murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  But, he thought, as he crept out of bed and pulled on his pants, all he’d done was notice Chapel Bailey’s nipples poking through her blouse. He hadn’t said anything, or even lunged at them like he had at his dearly beloved’s on the porch swing one summer night when it seemed half of Maggody was lurking behind the bushes at the end of the sidewalk.

  Brother Verber would be the first to accuse him of having lust in his heart, Kevin thought while trying to find his shoes in the dark room. But how could anyone ever replace his love bug? Dahlia was all he’d ever wanted since that first encounter in the back of the convenience store, aptly known as the Quik-Screw. His mouth got all dry as he allowed himself to relive what had taken place on a sunny afternoon while customers complained and Jim Bob kept banging on the door. Had it been one of those Kodak moments, Kevin would have been the first to buy prints.

  “This less-than-fascinating exploration of blue-collar culture is over,” Chapel said as she considered how much of the cutlery to take. Two of each, perhaps—one for her and one for the child she might be bearing. Justin deserved to eat with his fingers like a troglodyte, stuffing red meat in his mouth, but she was not about to clutter up her future with superfluous accouterments. “Feel free to burn my books,” she added as she slammed closed a drawer. “For that matter, burn my bras at the next social at the church. That ought to satisfy those pigs with their condescending sneers. Use the fondue forks.”

  Justin was less than comfortable on the lumpy couch that was standard issue with the double-wide. “Come on, Chapel,” he said, “you have to admit you showed up in provocative clothes. These people didn’t venture down from the trees all that long ago. You had no call to dress like you did.”

  “I was defining myself.”

  “As what?”

  “Can’t you see what I am?”

  “All I see,” Justin said patiently, “is a thousand dollars a month plus expenses while I teach these people how to send E-mail to each other. I apply to grad schools; you take the seminar. Twelve months from now, we’ll be packing up our stuff.”

  “If I stay here, twelve months from now I’ll be wearing hair rollers to the supermarket and cookin’ up a mess of ripe roadkill,” she retorted. “And don’t think for a minute that I didn’t see you keeping an eye on that scrawny girl. She was keeping an eye on you, too, even though that boy was hanging all over her. Is she taking this class?”

  “Yes, and I’m going to be polite to her, just like I am to everyone else in the adult class. I don’t see why—” He stopped as someone knocked on the door. “You expecting company?”

  “Yeah, I invited all the degenerates in the trailer park to come by for an evening of illegal drugs and spontaneous sex. Why don’t you welcome everyone while I find my leather G-string?”

  “Give it a break, Chapel.” With some trepidation, he opened the door.

  Gwynnie’s face was flushed and her eyelids were swollen. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Bailey, but you seemed so nice and I don’t know where to turn. As much as I’d like to cram my clothes in a suitcase and hitch a ride to the next state, I got to think about my little boy. He ain’t but two.”

  “Why don’t you come inside?”

  “I saw the way your wife was glaring at me like I was nothing but a dirty diaper,” she said, “and maybe that’s all I am. I wouldn’t feel right coming inside. Do you think you could sit out here with me for a few minutes? I’m so scared I could wet my pants.”

  “Scared?” he echoed.

  “It’s kinda complicated,” she said, tears beginning to spill out of her eyes. “I promise I won’t take much of your time, but if I don’t talk to someone, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe Chip’d be better off being an orphan. I can’t let things go on like this.”

  “Go out and talk to her,” Chapel said as she headed for the bedroom.

  He wasn’t at all sure what to do. “She says she’s scared. Maybe both of us should talk to her.”

  “I don’t think that’s what she has in mind.”

  Justin held his breath until the bedroom door closed rather emphatically. “Are you sure I’m the person you should be talking to, Gwynnie?” he asked in a low voice. “I only met you a couple of hours ago. Isn’t there someone else you can trust?”

  Gwynnie shrank away from the door. “If I’m causing you grief, say so and I’ll leave. I don’t know where I’ll go, but it’s none of your concern. Like you said, it’s only been a couple of hours. You got no reason to worry about me. There’s more than one way to leave Maggody.”

