Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 10 (11 page)

Mrs. Jim Bob pinched her lips together and stared suspiciously at them. “Did you?” she said at last. “Who would have thought you’d worry about Brother Verber, especially since you’re not a member of the congregation. Maybe that has something to do with you selling alcohol.”

“To folks like your husband,” shot back Ruby Bee.

“My husband has been known to stray at times, but whenever he does, I do my best to get him back on the path of righteousness. I presume you do the same with your daughter, even though it doesn’t seem to do a smidgen of good.” Ignoring Ruby Bee’s gasp, she took a key from under the door mat, unlocked the door, and went inside.

“Well, I never! ” said Ruby Bee as the door slammed in her face. “The nerve of her!”

Estelle snorted. “One of these days Mrs. High and Mighty’ll get what’s coming to her, and I hope I’m there to see it. Come on, Ruby Bee, we might as well go have some sweet potato pie.”

Ruby Bee was more in the mood to stomp into the rectory and tell Mrs. Jim Bob what she thought of her, but she followed Estelle back to the station wagon.

/\
/\
/\

Jake saw the Hummer parked at the far edge of the pasture and drove toward it, cursing as his tires spun in the mud. “I hope to hell it don’t take a tow truck to get out of here on Monday.”

Judy pulled her coat more tightly around her. “Then Sterling can pay for it, since he selected the spot. At least over at Bradley’s place, there was a gravel road. This is ridiculous. I never should have agreed to put up with this another year.”

He glared at her, then concentrated on getting through the shriveled corn stalks that slapped at the front of the truck. As he parked alongside the Hummer, Pitts came out of the woods and called, “You’re early. I wasn’t expecting to see you all till six or seven.”

Jake climbed out of the truck and pulled down the tailgate. “I took off early so we could get here before dark. My boss thinks I’m over in Farberville having a look at junkers at the auto auction lot. How long you been here, Pitts?”

“We’re supposed to use code names on retreats! Unless you wish to risk the possibility of a court martial, Blitzer, address me as Silver Fox.”

Jake dragged a canvas tent bag out of the bed, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and said, “Where are we making camp-Silver Fox?”

“I’ve reconnoitered the area and chosen a clearing with adequate drainage. It’s just on the other side of that gully and up about fifty feet. No one can see you from here, but you should be able to see anyone who approaches. I’ll show you the way.”

Jake looked back at Judy, who was sitting in the cab like she was planted there for all eternity. “Get the sleeping bags and whatever else you can carry,” he shouted at her, then slithered down the side of the gully and made his way up the far side.

Sterling waited until Jake reached the top, then turned and continued between thickets of brambles and thin, stunted trees. They arrived at a rocky clearing encircled by scrub pines and more brambles.

Jake dropped the tent. “Where’s your crap?”

“I’ll set up the communications post in town. I can hardly plug the computer into that tree, can I? I think I hear another vehicle coming across the pasture. I need to make sure it’s one of our people instead of some nosy federal agents.” He paused to study Jake’s face for a telltale flicker of guilt. “I had a communiqué from the outfit over in Oklahoma. It seems they discovered an informant in their midst, a sneaky bastard taking money from the FBI. He’d been in their cell for over two years before they uncovered him.”

“Did they hang him by his balls?” Jake asked as he pulled the tent out of the bag and began to unroll it.

“Something like that.”

“Sumbitch deserved it.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Sterling left him to struggle with the tent and returned to the pasture. The truck belonged to Red Rooster. For a moment, he assumed the passenger was Apocalypse, but as the truck got closer, he recognized Dylan Gilbert. It was unfortunate, he told himself as he crossed the gully, that the young man had not drifted elsewhere. Theirs was an enthusiastic group, but hardly as professional as the one in Colorado. Red Rooster had passed along Dylan’s remark about the compound in Idaho, too. Sterling knew the brethren there had been ruthless when they’d been under siege by the feds for nearly three weeks. Some of them had been given life sentences despite the fact they were doing nothing more than protecting their families.

Reed cut off the engine and got out of the truck. “How’s it going, Pitts?” he said as he began to unload his camping equipment.

“You’re supposed to call me Silver Fox.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Reed. “How’re you doing, Judy? Where’s Jake?”

