by Joan Hess
Carlotta started for the van but spotted Ruby Bee and Estelle nearby and went over to them. “Good morning. Ruby Bee, did you happen to see Buddy Meredith or Kitty Kaye this morning?”
Ruby Bee paused for a moment so everybody could appreciate how the assistant director was asking her a question concerning the whereabouts of famous celebrities like Miss Kaye and the Wite & Brite man. “I don’t reckon I did. I took breakfast trays to everybody’s doors like you requested. Now that I think about it, the tray in front of #5 was still sitting there when I locked up to come watch the movie bein’ made.”
“I saw it, too,” Estelle said, a little miffed that Carlotta hadn’t said a word to her or even bothered to smile. “It didn’t look like it’d been touched. If you want, I’ll drive back and knock on their door.”
Before Carlotta could respond, the door of Raz’s cabin flew open. Gwenneth marched across the yard, her face rigid and her breasts bobbing indignantly, and came through the gate. “There is a pig in there,” she told Carlotta in a steely voice. “That person says he’ll put it outside, but it’s lying on the sofa. He chews tobacco and he spits. Furthermore, he scratches as if he were infested with lice. My skin is absolutely crawling.”
“What are the others doing?”
“I need to lie down somewhere clean and cool,” Gwenneth went on with a martyred sigh, allowing the spectators to appreciate her delicate sensibilities. “Truly, Carlotta, I am simply going to burst into tears if you force me to go back inside there.”
“Talk to Hal.”
“I cannot communicate with him. He and Fuzzy are drinking an unknown substance from jars, and Frederick is watching them with that nauseatingly superior smile of his. I just know the place is swarming with spiders and fleas—and that pig is disgusting!” Two silver tears trickled down from behind the dark lenses of the sunglasses.
“Would you like to sit for a spell in my station wagon?” Estelle asked solicitously.
“Yeah, do that,” Carlotta said. “I’m going to run back to the motel and pick up Buddy and Kitty.”
Estelle was pretty darn impressed with herself as she took Miss D’Amourre’s arm and led her to the station wagon. She knew that everybody was watching how she had a real famous movie star in tow, and Ruby Bee could fume all she wanted, since her car was parked way down by the highway.
“So there’ve been five fires?” Anderson said. We’d broken into Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill (the key’s on the ledge above the door), and were drinking coffee in the back booth. Yes, the dark one, even in the morning. Sunlight was not allowed to violate the ambience of the barroom. “Are you positive the one in your apartment was set by the same person? The style’s quite different.”
“It was a message,” I said with a sigh. “I know who’s setting them, and he knows that I know—if you follow that. The investigator at the state police barracks is going to see what he can find out about Billy Dick MacNamara’s history in Farberville. I won’t be surprised to learn he’s been in trouble before, or at least suspected of being involved. In the meantime, all I can do is try to catch him with matches in his hand.”
“Can’t you get assistance?” Anderson said, taking my hand in his, although not, I assumed, to determine if I was holding a book of matches.
“I talked to the sheriff, who squawked and snorted as he always does, then lapsed into his lament about his shortage of manpower. He has a point. We can’t stake out every old building in the county on an indefinite basis.”
“Can you tail the boy at night?”
“I can try, but I doubt it’ll do any good.” I smiled at him, trying not to let myself linger too long on his lovely eyes and talented lips. “You like this, don’t you? A little real-life drama after all those years of cinematic fantasy?”
To my surprise (okay, dismay), he let go of my hand and leaned back against the partition. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said in an odd voice. “Or then again, maybe I don’t. It has to do with my wife.”
The door opened, and Carlotta came across the barroom. She was dressed neatly, but her hair was not its usual tidy cap, and her bloodless fingers were clutching the clipboard as if rigor had set in. “I’m glad I found you, Chief Hanks. Kitty and Buddy missed their call this morning, and I’m afraid there’s something wrong in #5. Do you know where Ruby Bee keeps a second set of keys?”
