The Arly Hanks Mysteries Volume One

by Joan Hess

  I felt guilty, but I didn’t want anyone to know where I intended to spend my weekend. Merle had sworn he wouldn’t breathe a word about Robin’s body, and he was so daft I doubted anyone listened to him, anyway. He’d also said he intended to spend several days on the banks of Boone Creek, recalculating angles, which suited me just fine. I thanked David Allen several times, meaning every word of it, and went so far as to ask him to have a word with Ruby Bee. I then tried a tentative smile in Hammet’s direction.

  “See you in a couple of days,” I said.

  He got in the passenger’s side of the wagon and studied the windshield-wiper blade. David Allen went around to the other side and got in, then called to me, “I forgot to give this back to you,” he said, holding up the beeper. “You don’t want to leave home without it, do you?”

  Looking at the blasted thing made me remember how irresponsible I’d been. It was the icing on the cake of incompetency, and the cake seemed to be growing extra layers every minute. I took it from him and clipped it on my belt. “I sort of forgot to return Mrs. Jim Bob’s calls—maybe forty or fifty of them thus far,” I said with a wry smile. “There’s not much of a reason for me to call her now, since you’ll be there in a few minutes and be able to tell her in person what’s going on. I just don’t have time to get entangled in her problems right now. Would you please tell her how busy I’ve been and offer her my apologies?”

  David Allen assured me that he’d smooth it over, and he and Hammet drove away in the direction of Mizzoner’s manor. I went back to the apartment, sat down and made a list of the paraphernalia I needed to take with me on this little camping jaunt, made a list of all the people I needed to talk to (but wouldn’t until I got back), loaded up said paraphernalia in the sheriff’s vehicle, and locked the apartment door behind me.

  Then, wondering how someone as incompetent as I seemed to be, not to mention coldhearted and self-centered and all sorts of other charming things, could have survived thirty-four years without being locked away in a home for Nazi war criminals, I drove down the highway toward the road that led to the ridge. Although I knew the words to a few camp songs, none came to my incompetent, coldhearted, self-centered mind.

  “Isn’t he just the most darling little creature in the whole world?” Estelle said, squatting down in front of the high chair to tweak a sweet little pink toe.

  “He sure is,” Ruby Bee said. She leaned against the edge of the counter and fought back a yawn. “Why, last night he gave me the dearest smile while I sang him some lullabies in the rocking chair.” She didn’t see any reason to mention how many lullabies it’d taken for the baby to go back to sleep, but there’d been a good dozen more than there were sweet little pink toes.

  “Who do you think he favors?”

  “He favors the Buchanon clan,” Ruby Bee said, trying not to sound testy, which wasn’t easy on four hours of sleep. “Any fool can see the family resemblance. He’s got that unfortunate, chimpanzee-lookin’ forehead, black hair, and those yellow eyes what remind me of a weasel.”

  Estelle stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I beg your pardon, Rubella Belinda Hanks. I am capable of seeing that he has that Buchanon look to him, but thank you kindly for pointing out the obvious. I was referring to the pappy. You do recollect how there has to be a pappy, don’t you? He does contribute something to make the little baby, so he might well look like him, too.”

  “I know all that, but thank you kindly for reminding me of something I learned at my mother’s knee. I swear, these days they talk about it right in the classrooms of the schoolhouse, just like it was arithmetic or state capitals.”

  “Does that have something to do with the price of tea in China?”

  “Not particularly,” Ruby Bee conceded as she struggled with another yawn that darn near dislocated her jaw. “Do you think you can take Baby over to your house this afternoon? I’ve got to inventory my napkins and paper products, and I’m way off schedule ’cause Dahlia didn’t come in last night.”

  “Did she call in sick?”

  “Nope, not a peep. I know she’s likely to have been in the shed with Kevin when God passed out the brains, but I was a might disappointed with her. Thursday night’s not a busy night, and I really did plan to leave her out front so I could go in the back room to count napkins and paper products. I need to put in an order before the weekend. What about you taking Baby?”

