Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 10 (23 page)

“I made that clear this morning.”

“I’ve changed my mind. Why don’t you come with me to the PD so you can answer any questions that may arise?”

Mrs. Jim Bob crossed her arms. “I’ve already told you everything I know. He was seen in the hussy’s car Wednesday afternoon, and he had the audacity to wink at her several times during the prayer meeting that same evening. He sat next to her at the potluck, smirking like a dead hog in the sunshine, and she was so syrupy that I kept expecting her to crawl into his lap. She’s nothing but a common tramp who’s set her sights on him. What if she talked him into eloping?”

“And forgot to go along?” I opened the door and gestured at her to stand up. “Why don’t you come with me so you can tell your theories to Sheriff Dorfer? He’ll be fascinated.”

She switched off the light as she went out the door, but I figured Ruby Bee and Estelle could find their way in the dark. When we arrived at our respective cars, Mrs. Jim Bob said, “You can tell Sheriff Dorfer to call me at home if he wants to. All this worrying has taken its toll on me. I need to lie down.”

After she’d driven away, I leaned against my car and waited for the miscreants to come out of the rectory. They could probably see me in the diffused glow from the streetlight, but I doubted they had the nerve to linger inside the rectory until I left. Mrs. Jim Bob was more than capable of returning to continue her vigil.

Eventually the door opened and two shadowy figures scurried toward the old hardware store. I caught up with them at the edge of the road and said, “Would you care to explain what you were doing?”

Ruby Bee put her hands on her hips. “We weren’t doing anything that concerns you, missy.”

“That’s right,” added Estelle.

“I want an explanation,” I said in a stony voice Ruby Bee had used when I’d missed my curfew in high school.

“Well,” Ruby Bee began, “we thought it’d be nice to take Brother Verber a plate of supper so when he got back, he’d have something filling to eat. I had pot roast left over from lunch, along with carrots, potatoes, black-eyed peas, and a piece of apple pie.”

“And a clover-leaf roll,” said Estelle. “It was cold, of course, but all he had to do was heat it in the oven for-“

“Stop it,” I interrupted. “If that’s all you were doing-and don’t think for a minute that I believe you-then why were you cowering in the hallway? Couldn’t you have told Mrs. Jim Bob this same story?”

Ruby Bee moistened her lips. “She’s been acting right peculiar these last few weeks, and I’m not one to spit in the devil’s teeth. It seemed better to wait until she left. We had no way of knowing she was gonna plunk herself down and start mouthing off. She sounded so crazy we were too scared to come out of the bedroom. For all we knew, she’d taken a knife out of a drawer or brought one of Jim Bob’s shotguns with her.”

“And if Brother Verber returned?” I asked.

Estelle took over. “We figured she’d grab his ear and haul him over to the Assembly Hall to pray for forgiveness. That was one of the things she kept saying over and over again. The rest of it doesn’t bear repeating, although I must say some of it didn’t sound very charitable coming from someone who goes around telling everybody what a good Christian she is.”

“I should say not,” said Ruby Bee. “I’d better get back to the bar in case some customers show up. Come on, Estelle.”

They went behind the building, where I presumed Estelle’s station wagon was parked. I had no idea what they’d been up to, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I went back to my car and drove to the PD. The red light was blinking on the answering machine. Ruby Bee hadn’t dawdled in Brother Verber’s trailer long enough to call me before they emerged, and Mrs. Jim Bob couldn’t have made it home yet. I hit the button and heard McBeen’s raspy voice:

“I got some preliminary results for you. The boy died of respiratory failure, probably after a few convulsions. Could have been he was allergic to bee venom and was stung, but we haven’t found any welts. Nothing in his stomach indicates oral ingestion of anything more lethal than eggs and biscuits. All I can do is overnight some blood and tissue samples to the state lab in Little Rock, where they’re equipped to run sophisticated tox screens. I’ll try to bully them into getting back to me tomorrow afternoon.”

The second message was even more perplexing. It was from Harve, who’d received an amazingly quick response to his query about the Ingram MAC 10. It seemed the weapon had been seized in a raid on a compound in central Missouri and was implicated in the cold-blooded killing of a local radio personality who’d been both revered and reviled for scoffing at the militia movement. A month before the shooting, the weapon had been reported stolen from a dealer in Arkansas. The dealer’s name was Maurice W. Smeltner.

