murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  “What?” she squeaked.

  “Is your mother here?”

  “I reckon not. It’s Sunday morning and the sun rose in the east, so she’s at church. Are you aiming to tell her? Shit, Arly, I thought I could trust you after you helped me out yesterday afternoon. Why don’t you just haul me over to the sheriff’s department and lock me up? I’d rather sit in a cell than face my parents.”

  “I suppose I could do that.”

  “Can I least comb my hair and put on some mascara? I don’t want to look like a zombie when they take my mug shot. It’ll probably end up on the Maggody web site. I keep waiting for report cards and test results from gynecologists to show up. Doesn’t something in the constitution guarantee privacy?”

  “I don’t know. Shall I wait out here and think it over?”

  Dark Jean dragged me inside. “The way things are going, some nosy neighbor’d drive by and see you.” She pushed me down on a chair in the entry hall. “Sit here, all right?”

  She went through the living room, and seconds later I heard the back door slam. Obviously, Darla Jean believed I was onto something, although I had no clue what it might be. As I’d said to Heather the previous day, I was fairly sure they’d been lying to me, and in some way Lazarus was involved. And, as I replayed remarks, Gwynnie Patchwood.

  Surprise, surprise.

  Brother Verber stood on the porch of the Assembly Hall, shaking hands and offering genial observations about the weather. Some Sunday mornings, he was there for more than half an hour, but this morning the turnout had been so low they might as well have all slept in. Among the AWOLs were Sister Barbara and Jim Bob, Eileen and Earl, Kevin and Dahlia, Lottie, Leona and Daniel, and even Eula, who always could be counted on to set out the hymnals. Miz Ferncliff rode with Eula, so she hadn’t come either. Once a month or so Miz Twayblade brought a van of denture-clicking residents from the old folks’ home, but she’d made it clear she was an equal-opportunity patron of religion (within the confines of respectability, of course), which meant she had many other denominations to cover with her charges. Little had she known this had been the morning Brother Verber would have come darn close to kissing Petrol’s stubbly, sunken cheek.

  Or hers, for that matter.

  Millicent McIlhaney stopped to compliment him on his sermon, despite the fact they both knew he had rambled on for most of forty minutes and hadn’t made a bit (or byte) of sense. “I couldn’t help noticing that bump on your nose,” she added. “Did you run into a door?”

  Jeremiah grinned. “Looks more like you grabbed the wrong end of a weed wacker.”

  “I have been wrasslin’ with Satan,” said Brother Verber darkly. “Be sure and tell Darla Jean we missed her this morning in Sunday school. Her class is making plans for the senior trip to the water theme park up in Branson. I hope we can count on your support for the bake sale at the end of the month, Millicent, and yours, Jeremiah, for the car wash come Saturday. Darla Jean signed you up for the first shift, so we’ll expect you at eight. Bring a garden hose and sponges.”

  Millicent stared at her husband until he mumbled something and went down the steps toward their car. “Have you been over to see Leona this morning?” she asked.

  “I was thinking I’d go over directly.”

  She waited until Bojangles Buchanon shuffled by, bobbling his head like a dashboard statuette and grousing at an unseen companion. “I ain’t sure what to make of this, Brother Verber, but I found a memo in Daniel’s office that laid out the details of this seminar in Springfield, with the times and where they’d be staying.” Her eyes shifted uncomfortably. “I figured Leona wouldn’t be in any shape to call him later in the evening, so I called the motel. He never checked in yesterday.”

  “Do you think he could have been in a wreck on the way up there? Should we call the hospital?”

  Millicent wondered if she’d go to hell if she started attending the Methodist church. “If Daniel’d been in a wreck, Leona would have been notified. He was driving his own car and presumably had his wallet with him.”

  “You think he might have been arrested and thrown in jail? If that was the case, he could have been too embarrassed to call her.”

  Millicent propelled him back into the vestibule. “No,” she whispered, “I don’t think he was arrested. I don’t think he went to this seminar to begin with.”

