart beating arrhythmically, and he slipped a pill under his tongue and closed his eyes until he felt steadier.

He opened the file. Yes, Earl Buchanon was Kevin’s father and lived at the address reported by the vehicle registration office. Had Kevin borrowed his father’s car, or was the father implicated? And how did this Arly Hanks woman fit into things? He turned over the application form and flinched as he saw the name printed crudely but legibly. Kevin had listed his previous employers, and between stints as a convenience store assistant manager and a bank security guard, claimed to have served as an investigator under the supervision of Chief of Police Arly Hanks of the Maggody PD. This time Dentha could barely get the cap off the vial of nitroglycerine tablets. When he felt calmer, he went to the front office and waited impatiently until Miss Vetchling had finished her telephone pitch. “I’m going to be out of the office for the rest of the day, possibly until Monday morning. Can you look after things?”

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Dentha.”

“I’ve had a call from the home office. I can’t name names, but I’ve been asked to investigate the possibility that someone at the regional level has been diverting funds to an account in the Cayman Islands. For obvious reasons, this requires the utmost discretion. If anyone calls, say that I’m at a sales meeting in Little Rock.”

“What if there’s a call from the regional office?” Miss Vetchling asked shrewdly.

“I’m confident you’ll think of something.” He put on his hat and coat, picked up his briefcase, and stopped to give her a look of avuncular concern. “You really should add red meat to your diet, Miss Vetchling. You look a bit anemic.” He was already halfway down the sidewalk when he heard something inside the office shatter, but he was too preoccupied to go back and inquire.

“I am so honored to have you all as guests in my home,” Mrs. Jim Bob said to Ripley as they sipped tea in the living room of The Mayor’s Mansion, now officially filled to capacity. A fire crackled and snapped in the fireplace and the mingled scents of pinecones and potpourri added to the overall coziness. Every doily had been handwashed, starched, and pinned back in place on the arm rests, and every cushion plumped like a marshmallow. The spruce tree in the corner was decorated with red glass balls, red-and-white gingham bows, and little plastic candy canes; the gaily wrapped packages beneath it were empty but the effect was festive.

Mrs. Jim Bob was proud of the ambiance, but as Brother Verber often expounded from the pulpit, pride went before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Having time for neither of those calamities, she lowered her eyes modestly and said, “I hope Miss Katie finds her room pleasant, and you, too. I put copies of the Bible in the top drawers of the nightstands. I want all my guests to go to bed knowing they’re in an upright Christian household.”

Ripley smiled. “It’s charming. I hope you’ll forgive Katie’s haste to go to her room. She’s tuckered out from the drive and needs a nap. I’m hoping to meet Mrs. Wockermann and warn her that Matt’s coming to see her in the morning. If he surprises her, all that excitement might make her fly … off the handle.”

“First, we ought to drive around town so you can see for yourself how everything’s all fancied up for Christmas. I myself went all the way to Farberville to find the perfect wreath for the front door of the house. Then, why, we can have a nice visit with Brother Verber, who said a special prayer last Sunday entreating the Good Lord to watch over your bus. The church is decorated for Christmas, too, but Millicent McIlhaney saw to that, and it’s overdone, if you ask me. Millicent and I don’t see eye to eye about—”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Ripley interrupted. He winked reassuringly at her, but rather than soothing her, it startled her tongue back into action. “You’ll want to walk down to the creek and see where Matt was baptized. The official map shows it as being upstream just a ways, but we didn’t think folks wanted to walk all that—”

“A brilliant idea, Mrs. Jim Bob. Let me pop upstairs for my coat and gloves, and we’ll be on our merry way.”

He started to rise, but she caught his shoulder and pushed him down. In an uncharacteristically tremulous voice, she said, “Why don’t I call first and let everyone know we’re on our way? You just sit here and have another cup of tea. I’ll be back in one tiny minute.” She went into the hall, realized he could overhear her call, and hurried out to the breakfast room to use the extension.

