murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  “Look at the bed, Arly.”

  “A bit rumpled.”

  Estelle snorted. “No one has rented this particular unit in months. Do you honestly think Ruby Bee would leave the bed in that state? She’s real fastidious about changing sheets and emptying wastebaskets and putting in fresh towels. What’s more, she said the exterminator was here not too long ago and she went inside all the units with him to make sure he did a thorough job.”

  I approached the bed. “Could he have taken a nap after she left?”

  “If he did, it wasn’t by himself,” she said darkly as she pulled back the bedspread. “I’m not of a mind to speculate about these stains.”

  “Is Ruby Bee’s unit unlocked?”

  “She gave me the key. Normally, she doesn’t bother to lock it unless she’s going off someplace, but all these wild stories about Diesel have been making all of us jittery. Elsie won’t let Stan out of the house. According to her, all he does these days is lie on the windowsill and watch the robins hop around on the lawn. She feels real bad, but—”

  “Wait for me at Ruby Bee’s,” I said, then nudged her out the door. There were several stains, some fresher than others. I began to pick up on odors other than disinfectant and furniture wax. Urine, I realized, and the same sour stench of vomit I’d encountered only hours earlier. And sexual encounters.

  I took a quick look in the bathroom and closet, then went over to Ruby Bee’s unit, fixed myself a glass of soda, and sat down on the sofa. Ignoring Estelle, I dialed the number of the sheriff’s department.

  Harve himself answered. I told him what I’d found, waited out his decidedly unhappy sighs, then asked if McBeen had added anything to the preliminary report.

  I heard a match scritch and a lengthy inhalation before he said, “Yeah, a few things. The victim was already dead when she was left in the shack, which would fit in with what you’re saying. The lividity indicated she was on her side for a period of hours after she died, but she was on her back when you found her. What’s more, there are some nasty bruises on her upper arms and around her mouth. McBeen won’t say it, of course, but it looks like someone sat on the girl’s abdomen, knees pinning down her arms, and poured the alcohol down her throat. She couldn’t have resisted for long.”

  I winced. “And maybe at the Flamingo Motel.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “So it does,” I murmured.

  “Les ain’t gonna like this any more than McBeen did earlier. He promised his wife they’d look at used cars.”

  “Did Deputy Phart make it to the delivery room before the stork did?”

  Harve exhaled. “Stork’s on the fourth pass, last I heard. I suppose I’ll have to oversee this myself.”

  “Wow, Harve,” I said, “that’ll make my day.”

  He hung up without bothering to say goodbye.

  12

  As soon as I hung up, Estelle started in with questions, but I cut her off. “The keys to the units are kept in the drawer under the cash register. There are no indications someone forced open the door. What about the key?”

  “It seems to be missing. There are moments when Ruby Bee’s in the kitchen dishing up food, but it’d be real risky for anybody to go behind the bar. You’d think after all these years I of all people could fetch myself some sherry, but even I don’t dare. Dahlia was the only waitress in a long while, and she quit a year ago.”

  “Therefore?” I said.

  Estelle began to nibble what I had learned from the catalog was Tangelo Tang off her lower lip. “Gwynnie did some work in the pantry last week, and just the other day was putting down shelf paper. She was back and forth, looking for scissors or tape or whatnot.”

  “When’s the last time Ruby Bee saw the key?”

  “If you want to interrogate your own mother, it’s between her and you. Don’t go thinking she knew anything about this, though. She may have offered Gwynnie a safe place to get away from the likes of Daniel Holliflecker, but she would never allow the Flamingo Motel to be used for tawdry romances.”

  I opened the door so I could watch for Harve. “Give me a break, Estelle. Two or three times a year a truck driver has one too many pitchers of beer and wisely decides to sleep it off. Beyond that, travel agents do not book their clients into the Flamingo Motel, and AAA does not include it in the guidebook. Michelin awards no stars. Ruby Bee knows damn well what goes on out here. She may not condone it, but that hasn’t stopped her from accepting cash in exchange for a room key.”

