Mortal Remains in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  “He’s been fired by every studio on the Coast. He takes whatever work he can get to sustain his haze. He’s actually a fairly good cameraman when he’s sober, so in addition to everything else I do, I pat him down before we start, confiscate his flask, and watch him like a pit bull until we quit for the day.”

  “Was he in Ruby Bee’s last night?”

  “After we ate, he said he had something to do and left. Perhaps he’ll be able to remember what it was, or perhaps not. He earned his nickname.”

  I made a note to search his room for bloodied clothes. “And you left at what time?”

  “I’m not sure. About eleven or so, maybe earlier,” she said, for the first time in the interrogation sounding a shade flustered.

  “Did you and Gwenneth go to the room together?”

  “I … ah, I went for a walk. There are times when I literally loathe the sight of these people, and this was one of them. I wandered around the parking lot and along the road. I returned to my room after an hour or so.”

  It was challenging to envision this competent young woman with a knife in her hand, but it was equally challenging to think of anything she might have done the previous night worthy of a lie. Maggody is not known for its nightlife. The animal life at the pool hall wouldn’t have interested her, and watching people struggle at the self-service pump couldn’t have entertained her for long.

  “I took a walk,” she said, rising, “that’s all. I really must get back to Hal before he has some kind of creative seizure over the delay and the revisions. Obviously we’ll have to delete Kitty’s role, but I can handle that. I don’t know what to do about Buddy’s role. Our budget’s too tight to sit for several days; the meter’s running. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything …?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “We’re operating on the premise that he and his wife returned to the room at ten o’clock. Meredith hasn’t been seen since then, and according to you, has no transportation. He could have hitched a ride into one of the towns, or headed into the woods for some reason.”

  “He wouldn’t hurt Kitty,” Carlotta said firmly. “I think he was married once before, or merely entangled, but he was obsessed with Kitty. As I told you earlier, there’s never been a rumor about either of them, and in this industry, that’s damn amazing.”

  “Who next, Chief?” Plover said as he opened the door for Carlotta.

  I considered the remaining members of the company: Hal, Fuzzy, Frederick, and Anderson. I decided I couldn’t face the first three on an empty stomach, and that I needed to interrogate Anderson without Plover’s presence, since he was behaving so childishly every time I glanced elsewhere. The two were waiting for a response, so I finally put down the pencil and said, “Let’s grab some lunch at Ruby Bee’s and tackle the others after we eat.”

  “There are approximately a thousand people at Ruby Bee’s,” Plover said. “We might end up eating breakfast, and only then if we make reservations.”

  “We agreed to keep the entire area off-limits. Who let her open up?” I said, resisting the urge to snatch up the pencil and snap it.

  Plover asked Carlotta to wait outside, and as he turned back, his face was pink. “I did. It seems she knows every last detail of what happened in number five. Hell, she may know more than the rest of us. When I escorted Miss D’Amourre back to the motel, Ruby Bee grabbed me and explained the situation.”

  “The situation?” I said, mystified.

  “The situation in which, if she wasn’t allowed to open for lunch, she would tell everybody in town about the vicious murder and Meredith’s disappearance. The television station in Farberville was mentioned, as was the minor expense of calling Little Rock to talk to the nice boys and girls at the Gazette.”

  His face was pink, but mine was heading for cerise. “How’d she find out?” I sputtered.

  “She wouldn’t tell me, but she wasn’t bluffing. I told her she could open. The motel’s cordoned off, but the parking lot in front of Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill was full by the time I left.”

  I almost apologized to the man. I’d been mentally accusing him of snuggling up to Gwenneth—when he’d been too busy being blackmailed by my mother.

  “The way they do it is they finish one scene and race to the next location without even taking a breath,” Jim Bob said. He stayed in the doorway, just in case his wife got too riled up, and he was regretting—seriously regretting—having come back to the house for lunch before he went to the supermarket.

  “And the director told you that he would be here this morning?” Mrs. Jim Bob vowed to herself that if he took so much as one step inside the living room, she was going to hurl the crystal candy dish at him, even though it was piled with pastel mints and liable to make a mess on the pristine carpet.