  He stepped outside and eased closed the door behind him. “You’re not talking about harming yourself, are you?”

  “I don’t know what I’m talking about, Mr. Bailey. I’m confused and I’m scared. I don’t want your wife to get upset. I just need someone I can trust.” She sat down on the edge of the concrete slab. “I got to think of my boy, Chip, but at the same time—”

  Justin squatted behind her, desperately trying to recall what he’d learned in his sole psychology class (a smattering of social sciences having been required, which was how he’d met Chapel in his sophomore year). “You have a son named Chip?”

  “It might have been for the best if I’d let him be adopted right after he was born. I have this awful feeling that something’s gonna happen to him, and it’ll be my fault.”

  “What’s wrong, Gwynnie?”

  “Daniel, for starters. You saw how he acted tonight. Everybody knows I ain’t a virgin, but Chip’s father was the only boy I ever … was intimate with. Daniel makes me feel like a slut.” She hung her head. “I wasn’t voted most likely to get laid, you know. My ma’s boyfriends were all the time pinching my ass and whispering nasty things, but I never paid them any heed. I made a mistake, Mr. Bailey, and I’m facing up to it as best I can. All I need is a friend. I could tell the minute I met you that you’re the kind of person that can see me for what I am—or want to be.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” he said honestly. “I’m not real clear who Daniel is, for that matter, or what kind of person you think I am. The one thing I’m not is a therapist.”

  Gwynnie wiped her eyes as she looked over her shoulder at him. “Daniel is Leona’s husband, so he’s kind of my uncle. Some nights he comes into my bedroom and stands over the bed, looking down at me. I keep my eyes closed, but I can hear him breathing. If you’ve ever been abused, you’d know what I’m talking about.”

  “Isn’t there someone to call?”

  “No one’s ever believed me so far, and I don’t see why they’d start now. I may lack a diploma, Mr. Bailey, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthless. I have emotions like everybody else. I shouldn’t say this, but when I first laid eyes on you tonight, all I could see was a knight in white armor. You’d never let anyone take advantage of your wife, would you? You’d defend her, no matter what.” She hiccuped in a way he found oddly touching. “I hope she appreciates that. I know I would.”

  “Gwynnie, I don’t know how to help you. If this man is menacing you, you should tell the policewoman, or Miss Estes, or the woman who runs the local bar, or even Brother Verber. He may not be the quickest to master the basics on the keyboard, but surely he’s had training in matters like this.”

  “Any one of them would carry tales back to Daniel and Leona,” she said as she stood up. “I was hoping you’d understand how scared I am. I’m sorry for wasting your time, Mr. Bailey. Please tell your wife how sorry I am for disturbing y’all. It’ll never happen again.”

  Justin caught her shoulders. “You need help, Gwynnie.”

  “I know I do,” she said, sniffling. “It’s not your trouble, though. I’ll do whatever it takes to stop the abuse, even if it means …” She seemed to wilt into his arms, like a daffodil caught in an unseasonable cold snap. “Make sure somebody looks after Chip. Maybe you and your wife can adopt him when the time comes. He’s real fond of chocolate milk and stories at bedtime. Make sure you don’t let shampoo get in his eyes when you give h
im a bath. Even though it’s supposed not to sting, he gets real upset.”

  “Gwynnie?” said a male voice from the darkness. “I was thinking that was you. Is everything all right?”

  She deftly extracted herself from what Justin had begun to view as an embrace, unpremeditated, but not necessarily objectionable on his part.

  “Jessie?” she responded.

  The young man ventured onto the patio. “I was just taking a walk when I heard voices. I wasn’t sure if it was you or not. After what happened earlier, I was kinda surprised your uncle didn’t lock you in the root cellar for the rest of the night.”

  “He would have if there was one,” she said with a rueful laugh. “He said he’d come after me with his belt if I ever spoke to you again, Jessie, so maybe you’d better go on.”

  Jessie retreated a few steps. “Can’t you help her, Mr. Bailey? She’s got no one else. I’d try to do something, but I ain’t nothing but an ignorant peckerwood living from one payday to the next. You got a college degree. You’re smarter than most everybody here in Maggody.”