Sterling stomped his boot in the mud. “Refer to him as Blitzer, damn it! This is not a Boy Scout jamboree. We are here for a purpose purpose-and it’s not to roast marshmallows and tell ghost stories. Tell your friend to get his gear, and I’ll lead you to the encampment. I myself will be staying at a motel in order to remain in communication with the network.”

“What’s the matter, Pops?” said Dylan as he lazily emerged from the truck. “Getting too old to rough it with the rest of us?”

“My name is Silver Fox! Can’t you morons get that through your thick skulls?”

“Look at this, Silver Fox,” Reed said, holding out a blowgun. “Jake-I mean Blitzer-told me to check it out. It’s a helluva lot more accurate than a knife. I took down a crow at more than forty feet.”

“Interesting,” said Sterling.

“You bet it is. I got some paint pellets so I can show everybody how powerful it is. It didn’t cost but about thirty dollars.” He pointed at a sparrow on a limb across the gully. “Watch this.”

He loaded a pellet into the blowgun, leveled it, and took a deep breath. A noise no louder than a mouse’s fart accompanied the release of the pellet. The sparrow continued to watch them, its head cocked.

Pitts looked at the orange splotch on the front of his field jacket. “Good work, Red Rooster. I can see how terrified all of our feathered friends will be in the future. Now, would you put that blasted thing away and get your gear?” He looked at Dylan, who was sniggering. “You, too, if you’re planning to participate in the retreat. Otherwise, take a hike back to Colorado.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dylan balanced a sleeping bag on one shoulder and picked up a duffel bag.

Reed fondled the blowgun. “Hey, I’m real sorry, Sterling. I practiced all day yesterday with this baby, and I was getting to where I could hit something clear across the parking lot behind my apartment. ‘Course there were some wild shots while I was learning. This old boy that lives below me liked to have gone crazy when he saw the paint on his car, but I told him next time I’d use a dart and aim for his tires if he didn’t stop squawking.”

“Just call me Silver Fox,” Sterling said in a discouraged voice, then started back across the gully.

“Did you do that on purpose?” asked Judy as Reed walked by.

Reed was torn between not wanting to admit he’d made a bad shot and confessing that he’d purposely assailed their leader, which might amount to treason. “It was one of those things,” he muttered. “You aiming to sit there all night?”

“I might.”

Dylan joined them. “You’re too pretty to spend the next few days wallowing in the mud. Judy, right? I’m Dylan. I think I’m going to like it here more than I thought.”

“Hey!” Reed said, thumping Dylan on the back with the blow gun. “You’d better watch that kind of thing. Jake’s liable not to like it, and he’s one mean fucker when he’s riled up. He did six weeks in the county jail for biting off a biker’s ear in a brawl.”

Judy winked at Dylan, then went back to studying the dusty dashboard. The two men crossed the gully and disappeared into the woods. After a while, Jake emerged and came back to the truck, his eyes hard.

“Thought you was coming to the camp,” he said.

“You thought wrong. If Sterling can stay in a motel in town, then I can, too. He can bring me out here to do the cooking and washing up, but there’s no reason why I should spend the next three nights in a smelly sleeping bag on the rocks. If you don’t like it, I’ll find a way to get myself to Emmett in time to babysit tomorrow. Take it or leave it, Jake.”

“You planning to sleep alone?”

“Heavens, no. I was planning to ask Silver Fox to crawl into bed with me. He may still have a little life in his old pecker. Or maybe that new fellow named Dylan. I could tell from looking at him that he’s a real stud. After all, he’s got be a good twenty years younger than you.”

“Damn it,” Jake said, making a fist but keeping it at his side, “you got no call to talk like that. I ‘spose you can stay in town as long as Sterling keeps an eye on you. I want you to promise to stay in your motel room and not go wandering around town. From what I’ve heard, there are some mighty peculiar folks in Maggody.”

Judy decided not to comment about grown men who snuck around the woods with green and brown makeup on their faces and guns that fired paint pellets. Boy, that’d stop the foreign troops in their tracks. They’d be laughing so hard they could be rounded up effortlessly and deposited in makeshift stockades.

“I promise to stay in the motel room,” she said. “Make sure that you do.” Jake stared at her, then gathered the rest of his gear and headed for the gully.