  “That’s what he said,” Jim Bob said as he edged backward. “But from what I heard at the store, they were over at Raz’s and all of a sudden upped and went back to the motel.”

  “From what you heard at the store?”

  Her tone was so icy that it was giving him goose bumps. Jim Bob edged on around the doorway into the kitchen, where he was safe from one of her beadiest, unblinkingest stares to date. “Yeah, at the store,” he said loudly. “I’m going to fix myself a sandwich real quick and get back to work. The soda pop distributor’s coming by in an hour or so. I need to do some figurin’ before I order.” He opened the refrigerator, but he was keeping at least one ear cocked, and he could hear a storm brewing in the living room.

  “I called the store,” came the first chilly wind.

  “I must have been in the back. One of the pipes in the break room busted, and I couldn’t have employees going home every time they needed to pee.”

  “The girl who answered the phone looked back there for you. She assured me that she searched the entire store, including the employees’ break room.”

  It was getting downright frigid now. Jim Bob eased the refrigerator door closed, tiptoed across the kitchen, and let himself out the back door before a glacier started down the hall. A sandwich from the store deli wasn’t nearly as appealing as a leftover meat-loaf sandwich, but it would do in a pinch, and if this wasn’t a pinch, he didn’t know what was.

  “There is no meat loaf,” Mrs. Jim Bob said, aware of his penchant and taking a small amount of pleasure in her announcement. “I told Perkins’s eldest to have it for her lunch. I am increasingly concerned about her. She’s been positively moody lately, and I hope it’s not because she’s burdened by a heavy conscience.”

  She paused a moment to rest her voice, and then, in a spurt of Christian charity, said, “Have yourself some of that green bean casserole and a chicken leg. Now, I know for a fact that Perkins’s eldest was seen drinking beer at Ruby Bee’s, and making pathetic attempts to ingratiate herself with those Hollywood folks, although it’s difficult to conceive of any reason why they’d be interested in someone so common. It’s surely more dignified and proper to await them in one’s own home rather than risk being seen in a place like that.”

  She took a sip of tea, which made her feel even more munificent. “Oh, go ahead and have that piece of pecan pie on the bottom shelf. I was thinking Brother Verber might come by, but he’ll have to settle for store-bought cookies. Maybe I’ll just call him to find out why he’s been neglecting his duties.”

  Having done her Christian duty to forgive him his most recent trespasses, she picked up the receiver and dialed.

  Plover and I decided to dine on delicacies from the Dairee Dee-Lishus. Once he returned with greasy cheeseburgers and cherry limeades, we retreated to the back room to sit at the table.

  “This Anderson St. James may be our man,” Plover said as he unwrapped his burger and lifted the bun to study the few shreds of pale lettuce and a translucent slice of tomato.

  I mimicked his motions while I considered his remarks. “Why do you say that?” I asked ever so casually.

  “Pretty queer coincidence, his wife and then Kitty Kaye.”

  “But
he didn’t murder his wife. He was on location and came home to discover her body. He wasn’t even in town.”

  Plover chewed this over for a while, then said, “The police never caught this so-called maniac. What if St. James came home, murdered his wife, and then notified the authorities?”

  “The police there are so incompetent they failed to notice the wounds were still oozing and the body warm? Is that your assessment of a police department blessed with state-of-the-art equipment and training?” I stuffed the cheeseburger in my mouth and chomped furiously. “This has onions, damn it. I told you I didn’t want onions.”

  “Scrape ’em off,” said amiable Sergeant Plover.

  “I ought to scrape you off,” I mumbled through a mouthful, not sure whether I hoped he heard me. I pushed the food aside. “Look, I’ll call the L.A.P.D. and see what I can find out about the murder last year. There may well be a connection of some sort, but you seem awfully eager to nail Anderson St. James. There’s been no suggestion that he has a motive.”

  “Thus far, no one has a motive—according to them, anyway. Gwenneth and Frederick squabble, Hal Desmond takes credit for Carlotta’s writing, and Fuzzy drinks, but all of them are in it for the money. Murder’s inconvenient because it screws up the schedule. Maybe it’s a psycho off the highway who aspires to be in the movies. Maybe it’s your pimply firebug.”

