Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 10 (32 page)

I swung by Raz’s, but his truck was gone. I went on to the PD to make a pot of coffee before I headed for Harve’s office. On a whim, I took out Agent Tonnato’s business card, called the office and got the answering machine, then called the home number.

“Tonnato,” he said.

I identified myself, then said, “Did you overhear the conversation in Kayleen Smeltner’s motel room half an hour ago?”

“The only thing I’ve overheard today was my wife telling her sister what a sloppy paint job I’m doing on the deck. Why don’t you go home and check under your bed for communists, Chief Hanks?”

He banged down the receiver, so I did, too. I poured a cup of coffee, settled my feet on the corner of the desk, and mentally reviewed my spontaneous construction of my case against Kayleen. It seemed to make as much sense as most of the things that took place in and around Maggody, and I was gathering up my notes when the telephone rang. “Arly,” chirped LaBelle, “I know you’re on the way, but this couldn’t wait. Are you missing any of your local residents?”

I thought for a minute. “Not as many as I was a couple of hours ago. What are you—the census taker?”

“Well, we just got a call from the Pulaski County sheriff’s office. Three days ago they raided a place outside the Little Rock city limits and found one of yours. Ruby Bee’s not gonna have any trouble writing her column this week, lemme tell you.”

“So tell me.”

“There are certain words I don’t use, but the place is called Madam Caressa’s Social Club. The employees are all women, and the customers are men, if you get my drift. Most of the men were allowed to put up bail and leave, but yours was so inebriated and incoherent that they took him to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric evaluation.”

I sat down and rested my forehead on my fist. “Brother Verber, right? Hey, LaBelle, why don’t you call Mrs. Jim Bob and tell her the news? She’s been worried sick, so this will make her feel a whole lot better. It’s real possible that she’ll want to drive down there to pick him up herself.”

LaBelle happily agreed, and I made it out the door before she realized what she was getting herself into and called me back.

I could tell from the look she gave me when I arrived at the sheriff’s department that Mrs. Jim Bob hadn’t gurgled in gratitude and thanked LaBelle for sharing the information. I hurried by her desk and into Harve’s office, where he and the county prosecutor were waiting.

It took me most of an hour to cover everything.

I was unable to explain how the Ingram MAC 10 had ended up in Missouri, but suggested that an argument could be made that taking a stolen weapon across state lines for use in a felony might be racketeering, and thus a way to involve the FBI. The prosecutor was ambivalent, but Harve was so delighted at passing the buck that he offered to send a deputy back to Raz’s shack for the rifle.

He also volunteered to walk me out to my car. “Good work, Arly. I’m so distracted these days that I’d probably have let it go as a hunting accident.”

“Another burglary?” I asked.

“No, but the newspapers are carrying on like there’s a serial killer systematically exterminating the population. Now that this militia business is done, think you’ll have time to get back on the burglaries?”

“I’ll reread the files,” I said, then left for the hospital.

I went to the maternity waiting room. Ruby Bee and Estelle were reading magazines, while Earl snored in a corner and Eileen stood by the door, twisting a tissue into shreds.

“No progress?” I asked.

“No,” Eileen said glumly. “They let me go to her room for a minute, but she was bawling because the nurse wanted to put on a fetal monitor. I don’t know where she got this crazy idea that any kind of test is going to hurt the baby.”

“Oh, I know where she got it,” Estelle said as she opened her two-gallon handbag and pulled out a folded newspaper. “There’s an ad almost every week in The Starley City Star Shopper that says all the tests are potentially harmful to the baby. If you send nineteen ninety-five to the address in the ad, they send you a kit to determine the sex of your baby.”

“Let me see that,” I said.

“The ad’s right under my column,” said Ruby Bee. “I must say I’m getting a lot of compliments these days from folks that enjoy knowing about their neighbors. The folks that write the Emmett and Hasty columns must be as dull as June Bug Buchanon. She’d talk your ear off, and afterwards you couldn’t recall a thing she’d said.”

I read the ad. “This should have been in a tabloid between stories about coconut trees at the South Pole and man-eating rabbits.” Aware that Ruby Bee was watching me, I scanned her column. “Glad to know that Petrol hasn’t lost his zest. I don’t remember asking you to remind anybody about hunter orange, but that’s okay.” I thought about telling them that Kayleen wouldn’t be opening her pawnshop anytime in the foreseeable future, but it could wait.

“Here’s the first column,” said Ruby Bee, handing me a carefully folded piece of newsprint.

I obediently read her maiden foray into journalism. “Wow, I didn’t know the Four-H club was doing so well … and a baby shower for Dahlia with punch and cake. Maggody was certainly on the go that week, what with Edwina in Branson, the Bidens planning their trip, and Elsie …”

“What?” said Ruby Bee, poised to snatch back the column if I snickered.

“I need to make a call from the lobby,” I said. I rode the elevator back down, found a dime, and called Harve. “Do you ever look at those small town weekly newspapers?”

“Not in an election year,” he said. “I’d like to talk, but we’re kinda busy over here. Both of the suspects have lawyers falling all over themselves, and for some fool reason, LaBelle said she was going home to get drunk. Les keeps trying to tell me about a goddamn grenade launcher we can use to blow up marijuana patches, and—”

“This has to do with the burglaries, Harve, although I can’t deny that I’d find ways to enjoy a grenade launcher. The newspaper I’m looking at is packed with columns written by amateur correspondents. Most of what’s in them is tedious, but there seems to be a common trend—and that’s to announce who’s away visiting relatives or planning a trip. The burglars had all the time in the world to empty the suitable residences.”