  “Then where’d he go?” asked Brother Verber, his eyes wide.

  “I don’t have any idea where he went. How could I, for pity’s sake? All we can do for the time being is pray he shows up this afternoon. If he doesn’t, in the morning I’ll call over to his office and see if anyone there knows where he might have gone.”

  Brother Verber may have had welts and scratches over most of his body, as well as a swollen purplish-yellow bruise the size of a cantaloupe on his backside, but the one part of his anatomy that hadn’t bounced off Idalupino’s patio was his head. “Do you think this has anything to do with Gwynnie?”

  Millicent had not allowed herself to consider this. She went into the auditorium and sat down in the last pew. Darla Jean had sworn she and Gwynnie were not friends, but there’d been some hushed conversations on the telephone late at night when Millicent had heard Daniel’s name. Not that she’d been eavesdropping, mind you, but the mother of a teenaged girl has the God-given right to linger on the way to the bathroom.

  “The Hollifleckers have been members of this congregation for ten years,” she said as Brother Verber sat down beside her; “Daniel’s always seemed upright as a rail post. He’s been a deacon for the last four years, hasn’t he? He was on the school board. There’s been talk he wants to be elected to the town council.”

  “I don’t reckon this should go any further for the moment,” said Brother Verber. “Daniel may have decided to stay at a different motel in Springfield, and is driving home as we speak. Don’t go repeating anything about this, Millicent.”

  “I am not inclined to gossip,” she said coldly as she stood up. “I’ll go by Leona’s and set out leftovers for those who care to come by to offer condolences. I expect you’ll be there?”

  “Yes,” he said with a forced smile. “I have my duty to the members of my flock.”

  If Lottie Estes had chanced to overhear that remark, there was no telling how she might have reacted.

  “Are you aimin’ to spend the rest of your life in there?” asked Jim Bob, standing outside his wife’s bedroom, his jaw jutted out so far he looked like a belligerent bulldog intent on a mouthful of bloody flesh.

  “Maybe,” she responded in a thin voice. “I am praying for guidance, or at least I was until you started pounding on the door. Go on about your business. I got nothing to say to you.”

  Jim Bob ran his hand across his head. “What exactly is it you’re thinking I did this time? Last night I came home soon as I locked the supermarket. I may have been expecting warmed-up leftovers and a cup of coffee, same as any hardworkin’ husband would. I may have hoped to find my breakfast on the table this morning, but I made do with a piece of pie. I didn’t say anything when you didn’t gripe at me to get dressed for church, but now it seems to me that you should be downstairs in the kitchen, frying chicken and stringing beans and that kinda thing.”

  What was really pissing him off was that he hadn’t actually done anything of note lately. For most of a month Cherri Lucinda had been appeased with grandiose (and possibly less than sincere) promises of perfume, chocolates, and roses. Rowena had sounded kinda relieved, since she never knew for sure when her husband might park his rig in the yard and come thudding into the house. Idalupino had told him to kiss her ass, which had pretty much put that relationship on hold until he could figure out her problem. Even the Dew Drop Inn had been obliged to survive without his company at the pool table in the back room.

  Hell, he thought, he might as well have gone over to the Assembly Hall an hour earlier and passed the fuckin’ collection plate. Instead, he was stuck with a demented woman that showed no signs of
ever coming out of her bedroom. Peach pie might serve for breakfast, but Sunday dinner was different. Hadn’t she promised to love, honor—and obey?

  “Come out of there!” he bellowed, thumping his fist with each word. “I expect my wife to put my Sunday dinner on the table. You hear me?”

  Her lack of response implied she hadn’t, didn’t, or wasn’t about to. Jim Bob stomped down the staircase, stopped in the kitchen to make hisself an onion and mayonnaise sandwich (tasty, but a far cry from fried chicken), and then called the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall rectory to report this infraction of sacred matrimonial vows. She was gonna be real sorry when Brother Verber showed up to chew her out, he told himself as he tapped his foot. He couldn’t recollect one single time in all their years of marriage when he’d been in the right, instead of having to grovel and get down on his knees to beg her forgiveness, and then agree to pay for some damn-fool thing or another, be it a Cadillac or upholstery.