  Estelle flapped her jaw for a moment, cranking up to what would have been an eruption of self-righteous indignation worthy of Mrs. Jim Bob, then thought better of it. “Well, she didn’t give Gwynnie the key, and she’s had no call to make sure it was there since the exterminator came.”

  “So Gwynnie might have taken it as much as two weeks ago?”

  “She could have. There’s no way of telling. A salesman stopped by a couple of nights ago, but he stayed in number four. Other than that, the units have been empty for six months.”

  “What precisely did Gwynnie say about Daniel?”

  “She was worried that he might be abusive. Ruby Bee, Jessie, and I all tried to persuade her to stay at the Flamingo. She seemed to think we were sticking our noses in her private business. Jessie caught the worst of it, even though he was just trying to help.”

  This was the second time I’d heard the rumor, but it was of the sort that only two parties could verify. One of them was no longer available. “What did you think when she said this about Daniel?” I asked Estelle. “Did you believe her?”

  “I wasn’t sure what to think. According to Gwynnie, she had to live with Leona for another two months on account of a court order, so she couldn’t get away from him. I can’t imagine why anybody’d make up something like that.”

  “Nor can I,” I admitted. I went to the doorway and gazed across the gravel at the opposite building. A regular at the bar might have taken the key, but the threat ran deeper than being caught in the act. None of the locals would gamble on being spotted creeping out of the Flamingo Motel after a liaison. The teenagers took advantage of blanket-friendly spots alongside Boone Creek; the adults preferred the anonymity provided by dumpy motels on the fringes of Farberville and Starley City.

  When Harve, Les, and a deputy carrying a very serious-looking crime scene kit finally appeared, I pointed them in the direction of number six. “I know we can’t afford DNA testing,” I said, “but we may be able to nail someone with old-fashioned fingerprints. It’s distressingly obvious that sexual encounters were taking place, as well as …”

  “Seventeen,” said Harve, shaking his head. “Back in my day, the only girls that’d meet a boy in a motel weren’t anybody you could introduce to your mama. Girls like that, well, everybody knew they were trash.”

  “Is this a bulletin from the Jurassic Trailer Park?” I said acerbically. “Girls wore skirts to their ankles and boys chopped wood to earn two bits to take a date to the newest Charlie Chaplin movie? A loaf of bread cost a dime? Jeez, Harve, we ought to have you bronzed. We can put you up outside the courthouse next to the statue of Jubilation T. Cornpone. It’ll be a toss-up which one of you looks more dignified.”

  “Got health insurance?” growled Harve.

  “The city council gave me a box of Band-Aids.”

  “Extra-wide?”

  Risking life and limb—and then some, Les inserted himself between us. “We’ll get prints and samples. I don’t know if we’ll need the mattress, but we will take the sheets. Isn’t there someone you should be interviewing right now, Arly?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll talk to the uncle and see what I think. The bottom line’s going to be fingerprints.” I paused. “You may have to track down a particular exterminator and get his prints for comparison. Ruby Bee can give you his name.”

  “Everything we find will be on the way to the state forensics boys this evening,” Les said. “We’ll be here for at least an hour.”

  W
hat he meant was that I had an hour to go soak my head, which I needed to do. I’d scraped up bodies thrown from cars that had failed to negotiate the pertinent curve; I’d fished bloated teenaged corpses out of the reservoir on occasion. But it was never easy.

  I gave Harve an apologetic look. “I’ll go talk to Daniel Holliflecker, then swing back by. If you want coffee or something, Estelle will fetch it for you. If you’re not careful, Ruby Bee will be fixing you cheeseburgers and fries.”

  He relented. “And they’ll be the best cheeseburgers west of the Mississippi. You go see what you can find out.”

  “Could you boys do with coffee?” asked Estelle. “How about some pie? Anybody in the mood for coconut cream?”

  I left them to debate the crime-scene menu and drove to the Hollifleckers’. By this time, casseroles and cakes would have arrived in droves. Well-meaning church ladies would be protecting the portal like bronzed Spartan soldiers. Ruby Bee’s green-bean concoction was surely displayed in a place of honor, perhaps next to Mrs. Jim Bob’s wobbly pineapple-and-cream-cheese delight.