Ripley leaned back and crossed his legs, amused by her panic. Before long, he’d be back in Oxford, this time living in a fine old antebellum house with mahogany bookcases, books with cracked leather spines, and a group of students awaiting his learned remarks. Decorum would require that he invite pasty-faced young women with thick ankles and thicker glasses, but he would also include malnourished young men in dark cotton sweaters and baggy khaki pants. The thought was enough to bring a sheen of perspiration to his forehead.

“I wanna talk to you.”

Ripley opened his eyes. “You’re the mayor?”

“Yeah, the mayor of the fuckin’ utility room.” Jim Bob sat across from him and got right down to business. “I was over at the bar and grill when your bus drove up and that kid started caterwauling caterwauling out the back window. You and me got a few things to get straight, Mr. Nashville Hotshot.”

Ripley put his fingers together and regarded Jim Bob as if he were one of the distaff students of his reverie who’d just made a disparaging remark about Miss Eudora. “Would you care to elaborate?”

Jim Bob, who could spot ‘em a mile away and had bashed a few in his time, didn’t give a shit if this fellow was the fairy princess of Opryland. When money was involved, he could be real tolerant. “I sure as hell would.”

“About the time I was resigned to a broken back, Matt Montana came to the rescue,” I said over the telephone to Harve, who was puffing away in his office in Farberville. I was in the PD, gazing wearily at the rings left on the desk by innumerable unfinished cups of coffee and at the wad of wax paper that had contained the lunch I’d gulped down. “After he gave the impromptu concert from the window of the bus, he was so gosh-darn grateful for their presence and golly-gee apologetic and all that crap that his fans practically begged him to stay inside and rest. Some of the women were crying, for chrissake, and even Hizzoner looked all choked up. He’s the last one in town I’d have accused of being a softie. Anyway, everybody backed off and the driver roused himself to move the bus around the corner of the bar. I blocked off the motel parking lot with sawhorses and deputized a couple of unemployed chicken processors to fend off the tourists for the rest of the day. I armed one of the deputies with a beeper that’ll keep him in touch with your dispatcher, who can call me here or at home if there’s a problem.”

“You didn’t arm Hammet, did ya?” drawled Harve. In the background, LaBelle giggled like a serial killer.

“Heard about that, did you?” I said mildly, hoping he couldn’t hear me grind my teeth.

“Ain’t but a handful of folks in Stump County that haven’t heard Robin Buchanon’s bushcolt is back in town. Around these parts, he’s a sight more famous than Matt Montana. His mouth any cleaner since his last visit?”

“No, and he’s expanded his vocabulary to include a lot of obscenities I’ve never heard before. His foster mother lets him watch MTV.”

Harve chortled until he choked. After he’d ordered LaBelle to thump him on the back, then hacked and wheezed for a while, he came back on the line. “Wait till dark, then bundle him up in a blanket and take him back to his foster home.”

“You know I can’t do that,” I muttered, not allowing myself to entertain the possibility for more than an idyllic second or two. “Ever since he stayed with me after his mother was murdered, he’s been convinced that I’m going to relent and adopt him. He watches me out of the corner of his eye for any sign of weakness. He’s not a bad kid, considering he spent his formative years in a gawdawful sorry excuse for a shack up on the ridge, and he’s really pretty bright. He’s also unbelievably excited about being dressed up in a cowboy suit and brought onto the stage with a real live star. He kept me up all night talking about it. How am I supposed to drop him at the curb?”

“Your funeral. Did you get me and the missus tickets for the concert?”

I admitted I did, although I made it clear that the tickets were in exchange for a six-man security force outside the auditorium. Matt Montana was not in danger of an assassination attempt by a highly trained agent from a hostile country. I wasn’t worried about snipers on rooftops or bombs in the auditorium. All six hundred tickets had been sold, with locals given twenty-four hours to snap them up before they were offered to the public. Rumor had it that scalpers were already commanding fifty dollars a ticket, and we still had more than forty-eight hours to go. It had overtones of a bad movie, R-rated for violence, if not sex.