“Can we catch ‘em?”

I may have been a bit cocky, but it felt good. “Have someone round up all these papers and we’ll see about staking out the most likely candidates. It may take a week or two, but—”

“A week would be better, on account of the election, but just the same, nailing those bastards would make a lot of people sleep better at night.”

“If you wanted to sell stolen property, Harve, where would you start?”

“Pawn store,” he said promptly. “but nothing’s turned up. We’ve got some of the serial numbers and fairly good descriptions of jewelry and that sort of thing.”

“What if,” I said, regretting my failure to keep track of who was where and when, “you were a fence, and had connections with fences in other states? You wouldn’t have to risk selling stolen goods that were on the hot sheet, would you? You could put the stolen property in a storage facility, and wait until you could move it out of state. No rush, especially if you had reciprocal agreements across the country.”

Harve wasn’t puffing on a cigar anymore. “What are you getting at, Arly?”

“Malthus,” I said. “It’s in Chowden County. You might ask Sheriff Flatchett about rental storage space. He may know all sorts of things.”

“You know,” Harve said, sighing, “sometimes I think about dropping out of the race and retiring to someplace like Florida.”

“Hurricanes and theme parks.”

“Then maybe southern California.”

“Mudslides, floods, earthquakes, sinkholes, brush fires, and theme parks.”

Harve harrumphed. “I’m sure as hell not retiring to Maggody. You may not have any of those things you listed, but you not only attract the strangest bunch of folks I ever met, you grow them out that way, too.”

I hung up the phone.

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When Jake and Judy got back to Emmet, Jake announced he was going to find LaRue. He dumped all the camping gear in the yard, told her to put it away, and drove off.

Judy went inside and called Janine to make sure the baby was fine. Afterwards, she crammed as much of her clothes as she could in a suitcase, put the money she’d been setting aside into her purse, and walked down the road to the café where the Greyhound buses stopped.

After she’d had a cup of coffee, she took a dime from her purse and used the pay phone to call the Stump County sheriffs department.

“About those burglaries,” she said without identifying herself. “You might want to ask Jake Milliford out in Emmett how he and his buddy LaRue can afford all their fancy guns.”

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When Reed got back to the Airport Arms, he sat in the truck and tried to come up with a way to sell Dylan’s car. He was thinking he should have asked Jake about the salvage yard when a guy on a damn-fine Harley drove up. The guy pulled up the visor of his helmet and said, “You Reed Rondly?”

“Yeah, but why’s it your business?”

The guy threw a fat envelope into the truck. “Just doin’ my job, which is serving court orders. Have a good day.”

The motorcycle was long gone before Reed got his mouth closed.

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When Barry got back to his apartment, he found a message on his answering machine from an unfamiliar woman, warning him that her husband LaRue and Jake were on the way “to kick the shit out of you—and believe you me, they can do it, no matter how tough you are.”

Barry decided it was time to find another group of brethren in some place like Wyoming.

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When Jim Bob got back to the deer camp after six hours of being lost in the rain, blundering up and down the ridge, not seeing Roy or Larry Joe or any other living thing, he felt darn sorry for himself. To top it off, his four-wheel was gone and the trailer was still locked and by now he was so hungry he would have eaten some of that greenish bologna Larry Joe had thrown out in the grass—except something had already gotten it.

He sat on the concrete block, wiping his chin and trying to find the strength to get up and follow the logging road off the ridge, when he saw something staring at him through a bush.

It was back, he thought wildly. It looked different somehow—hairier and heftier and more like an ape—but he didn’t hang around to think about the differences and instead ran down to the outhouse, scrambled inside, and banged down the latch.

He peered through a knothole and saw movement, but not enough to figure out what was going on. His heart was pounding like it was about to burst out of his chest, and his eyes were clouded with blotches of red.

He sat down to wait. It wasn’t likely that Larry Joe and Roy would come back, but he wasn’t about to go outside until they did.

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When I got back to the waiting room, everybody was beaming except for Earl, who looked a little groggy.

“It’s a boy!” said Ruby Bee, clapping her hands.

“Kevin just came out and told us,” said Eileen. “Dahlia’s fine, and as soon as they take her to her room, Earl and I can poke our heads in for a minute. Once the baby’s been cleaned up, they’ll roll him out in the nursery so we can see him. I’m just as pleased as punch!”

“Aren’t we all!” said Estelle.

Eileen had to elbow Earl before he agreed, but he grunted something and we were all smiling mindlessly (there wasn’t much else to do) when Kevin came to the door.

“It’s a girl,” he croaked, swaying like a top-heavy stalk of corn.

I caught his arm, shoved him down in the nearest chair, and held his head between his knees until he began to protest.

Earl was wide awake. “What do you mean, it’s a girl? You just came in here and said it was a boy. Which is it?”

“Both,” Kevin said numbly.

“Twins?” Eileen said, doing some swaying herself.

Two more Buchanons, I thought as we crowded around Kevin and began to congratulate him. Just what I needed.