Mortal Remains in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  Carlotta took Brother Verber’s handkerchief from his back pocket, blotted his face, and dusted his nose with a brush to counteract the sheen. “They’re merely words,” she said soothingly. “When taken in the total context, they evoke a complex imagery that Hal’s striving to achieve. Try to visualize the allusion and let yourself flow with it. Do you have your lines?”

  “I have the script with my lines written in it,” Brother Verber said, desperately trying not to visualize anything at all because he was terrified out of his skin that something might start flowing.

  “No, what I meant was, do you know your lines? Do we need to run through them again?”

  “O my Gawd,” Gwenneth said, rolling her eyes. “We’ve run through this—what? Ten times, twenty? My mascara’s melting, you know, and so is the rest of me. The entire scene’s not two minutes long, and we’ve been here two hours.”

  “Come on, Hal,” Frederick added. “Gwenneth’s shorts are so tight she can barely breathe. You may want pink cheeks, but do you want blue toes?”

  “Oooh,” Gwenneth said with a squeal. Her blond curls disappeared as she bent over to examine her toes.

  Hal pointed his finger at Brother Verber. “Do the first line,” he commanded.

  Brother Verber blinked. “Do what to it?”

  “Don’t do anything to it. Say it.”

  It struck Brother Verber that fighting Satan was a darn sight easier than figuring out what these Hollywood folks were talking about. He manufactured a smile of sorts. “Glad to help, Harry. Now you just keep your distance from that pretty little heifer and pay more attention to your wife,” he recited in a monotone.

  Gwenneth reappeared. “Let’s just get it the hell over with.” She rose and brushed past the preacher, giving him a good look at her halter and its contents. “This is mega-maddening.”

  “Positions,” said Hal. He waited until Harve and Brother Verber found their marks, and Gwenneth was poised outside the door. He nodded at Carlotta, then said, (albeit without much hope), “Action.”

  “I sure do appreciate you takin’ the time to talk to me, Preacher Pumpkin. I’m feelin’ better, and I reckon I better get back to the … uh, the farm,” Harve said. This time he made real sure he didn’t squint into the light. “Was that better?”

  “You know what’s occurred to me?” Ruby Bee said as she put down a chipped cup and picked up a saucer with pretty lavender flowers.

  Estelle glanced at the saucer and shook her head. “Cracked,” she whispered. “Not worth a dime, much less fifty cents. These prices are enough to gag a goat.”

  As they continued to move alongside the table, frowning at various objets d’art, Ruby Bee said, “I was thinking about that Fuzzy fellow and how come he upped and disappeared.”

  “And?” said Estelle, distracted momentarily by a promising candy dish made of bubbly green carnival glass.

  “Now, every time we saw him, he was drinking or already drunk,” Ruby Bee said out of the corner of her mouth. There were other browsers, and she’d sworn not to breathe a word about the murder so’s not to alert the media. You never could tell when one might be prowling around—and in disguise. “What’s curious is that he was potted when the deputy brought them back to the bar to tell ’em the bad news. I saw him stagger to his room, and he was weaving worse than a bowlegged centipede.”

  “You just said he was all the time drinking.”

  “But yesterday morning they were making the movie at Raz Buchanon’s shack, so he must have been drinking there. If I remember rightly, Fuzzy was talking to Raz the evening before, too. They were in a booth all by theirselves for at least an hour, just as cozy as that pair of salt and pepper shakers.”

  Estelle decided the candy dish was overpriced and continued on to a stack of old magazines. “Does this have something to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “Would you stop gawking at this table of junk and listen to me?”

  “If you aim to continue speaking to me like that, you might find yourself hitchhiking home.”

  Ruby Bee decided to be generous and overlook the remark. “This is important. What if Raz let Fuzzy try some of that rotgut moonshine everybody knows he’s making on Cotter’s Ridge?”

  “Most likely he’d be dead. That stuff’s supposed to be nasty enough to strip the hide off an alligator.”

  “What I’m getting at is that if Raz let something slip about where the still is, Fuzzy might have taken off to find it. When I saw him, he looked drunk enough to go off on some hare-brained mission to find Raz’s stockpile.”