  Justin bit back the urge to ask who among the limited population might not fall into the “most everybody” category. “I don’t see what I can do,” he said, all of a sudden considering the wisdom of standing on the lit patio should a car come down the road, headlights off, its driver cradling a shotgun in his lap. Or a lynch mob comprised of fierce-eyed fathers and brawny, witless brothers. Even at seventeen, Gwynnie might well be jail bait, depending on the statute.

  “Gwynnie,” he said in a hoarse voice, “you’d better get on home. You and Jessie need to avoid each other until things calm down. Don’t sit next to each other in class, and be careful not to leave at the same time.”

  “Maybe he should skip classes for a few weeks,” she suggested. “I’m pretty sure Daniel’s gonna deliver me to the door and wait outside to fetch me. It’ll be hard on both of us, Jessie, but I’m real fond of my backside.”

  “That would be best,” added Justin, who’d last had his nose punched in third grade and still broke out in hives when he saw a teeter-totter. Computer geeks might spit and sputter over the latest program operating system, or even the merits of new browsers. They did not, however, raise their hands except to snatch pens out of their shirt pockets in order to scribble their conjectures on pads of yellow paper. As far as Justin knew, there’d been no crimes of passion in Silicon Valley.

  7

  After a couple of days, Harve got back to me about the license plate off Lazarus’s motorcycle. It was legally registered to a more mundane Nicholas Brozinski, who’d been convicted four years previously for possession of a controlled substance. He’d dutifully twiddled his thumbs in the county jail for six months. No other priors, no suggestion of anything that might raise the hairs on the back of my neck. According to the record, he’d been a model citizen since then.

  I’d had Harve check on Seth Smitherman, my hapless drunk. Seth’s record was more timely, but equally unimpressive. He’d recently completed eighteen months for grand theft auto, and was, as far as the authorities believed, no longer a menace to society. This explained the new driver’s license and lack of credit cards (although he might have been preapproved for platinum at a fantastic introductory rate, had telemarketers been able to call him during suppertime at the state prison). Kyle, whoever he was, had failed to come by the PD to pick up his rifle, which was just as well; I’d delivered it to LaBelle with a veiled hint that it might be used against rogue car salesmen. She failed to see the humor.

  Even though I was pushing my luck, I’d run Jessie Traylor’s name by Harve. Not so much as an unpaid parking ticket blotched his record. Although Eula Lemoy’s name had crossed my mind, I decided she was not likely to have outstanding warrants for anything more serious than overdue library books.

  Ruby Bee and Estelle were kicking ass on the Internet, although neither would have described it in those precise terms. Whenever I ventured into the bar and grill, they were much too busy scrutinizing their notes to nag at me. Eileen had been with them on several occasions; the conversations regarding URLs and browsers might as well have been in Kurdish or Swahili. Brother Verber had tacked up a poster on the front door of the Assembly Hall that invited potential worshippers to contact ass_hall@maggody.com for information about specifics of the weekly services.

  The sun was shining and the sky was blue when Raz Buchanon banged open the door of the PD and interrupted my relatively pleasant reveries. Not one angel could dance on the head of a pin if Raz were anywhere in the vicinity. His shapeless overalls and beard were encrusted with decades of accumulated filth. What hair he had hung to his shoulders in oily lanks. I did not need to close my eyes to envision myself in a pasture ripe with cow patties; Raz carried the redolence with him (and possibly the patties in his back pocket).

  “We got us a problem,” he said as he plunked down in the chair across from my desk and crossed his arms.

  “You and I have a problem?” I said, feigning astonishment. “Does Marjorie know about this?”

  “I reckon I’m here on account of her,” he said. His cheek was bulging with a wad of tobacco, but he’d gotten the message long ago that I did not cater to spitters. He’d also learned to leave his sow outside in his truck. “It ain’t like I care what other folks do, long as they keep their distance so I can go about my business.”

  “How is business, Raz? Revenuers any closer to finding your still?”

  His eyes narrowed. “I ain’t got a still, and iff’n I did, those sumbitches won’t find it for another twenty years. Cotter’s Ridge is a mighty big place—and downright dangerous lately. Diesel’s taken to prowling, ’specially when the moon’s out. Perkin saw him gallumping through the pasture on all fours, nekkid as the day he was born.”

