by Joan Hess
“That’s right,” Estelle added.
The whole thing was driving me crazy, crazy, crazy. I poked a finger at Ruby Bee’s chest. “Estelle said earlier that there was some urgent need to learn the identity of the children’s fathers. You were so frantic that you consulted Madam Celeste. Why?”
“We were trying to help,” she sniffed, retreating under my maniacal glare. Estelle, a loyal sort, retreated along with her.
David Allen stopped patting Heather’s shoulder long enough to say, “I bet I know why, Arly. Hammet and his sibs took Baby out of a station wagon and carried him off. I doubt they left a little note.”
By this time, most of the congregation not directly involved in the paternity dispute had wandered outside. Everyone seemed to think the second act had started on the gravel stage, and managed to drift a little closer for optimum rubbernecking. Across the street Nate and Zachery came out of the Emporium and stopped to watch us. I was surprised the news vans didn’t roll up, or the Goodyear blimp drift across the sky.
“You lost Baby?” I said. “Is that what sent you to Robin Buchanon’s cabin yesterday afternoon? You thought that his father might have kidnapped him?”
“We would have gone anyway,” Ruby Bee snapped. “The child cries night and day, and I’m too old to be forced to put up with it. If you hadn’t dumped him in my lap, I wouldn’t have…misplaced the little dumpling.”
Estelle nodded. “It was a terrible strain on your mother. Why, she’s sprouted dozens of gray hairs since you abandoned Baby on her doorstep.”
“I did what?” I howled.
“Dozens of gray hairs?” Ruby Bee howled.
“What about Carol Alice?” Heather howled.
“You’ll never touch me again as long as I live,” Mrs. Jim Bob howled (from inside the church building, presumably to her husband, but you never know).
“She was a Jezebel,” Brother Verber howled (same locale).
Lupine madness provided some degree of catharsis, not to mention a great deal of satisfaction to the audience. Once things quieted down, I told everybody to have a nice day, got in the jeep, and drove sedately down the highway to the PD. For all I knew or cared, they could form a pack and lope into the forest to eat bunny rabbits for Sunday dinner.
The office was dusty, which reminded me that I really needed to do something about Kevin and Dahlia—just as soon as I dealt with the dopers. Having resolved that for the moment, I sat back in my comfy old chair and called the sheriff. We had a long talk about the disastrous stakeout, and he was kind enough to say he’d probably have done the same thing. Neither of us believed it, but it was a nice gesture. He then put me on hold and went to talk to the treacherous LaBelle. When he came back, he said he was confident she had not spilled the beans to anyone except Mrs. Jim Bob. He said he’d do something about the missing lovebirds and suggested I take a well-deserved nap. I told him I didn’t deserve anything, sympathy included, and hung up.
The dim light and utter quiet were conducive to thought, so I thought for a long while. I thought about who’d planted the dope and subsequently chopped it. You’re undoubtedly screeching Nate’s name at this page of this book, because that much was pretty obvious: Zachery’s steady supply of dope, Nate’s absence at the critical moment, the lightless truck on the road.
That didn’t explain how he knew when to return to his patch, however, or who was with him, or where the dope was at the moment. And it didn’t prove a damned thing. Obviousness doesn’t equate with evidence. And I really did want to nail the sons of bitches for Robin’s murder.
I went across the street and up the stairs to my apartment, wondering how much of a mess the Buchanon children had left. As Hammet had promised, it wasn’t all that much worse than usual (my feckless Manhattan housekeeper refused to follow me to Maggody, and I never was one for scrubbing toilets; Ruby Bee says I’ll get typhoid one of these days). I took a shower, changed into clean clothes, ate a bowl of cornflakes (the only edible item that hadn’t been devoured by my guests), and drove back to the Emporium.
The truck was gone. I went inside and found Rainbow in the office. We discussed Poppy’s baby and the miracle of birth and the cosmic truth or consequences of Jupiter in the eighth house. I then asked her where I might find Nate.