  “Then why hasn’t he come back?”

  “Because he found it, that’s why.”

  Estelle put down a gingham sunbonnet, took Ruby Bee’s elbow, and hustled her out of the tent and across the parking lot to her station wagon. Once she’d made sure no one was following them, she said, “So you think that the Fuzzy fellow is on a toot up on Cotter’s Ridge? He found Raz’s stash of field whiskey and is staying drunker than a boiled owl?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Ruby Bee said as she freed her elbow and made a show of rubbing it and wincing. “I’m not sure what we ought to do about it, though. Arly’s awfully busy with the murder, and I’d hate to send her all the way up past Robin’s cabin if it turned out to be nothing but a wild-goose chase.”

  “You think maybe we should … help her?” Estelle murmured, wiggling her eyebrows like her forehead itched.

  “That way, if we’re wrong, we can just go on about our business without Arly throwing a fit because she thinks we’re interfering in”—Ruby Bee paused dramatically—“her official police investigation. But first I think we ought to have a word with Raz. If we do it right, he won’t even know what we’re asking him.”

  “It can’t hurt.” Estelle got in the station wagon. Ruby Bee wasn’t convinced, but she got in, too.

  When I got back to Maggody, I cruised past the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. Several official vehicles and the Glittertown van were parked by the highway, and two deputies were standing by the door. Carlotta was running behind schedule, I noted with a grin.

  Everything seemed under control, however, so I went to the PD. The telephone started ringing the minute I stepped inside, as if my mere presence were the stimulus for somebody somewhere to decide it was time to pester me. I answered it without enthusiasm.

  “Oh, Arly, thank goodness, I’ve been trying to find you all morning,” Eilene Buchanon said in a whoosh. “It’s Kevin.”

  “What’s Kevin?”

  “He’s disappeared. He left right after supper and he didn’t come home last night, and now it’s nigh onto lunchtime. I’ve racked my brain, but I can’t think where he could be.”

  “Calm down, Eilene,” I said as I sat down behind my desk. “Maybe he’s at Dahlia’s house. They’re still engaged, aren’t they?”

  “I drove over there first thing this morning. He’s not there, and neither is she. What’s more, he’s got his pa’s car, and it goes without saying that his pa’s fit to be tied. Maybe Kevin and Dahlia were in a horrible wreck, and now he’s unconscious in a hospital or even worse.”

  I didn’t point out that he was unconscious most of the time. “If he was in a wreck, you’d have been notified. He and Dahlia must have gone on a jaunt somewhere. They’ll turn up soon, but I’ll pass along the plate number and a description of the car to the sheriff’s department and the state police.”

  I wrote down the information, made some more reassuring noises, and hung up. The telephone rang.

  “Arly, good,” Plover said, forgoing any minor pleasantries. “Merganser did a preliminary at that gas station in Hasty. The front door has an exterior padlock, and it was locked. Merganser had a helluva time poking around what was left, but he’s fairly sure the point of origin was in the bay—not out by the pumps. That indicates arson.”

  “And attempted murder,” I contributed flatly.

  “And attempted murder.” He told me he’d be there shortly and
hung up. The telephone rang.

  “Arly, this is Elsie McMay. Do you happen to know where Estelle is? She promised to do my hair at eleven, and it’s nearly noon now.”

  I was almost afraid to ask. “Did you try Ruby Bee’s?”

  “Yes, and no one answers. I knew they were going to a flea market in Piccard, but Estelle said they’d be back by eleven so Ruby Bee could open for lunch. It’s not like Estelle to miss an appointment.”

  I told her I’d keep an eye out for them and hung up. I glowered at the telephone for a minute, daring it to ring with more ominous news. Then, still watching it out of the corner of my eye, I made a list of lost souls:

  1.

  Buddy Meredith, missing thirty-six hours; not in Pineyville, Missouri

  2.

  Fuzzy Indigo, missing twenty-four hours

  3–4.

  Kevin Buchanon and Dahlia O’Neill, missing eighteen hours

  5–6.