  “I would if I could, but I absolutely have to redo Elsie’s perm. She’s been squealing about how she looks like Shirley Temple, and I’ve got to admit you can see a passing resemblance if you squint.”

  “Can’t you put the crib in your bedroom?”

  “Can’t you put the crib in your storeroom?”

  The two looked at each other for a while, then both turned to look at the sweetest little thing you’ve ever seen, who was turning red and screwing up his mouth in preparation to howl.

  “You know,” Ruby Bee said, deftly inserting a bottle into the baby’s mouth, “this precious punkin does have a pappy out there who loves him. If Arly never finds Robin Buchanon, someone’s going to have to take Baby and give him a home. It’d be criminal to deprive his pappy of the chance to raise him and wait up till all hours when he’s out drinking beer with his friends.”

  Estelle climbed on a stool and nodded. “Downright criminal. I think we owe it to the little angel to help Arly find the father. We could even learn the identities of the fathers of the other children—just in case.” She wiggled her eyebrows, not wanting to alarm Baby with the dire scenario.

  “I’m sure Arly’d be real grateful. I don’t know exactly how to go about it, though. Robin did have a reputation for…having a lot of friends.” Ruby Bee wiggled her eyebrows, too. “Men friends.”

  “She sure did. She must have known half the county, and in the Biblical sense, if you follow my drift. I don’t see how we can find out who all was blessed enough to father any of the children.”

  The baby bottle now depleted, Ruby Bee wearily took the stool next to her. “Me neither. It ain’t like we can go over to the county hospital and ask to see the birth certificates. I have a hard time seeing Robin in a hospital bed with a doctor hovering over her. She’d have had a midwife, if she had anything at all. It’s just as likely that she dropped the younguns while hoeing potatoes in the field. Might not have even noticed at the time, for that matter.”

  “But that’s a beginning,” Estelle said, straightening up.

  “What’s a beginning, for Pete’s sake? Searching potato fields?”

  “The midwife out on the county road. We could ask her if she went to Robin’s cabin to assist in the delivery of any of the babies. Then, if she says she was there, we can ask if Robin said anything about who the fathers were. That’s a fine idea of yours, Ruby Bee. I’m right proud of you for coming up with it.”

  “I suppose so,” Ruby Bee said with a sigh. “I just hope Arly doesn’t get all hot and bothered and commence to thinking we’re interfering again. She liked to have had steam coming out her ears last time.”

  “We’re not trying to find Robin Buchanon; we’re just making discreet inquiries about the fathers. It’s not even near the same thing as interfering in one of her so-called police investigations. After all, if fathering a bastard was a crime in Stump County, the jail’d be so jampacked that the convicts would have to make reservations to serve their time.”

  “I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe I’m having one of those premonitions like Madam Celeste has all the time, but I don’t know if we’re doing the right thing.”

  “Now, Ruby Bee, just look at that sweet sleepy baby. Doesn’t he deserve to grow up with a loving pappy to take care of him? Besides, we’ll just hop in my station wagon and run out to the midwife’s house to ask. She’s such a senile ol’ granny that she most likely won’t be able to tell us anything. There’s no point in acting
all mystical and muttering under your breath like a psychic with laryngitis. Get your ‘Closed’ sign and hang it on the door. We’ll wrap up Baby and take him with us, and we’ll all three be back in less than an hour. It can’t hurt anything.”

  Ruby Bee nodded, but she was still having Severe Misgivings.

  If I thought nothing ever happened in Maggody (and that theory was on the moth-eaten side by this time), I hadn’t realized the extent of true nothingness. It was moderately amusing at first. I parked a good ways from the dope patch, and spent most of two hours lugging equipment from the four-wheel to a spot I felt was distant enough not to be seen should the weekend gardeners appear. I pitched a pup tent, unrolled my sleeping bag, lined up the cans of soup like little tin soldiers, spread out my gear, and generally got myself organized.