  This time was different.

  Brother Verber failed to cooperate by answering the telephone. Jim Bob fixed another sandwich, wondering all the while how hard it’d be to get her committed to one of those places with padded walls, then hollered that he was leaving and went out to his truck.

  If he’d looked in the rearview mirror as he drove away, he might have noticed a wisp of smoke drifting out of her bedroom window. As it was, he was too busy grappling under the seat for a pint bottle of bourbon.

  Later, he would tell anyone who’d listen that it was her own damn fault.

  I knocked on the door of Eula’s trailer, then leaned against the teetery wrought-iron rail and waited, hoping she hadn’t gone to Leona’s for a second round of casseroles and commiseration.

  “Oh, good,” I said as she opened the door. “May I come in?”

  “I’m not dressed for company,” she said, blocking the doorway. “I haven’t had a wink of sleep for two nights now. You don’t seem the least bit interested in protecting us from that psychotic killer across the road, but I know for a fact he’s intended to murder us since the day he moved in. Miz Whitbread has taken to her bed with a hot-water bottle. Idalupino saw him just last night, leering at her through the window when she got out of the shower. He scuttled away like a lame crawdad before she could grab her pepper spray and get outside to show him a thing or two. This morning she stopped by to ask me to collect her mail for the next few weeks, while she stays with her sister in Crossett.”

  “Are you talking about Lazarus?”

  “No, Arly, I’m talking about Elvis. It seems he followed Estelle back here to Maggody, and is sharing a cave with Diesel up on the ridge. You got any more stupid questions? I skipped church this morning, so I’m listening to the Pentecostal service on the radio. Considering how they carry on, it’d be more entertaining if I could watch ’em on television, but we don’t get cable.”

  “I’ve noticed,” I said weakly. “I just now knocked on Lazarus’s door. He’s not home.”

  “I reckon he’s not even in the county by now. He strapped a couple of duffel bags on his motorcycle this morning, then squealed out like a bull getting castrated.”

  “Does anyone have a key to his trailer?”

  Eula stepped back to allow me inside. “This ain’t a hotel with a desk clerk. I send my rent money to some real estate company in Starley City. If I’m three days late, a smarmy little thing calls to ask real sweetly if I have a problem. When the sewer line backs up or a gas line leaks and I call them, I get the answering machine. The smarmy little thing’s too busy to call me back.” She waved me toward the sofa. “I don’t reckon you, or even Ruby Bee, understand what poverty means. I can afford to buy food, and most months I can pay the bills. I can’t make long-distance calls to my daughter in California, though, and I can’t send birthday presents to my grandchildren. Lottie takes me into Farberville every now and then so I can buy greeting cards and a book of stamps. I can barely remember their names and faces these days. I’ve never held the two youngest ones.”

  “Eula,” I said, for the first time actually looking at her, “I didn’t realize …”

  “Don’t go feeling sorry for me,” she said as she went to the kitchen window. “Bernard died all these long years ago. I’m just biding my time until we can meet up again. I’d like to think Saint Peter issued him a washrag and a bar of soap before he was allowed inside the Pearly Gates. The last thing I want to do is spend eternity with a man who neglected personal hygiene after his retirement.”

  I was trying to come up with a response, however lame it was apt to be, when she said, “I wonder who’s over there now. If it’s Bernard, I’m gonna have to rethink things. The Pot O’ Gold for all eternity—I ain’t so sure.”

  I nudged her aside and looked across the street at the double-wide trailer that had been occupied by Lazarus until some point earlier in the day, when he’d roared out on his motorcycle. I had no doubt that I could break into the trailer, but the lack of a warrant was a problem.

  “Why do you think anyone’s there?” I asked.

