murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  What I said does not warrant repeating, but it was one of those words you should not say to your great-aunt, particularly on her deathbed.

  Gwynnie’d been meeting someone in number six for as long as two weeks, before or after the computer classes, or maybe during the odd moments when Ruby Bee was inside the bar, sloshing gravy on mashed potatoes and slicing apple pies. Jessie Traylor had a house, but Gwynnie might have been too nervous to park in his yard. She most certainly would have needed a haven in which to get cozy with Justin Bailey; Chapel, lacking a schedule, no doubt came and went on whim (and woe to the frogs in Boone Creek when she was whimsical). Daniel was an obvious consideration. Despite evidence that Leona drank herself into an abyss every night, at some unpredictable point she must have roused herself to stagger upstairs.

  Gwynnie was beginning to seem less and less the poster child for teen angel. She’d stolen the key from under the nose of her benefactress. Using the motel room for sexual encounters amounted to betrayal of the trust and support she’d been offered. The previous night, seemingly after nine or ten o’clock, someone had met her in the room and killed her, then found a way to transport her body to the shack on Cotter’s Ridge. Why had she taken Chip with her to begin with? And who had taken him into Farberville and dropped him off at the hospital?

  Certainly not Miss Okrafest, I thought. Based on what Raz had said and I’d observed, her body had been in the shack for several hours before Les had received the call about Chip. Toddlers did not wander in public facilities for more than a minute or two without being scooped up, especially ones with droopy diapers and notes pinned to their shirts.

  My head jerked up as I heard a muted whimper from his room. Leona was in no condition to deal with him, and I hadn’t heard an indication from downstairs that Daniel had returned. I’d never had a puppy or a kitten; the only creature I’d ever nurtured was a goldfish that I won at the county fair the year I turned seven. It went belly-up the next day. I’d never gotten around to naming it, although I’d been leaning toward “Goldie.”

  It occurred to me that my best bet was to go downstairs and let Millicent know that Chip was stirring. I replaced the letters and clippings in the box, and was about to add the home pregnancy wand when something nagged at me. I looked more closely at one of the clippings. Miss Okrafest had achieved her ephemeral rhine-stone glory from the Powata town fathers.

  And one of them probably worked in the office where Seth Smitherman had obtained his driver’s license only a month ago.

  Powata, Arkansas.

  Millicent was still by the front door, ushering in members of the congregation and steering them in an orderly manner toward the buffet line. From the living room, I heard Mrs. Jim Bob extolling the virtues of the Maggody web site to the Internet illiterati (among whom I counted myself). Dahlia’s double stroller was parked in the foyer; I had no doubt she had found a way to jiggle and juggle the twins as she loaded up on corn pudding, pot roast, garlic potatoes, and huckleberry jam.

  Huckleberry jam on crusty homemade bread.

  I asked Millicent to look after Chip, gazed wistfully toward the dining room as my stomach rumbled a suggestion that one measly little garlic potato might be just what I needed to solve the case, and was stoically heading out the door when Eileen Buchanon caught me.

  “Can I talk to you?” she whispered.

  “For a second.”

  She glanced at Millicent, who was edging in our direction, her ears aquiver. “Out on the porch.”

  “I’m in the middle of a criminal investigation,” I said as I allowed myself to be hustled out the door.

  “It’s about something I saw on the computer,” she said. “Or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I should take a change of clothes and go live in a cave with Diesel.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “Why are you telling me this, Eileen? I don’t know anything about what you may or may not have seen. The one time I was in the lab, the computers were turned off. Shouldn’t you be confiding in Justin?”

  “It’s too embarrassing.”

  “What is?”

  She sat down on a wicker rocking chair. “I’m reluctant to admit even to myself what I thought I saw. My mother went through menopause at about my age. I don’t reckon her hot flashes were quite this … hot, though. I can’t sleep for more than a few minutes without waking up covered with sweat—all on account of what I saw, if I saw it. I swear, if my mother had been faced with this, she would have packed her bags and lit out for Kansas City instead of making biscuits from scratch every morning until she had a heart attack and died at the age of eighty-seven. She was wearing her apron when they found her.”