  By then it was blacker than the inside of a cow, so I fixed a pan of soup on my stove, then crawled into the tent and dined on vegetable-beef and saltines while reading by flashlight. I didn’t worry too much about someone seeing the faint light in the middle of nowhere, because no one would be dumb enough to approach the patch in the dark. The only person dumb enough to do that was sitting in a pup tent on the back side of Cotter’s Ridge having an intimate experience with Campbell’s finest. At some point I felt the need to put on heavy wool socks, and a little bit later a pair of gloves. Finally, dressed in every item of clothing I’d brought, I got into the sleeping bag and shivered until I fell asleep, reminding myself that this was my brilliant idea and that I was doing it for all the right reasons.

  Hammet managed to delay the reunion for several hours, first by bursting into tears and wailing so loud that David Allen pulled over to the side of the road. Hammet then allowed how he jest couldn’t face his siblings ’cause they would be so fuckin’ upset it’d set him off again. He agreed that something to eat might help, and tried not to grin all the way down to Ruby Bee’s Bar and Grill. For some odd reason it was closed, so David Allen offered to take him home for a quick sandwich and a soda.

  That were even better, Hammet decided, letting his face crumple up again for good measure. Big tears rolled down his checks while he tried to figger out how to stay away from that thin-lipped bitch’s house as long as possible.

  “Look at all these here houses,” he said admiringly as they drove through the subdivision. “Do you know all them what lives in ’em?”

  “No, just the ones next to me. You do realize we’re going to have something to eat, then go straight to Mrs. Jim Bob’s house, don’t you? I promised Arly that I’d break the news to everyone, and I feel guilty about the delay.”

  “Arly wouldn’t mind. She’s real nice about that sort of thing. Don’t you think she’s a right nice lady?” Hammet stole a quick look from under his brow. “And knockers—she’s better built than a sow what’s suckling a dozen babies. And she can cook real good, too, and she never talks dirty unless’n she’s mad.”

  David Allen parked in his driveway and gestured for Hammet to get out of the wagon. “I can see you’re smitten with her, but don’t you think she’s too old for you?” he asked as they went into the house.

  “I never said she weren’t old as the hills.” Hammet wandered around the living room, examining the crumpled beer cans and old pizza boxes while his host went on to the kitchen. “You happen to be married?”

  “Once upon a time I happened to be married. In fact, I have a little boy a few years younger than you. I’m fixing bologna and cheese. You want mustard or mayonnaise?”

  “Where’s your boy?”

  David Allen poked his head out of the kitchen. “He lives with his grandparents in Farberville. Mustard or mayonnaise?”

  “Both,” Hammet said decisively, since he wasn’t sure what either was. He recommenced to wandering. “Whose toys are these?”

  “Mine.”

  “What does you do with them?”

  “I launch them into the air and try very hard to find them when they come down. Then I glue them back together and launch them again.”

  “Iffen you don’t want to bust them, why do you launch them in the first place? Why not jest leave them on the shelf?”

  David Allen stopped spreading mustard. “A good question. I enjoy the launch, and I have a radio thing to help me track them when they crash. It’s sort of exciting…I guess.”

  “Mebbe if you was a kid,” Hammet said, dismissing the crazy notion. “What happened to your little boy’s mama? Was she kilt too? How come he don’t live with you no more?”

  “Because he needed a mother to take care of him, and the best I could do was a grandmother. He also needs to live near a doctor. As for his mother, she died from a nasty disease.”

  “My ma was kilt by a bear. She damn near kilt him first, but the ole thing was bigger than the broadside of a barn, and he had teeth sharp as knives, and big, long claws that could rip out your guts,” Hammet said, proud of the way his ma’d tried to fight off the bear. “She din’t die of some dumb disease.”

  David Allen came into the living room and put a plate on the coffee table. “It would be more exciting if a bear attacked your mother, wouldn’t it?” (Techniques for Today’s Intervention Therapy, Chapter Three: “Denial as an Expression of Grief.”) “But you and I both heard Arly say that your mother was killed in a hunting accident, didn’t we?”