I was still reeling from the word “wife,” and her agitation wasn’t helping. “Why do you think there’s something wrong?”
“The breakfast tray hasn’t been touched, and no one answered when I pounded on the door. Have you seen either of them, Anderson?”
“Not since early last night. They were here when I went back to my room.”
“Maybe they went into Farberville,” I suggested. I should have been struggling to my feet while trying to remember where Ruby Bee kept the keys, but I actually wanted her to go away so that Anderson and I could continue our conversation. Married, huh? No big deal. We weren’t in the midst of a torrid affair. And not necessarily destined to be so. On the other hand, Plover’s complacency was wearing thin, and it wouldn’t hurt to give him something to think about, presuming he noticed.
Carlotta shook her head. “They have no transportation. The van and the rental car are both at the site. Do you mind finding the keys?”
I went behind the bar and opened the drawer below the cash register. It was a miser’s nest of stubby pencils, pens, string, rubber bands, receipts, invoices, IOU’s, and more than a dozen keys, ranging from shiny ones to rusty, old-fashioned ones that probably locked buggy doors.
“Did they say anything last night?” Carlotta asked Anderson.
“Buddy was having a great time with the locals,” he said slowly, gazing at the dim room as if he could replay the evening in his mind. “He told me he’d grown up in a town like this and still got a kick out of the colloquialisms and rural rituals. He had the accent down pat.”
I grabbed all the keys that weren’t out of the question and went across the dance floor. “They’re unmarked, but some of them are likely to be the ones for the motel room doors.”
We hurried out to the parking lot. As we approached #5, I spotted flies buzzing above a tray covered with a napkin, and abruptly I felt as uneasy as Carlotta obviously did. Anderson had pointed the couple out to me the night we’d had beers. Neither of them looked especially spacy. Had Gwenneth or the one called Fuzzy taken a hike, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it.
I handed all but one key to Carlotta and tried it. We’d gone through most of them when the lock clicked. I opened the door a few inches, but none of us made a sudden rush through the door.
“Buddy? Kitty?” Carlotta called hesitantly.
I bit my lip as I pushed the door all the way back and ordered myself to step into the room. There were two suitcases in the corner, and a shirt draped over the back of a chair. The swaybacked bed was made neatly enough to pass inspection. A couple of liquor bottles were on the dresser next to glasses and an ice bucket.
“That’s her purse,” Carlotta whispered from behind me.
I swallowed several times. “Maybe they went across the road to the supermarket, or went for a walk.”
“Not them,” Anderson said, also behind me and envincing no desire to come any farther. “They knew the schedule. The budget’s too tight to waste time. Hal’s watch doesn’t have a minute hand; it has a dollar sign.”
I opened the curtain and took a harder look at the room. They clearly weren’t here, and if there’d been a struggle, it had been of a genteel variety. “I guess I’d better check the bathroom,” I said under my breath. No one offered to save me the trouble, so I walked across the room and tapped on the door. “Anyone in there?”
My voice was on the squeaky side, but it was loud enough to be heard through the plywood door. I glanced back at Anderson and Carlotta, who looked as if they were waiting for me to step on into the lion’s den.
Gritting my teeth, I opened the door.
Everybody else either had driven there and battled to find a place to park, or had walked up the road. He could have approached that way, too—if he didn’t mind everybody knowing his business. The problem was, his business was spiritual guidance. His duty was to lead an unsullied Christian life. Therefore his goal was to sneak up from the flank and have a quiet gander at what the Hollywood folks were doing inside the cabin, and in broad daylight.
He mopped a little more, then stuffed his handkerchief in his pocket and stood up. Waving irritably at the cloud of gnats (God’s own little creations, but annoying just the same), he trudged along until he came to the backside of Raz’s barn.