  I might as well have been standing in the middle of a field of corn, surrounded by sheep dressed in tutus. “What are you talking about, Eileen? The Internet is causing you to have hot flashes? I’ve heard that constantly flickering lights can induce epileptic seizures. Could that have something to do with it? Have you talked to a doctor?”

  “Earl,” she said. “I saw Earl.”

  “Okay,” I said cautiously. “You thought you saw Earl on the computer screen. I didn’t think he’d been coming to the class.”

  “Oh, he’s vowed never to so much as lay a finger on a keyboard. His idea of technology is the remote control for the television. One evening I tried to tell him about a web site devoted to professional wrestlers, but he got so mad that he stomped out of the house and stayed at the pool hall past midnight. He’s like one of those barbarians that believes a camera can steal your soul.”

  “But you saw him? What exactly was he doing?”

  She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t bring myself to tell you.”

  This was a situation requiring a shrink more skilled than yours truly. “I wish I could stay here and try to help you, but I ought to be going. It’s going to be common knowledge before long that Gwynnie was murdered. I need to be dealing with that. Ruby Bee knows more about this computer thing. Why don’t you talk to her?”

  “Earl was buck-naked.”

  Since I was heading down the steps, it was a toss-up between busting my tailbone or breaking my nose. At the fateful moment, I caught myself and stared back at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said he was buck-naked like he just climbed out of the tub. What’s more, his privates … well, this is the craziest part of all, but they weren’t his.”

  “Whose were they?”

  “How should I know? All I can say is they weren’t his. I’ve been married to him nigh onto thirty years. Don’t you think by now I should be able to recognize my own husband’s privates?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, sitting down on the bottom step, “but you’re not sure you even saw … them. Lots of women are finding relief with estrogen replacement. Now there’s something you can research on the Internet.”

  “You think I was seeing things, don’t you?”

  “You yourself suggested the possibility, Eileen. If Earl’s never so much as sat down in front of a computer, so how could—”

  I stopped as I remembered Jim Bob’s apprehension that photographs of him might be circulating on the Internet. If Jim Bob had been displaying his privates, however, they surely would have been his own. I had no idea how Earl might have acquired someone else’s.

  “What?” she snapped.

  “I’ll see what I can find out. Right now Sheriff Dorfer’s waiting for me to give him a report. Have some supper and try not to worry.”

  Eileen stood up. “I’d like to think you’re not going to start telling folks about Earl’s privates, no matter whose they might turn out to be.”

  “I promise not to say a word, unless, of course, it comes down to the necessity of a lineup over at the county jail.”

  “I am not about to stand in front of a window and try to recall what I saw, if I saw anything, which I’m beginning to think I didn’t. What’s more, it wasn’t like Earl was in the midst of committing a crime. He had that stupid grin
on his face like in his picture for the electric co-op board of directors annual report.”

  Trying not to envision a dozen middle-aged and elderly men, potbellied and balding, struttin’ their stuff on an annual report, I fled to my car and drove back to the Flamingo Motel.

  Harve came out of number six, flecks of meringue clinging to the corners of his mouth. “I reckon you were right, Arly,” he said, which was as close to an apology as I’d ever get. “The boys are still collecting samples. It could have been somebody else, but from what Estelle said, Gwynnie was about the only person that could have taken the key. There ain’t much doubt why she did. There was an empty vodka bottle under the bed and a sprinkling of marijuana in the wastebasket.”

  “You need to tell McBeen that she was apt to have been pregnant.”

  “McBeen won’t care. He did the preliminary, but that’s all. We won’t get a comprehensive autopsy from the state lab for three or four days, if we’re lucky. Could be as much as a week.” He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth. “Who do you think’s responsible?”