  Hammet hadn’t studied the technique in effect. “Yeah, she said that ’cause she thought it’d make me feel better than iffen she described how my ma’s guts was all ripped into tatters by a fuckin’ bear. There was most likely blood splattered up in the trees to the top branch. Arly probably had to look all over the place to find my ma’s arms and legs—or what was left of ’em. Why, little Sissy’d start bawling and keening and carryin’ on if we told her that.” He snatched up the sandwich and jammed it in his mouth, regretting the reference to his sibling. He sure din’t want to remind David Allen they wasn’t doing what Arly’d told ’em to do.

  “As soon as you’re finished, we’re going. We are not going to relate this wild story about the bear; instead, we’re going to say as little as possible. Right, partner?” (Ibid., Chapter Six: “Eliciting Cooperation from the Client.”)

  “You know,” Hammet said through a mouthful of sandwich, “You could have your little boy here with you if you was to get married. You already knows how to be a parent and make little boys take baths and all that crap. All you need is a woman to be his ma. She doesn’t have to know much about doin’ it.”

  “That’s a possibility, I suppose. You don’t happen to have anyone in mind, do you?”

  “Guess your little boy’s right sad that he don’t have any siblings.” Hammet let out a lengthy sigh of despair over the plight of the siblingless boy. “He don’t have nobody to play with or to punch in the mouth when he gets all riled. I bet he has to sleep by hisself in his bed, and gets colder than a widder woman’s feet. He most likely—”

  “He has several friends in the neighborhood,” David Allen cut in, “and he doesn’t mind being an only child.”

  “Only a child? If he’s littler than me, he’s got to be only a child. How old do you reckon I am?”

  “Old enough to know what went on at the cabin,” David Allen said, opting for a diversion. “Old enough to recognize the men who visited your mother on occasion, and old enough to tell me about them. I almost laughed when Arly suggested I talk to Bubba, simply because he’s the oldest. Anyone with the sense God gave a goose can see that you’re the smartest.”

  Hammet had that much sense, if not more. He figgered if he admitted he could recognize his ma’s visitors, he might well find himself having to go live with one of the sumbitches. Instead of comin’ up with a lie, he clutched his belly and doubled over, howling like a January wind coming through one of the cracks in the cabin. It ended the conversation, at least for the moment.

  10

 
“And if you don’t mend your ways, you’ll all spend eternity in the blazing fires of hell,” Mrs. Jim Bob concluded in a pious spray of spittle. Steeling herself to be charitable about the big rip in the upholstery of her sofa, she folded her hands in her lap and gazed at the nearest Buchanon bastard, who happened to be Sissie. “Now, just what do you who have to say for yourself?”

  “How do I know you ain’t lying?”

  “Because, young lady, I am a God-fearing Christian woman who was brought up to tell the truth if I didn’t want to be beaten on the buttocks by my father’s leather strap. I was not reared in some filthy pigsty by a woman with no morals or sense of decency. And now that’s she dead and burning forever in the fiery furnace of damnation, you’d better heed what all I say to you.” She turned to stare at Bubba, who held a sniveling Sukie on his lap. “And as for you, young man, you’re likely to spend your life on this earth in a rat-infested prison cell if you don’t mend your ways, not to mention enduring ever-lasting torment after you die some terrible death.”

  “Big fuckin’ deal,” Bubba said. “I still think you’re a-lyin’ about what happened to Her. We don’t have to pay any mind to what lies you tell us, or listen to all this shit about devils and fires and furnaces.” He pushed Sukie off his lap and stood up. “Come on, y’all. We’re gittin’ out of here. This holyfied lady’s jest tryin’ to bumfuzzle us.”

  Mrs. Jim Bob resisted an urge to smack the smirk off his face, because that wouldn’t be charitable in his hour of grief. “If you don’t believe me, I’ll call Brother Verber to come over here and tell you all the details of how you’ll burn in hell until you look worse than a charred marshmallow. But let me point out that you were brought here by the police, which means you’re arrested and in my custody. For another thing, you don’t have anywhere to go. Your mother is dead, and there’s no one in this entire world who has one whit of concern about any of you. If you had any sense at all, you’d drop to your knees and beg my forgiveness for all the wretched, horrible sins you’ve committed against me, right here in my own home. I’m liable to throw you out myself, and let you sit in the cold night until you all starve to death.”