“… and they’ll be there midafternoon,” Harve was saying. “I’ll send over some more sawhorses to set around the school parking lot to keep the gawkers at a distance. You want the bullhorn, Arly?”

I did not want the bullhorn, any more than I wanted half a dozen deputies, more sawhorses, six hundred concertgoers, or a horde of ticketless folks who’d sell their grannies into white slavery for a glimpse of Matt Montana. I did not want traffic jams on the highway, dented fenders in the parking lot, brawls outside the bar and grill, shoplifters in the souvenir shoppes, or witticisms from Harve Dorfer. “Nope,” I said and hung up, the last being the only one of the above over which I had any control. I went to the door and regarded what I could see of my jurisdiction.

It was getting dark, which meant the souvenir stores would close shortly, the tours would terminate for the day, the one streetlight would come on of its own magical accord, and I could start rolling up the sidewalk.

But I’d have to unroll it the next day, when the hometown boy emerged from the bus for two days filled with photo ops at the Wockermann house, the Assembly Hall, the high school, and whatever other sites the homecoming committee had decided he would fondly remember, given adequate forewarning. I’d tried to remember him, but all I could come up with were blurry images of bad acne. Nothing a kid did was of interest to a bona fide teenager, with the exception of said kid creeping through the moonlit scrub down by Boone Creek. All I’d seen of him then was his backside (which, possibly, was all he’d seen of me).

The faux-deputies had agreed to work all night in exchange for overtime, which I’d bill to Harve. The manager of the Pot o’ Gold Mobile Home Park, as well as Earl Buchanon, could handle security in their respective campgrounds. The two potential hotspots were at best tepid. Ruby Bee kept a baseball bat behind the bar, and the guy at the pool hall had hired a bouncer who parked a chopper out back. I’d run the license plate, and his parole officer had told me she herself was making sure he stayed on his medication this time. The Springfield splinter of the Partridge family was likely to have arrived in Hasty before dark. If I’d read Patty May’s mother’s quasi-slip correctly, Patty May would soon be sipping egg nog and munching cookies in the kitchen with her kin. I decided to take Hammet with me. After my surprise visit, we could drive around Farberville and look at the Christmas lights, go to a movie, get ice cream, or anything else that appealed to him as long it took place outside the town limits of Montanaville.

I’d turned him loose for the day, telling myself the townsfolk deserved no mercy for having dumped him on me in the first place. Everybody’d sworn it was Brother Verber’s doing, but I figured the blame belonged to the entire committee, none of whom had best ease through a yellow light as long as I was in office. Was I vindictive? As Hammet would say, you bet your ass.

I was headed out the front door when I heard a knock on the back door. Figuring my houseguest was being pursued by a lynch mob, I sighed and went to let him inside the sanctuary. I found myself admitting Matt Montana, who touched the brim of his cowboy hat as he ducked under my arm. He wore a fleece-lined jacket and denim pants, but his photograph had been held under my nose so often that I had no problem recognizing him.

“Evening, ma’am,” he said.

I regret to say I was speechless.

“Hope I’m not disturbing you,” he continued as if used to dealing with the dumbstruck, which he probably was. “I was feeling cooped up like a chicken in the bus, so I thought I’d slip away and hunt up some of my old friends in Maggody.” He went into the front room and sat down in the chair across from the desk. “Bet ya don’t remember that night down at the creek, do ya? Lordy, your eyes was a-blazin’ when you came after us. I was surprised I didn’t end up with burn marks on my butt.”

“The good ol’ days,” I murmured. I was so stunned that I had to clutch the arm rests of my chair as I sat down behind the desk. “Your memory’s better than mine.”

“Mebbe ‘cause it was the first time I saw tits in the moonlight. Sure was a pretty sight.”

I couldn’t decide whether to grin back or go get my gun and shoot him in the middle of his forehead. I decided to delay the decision for the time being, although I had not unilaterally dismissed either option. “Everybody’s excited about your triumphant return to Maggody. Guess you saw all the signs along the road?”