An emaciated hound barked at him as he made his way up the bank and into the shade of the barn. The ground was littered with broken glass, cans, wads of paper, and tendrils of wire that tried to snake around his legs. He moved to the corner and peeked around it to assess his chances of making it to the back of the shack without being spotted by some vigilant member of his flock. He could hear car doors slamming and folks greeting each other, but, perhaps due to his preliminary prayers to that effect, the cabin and scruffy growth around it blocked out the view of the road.
The back door opened. Raz came outside, spat in the dust, and turned back to speak to someone inside. Shortly thereafter, Marjorie strolled through the doorway, gave Raz a sullen look, and plopped down in a fresh-looking puddle of mud in the middle of the yard.
“It ain’t that bad,” Raz said. “You got a nice spot, and the sun’s shining. No, don’t you go and give me that look, Marjorie. I dun told you how we didn’t have no choice, unless you want to start dining on them budget frozen dinners. I cain’t have Arly sniffing around up past Robin’s cabin and stumbling onto the still.” He went back inside.
Brother Verber warily eyed the sow. Like the pesky gnats, it was one of God’s own creations, but it weighed quite a bit more and had evil pink eyes. Drool hung out of its mouth like a silver ribbon, and its snout was wet. Then again, he’d never heard anybody tell of a death by sullen sow, so he reckoned it hadn’t ever happened.
He stayed by the barn, however, and was real glad he had when one of the actors came outside, went over to a window, and knocked on the pane. Which didn’t make any sense to Brother Verber. If the boy wanted in, why’d he go out in the first place?
He was scratching his head when there was movement inside the room. The actor fellow opened the window, then closed it and stood there with his arms crossed. A minute later the first half of the process was repeated, but this time a voice inside said, “No, sweetheart, over here by the mirror. Carlotta drew the chalk mark for you; all you have to do is find it.”
Brother Verber caught a glimpse of white flesh as someone inside the room crossed in front of the window. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure he saw what he thought he saw, but it was enough to make him start sweatin’ like a hog (not a fair analogy; the part of Marjorie not in the mud was dry).
The window was closed from the inside. The actor turned around, but Brother Verber had anticipated it and had retreated prudently. He held his breath and waited several minutes, just to be on the safe side, before he peered once again around the corner of the barn.
The actor fellow tapped on the window—for the third time, mind you—and opened it. With the ease of a panther, he climbed over the sill and disappeared into the room. Brother Verber would have given the contents of the collection plate to starving orphans to be in that room, but he settled for sneaking along the fence to the back of the house, then edging across the porch to the open window, the sill of which was five feet off the ground.
He got centered under it and was about to take a peek when he heard a man say, “I got a plan, Loretta. We can get away from this filthy town and start a new life together. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then I could do this … and this … all the time.”
This … and this? Brother Verber didn’t know what they all were doing, but it seemed to involve a lot of heavy breathing and moaning—two sure signals that Satan was on the loose in Maggody. The thing was, he needed to know for certain that his suspicions were right, and the only way to do it was to take a look for himself, even if it meant going eyeball-to-eyeball with Satan.
Brother Verber straightened up inch by inch, and kept going until his eyes were a fraction above the sill. Lights glared from several spots. The camera was in the middle of the room; the man hunched behind it wore a fatigue jacket. Another man stood behind him, a cigarette between his lips, a canvas hat on his head, a jar in his hand, and a bored expression on his face. The action was on the bed.
Some folks might have ducked in order to avoid being confronted by Satan’s handiwork (and in broad daylight). Brother Verber couldn’t have moved if he’d been stung in the rear by a yellow jacket, or even a hornet. The stain under his armpits was spreading like an oil slick, and his nose was pressed so hard against the rough wood that he’d be obliged to doctor it later with ointment.
Satan was outdoin’ himself.
The actor on the bed stood up, exposing even more of the handiwork and thus giving Brother Verber a particular physical problem that he was grateful no one was around to observe.
Before he could get ahold of himself, figuratively speaking, the actor took a step toward the window and said, “I’ll figure out a plan. I’ll get a message to you … somehow or other.”