  “And here I am fresh out of silver bullets.”

  Raz gave me a baffled look. “You been here so long you’re beginning to think you’re the Lone Ranger?”

  “Maybe,” I said with a sigh. “Diesel’s eccentric behavior hardly rates a mention in the pool hall. Now if he was back to lurking on the bluff, throwing rocks at chicken-truck windshields, I would agree that at least one of us has a problem. I don’t know why it would upset Marjorie, though.”

  “She has a delicate disposition,” he said as he went to the door and loosed a stream of amber-colored spit. “She gets all bumflustered when Diesel takes to howlin’ down behind the barn. She ain’t et much of nuthin’ for the last three days.”

  “It shouldn’t hurt her to lose a few pounds, Raz. She’s not what I’d describe as ‘svelte,’ even for a porcine princess with such an impressive pedigree.”

  “Mind your mouth afore I mind it for you, missy. I suspicion I know why Diesel’s acting like this. He’s plum tuckered out of eating nuthin’ but rabbits and squirrels, so he’s hunting for something different. I ain’t one to mince words. You’d better tell Elsie McMay to keep her cat locked up at night. Same goes for Miz Whitbread and that pissant critter she calls a dog. I got rats in the barn bigger’n that—and a sight prettier.”

  “Surely not,” I said, shaking my head. “Coons and possums, maybe, or even rattlesnakes—but not house pets.”

  “He probably figgers they’re less stringy. Based on my own experience, I cain’t argue with that.”

  I’d had enough. “Okay, Raz, you’ve done your civic duty. I’ll spread the word. Why don’t you run along and make sure Marjorie’s not breaking out in a cold sweat over the idea of being served up with candied apple rings?”

  “There’s sumthin’ else,” he said, studying his shoes. “It’s real likely he took some jars I hid in Robin Buchanon’s old shack a few days back while I was movin’ particular objects over to another clearing on the ridge. They weren’t there but a matter of hours, but when I went back for ’em, half a dozen was gone. I ain’t saying Diesel’s likkered up, but he might could be for the next week or two.”

  Stone sober, Diesel was a threat. Drunk, he was apt to be a ram
paging Godzilla chewing on more than bushytailed rodents. Winter was on the wane, and a wide variety of people would soon be hiking on Cotter’s Ridge, from senior citizens in L. L. Bean wear to boy scouts in high-top sneakers.

  “Dammit, Raz!” I said as my fist hit the desk. “If Diesel hurts someone, it’s your fault. How could you leave a load of ’shine where he could find it? I ought to take you over to the sheriff’s department and have you booked for reckless endangerment. You might as well have given him a loaded weapon!”

  “I dint give him anything,” Raz protested, hauling himself to his feet and hitching up his overalls. “Ain’t my fault he’s a thievin’ bastard.”

  I cut him off before he could shuffle out the door. Despite the very real jeopardy of sending swirls of lice into the air, I poked his chest. “How could you be so stupid? Did it ever cross your pea-sized brain that Diesel watches you every last second when you’re on the ridge? Why wouldn’t he have known where you left the jars? Tell me that; you sorry piece of—”

  “Let’s not get personal. Marjorie’s all jittery as it is. I’m gonna take her home and settle her down on the sofa so we can spend the rest of the evening watchin’ the Planet of the Apes movies. They have a soothing effect on her. You might consider doin’ the same. Marjorie may not be the only one with PMS these days.”

  I barely stopped myself from going for his throat. “What did you say?”

  “Reckon you heard me just fine,” he said as he went out the door.

  I threw myself down in the worn cane-bottomed chair and tried to decide whether or not to call Harve with the news that we had a problem. I doubted I could get helicopters, or even a search team. No, I’d have to wait until Diesel actually attacked some innocent nature-lover, at which point Harve would hold a press conference on the courthouse steps and promise to send a posse with baying bloodhounds. Not that I believed for a moment that they could track down Diesel any more than I believed they’d stumble across the lair of the dreaded Easter Bunny.