“I don’t know,” she said, her smile slipping just a bit. “He’s been impossible lately, and if you ask me, his karma has been rotten. He’s not the least harmonic. He either lies around the office waiting for mysterious telephone calls, or he vanishes in the truck. He missed Daffodil Sunshine’s birth, you know. It was a vital family experience. We were supposed to share!”
“Was he lying around the office yesterday waiting for a call?” I asked.
“Yes, and then about the time it got dark he got his call. He announced he had something to do and drove away. I told him Poppy was having contractions, but he laughed and said it was gas. Now that’s rotten karma if there ever was one.”
I agreed. After once again declining to have my chart done, I went back to the jeep and myopically gazed at the Voice of the Almighty while I tried to determine my next brilliant move. When nothing struck, I drove down the country road where I’d seen the truck. I doubted Nate could have stashed a hundred pot plants in Estelle’s back bedroom without her noticing. I wasn’t particularly pleased with Madam Celeste, but I had no reason to think she and Mason were involved in felonious activities. Past their house there was only the rusty car, the dilapidated chicken house, the low-water bridge, and Hasty ten miles down the road.
Surely he hadn’t planned to drive all the way to Hasty without headlights, I told myself as I turned around and drove back toward Maggody. As I approached the psychic’s house, I saw Mason pull into the driveway.
“Everybody says ask Madam Celeste,” I said aloud, tightening my fingers around the steering wheel until it would have yelped, had it been capable of yelps. “I’ll ask Madam Celeste.”
I parked by the mailbox and went over to Mason, who was unloading groceries. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you on Friday,” I said. “Something came up and I had to leave town.”
“I shouldn’t have knocked on your door at six in the morning. Celeste has been so darn weird about this dead woman’s face that I’m scared not to do what she says. She sits in the solarium night and day, laying out tarot cards or shaking the Mesopotamian sand and then reading it. She even canceled all her appointments.”
“Except for Carol Alice Plummer. That’s the one she should have canceled.”
A sack of groceries hit the ground. “Oh, no,” he groaned. “Did Celeste get that sweet little girl all upset again? She was sniveling in the solarium the other day, so I made up some silly predictions to cheer her up. Why didn’t she just stay away?”
I handed him a can of corn that had rolled between my feet. “The girl’s suicidal, which doesn’t sit well with her parents or her boyfriend. I guess I’d better have a word with your sister; she really can’t upset the local girls like this.” And slip in a question about activity on the road the previous night.
Mason said he’d go over to Carol Alice’s house and see if he could calm her down with some jovial fortune-telling. The front door was unlocked and there were sodas in the refrigerator, he told me as he drove away.
Madam Celeste was still in the solarium, the cards spread in front of her on the Formica table. When I’d first met her, she’d been sparkling and fizzing like a glass of champagne. Now she looked gray and exhausted. There were black smudges under her eyes, and her hair hung limply on her thin shoulder. I sat down across from her. She regarded me without interest, then moved a picture card a fraction of an inch and let her hand fall away.
“I understand you helped the police in Nevada,” I said softly.
“I did, but they resented it.”
“I wouldn’t resent help. I need all the help I c
an get. Did Mason tell you that a woman’s body was found in the woods south of town?”
“He did.”
“I’ve been investigating the death.”
This time her eyes were brighter, although narrowed to slits. “Then you saw this woman’s face?” When I nodded, she said, “There had been an explosion, no? Her eyes were opened in shock, her nostrils clotted with blood, her lips cracked and covered with flies?”
“That’s a reasonable description,” I said cautiously. “Mason said that you’d seen the face before, in a trance.”
“I saw a face, but I do not know whose it was. A woman, yes, and dead. The cards insist that there is evil afoot in this town, that there are men who lie and stir up mischief. Not childish mischief, but malicious mischief for their own dark purposes.”
“Do you know their names?” Dumb, naive, foolish, but I had to ask. Hell, she might have whipped out a list for me, perps in alphabetical order. Footnoted with addresses and telephone numbers. Not exactly courtroom evidence, but at least a nudge to get me going in the right direction. And it couldn’t hurt. So there. Stop smirking.