  I glumly picked up the cherry limeade and took a sip. “No, I can’t see it. I’m convinced he’s guilty, but he’s been careful not to start any fires that might endanger someone. It’s a big leap from burning down a shack to slashing a stranger like that, and that still doesn’t explain what happened to Meredith.”

  “What about the fire in your apartment?”

  “Merganser told you about that, did he? How loquacious of him, especially when I asked him not to say anything.”

  “I was wondering about that, too,” Plover said, staring at me over the expanse of a poppyseed bun.

  Although there was no smoke, things were beginning to warm up in the back room. I headed for the telephone in the front. “There’re a lot of things about me that you don’t need to know, Plover,” I said from around the doorway.

  “That you don’t want me to know might be more accurate,” he said mildly.

  “That I don’t want you to know.” I picked up the receiver and began what I knew would be a tedious attempt to catch the right detective at the right precinct in a city of numerous million people.

  “If you don’t stop grinning like a mule eating briars, I’m gonna shake you so hard your hair uncurls,” Estelle said, advancing across the kitchen.

  “Keep it down,” said Ruby Bee. She realized she was retreating and told herself to hold her ground before she got backed up against the sink. “It’s an official police investigation, and I am under orders not to breathe a single word to anyone about what all happened.” Losing her resolve, she dodged around the center island. “I got a whole roomful of hungry customers, and I got better things to do than play games with you. I told you: I crossed my heart and hoped to die.”

  “I am not some stray grannywoman out of the hills, Rubella Belinda Hanks. We have gone through thick and thin together, and not one time—not one last living time, mind you—have I refused to share a confidence with you. Remember when I heard about Lottie’s gallbladder operation? Did I act like Mrs. Mystery and not repeat everything I’d heard, including what she said in the operating room while being anesthetized?”

  “And her teaching home ec to innocent high-school girls,” Ruby Bee said, smiling just a tad before she caught herself. “This just ain’t the time to discuss it, Estelle. Dahlia can’t hardly handle the bar, much less take orders from the booths and fix trays for the movie stars to have in their rooms.”

  The waitress under discussion trudged into the kitchen, her lips pursed in a tight circle and her cheeks puffing in and out. She slammed down a stack of orders, exhaled noisily, and went back through the door, moving so heavily that pots rattled in the cabinet and the soup simmering on the stove sloshed gently.

  “What’s ailing her?” Estelle demanded.

  “It’s this movie thing,” Ruby Bee said as she opened the oven door to peek at the cherry cobbler, which was bubbling perfectly as usual. “She was all fired up about her role, but now that Miss Kaye’s been murdered, Dahlia’s afraid the movie people’ll pack up and go home without—”

  “Murdered? Miss Kaye was murdered?”

  Ruby Bee banged the oven door. “You heard me, even though you weren’t supposed to. I swear, you’ve got more ways of worming things out of folks than a robin hopping around in the wet grass. I guess there’s no point in not telling you what that deputy told me, but we can’t tell another soul.”

  “I solemnly swear,” Estelle said soberly, then scooted around the corner and grabbed Ruby Bee’s arm. “But I think this is a real opportunity for us, don’t you? You and I are going to be the ones to take trays to the movie stars and maybe hear them talking to each other about what happened. That nice Mr. Meredith may be married, but he was right friendly at the bar the other night, and I figure he might—”

  “Hush,” Ruby Bee ordered. She could smell the cobbler, but she could smell something else that was liable to have Arly kicking up stumps. Again. She thought about saying as much to Estelle, but the cobbler was done and the soup was boiling and all sorts of folks were bellowing in the barroom. “Help me dish up these orders,” she said briskly. “Let’s get through the rush hour, and then we’ll settle down over sherry and discuss the case.”

  “Because I’m busy reading this,” Darla Jean said, her face hidden behind the cover of a confession magazine. She was lying on her bed, the pillows squashed behind her head. The magazine trembled as she flipped to the next page. “This is what I want to do, so there’s no reason for you all to hang around in the doorway staring at me like I’d turned pea green or something.”