  Ruby Bee Hanks and Estelle Oppers, missing at least an hour; not earth-shattering, but interesting

  Numbers three through six could take their own sweet time surfacing, but I had to figure out where numbers one and two were. I mentally tried to reconstruct the evening preceding the murder. The company had met to determine the shooting schedule and then retired to Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill for dinner. Afterward Fuzzy had gone off, presumably under his own steam. At ten o’clock Meredith and Kitty Kaye had gone to their room, and during the next two hours, she’d been stabbed in the neck and he’d vanished, either voluntarily or not. Gwenneth went to her room at eleven; Carlotta went for a walk. Frederick Marland had been in Farberville with a girl. Anderson had been alone in his room.

  Just one big happy family, these Hollywood people. Making low-budget films and oodles of money. No one with any known motive to disrupt the production and therefore their respective incomes.

  I opened my notebook and read through the statements I’d taken. Thus far no one had much of an alibi. I realized I hadn’t gotten around to confirming Frederick Marland’s story. I was flipping through the directory when (take a guess) the telephone rang.

  “Chief Hanks? This is Detective Cannelli in L.A. I have a few tidbits for you, but nothing exciting. Ready?”

  I grabbed a pencil. “I’ll take anything.”

  “I ran the names through Equity and our computer links. Gwenneth D’Amourre, née Wanda Sue Thackett, is from Cedar Rapids, and there’s an outstanding warrant for her arrest on a hit-and-run. Frederick Marland, né Freddie, is clean, at least with the feds. Katherine Kaye, née Katherine Kaye Winkleman, had a few traffic violations. Meredith’s real name is Buddy Oliphant. Harold Desmond has been booked twice for possession of a controlled substance, but kept both of them out of court. Carlotta Lowenstein’s clear, as is Anderson St. James, born James Allen Anderson. Francis Indigo, a.k.a. Fuzzy, has a sheet from here to San Diego and back. DWI’s, public drunkenness, disturbing the peace, failure to comply, resisting, all that sort of thing.”

  “Wait,” I said, scribbling as fast as I could. “Is there a chance any of them could have some sort of involvement with a ring that distributes pirated tapes?”

  “You’ll have to ask them,” Detective Cannelli said, then wished me a good day and hung up.

  My mood had not improved when Les Vernon came into the PD. “I missed you this morning,” he said, “but I heard about the fireworks at the gas station in Hasty. Anything you want me to do about those damn firebugs, short of shooting them?”

  “Pick them both up and take them to separate detention rooms at the sheriff’s department,” I said. “Give me a call when you get there. I’m going to question each of them until one breaks. I don’t care how long it takes.” He started out the door, but I made the mistake of looking at my list. “Hold on, Les. It seems we’ve misplaced some more people. Not anyone important, but I guess we ought to alert the patrol cars.” He snickered when I read the list, then departed before I could come up with any more assignments.

  I left a note for Plover and drove to Darla Jean McIlhaney’s house. Millicent was startled to see me, but admitted Darla Jean was upstairs in her room, no doubt, gossiping on the telephone with her friends, because that was all they seemed to do these days, and why on earth did I need to speak to Darla Jean? I did not enlighten her as I went up the stairs. Darla Jean’s voice was drifting through the door as I knocked; I heard her laugh as she told someone she’d call back.

  As she opened the door, any lingering trace of laughter vanished. “Arly?” she said with a croak. “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you, and I suggest we do it in your room with the door closed.”

  “Sure, yeah, like come on in.” She stepped aside, and once I was in, closed the door and locked it. “Sit on the bed if you want, or over by the window, or wherever you want.”

  “You sit on the bed,” I said, taken aback by her ashen face and watery, terrified eyes. “I’ll stand. I need to hear what happened when you drove Frederick Marland to Farberville.”

  “Nothing, nothing at all.” She tried to give me a defiant look, but the tears spilled out of her eyes and she began to snivel. “I didn’t do nothing. We went to that drugstore on Thurber Street, and then we drove around, and then he said did I want something to drink and I said—well, I said okay, but then he said not Cokes, and—I couldn’t—he said let’s go—he wanted to, but I didn’t—and then …”

  I sat down beside her and put my arm around her shoulder. “Calm down, Darla Jean. No one’s accusing you of doing anything terrible. Thoughtless, perhaps, but not all that terrible.”