Harve hadn’t caught the significance of the name, but I did. It now seemed likely that Dylan had been a federal agent who’d infiltrated this particular militia not because he thought they were capable of violence, but because he was tracing the Ingram MAC 10 back to its original source. Since Maurice was no longer available, he’d ended up with Kayleen.

I had an urge to leap to my feet and in a single bound be pounding on the door of #3 and demanding answers. However, I didn’t have any questions, and it had been a grueling day. Sunday’s agenda was beginning to swell up faster than Boone Creek in the spring. I suppose I should have gone to Ruby Bee’s to insist that she and Estelle tell me the truth, or called Dahlia to find out if Kevin had returned, or filed a missing person report concerning Brother Verber, or fingerprinted the toilet seat in #4.

Maybe I should have done at least one of those, but I locked up the PD and went across the road to my apartment for a can of chicken noodle soup and an undemanding late-night movie. Considering the way things were going, the only thing on was apt to be Village of the Damned.

It’s never been one of my favorites.

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“You won’t believe your ears,” Ruby Bee said to Estelle, who’d arrived at the barroom for breakfast the next morning. “I found out what that tight-lipped deputy was doing parked in the lot all night long. You’d have thought that since I own the motel I deserved an explanation right then and there. Anyway, a while ago I took trays to everybody, and Kayleen explained why all the militia folks are staying out back. One of them, a boy from Colorado, was shot while they were playing their war game on Cotter’s Ridge.”

“Shouldn’t he be staying in a hospital?” said Estelle as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

“He’s in the morgue-and nobody knows what killed him.”

“You just said he was shot. Can I have some cream for this? It’s strong enough to bubble the paint off aluminum siding.”

Ruby Bee didn’t much care for the aspersion, but she slid the ceramic pitcher down the bar before she got back to the more important affair of repeating gossip. “At first, Arly and the sheriff agreed it was an ordinary hunting accident, but then they found out the bullet wound wasn’t all that serious.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “What’s more, Earl and Kevin were there, as well as Jeremiah McIlhaney. I’d liked to have been a fly on the wall when those three told their wives.”

Estelle wasn’t ready for conversation, so she busied herself calculating the precise amount of cream needed to make the coffee palatable. Ruby Bee went into the kitchen to check on the ham in the oven, then returned just as Eileen came into the barroom and said, “Where’s Arly?”

Ruby Bee shrugged. “She hasn’t been here this morning.”

“She’s not at the police department or her apartment. It’s real important that I talk to her!”

Estelle patted the stool beside her. “You’d better sit down, Eileen. You’re white as a slab of cream cheese. Ruby Bee, why don’t you get Eileen a cup of coffee?”

“I’ve got to find Arly!” said Eileen, remaining where she was. “Yesterday Kevin went off somewhere, and now Dahlia’s gone, too. I called their house this morning, then went over there. Nobody was home. I thought maybe Kevin had rushed her to the hospital, but according to the reception desk, they’re not there. The clinic hasn’t heard from them either, and they were supposed to call before they left for the hospital.”

Ruby Bee went ahead and filled a cup with coffee. “Could they have gone to a different hospital?”

“I don’t see why they would. The clinic gave them instructions to go to the one in Farberville, and they’ve already filled out the admission forms and made sure they know which door to go in. Kevin came close to passing out when he heard how much the delivery will cost, but the hospital agreed to monthly payments.” Eileen took a swallow of coffee, grimaced, and put down the cup. “I’m beside myself with worry. Earl thinks Kevin came home real late, and by way of apology, took Dahlia for a drive this morning. He says Dahlia forgot her promise to call us when he showed up.

“He could be right,” said Estelle.

It was obvious that Eileen was on the verge of bawling, so Ruby Bee hurried around the bar and gave her a hug. “It’s gonna turn out fine,” she said, “but when Arly shows up, I’ll have her call you just to be on the safe side.” She waited until Eileen trudged out of the bar, then looked at Estelle. “I don’t know what Arly can do, though. The way folks are coming and going these days, you’d think there was a revolving door at both ends of town. It’s a dadburned shame those militia folks pushed their way through it.”

“The fellow that got shot would be the first to agree with you. I think I’m gonna go out to my house later this morning to collect yesterday’s mail and make sure Elsie’s burglars didn’t drop by.”