  “Why, Arly,” said Millicent McIlhaney as she opened the door, “how kind of you to come by. Lots of folks have already arrived, but there’s always room for more. Would you like something to eat? I myself haven’t had a chance to taste it, but I hear that Edwina’s corn pudding is divine. Estelle brought by a very nice loaf of homemade bread and some huckleberry jam, and Ruby Bee can always be counted on, can’t she? Your mama never misses an opportunity to offer us a real tasty casserole when troublesome times come about. You must be so proud of her.”

  “Absolutely,” I said as I went inside. “Is Daniel here?”

  Millicent’s smile wavered. “Not as yet. Brother Verber wanted to wait with Leona, but she said she’d rather be alone.”

  “I’m going to have to speak to her.”

  “I believe she’s in her sitting room. It’s on the far side of the kitchen, out by the back porch. Are you sure you should disturb her in this time of grief? How about some pot roast and garlic potatoes?”

  I brushed past Millicent, eyed the tantalizing spread on the dining-room table, and went through the kitchen to a room crowded with bookshelves, stacks of magazines, depictions of martyrs in all manner of painful demise, and a wastebasket containing several empty vodka bottles.

  Leona appeared alarmingly limp in a chair in front of a cluttered desk, but she lifted her head. “What do you want?”

  “I need to know more about Gwynnie.”

  “Somebody killed her.”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Chip’s gonna be wanting supper before too long. What am I supposed to do when he asks for his mama?”

  I sat down on a footstool beside her desk. “Did you get hold of Daniel?”

  “No,” she said, tearing up. “I called the number and left a message at the desk, but you know how irresponsible these motel clerks can be. His seminar should be winding down for the day before too long. If he doesn’t call, I’ll try again. There’s no cause for you to badger me like this, Arly. I am doing the best I can, just like I always have.”

  I realized one of the vodka bottles had been emptied in the last hour. “I do know you’re doing your best, Leona. I’m just trying to do mine.”

  She hiccuped. “I should hope so.”

  “Gwynnie’s father is dead and her mother is working at a mission in Africa, right? Are there any brothers or sisters who should be notified?”

  Leona stared at a print of a martyr riddled with arrows; he had the flowing hair of a hero on the cover of a paperback novel, but bore an unfortunate resemblance to a pincushion. “Her older brother lives out in California. When she got herself into that whole mess, he made it clear that he didn’t want anything more to do with her. Some nights I pray for earthquakes; other nights, I opt for mud slides and fires. Then again, maybe he’ll snort alfalfa sprouts up his nose and die a most painful death.”

  “Perhaps Daniel should make the call,” I said tactfully. “It’s my understanding that Gwynnie was under some sort of court order to live here until she turned eighteen. Is that true?”

  “We agreed to it. The judge gave her the choice of living with us or going to prison. None of us were real happy about it.”

  “Prison?”

  Leona shrugged. “It would have been one of those minimum-security places, more like a summer camp than anything else. She couldn’t have taken Chip with her, though, and he would have been put in foster care. We worked it out with the social-worker lady, and she made her recommendation to the judge. It might have been better if we’d allowed the system to take charge.” She swung around to give me an unfocused glare. “Why’d she end up drinking on Cotter’s Ridge? She wasn’t beaten and locked in the basement at night. Dahlia looked after Chip while she did odd jobs for Ruby Bee. Daniel and I saw to him in the evenings so she could take the computer class. Despite our misgivings, Jessie Traylor came by every now and then to sit on the porch swing with her. Her life may not have been a movie where everybody sings and dances, but she wasn’t mistreated. In a few months, she could have upped and done whatever she chose. Why did she do it?”

  “Someone did it to her,” I reminded her. “What kind of legal trouble had she been in?”

