by Joan Hess
Estelle’s station wagon wasn’t parked out front—naturally, but I banged through the door and stomped across the dance floor, around the end of the bar, and into the kitchen, where I found Ruby Bee and a man in a grease-stained jumpsuit arguing about the estimate to fix the vent.
“Go away,” I said to the repairman.
He looked at my expression and my badge and started for the back door. Ruby Bee grabbed his arm. “Don’t take one more step, Peewee Thrasher. I’ve waited three darn weeks for you, and you ain’t going anywhere.”
“Yes, he is,” I said, folding my arms and glaring.
“No, he ain’t,” Ruby Bee said, hanging on for dear life and glaring.
“Yes—he—is. You and I have important things to discuss. Had you been in residence last night; we could have conducted the discussion at that time. I not only drove by here several times, I also called your unit until well after midnight. You chose to lurk under a bush all night.”
“This kitchen’s hotter than a final-night revival sermon. I’ve waited three weeks to get the vents repaired, all the while slaving over a hot stove so folks like you wouldn’t whine about how hungry you are. Peewee’s here to fix the vents and he’s gonna do it right now.” Her face was turning redder by the word, and her voice was climbing toward double-digit decibels. The repairman’s head was going back and forth as if he were at Wimbledon, and I suspected he wished he were—or anywhere but where he was, for that matter.
“We are going to talk about your presence in the Bernswallows’ library yesterday,” I said. “He’ll have to come back later.”
“It took three weeks to get him here and he is not going to leave without fixing the vents, even if he charges a poor widow woman an arm and a leg to do it!”
We were still snarling and glaring when the kitchen door swung open and Estelle hurried in. Ignoring the ambiance, she said, “Well, it’s about time you showed your face, Arly. We’ve got a problem. I’d even say we’ve got us a tragedy in the simmering.”
“What?” Ruby Bee gasped, loosening her grip on the repairman.
“I stopped by Carolyn’s unit to see if she wanted a pot of coffee, and she told me that Staci Ellen’s disappeared. She went for a walk late yesterday afternoon and never came back.”
Ruby Bee released the repairman in order to point her finger at Estelle. “You swore she was in Carolyn’s room, being quiet as a mouse. Would you like to see the red mark on my ear?”
“Staci Ellen’s whereabouts are a tad more important than your sore ear,” Estelle retorted. She looked at me. “Why are you just standing there like one of your porch lights is burned out? You’ve got to find Staci Ellen before something terrible happens to her.”
I told Peewee to fix the vents. I then marched the merry pranksters out to the bar and said, “For starters, I have no idea who this mysterious Staci Ellen is. I gather she has some connection with Carolyn McCoy-Grunders, and that leads to yet another topic of discussion.” Before I could elaborate, the front door opened.
“Good, you’re here,” Carolyn said as she came across the room. “Staci Ellen Quittle is my secretary. She’s nineteen or twenty, short, bleached blond hair, blue eyes, not especially intelligent or articulate. She went for a walk around six o’clock. I didn’t hear her return, but I did hear a noise in her room later in the evening and assumed she was there. When I went to wake her for breakfast, I realized her bed had not been slept in and the clothes she’d been wearing yesterday weren’t there.”
“Does she know anyone in Maggody?” I asked.
“She knows us,” Estelle said, frowning. “Are you sure her hair is bleached, Carolyn? I happen to be in the profession, and I’d of said it was natural. Maybe a little lemon juice, but—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said curtly. “Let’s take a look at her room to see if she might have written down a name or a telephone number. Then Estelle and Ruby Bee can wait here”—I gave them icy looks—“in case the girl comes back, and you and I will drive around town and look for her.”
We all went to Staci Ellen’s room. I opened the drawers, but the only things I found were a battered romance novel, The Golden Ecstasy of Lady Beatrice, and half a pack of chewing gum, sugar-free spearmint. A few clothes were folded neatly on a chair, and the bedspread was slightly rumpled. A dry toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste were aligned by the sink.