  “Oh, come on, Darla Jean,” Heather wheedled, “I’ll buy you a soda. If you’re afraid to go to the Dee-Lishus, I’ll see if I can get my ma’s car and we can go someplace in Farberville.”

  “Why would I be afraid to go to the Dee-Lishus?”

  Heather made a face at Traci, who wasn’t being any help. “I just thought you might not want to run into Dwayne.”

  The magazine stayed in place. “He’s my boyfriend, ain’t he?”

  “’Course he is,” Heather said, her mouth as dry as cotton.

  “Then why should I be afraid to run into him?”

  Withering under Heather’s glare, Traci licked her lips and said, “Because of your date with Frederick Marland, Darla Jean. Dwayne might not like that.”

  “It wasn’t a date. I gave him a ride into Farberville, that’s all. He bought suntan oil at the drugstore on Thurber Street, and we came right back.” She lowered the magazine just enough to look at them, and it wasn’t anywhere near a friendly look. “You got problems with that?”

  Heather and Traci assured her that they didn’t, but once they were walking along the road, they agreed that they did, since Heather had tried to call at ten and Traci had noticed Mrs. McIlhaney’s car wasn’t in the driveway when she and her parents had returned home from a tent revival. The preacher had been real long-winded, and it had been well after midnight before the final “Hallelujah!” had died down and everyone felt sufficiently saved for the night.

  Chapter 10

  “WILD CHERRY WINE” (REVISED 5/24)

  6 CONTINUED:

  COOTER

  I thank you kindly, but I reckon I’ll pass on the pie. I came to see if my fiancée wanted to take a stroll and enjoy the cool night air.

  CLOSE-UP as Loretta stares at the floor. CAMERA WIDENS as Zachery crosses to her and pulls her to her feet.

  ZACHERY

  (jovially)

  ’Course she does, Cooter. It’s time you two got to know each other better. Why, you’ll be hitched afore you know it. Martha would have been so proud, may she rest in peace.


  COOTER

  Amen. May she rest in peace.

  (CONTINUED)

  Hal Desmond twisted the gold chain around his neck and scowled at his watch, then switched to a conspiratorial smile. “Arly, honey,” he said, “I realize you’re doing your job, and I’m sure you’re damn good at it. The thing is, the day is almost gone and I’m up to my ass in revisions. Carlotta thinks she does the writing, but she’s an amateur and I’ve been in the industry for thirty years.”

  We’d done name, rank, and serial number, and ascertained he’d formed Glittertown Productions, Inc., only a year ago. Before that, he’d been involved in “numerous projects, hard to say, deals that soared, deals that soured, but hey—that’s the business, you gotta love it.”

  “One of your team was murdered,” I said politely. “My job is to determine who did it. Yes, I’m doing my job.”

  “I have to tell you, when you tilt your head like that, there’s something there. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s there. You’re Capricorn, aren’t you? Hiding fiery passion behind those dark, appraising eyes?”

  Plover had been summoned to the barracks. As irritated as I was with him, I rather wished he were straddling the chair and harrumphing under his breath. “No, I’m not a Capricorn, and all I’m hiding is an urge to transport you to the sheriff’s department to continue this,” I said, less politely. “We might be there until midnight.”

  “Yo, take it easy. No harm intended.” Hal lit a cigarette and tried to find a comfortable position in the chair. There wasn’t one, naturally, and eventually he conceded and gave me another smile, this one intending to be apologetic (but too toothy for my taste). “I can’t deny it’s in my blood. I’m possessed by it. I see a sunrise—I see opening credits. I see a beautiful woman—I see a leading lady. Even my wet dreams are in Technicolor. The other day I was telling Brando that—”

  “Mr. Desmond,” I said, “could we please continue with your statement concerning the events of the past three days? I have other people to interview and calls to make. From what I’ve heard thus far, everything was proceeding as scheduled. All of the company except for you and St. James arrived in the van in the middle of the afternoon. Why did the two of you come on a later flight?”