“Of course not,” she said in an irritated voice. “If I knew their names, I would have insisted you come here at once to receive my information and act on it.
“Oh,” I said, wondering if I looked all that compliant. “Well, I agree that something’s going on in Maggody. Did you happen to see or hear anything last night shortly after nine o’clock?”
“I was here, studying the cards. I saw the King of Wands, the Nine of Swords, and—”
“No, I mean out on the road. A truck. Voices. Lights.”
She stood up and went to the window. “I saw no lights in the pasture, but cows do not have flashlights, nor do they converse or drive around. There is nothing out there except the fossils left by the chicken farmer who once worked that land. He is an interesting fellow, by the way.”
“Does he live nearby?”
“He lived in this house for forty years, and died in the bedroom where Mason sleeps. He says Mason snores louder than his wife did.” She spun around to stare at me. “I cannot help you. You have found the dead woman. Both of us have seen her face. I am sure now that it was not that silly high school girl.”
Wishing she’d made it plainer to Carol Alice, I went over to the window and studied the pasture, the chicken house, and the distant windbreak of trees. My eyes went back to the chicken house. “Did you hear anything from down that way?” I asked, pointing at the sorry structure. “Maybe a car door slam, or a voice?”
Madam Celeste turned back and followed my finger. “Yes. I heard a thud, but I presumed the rain had loosened a board.” Before I could inquire further, she opened the back door and went down the few stairs to the grass. Then, as if pulled by a magnet, she walked toward the chicken house in the far corner of the field.
“Wait a minute,” I called as I hurried after her.
She moved ahead purposefully, oblivious to my presence, with all her attention on the building. Although her gaze was directed straight ahead, she did not stumble on the clumps of weeds or snakish vines. I checked once or twice to make sure her feet were making contact with the ground. I couldn’t help it.
Once we got there, she stopped several yards from the door. Others of us panted and tried to control our imaginations. I did have enough of my wits intact to see tire tracks in the mud, along with many footprints, as though an army had marched past. Or two men had made numerous trips between the vehicle and the chicken house.
I touched the psychic’s arm. “Don’t go any farther. I’m fairly sure that there’s a quarter acre of marijuana plants drying in there, and I don’t want to screw up the evidence.” She brushed off my hand and walked across the evidence to the door. “Yes, green plants rooted in the sky. I have already seen them. There is malevolence inside this place. I can feel it. It frightens me.”
She was not alone. I plowed through the evidence and again tried to pull her back. “I don’t think we ought to even open the door, Celeste. Let’s go back to the house so I can call the sheriff for a backup. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?”
“I must open the door.”
She did. For a minute the two of us gaped at darkness, although I could make out the shadowy forms of inverted plants dangling all the way into the darkness. Celeste felt on the wall just inside the door, saying, “There is light somewhere. Very hot, very bright.”
Light bulbs and gasoline. “Don’t turn on the light!” I screeched, grabbing at her arm.
“I must.” She shoved me so hard, I tumbled backward and sprawled into the mud, breathless. Then she felt the wall again. I heard a click. Beyond her the room lit up, and the marijuana plants were spotlighted. A male voice yelled something in alarm.
And then the building exploded with a blinding flash and a wave of searing heat. Celeste was knocked back on top of me. Flames shot toward the sky. Boards cracked as the heat intensified, then seemed to shatter into red splinters. Brilliant sparks streamed like roman candles. The noise was worse than a train in a tunnel.
I managed to roll Celeste off me, then grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the fire as best I could, in that my body was screaming, my eyes tearing, my legs wobbling so wildly I was surprised they held me. Celeste seemed to weigh several tons, and the mud was treacherously slick. I pulled and slipped and fell and struggled up and pulled again for what felt like hours, all the while cursing at the top of my lungs. To this day I have no idea what I said; I have only a vague memory of the scene, as if it were from a movie watched in childhood.