As I came out of the bathroom, Carolyn pointed at a wineglass on the dresser. “Staci Ellen must have been back at some time last night, because this glass wasn’t here yesterday. It’s the most peculiar thing of all. I’m almost certain she doesn’t drink, but even if she decided to have some wine, where would she get this glass? And where’s the bottle?”
I bent over to sniff the glass. “There’s no residue in the bottom and no odor. It’s smudgy, as if someone held it and twisted it for a long time. I agree with you; it’s damn peculiar. A state trooper is coming to the PD this morning to pick up a plastic cup to be fingerprinted at the barracks. I’ll send the glass along.”
“Oh, you don’t have any call to do that,” Ruby Bee said. “Staci Ellen didn’t arrive in Maggody until yesterday—the day after the fire. There’s no way this innocent glass could have anything to do with important matters like arson and murder.”
“That’s correct,” Estelle added, nodding her head.
Carolyn frowned. “But something funny is going on. There is no rational explanation for the wineglass’s being in Staci Ellen’s room.”
“Maybe she brought it along for you,” Ruby Bee said with a bright smile. “Maybe she thought you’d want to have a glass of wine. She figured you would prefer a real glass to a plastic cup, so she popped it in her suitcase, just to be on the safe side.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. I looked so hard at Ruby Bee that she backed into the bed and sat down with a grunt of surprise. “Why did you say that Estelle swore Staci Ellen was in Carolyn’s room being as quiet as a mouse? What’s wrong with your ear?”
“I disremember saying any of that.”
“No, you don’t. Just where were you two last night?”
Ruby Bee looked at Estelle, who looked at the ceiling. “We were here and there, running errands and visiting folks. Nothing worth mentioning. We did come by here for a minute or so—or would you say a tad longer, Estelle?” When Estelle didn’t say anything whatsoever, Ruby Bee gulped and said, “We thought Staci Ellen might enjoy a little drive around the countryside, so we dropped by to invite her. She wasn’t here.”
I advanced until I was standing over her. “But Estelle thought Staci Ellen was in Carolyn’s room. That was a reasonable theory. Why didn’t you knock on the door and invite them both to go on this little drive?”
“We … ah, we didn’t want to disturb Carolyn. She’s going to defend Johnna Mae, and she might have been concentrating on what kinds of legal shenanigans to pull.”
“Why do you have a red mark on your ear?” I said.
“Who said I have a red mark on my ear? Don’t you think you ought to be searching for Staci Ellen instead of badgering your own mother? The poor girl could be lying in a ditch somewhere, bleeding and bruised from being knocked senseless by a chicken truck or some fool kid on a motorcycle.”
I looked at Carolyn, whose eyes were zipping from the wineglass to the witness to the wall at a very brisk clip. Before she could say anything, I said, “Well, I’m going to send this glass to be fingerprinted, but in the meantime, let’s drive around and look for the girl.” I carefully picked up the glass, took Carolyn’s arm, and pulled her out the door and into the parking lot.
Once we were in my car, she said, “Why on earth would those two spy on me? Do you think Staci Ellen made some sort of arrangement to vacate the room for them? The women in this town are crazy, absolutely crazy.”
I turned up Finger Lane. “Those two in particular are indeed crazy. They feel an obligation to assist in official police investigations, which usually means they get themselves into a major mud
dle and have to be rescued. I doubt Staci Ellen made any kind of arrangement, though, since they’re genuinely worried about her.”
“They were spying on me to assist in an official police investigation? Does that imply I’m an official suspect?”
“You came all the way to Maggody because of a complaint of insignificant proportions. You spent five days organizing a demonstration that ended with arson and murder. During the half hour preceding the fire, several women were unable to find you on the lot. You told me you went back to the motel to get some pamphlets, but no one can confirm this.”
“Nor can anyone disprove it. My specialty isn’t criminal law, but I took enough courses to know you need more than a few women with poor eyesight who couldn’t find me for a minute in a dark parking lot. In any case, I had no reason to harm either the banker or the building.”
“Perhaps not the building,” I said as I turned around in Earl Buchanon’s driveway and went back toward the highway, all the while keeping an eye out for a pedestrian with blond hair and a poor vocabulary. “However, you did have a problem with Brandon Bernswallow. You didn’t come to Maggody because Johnna Mae Nookim was demoted unfairly; you came because you recognized her immediate superior’s name.”