The bare-breasted woman fluttered her fingers in farewell.
“Cut,” said the man in the hat.
The woman sat up and reached for a shirt. “This mattress must be filled with beer cans. I’m going to have horrible red marks all over my butt.”
“Poor little butterfly,” the actor said in a smirky voice.
“Come along, my lust bunnies,” the man in the hat said. “At least we’ve got one scene wrapped.”
The man behind the camera fiddled with a knob, then said, “Well, we would if it hadn’t been for the pop-eyed pervert in the window.”
Brother Verber wondered to whom they were referrin’.
Chapter 8
Sergeant Plover was the first to arrive in the parking lot, although the dispatcher had promised to have the sheriff and his men on the way as soon as she tracked them down at a convenience store outside of Starley City. I was waiting by the door of #5, doing my best not to think about what I’d seen in the pink-tiled bathroom not fifteen feet behind me. I’d told Anderson and Carlotta to wait in Ruby Bee’s, and they’d gone so briskly that dust still hovered.
“Are you all right?” Plover asked me as he strode across the gravel.
“On the queasy side, but on my feet,” I admitted. “You’d better take a few breaths before you go in there. The bathroom looks as if it’s spattered with paint. The window’s open, so there are a lot of flies.” I swallowed several times, fighting back the image of eyes frozen with terror and a mouth contorted with pain. “It’s really bad, Plover.”
He winced. “You stay here and direct traffic. The boys from the barracks should show up within a few minutes.”
I wasn’t about to charge back in there, so I crammed my fists in my pockets and waited for what felt like the better part of a year. It was as quiet as dawn in a cemetery, I realized. The vast majority of those who generally cluttered up the town were at the movie site, no doubt expressing their opinions and praying they’d be “discovered” by a real-life Hollywood director, who obligingly would propel them into stardom. There was very little traffic; on a normal morning, subcompacts converged on the SuperSaver, pickups on Ruby Bee’s, and RV’s with out-of-state license plates and exotic decals on Roy Stivers’s antiques store.
Plover returned, his face ashen. “You’re right—it’s
really bad,” he said. “Who was she?”
“An actress named Kitty Kaye. I didn’t recognize her, but Ruby Bee told me she’d made a lot of movies in the fifties. She was married to Buddy Meredith, another of the actors. They were sharing the room.”
“Where’s he?”
A symphony of sirens and flashing lights disrupted the peculiar serenity. The sheriff’s vehicles began to descend on us, along with the technical team from the state police. “An ambulance followed mutely. I waited until the sirens whined into silence, then explained how Carlotta had returned from the site to look for the couple, who were supposed to be at Raz’s cabin.
“She came to the PD?”
“No, I was in Ruby Bee’s, drinking coffee with one of the actors who wasn’t needed this morning.”
Plover’s mouth tightened for a moment, and he gave me a look with Siberian overtones. “It was fortunate that she found you, wasn’t it?” He turned around and went to the vehicles, leaving me to guard the scene all by myself.
The sheriff was chewing on a cold cigar stub as he joined me. “We’d better round up all the Hollywood folks. Where are they, and how many of them are there?”
I did a tally. “Eight, altogether. Two of them were with me when I … found the body, and they’re inside Ruby Bee’s. With the exception of the missing husband, the rest of them are at Raz Buchanon’s shack, under the benign supervision of most everybody in Maggody and a decent contigency from nearby towns.”
“Guess we’d better fetch ’em,” Harve said. He eyed the door, then made a face at me and said, “What am I going to have the privilege of lookin’ at, Arly? The dispatcher said you were a might sputtery about the details when you called.”
“A woman, who’s been cut with something very sharp. Blood on the floor, the walls, the fixtures, the ceiling, and whatever I’ve missed. The word ‘whore’ written in blood on the mirror above the sink.” My stomach twisted, and I had to hold Harve’s arm to steady myself. “It’s straight out of some dreadful slasher movie.”