At last we reached the weedy edge of the pasture. I dropped her arm and collapsed beside her. The chicken house continued to burn; the noise was deafening, the light painfully bright. More explosions sent fireballs rolling upward. The smoke was black. I numbly noticed my hands and arms were black and wondered if the flesh had been burned.
I got to my knees and bent over Celeste’s body. Shards of wood protruded from her chest and abdomen. Her eyes were open but unfocused. Blood had already began to clot around her nostrils, perhaps from the furious heat. Her mouth was slightly open, her lips cut and bloodied. As I stared, a fly spiraled down and lit on the lower lip. I shooed it away, then fell back in the weeds, and that was all.
15
Ruby Bee came into my bedroom, a tray in her hands. “I brought you some supper, and I want you to finish every bite of it.”
The first two days of being waited on hand and foot had not disturbed me. I’d meekly allowed myself to be bullied, due to lack of any desires more complicated than sleep and liquids to wash down pills. By now it was paling. I felt awful, but not so awful that I wanted this regressive state to become permanent. My burns had been diagnosed as a good assortment of first degree, second degree superficial, and second degree deep. The last would leave scars, mostly on the palms of my hands, since it seems I’d instinctively thrown up my hands to protect my face. For the most part. I wouldn’t need mascara or an eyebrow tweezer for a long time, nor would I need blusher. A paper bag with eyeholes would suffice.
“What’s in the vase?” I said.
“Dried weeds from your little admirer—sorrel and wild marigolds, he said when he brought them.” Ruby Bee fluffed my pillows, noted the cover of the book I was reading with a snort of disapproval (escapist stuff, which was exactly what I needed), then put the tray in my lap. “He’s been coming over every morning and afternoon to see you, but I told him you were too sick for company. I didn’t think you’d want anyone to see you while you look like this. As much as I hate to say it, I’ve seen stewed tomatoes that looked better than you.”
“Thank you for that heartening assessment, Ruby Bee Nightingale. I think I’m up to managing my social calendar from now on. Has the sheriff called?”
“He did earlier this afternoon. I told him you were asleep. The
doctor said for you to stay in bed for several days, and I intend to see that you do it. You may have my good looks, but you’ve always had your father’s streak of mulishness. Now are you going to eat your supper or shall I feed you?”
This inspired me to put the tray on the end of the bed, throw back the covers, and struggle to my feet. While Ruby Bee squawked and waggled her finger and predicted all sorts of fatal relapses, I went into the living room and called the sheriff’s office.
“Why, Arly,” LaBelle said in a noticeably frigid voice. “How are you getting along?”
“Not too badly for a stewed tomato. Is Harve there?”
He came on the line and said he had received the lab reports from the boys in Little Rock at the state crime lab. The explosions had been started by gasoline-filled light bulbs, as I’d guessed. A devilishly clever booby trap designed to destroy the evidence should someone unwittingly flip the light switch. The fact that it destroyed the flippee made it all the more clever. Nate’s only mistake was being in the back of the chicken house at an inauspicious moment. I was glad I hadn’t been at his autopsy. I get squeamish at wienie roasts.
“So I guess you solved your case,” Harve concluded. “The evidence went up in smoke, but your perp did, too. Damn shame about that woman.”
“Damn shame,” I said dispiritedly. I agreed to come in to write up all the paperwork in a day or two, replaced the receiver, and then gingerly sat down on the sofa and wiggled around until nothing hurt too much. I didn’t much feel like crowing over the resolution of the case, however. It didn’t feel resolved. It felt frayed, and the little ends were tickling me.
Ruby Bee came into the living room and put the tray in my lap. “You know what the doctor said,” she began, her hands on her hips. It is one of her least flattering poses. “You’d better—”
“What police investigation didn’t you interfere in?” I asked abruptly.
“Well, yours, of course. I didn’t want you to think Estelle and I were involved in Robin Buchanon’s murder. We were working on the identities of the fathers. Producing an illegitimate child isn’t a crime.”