Granted, I was fishing. I was fishing so hard I should have been driving a bass boat and wearing a canvas hat decorated with lures. I decided to go right for the gills. “I had an enlightening interview with Brandon’s parents yesterday afternoon. They were overcome with grief, but they allowed me a few minutes alone with them in their library.”
“How veddy polite of them,” she murmured.
I stopped at the traffic light, turned left, and then left again on Coot Road. I was doing my level best to appear knowledgeable, but she wasn’t spilling her guts out of guilt. She was, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, getting more tight-lipped by the mile. I tried to think of something brilliant as we passed the McIlhaney house, and I was still working on it when I saw Estelle’s station wagon parked in Lottie Estes’s driveway. It was partly hidden by the sprawling forsythia, but I had no problem recognizing the dent in the hood and the bumper sticker that inquired if you had hugged your cosmetologist lately.
I swung into the driveway. “Damn it, I told them to wait at the bar in case Staci Ellen came back. We left them not more than ten minutes ago; they must have hesitated all of thirty seconds before leaving. I’m going to the door. Do you want to wait in the car?”
“I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
I went to the door and knocked loudly enough to provoke a riot in the morgue. Lottie opened the door a few inches, but it was enough for us to see that her hair was wrapped around pink sponge rollers and her face covered with white cream. “Why, Arly, how nice of you to … drop by like this, and you, too, Mrs. Grunders. I’m afraid I wasn’t expecting any company this morning. I was feeling badly when I woke up and called the school to say I wasn’t coming in. A touch of the stomach flu, I suspect. If you’ll give me just a moment, I’ll wrap a scarf around these unsightly hair rollers and wipe the moisturizer off. We can have a nice cup of tea and what’s left of an apple pie I made this morning. Are you here to interrogate me? Elsie said it was not the least bit what she expected, but she is quite religious about watching those dreadful police shows on television. I fear she was anticipating a spotlight in her face and a crowd of surly men looming over her with rubber hoses.”
“I’m looking for Ruby Bee and Estelle,” I said weakly.
She blinked at me. “I haven’t seen either of them since the night of the demonstration. We had a nice talk about the weather and swapped a recipe or two. I’m sure Mrs. Grunders remembers it well.”
Mrs. Grunders managed a pinched smile and allowed that she remembered it well. I pointed at the station wagon. “If Estelle’s not here, why is that parked in your driveway?”
She came out to the porch and leaned over the rail to look. “I swear, this is the first time I’ve noticed. I don’t drive, you see, and Miss Una prefers to pick me up at the end of the sidewalk so I rarely pay attention to that area of my yard. She is most kind about taking me to town, because, if I may say so myself, I take great pride in being prompt. Occasionally I must wait for her, but I really don’t mind too very much.”
I apologized for disturbing her, and Carolyn and I went back to the car. The whole thing was so screwy that I started laughing—or maybe I had a screw loose. Carolyn began to laugh, too, and pretty soon we were edging toward hysteria. I sputtered out a synopsis of Elsie’s third degree, right down to the lemon cookies and mint sprigs in the tea. Carolyn choked out the ingredients in the infamous green bean casserole, because she’d been forced to listen to a heated debate on the water chestnut issue that lasted more than an hour.
We finally ran out of people to poke fun at and our laughter faded. I wiped my eyes, switched on the ignition, and started to back out of Lottie’s driveway. When it hit.
“Lottie Estes did not support the cause,” I said. “She’s a great proponent of stereotypic roles. If given half a chance, she’ll lecture for hours about the importance of small appliances and needlework. Her idea of sex education is making sure everyone knows that girl babies wear pink and boy babies wear blue. Why on earth would she show up in the parking lot?”
“She might have been more comfortable across the road,” Carolyn said, shaking her head. “Ms. Estes was definitely there, however; she was defending traditional ingredients with the intensity of Perry Mason. It’s hard to place anyone at any given time, but I don’t remember seeing her until after I returned from the motel room.”