  I perched on the hood of my car. “Have you done a background search on Gwynnie?”

  “The records are sealed on account of her age. Should I be goin’ after a court order to open them?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “As I’m sure McBeen would agree, she had her three strikes and she’s out. Anyway, I’ve got a lead.”

  “Need backup?”

  “Swing through the bar and have another piece of pie before you leave. I’ll call you when I have something.”

  Harve was glaring at me as I drove away.

  13

  Sweat was not dribbling tentatively down Brother Verber’s face—it was coming down in a briny deluge that was nigh on to unmoppable. His nose was redder than the lead reindeer’s on Christmas Eve. Was it possible he was nurturing a deeply buried desire for Idalupino Buchanon? Idalupino Buchanon, of all wimmen? The same Idalupino that wore such heavy makeup that her racial features seemed to be in danger of sliding down to her chin, that never shaved her armpits or her legs or her upper lip? But how else could he be sitting there in front of the computer, imagining her ripe bosoms overflowing from a slip of a itsy-bitsy bikini top—and the bottom pulled down to expose auburn ringlets?

  Why, he’d barely ever said more than a few words to her while she checked his groceries and offered him a choice of paper or plastic. She was hardly a member of the congregation, being the son to spend her Sunday mornings nursing a hangover—and not in her own bed.

  He wiped saliva off his chin. Here he’d come to the lab to write up a real nice paragraph about his sermon in the morning, and all he could do was think inappropriate thoughts about a woman that was rumored to have sex with her uncle, not to mention cousins across the county.

  He scrolled back and read the Bible verse he’d put up the day before to stimulate some soul-searching before the sermon. “Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”

  At the time, he’d figured Matthew had the likes of Jim Bob in mind, since Jim Bob did a lot more than looketh. Not that he was the only one. Brother Verber’d heard the rumors about Justin and Gwynnie. Kevin Buchanon had been thrown out of his home, probably for cause. Earl had been seen at the pool hall late at night, drinking beer and telling off-color jokes. Jeremiah McIlhaney had been spotted in Starley City with a woman with bleached-blond hair; his wife was the only person in Maggody who’d believed for a second that it was his half-sister from Helena.

  He clicked the sequence of buttons to exit from the web page and was preparing to leave, when Lottie Estes came into the classroom.

  She stared at him, her eyeballs bulging like a bullfrog’s. “Brother Verber!”

  “Afternoon, Lottie,” he said. “It’d be a lovely spring day if we hadn’t heard about the terrible trouble on Cotter’s Ridge, doncha think? I went by Leona’s and spent some time ministering to her in her hour of need. She’s holding up well, considering.” He edged back as Lottie began to tremble. “That fruit salad you took was mighty tasty. When I was a boy, there was nothing I loved more than climbing a tree out in the orchard and eating juicy, ripe peaches. Each golden bite was a piece of heaven melting in my mouth. I’d be so sticky afterward that I’d have to wash up in the creek, but it was worth it. Sometimes we should study the Bible and ponder its mysteries, but other times we got to let loose and enjoy the purely physical pleasures God has granted us.”

  “Don’t come near me!”

  Brother Verber frowned. “What’s wrong with you, Lottie?”

  “You so much as take one step in my direction and I’ll scream so loud they’ll here me on the far side of the Missouri line.”

  “I don’t understand why you’d think for a second that I’d so much as lay a finger on you, unless it was to offer my blessing.”

  “What you do doesn’t constitute a blessing, you pervert. I’m gonna leave now, but if you try to follow me, you’ll be right sorry.”

  She backed out of the classroom. He watched from a window as she scurried to her car, made a production of locking the doors, and then drove away in a screech of loose gravel and dust.

  It was a puzzlement, he thought as he went outside and hurried to his own car. Sister Barbara had mentioned the possibility of exorcism, and he was beginning to think she might have been on track. Satan had moved into Maggody. One by one, he was tainting minds with evil. It was most decidedly time for a glass or two of sacramental wine, and maybe a frozen pizza.