  “But it was terrible,” she said, twitching as she held in sobs. “He said it would be fun, but—”

  “What would be fun?” I asked gently. “Necking on a dark road?”

  “The motel,” she said with a moan.

  Startled, I clasped her shoulder more tightly and said, “What motel? Did you two come back to the Flamingo Motel?”

  She stopped moaning and gave me a blank look. “Why would we do that?”

  “There was … a problem there that night.”

  “Oh, yeah, I heard that one of the actress ladies fell and broke her neck or something.”

  “That’s right,” I murmured. “Which motel are you talking about, Darla Jean?”

  “That one on the corner of Thurber Street and the highway,” she said. The tears started flowing again. “After he got his fancy suntan lotion, he told me to drive to a liquor store, and when he came out, he had a bottle of whiskey. He wanted to go to a motel. He said we were just going to drink and watch a racy movie.”

  “And you bought that?”

  Her nose was flowing as freely as her tears. Still shivering, she wiped her face on the corner of her bedspread and tried to smile. “Frederick Marland’s a real famous movie star, Arly, and the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen. I guess I thought it’d be really neat if I could tell Heather and Traci that we’d had a few drinks and messed around. I wasn’t about to … you know, go all the way or anything. It sounded so sophisticated and romantic.”

  “Did it turn out to be romantic?” I asked drily.

  “It turned out to be the awfulest night of my life. The first couple of times, he mixed whiskey with Coke for me, but then he started splashing it straight from the bottle to the glass and telling me to drink it without ice or anything. There was some movie on, something about naked nuns, but before I knew what was happening, we were on the bed.”

  “Did he take precautions?”

  “I don’t know,” she said miserably. “I told him over and over that I wasn’t like slutty Robin Buchanon, that I didn’t live in some shack on the ridge and act like an animal. He thought that was real funny and asked me all kinds of things about Robin and what she was rumored to do. Then he started doing things I didn’t like, and after a while I pretended I wasn’t even there. Sometimes he’d let me rest for a few minutes, but then he’d shake me awake and start up again with stuff that hurt. It’s all
real murky. I remember I threw up once. He was mad about that, but then he made me drink more whiskey, even though the first bottle made me sick.” She hid her face in her hands, fell back on the bed, and curled into the fetal position, her knees almost touching her hands. “Don’t tell my parents, please …”

  “I’m not going to tell your parents, Darla Jean, but I strongly encourage you to do it. What time did you get home?”

  “It was after midnight. I was too drunk to drive, and I threw up again on the way home. The next morning I felt so bad I wished I was dead and buried.”

  Despite the temptation, I didn’t spout off the standard platitudes about letting that be a lesson, et cetera. Instead, I sat beside her and rubbed her back until she relaxed a bit, then assured her I’d be there to help her if it turned out the lack of precautions resulted in any unwanted problems. Her parents were the type to react in much the same way the Hopperly boys had twenty-five years ago. In this case, however, the miscreant would be two thousand miles away and Darla Jean would be all alone in the eye of the hurricane.

  Millicent was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, a grimly inquisitive look on her face, but I brushed past her and went out to my (Ruby Bee’s) car. A pungent smell caught my attention, and after a brief search I found a burned book of matches under the driver’s seat. The smell was fading, but the matchheads were warm.

  I looked around, admittedly rather wildly, but there was no one in the McIlhaneys’ yard or any traffic on the road. I resisted the urge to crumple the matchbook in my hand and hurl it out the window. The paper cover was charred; fingerprints were out of the question. Still, I told myself as I set it on the dashboard and put the key in the ignition, it was evidence of a sort. It was also a message.

  I started to turn the key, then jerked my hand away as if I’d grasped a red-hot coal. One of the damn firebugs had been in the car, which hadn’t been locked. He’d left the matchbook. Had he left anything else—under the hood? Cursing, I rubbed my face and tried to rally a little courage, or at least bravado, in myself. Was I going to allow myself to be intimidated by a pair of pimply teenagers with a sick fondness for fire?