“Speaking of which, don’t give me that crap about the pamphlets. You didn’t need to walk down the highway at that hour. The pamphlets were to be distributed the next morning. Why’d you go to your room? If that’s where you went.”
“I needed to make a telephone call to the current wife of an ex-friend. He’s … a fellow attorney in Little Rock.”
“And his wife can verify this?”
Carolyn ruffled her hair and sighed. “I left a message at a Las Vegas hotel, so the call can be verified through telephone company records.”
“Or through the hotel operator, which might be faster. Will she remember taking the message?”
“Oh, yes, she most certainly will. I dictated a few words she was unfamiliar with. Why do you think Ms. Estes crashed our hen party in the parking lot? Do you think she was there to spy on us?”
“Shit, I don’t know,” I said with a groan. I came to the end of Coot Road and turned back onto the highway. “I don’t know anything. I don’t know where Kevin and Dahlia are, I don’t know whose fingerprints are on the wastebasket and the kerosene can, I don’t know who-all Bernswallow was blackmailing, I don’t know who killed him, I don’t know who lit either fire, I don’t know where Staci Ellen is, and I don’t know what the connection is between you and Bernswallow.”
“I thought you did,” she said.
“The Bernswallow Seniors declined to discuss it,” I admitted with another groan. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Not while it might be construed as a motive for murder. Once this mess is resolved, perhaps we can share a gallon jug of rotgut wine and I’ll tell you about it. In the very first year of law school, lawyers are taught the wisdom of not incriminating themselves.”
I turned up Raz Buchanon’s road, which hadn’t been graded in a decade, and pointed out Marjorie’s air-conditioned shed as we passed it. Then I asked her if she’d ever heard of a depository charge.
“There’s no such animal,” she said firmly. “I did several courses in banking law. The regulations on fee structure are complex and rigid.”
“Raz was all fired up about it this morning. Not so much that he paid it, mind you, but that it wasn’t mentioned on his statement and therefore caused grief at tax computation time.” I slowed down to a crawl. “I wonder if all the branch customers pay this mysterious charge whenever they make deposits.”
“And to whom?”
I stopped the car and looked at her. “To Miss Una, I’d guess. When Johnna Mae was head teller, she spent her time writing bogus loan applications. Miss Una sat at her window and did the mundane chores, including taking deposits and explaining the inexplicable to people like Raz. She’s a prim Sunday-school-teacher sort, and authoritative enough to convince half the town the sun rises in the west every morning, or at least plant a seed of doubt about it. She wouldn’t have any problem convincing some of the customers that they had to pay a fee to deposit money. We’re not real worldly in Maggody, which is why Chase Manhattan hasn’t opened a branch here. The majority of the citizens didn’t make it to the eighth grade prom.”
“So Miss Una’s been pocketing a dollar or so every day for the last twenty years? That could add up to a neat sum for retirement,” Carolyn said thoughtfully. “It doesn’t implicate her in the murder, however, or even place her at the scene.”
“But she was there. Lottie didn’t walk down the highway in the dark to exchange recipes. I’d wager the cost of a new radar gun that Miss Una stopped at the end of the sidewalk and tootled her horn. Furthermore, someone said Miss Una mentioned the faulty wiring as a logical cause of the fire.” I put the car back into gear and sent a cloud of dust into the air as I grimly drove toward the highway. “I’d thought originally that we had one blackmail victim. Yesterday afternoon I upped it to two, because it fit so well with two fires. What if we had three victims—Johnna Mae, Sherman Oliver, and Miss Una?”
“Isn’t that a rather larcenous group of employees for one branch bank? A hundred percent seems a high figure.”
“I know, but this was an obscure little branch in an obscure boondock of a town. Oliver was an absentee manager. Perhaps Miss Una and Johnna Mae had a quiet understanding not to see what the other was doing, a you-embezzle-your-way-and-I’ll-embezzle-mine pact. Then Bernswallow appears and starts spending his nights studying ledgers and rummaging through files. He stumbles onto the bogus loan applications the minute someone comes into the branch with a letter about a missed payment. He digs harder and sees that Miss Una’s drawer is usually off a little bit.”