  Due to the vast powers of his opponent, Brother Verber thought a pepperoni supreme might be required.

  I drove out to the trailer farthest from the gate at the Pot O’ Gold. On cop shows on television, the witness was always cowering inside his apartment, willing to blurt out a confession before the commercial break. Seth Smitherman had apparently not been a fan of such shows. He’d left the door unlocked; I quickly determined he wasn’t there. Since I lacked a search warrant, I did not make any effort to uncover evidence of illegal activity. If I’d chanced upon anything, it would have stood up in court about as long as Kevvie Junior or Rose Marie.

  I couldn’t remember if Seth had specified where he worked. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and if he wasn’t toiling away for $5.35 an hour (poultry processing was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week business), he might well be fishing or drinking beer in Farberville. An APB would have been a stretch. Growing up in Powata was not an indictable offense, and nobody had hinted at a link between him and Gwynnie.

  It was a helluva coincidence, though. Seth had done time for grand theft auto; Gwynnie had been busted for joyriding. Chip’s father had been killed in a car crash.

  For the moment, there wasn’t much I could do. I leaned against the hood of my car for several minutes, listening to the whoops of the pint-sized savages as they raged through the Pot O’ Gold, shooting each other with their index fingers and sprawling dramatically in the mud. Cops ’n’ robbers had probably given way to more sophisticated scenarios involving star troopers and alien life forms, but I was well out of the Saturday-morning cartoon loop.

  Then again, we were well into Saturday afternoon and I’d nobly bypassed the garlic potatoes and huckleberry jam at Leona’s house. I had not lingered at the crime scene for a cheeseburger or a piece of pie. If I continued to drive around in circles, which as far as I could tell was all I’d been doing for several hours, I was likely to end up depicted in a cheap print on the wall of Leona’s study, my halo aflicker and my ribs resembling a washboard.

  There was undoubtedly a vacancy at the Vatican for a martyr with fluctuating blood sugar, I thought as I drove to Ruby Bee’s. As Harve had avowed, her cheeseburgers were supreme. A grilled-cheese sandwich would not suffice; I felt a craving for red meat.
>
  Medium well, anyway, with tomatoes, lettuce, onion, and mayo. Mustard and ketchup were for Yankees.

  “I was wondering when you’d show your face,” said Ruby Bee as I came inside the barroom. “Harve and his boys left a few minutes ago, but they wouldn’t say diddly-squat about what they found. I just can’t believe Gwynnie would take the key and carry on like that in one of my units. All I wanted to do was help her. I paid her decent money to clean out the pantry, even though it could have waited another six months. I told her that she and Chip could stay here for free. I feel so stupid, Arly.”

  I went behind the bar to hug her. “You shouldn’t feel that way. You were kind and generous. She may have had big brown eyes, but everything I’ve learned about her suggests she was a cold-blooded schemer. She was living with Daniel and Leona to avoid doing time in a juvenile detention center. Leona described it as a summer camp, but from what I’ve heard, there’s no canoeing or volleyball.”

  “She seemed so sweet.”

  I blotted her cheeks with a napkin, then retreated to a stool. “Any chance of a cheeseburger and a glass of milk?”

  “What’s going to happen to Chip?”

  “A foster home, most likely,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine Leona and Daniel taking in a child that age on a long-term basis.”

  “What about Jessie? Could he adopt Chip?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Ruby Bee sighed. “I’ll fix a cheeseburger. I just wish you could fix everything else.”

  “Me too.” I sat in silence as she put a beef patty on the grill and began to slice an onion. “Did Gwynnie ever mention someone named Seth Smith or Smitherman?”

  She looked at me. “Eula said that was the boy shooting off the rifle at the Pot O’ Gold a while back.”

  “Did she say anything else?”