/\
/\
/\

“This is more like it,” Jim Bob said as he opened a beer and settled his muddy shoes on the crate that served as a coffee table in the trailer. “Hey, Larry Joe, if you’re gonna fix yourself a bologna sandwich, make one for me. I skipped breakfast on account of not wanting to disturb Mrs. Jim Bob when I left the house.”

“What’d she say when you told her we was going hunting?” asked Larry Joe. “Joyce was mad like she always is, but she said she’d cover for me if the principal at the high school calls to check up on me. It isn’t like those little bastards in my shop classes aren’t cutting school to go huntin,’ too. There were so few of them yesterday that I sent them to the library.”

“To do what?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Study or something.” Larry Joe opened a cooler and dug around for the package of bologna. “So what’d she say?”

“Some critter must have died in the outhouse,” said Roy Stiver, zipping up his fly as he came into the trailer. “It stinks to high heavens.”

Jim Bob slapped his brow. “And us without a can of pinescented air freshener! I knew we’d forget something essential. Put mustard on my sandwich, Larry Joe-unless we forgot that, too. Cut off the crust while you’re at it, and put on the tea kettle.”

Roy sat down at the kitchen table and shuffled a deck of cards. “I was just making an observation, for chrissake. You want to play poker or sit there like a boil on a preacher’s ass?”

“Deal the cards,” Jim Bob said, smugly congratulating himself for changing the subject. Mrs. Jim Bob would have figured out by the middle of the morning where he’d gone, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it until he got home. That scene was something he didn’t want to think about and spoil his weekend, not when they had plenty of beer, whiskey, bologna, and cards.

“I think we forgot the mustard,” Larry Joe said with a sigh.

/\
/\
/\

Instead of going straight back to Maggody, I went to Farberville to report in person to Harve and find out if he’d heard anything from the FBI about the prints. The sheriff’s department, which housed the county jail as well as offices, a weight room, and more showers than to be found in all of Maggody, was a complete contrast to my two-room, shabby PD. It always depressed me.

LaBelle glanced up at me over the top of her sequined bifocals, sniffed, and resumed talking on the telephone. From what I could tell, the conversation concerned a young relative with head lice. LaBelle’s not a Buchanon, but she should be.

“I need to speak to Harve,” I said.

She covered the mouthpiece. “He’s busy. You’ll have to make an appointment for sometime next week.”

“I’ve just come from a murder scene, and I need to speak to Harve. I cannot wait until next week, or even until you stop offering nit-picking advice to your sister or whoever it is.”

“Then go on back to his office,” she said with a flip of her hand. “Don’t blame me if he bites your head off, though. I warned you.”

Harve was seated at his desk, gazing dully at a stack of folders. An ashtray contained a veritable mountain of burned matches, and flakes of gray ash decorated most of the nearby surfaces. The potted plant on his desk appeared discouraged, if not yet dead.

“What’d you find?” he asked.

“Not much.” I took out my notebook and flipped it open. “The victim’s name was Katherine Avenued, twenty-one, lived alone in an apartment on Thurber Street. Her parents moved to Tucson several years ago. She waited tables at a Mexican restaurant and started taking classes at the business college in August. Her only friend seemed to have been Heidi Coben, the homeowner’s daughter. Katherine didn’t mention anything out of the ordinary when Heidi last talked to her on Monday. We pulled up a lot of prints, but you know as well as I that if these perps are pros, they wear gloves.”

“What else did the Cohen women say?”

I tried not to wince as he pulled a splintery cigar butt out of his shirt pocket and reached for a box of matches. “Mrs. Coben received a hefty divorce settlement and could afford nice things. Besides the stuff you already knew about, she’s missing a computer, a fax machine, a cordless telephone, a bunch of silver pieces, a pair of antique dueling pistols, a camcorder, and a jewelry box that deserved a spot in Fort Knox. There may be more after she does a thorough search.”

Harve fired up the cigar, eyed the overflowing ashtray, and dropped the match on the floor. “They had all that expensive stuff, lived in the middle of nowhere, and didn’t have a burglar alarm?”

“Heidi said that Katherine set it off by accident when she first moved in. After that, she refused to turn it on because she was afraid she’d do it again. I guess she figured her presence was enough, but she parked her car in the garage and more than likely turned off the lights when she went to bed.”