  “I disremember the specifics. She and some of her friends stole a car. They had a wreck or the car went off the road or something. It wasn’t the first time Gwynnie’d run into problems with the law, and she most likely wouldn’t have had any options if she hadn’t been pregnant. With the judge’s permission, Dolores packed her off to an unwed mothers’ facility in Mississippi. Later, Dolores let her come home, but all they did was scream at each other. Two months ago Dolores upped and went off to save the souls of heathens in Africa. If we hadn’t agreed to take Gwynnie in, Chip would have been sent to live with strangers. The Patchwoods look after their kin as best they can, even the common ones.”

  “Would you mind if I take a look at her bedroom?”

  “Suit yourself. Take the bedroom with you when you leave. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

  I detoured through the living room and told Millicent that Leona might benefit from something to eat, then continued upstairs. The first room, claustrophobic but clean, contained a crib with a sleeping baby and cloth diapers stacked on a card table. Further down the hall, I looked in at what was likely to be Daniel’s office. Glassy-eyed fish leaped on the walls, and a computer was centered on a walnut desk larger than my bathroom. Leona’s choice of art leaned toward martyrs in moments of anguish; Daniel seemed to prefer prints of ducks, mostly unaware of guns aimed at their bellies.

  Gwynnie had covered her bed with a bright quilt, but her room still felt stark, as if she were an inmate trying to make the best of it until the parole board relented (a relevant analogy). The only books in sight were study guides for the GED, and, unsurprisingly, a Bible. Her drawers were filled with cheap underwear. Her closet held a few thin cotton dresses and skirts. She’d possessed a total of three pairs of shoes: those she’d been found in, a pair of cheap canvas tennis sneakers, and grayish bedroom mules that had gone through more than one molting season.

  No ruby slippers for the unwed mother.

  I sat down on the bed, trying to remember where I’d hidden my personal treasures at her age. Ruby Bee had never hesitated to search under the mattress, claiming it had to be turned periodically. Drawers were a joke. I’d once taped a poem from a particularly articulate suitor behind the toilet bowl. It took her a day, maybe less, to find it and then read it to me over supper. I’d been so embarrassed that I’d told him to take a hike. Someone who’d attended the tenth high school reunion reported that he owned a pro hockey franchise in Canada and was planning to compete in the next America’s Cup yacht race.

  Bad choice.

  The suitcases in the closet were empty, and the shelf was dusty. I looked underneath the dresser, then removed the drawers to make sure nothing was taped on their backsides. The only items in the light fixture
were dead bugs.

  Seventeen implied cunning, but of a limited fashion. There was no ledge outside the window on which to leave a shoe box, nor easy access to a niche in the attic. The braided rug on the wood floor did not conceal a loose board. There were no trees within reach from the window.

  The one thing that seemed to keep Leona and Daniel at a distance was Chip. Neither seemed to consider him more than a minor inconvenience that came attached to a major one. Whichever of them was the designated babysitter of the hour may have felt obliged to check on him, but it was hard to imagine either of them lingering.

  He was breathing peacefully as I crept into his bedroom. A lamp beside the crib provided minimal light. I eased open drawers and fumbled through overalls and folded shirts. I moved on to the closet, where I found the payload in a diaper bag on the back corner of the shelf.

  I took the cheap plastic box to Gwynnie’s room and opened it. On the top was a pressed carnation, colorless and brittle, most likely a corsage of some splendor in its day. Newspaper clippings featured likenesses of Gwynnie at age four, when she’d found the first Easter egg at a mall, in fifth grade when her class had planted a tree at a nursing home, and in junior high, when she’d been named first runner-up in a local beauty pageant involving produce. A letter from her mother, which I did not read. A letter from her probation officer, warning her that if she failed to comply with the court order, she would lose custody of her child and be remanded into detention. A bookmark with a faded purple ribbon. A report card from sixth grade, asserting that she had potential if she would strive to apply herself.

  And then, at the bottom, a flat plastic stick four inches long and half an inch wide. I myself had gone through moments of panic when I’d peed on such a thing and then waited; sucking in my breath until I came close to passing out on the toilet seat. Gwynnie must have stashed it in her box, unaware that the result faded within hours. The only reason she would have done so was for it to serve, mistakenly or not, as proof that she was pregnant. A negative result would have been pitched in the trash.