“What about the birds?”

“It’s broad daylight and there’s no way they could be inside,” Estelle said coolly, ignoring the sudden flutters in her stomach. “Anyway, all we have to fear is fear itself.”

“I don’t recollect Winston Churchill being pecked so hard he fell off a porch.”

“He didn’t say it. It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Ruby Bee gaped at her. “It most certainly was not. It was Churchill trying to calm everybody down when the Nazis started bombing England.”

“I beg your pardon. I distinctly remember from my high school history class that it was President Roosevelt.”

“Are you sure you didn’t hear him say it?” Ruby Bee said sweetly. “I’ve always wondered how much gray hair you’re covering up.”

Estelle clamped down on her magenta-colored lip until she could trust herself. “I learned about it in school, and my memory’s a sight better than yours, Mrs. Walking Amnesia. Why don’t we just settle this by calling Lottie? She’s a teacher, so she might know.”

Ruby Bee was already regretting taking such a firm stance, but she wasn’t about to let it show. She opened the cash register, took out a dime, and slapped it down on the bar. “Go right ahead and call anybody you like.”

“We’ll just see, won’t we?” Estelle marched down to the pay phone and dialed Lottie’s number. As soon as she heard Lottie’s voice, she posed the question and waited for a response. Rather than chortling with self-congratulation, her eyes grew round as silver silver dollars and her jaw began to waggle. Minutes later, she staggered back to her stool.

“Well?” said Ruby Bee. “Which one was it?”

“I don’t think Lottie ever said, because she was hellbent on telling me something else. After I left the high school library, she remembered having flipped through a magazine-Farmer’s Digest, I think she said-that had ostriches on the cover. She hunted it up and read an article about how breeding them is big business these days. The eggs are worth a thousand dollars, chicks about three thousand, and a mature pair is”-she put her hand on her mouth to hold back the makings of a whimper, but it came out anyway-” between forty-five and sixty thousand dollars. Those hissy birds that Uncle Tooly gave me are worth a fortune, and you let them run off into the woods like nothing more valuable than scruffy little guinea hens.”

Ruby Bee didn’t recollect letting them do anything except come close to scaring her to death. However, there was no point in saying as much-or mentioning that Estelle had been the one too cowardly to open the door. “Maybe we can get them back. For all we know, they’re in your yard. If they’re not, they’re likely to be on the ridge. We’d have heard if they were wandering around town, alarming folks.”

“What’ll we do if we find ‘em? Ask ‘em real politely to follow us back to the house and climb into the crate?”

This was indeed a problem. After tossing back and forth suggestions that ranged from the ludicrous, like roping them cowboy style, to the outright insane, like jumping on their backs, they came up with a plan of sorts that involved being able to get close enough to throw bed sheets over their heads. Estelle finished her coffee while Ruby Bee collected sheets from #1, then they climbed into the station wagon and headed for Cotter’s Ridge.

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I arrived in Malthus at eight, found the sheriff’s department, identified myself, and was ushered into his office one minute later (his version of LaBelle was a nervous youngster with acne and a stammer).

Sheriff Flatchett was almost a carbon copy of Harve in terms of bulk and age, but there was something unsavory about him, something that implied he might be persuaded to look the other way in exchange for an envelope stuffed with money. Rumor has it there are no chickens in the chicken houses of Chowden County, but instead grow lights and irrigation systems. Rumor also has it that Sheriff Flatchett spends his vacations in Europe.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said, not, bothering to stand up or feign a smile. “Over in Maggody, right?”

“That’s right,” I said. I waited a moment to be invited to sit down, then did it anyway. “I’m here because of a string of burglaries in Stump County. One of them included a homicide.”

“Is that so?” he said without interest.

I reminded myself that I needed his cooperation, if not his undying devotion. “Yes, and I understand you had one here about a year ago. Maurice Smeltner was the victim.”

“Yeah, ol’ Mo took three slugs to his abdomen and was dead as a lizard before we got there. They lived way the hell out at the end of an unpaved road. Decent house, though, with one of those aboveground pools. According to his widow, swimming was about the only exercise Mo could handle after hip-replacement surgery. He met her while he was recuperating in a nursing home, and I guess he figured he could get looked after for free if he married her. Mo preferred to keep his wallet in his pocket. Odds are he never had a Girl Scout cookie in his life.”