  “Because someone snuck inside.”

  “Ah,” I said, ever so wisely. “Did you get a good look?”

  “Wouldn’t I have said so if I had? Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to make a cup of tea and elevate my leg. I’ve been in the hospital twice this last year. The last thing I aim to do is give Lazarus the satisfaction of putting me in my grave.”

  “You said something yesterday about how rude he was when you and he went into Farberville and—”

  “Go away and let me be. Miz Whitbread and I always share a can of soup on Sunday; this is her turn, so I suppose we’ll have cream of mushroom, along with those cardboard crackers she buys at Wal-Mart.”

  No fewer than a zillion responses went through my mind, but not one of them was adequate. “I guess I’ll go see who’s in Lazarus’s trailer,” I said.

  “Then do it,” she said as she limped down the hallway, her housecoat flapping. “Miz Whitbread and I can get along just fine without anyone’s pity. What’s more, I reckon I can protect us if Lazarus comes back.”

  “Perhaps we should discuss the gun,” I called. “It’s not nice to shoot your neighbors, Eula.”

  Eula did not slam the door as Darla Jean had done. She simply closed it.

  15

  It churns my stomach to admit this, but what I really wanted to do was to settle my butt in my chair, prop my heels on the corner of my desk, and talk to Harve, not because he was a guy so much as because he’d been down most of the back roads of Stump County, in the figurative sense (and possibly in the literal, as well). Ruby Bee and Estelle seemed to think I could solve dilemmas by putting one of my four remaining bullets in the gun and shooting someone, randomly if need be. Brother Verber would advocate the inspiration to be gained from a substantial tithe. Mrs. Jim Bob might be more inclined to think she could rev up her Cadillac and eliminate the problem at fifty miles per hour. Which she could, but it would lead to complications.

  It being Sunday afternoon, however, Harve was undoubtedly in a john boat in the middle of a river, stretched out within reach of a cooler of beer, ham sandwiches, and hunks of his wife’s chocolate-fudge brownies with caramel icing. He’d have a greasy canvas hat pulled down to shield his eyes, and a slathering of gunky white sunblock on his nose. A vile cigar would be threatening the continued well-being of the nearby fish more so than any hook, line, or sinker.

  But Eula had seen someone go inside Lazarus’s trailer, and Harve wasn’t going to offer up any wisdom in the immediate future.

  Reminding myself that I’d survived several courses in self-defense at the police academy (for the most part learning how to shout “Toyota!” and “Mitsubishi!” at the top of my lungs while gesturing in a vaguely menacing fashion), I walked across the road and banged open the door. “Nis-san!” I hissed, stressing the second syllable and hoping it sounded like an obscure samurai death threat.

  Seth Smitherman was seated at the dinette. He stumbled to
his feet and pretty much crashed into the refrigerator. “What are you doing here?” he gasped.

  I uncurled my fists. “What are you doing here?”

  He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “Nothing, really. Lazarus said I could use his computer whenever I wanted, and I was just kind of—”

  I glanced at the monitor. “Looks like porn to me.”

  “Justin has everything blocked at the lab. Women don’t seem to understand why men like to look at stuff like this. There’s no harm in it.”

  I caught his wrist before he could make the screen go blank. “No harm in it? This is Darla Jean McIlhaney, in the flesh, so to speak! Billy Dick McNamara is hovering over her, brandishing his magic wand. What’s going on, Seth? How could these pictures be on the Internet? These are local kids, damn it! They are not runaways sleeping in alleys off Times Square, posing for a few dollars to buy a hot meal.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Seth said, twisting free of my grip.

  “But you knew how to find it.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There is no ‘maybe,’ Seth. You and Lazarus seem to be buddies. Do you know where he is?”

  “He left. He told me to look at his computer equipment and make an offer. He’s gonna let me know where to send him the money.”

  “Which would be?”

  “He said he’d be in touch. All I’m doing is trying to put a price on it. Computers are out of date the week after you buy them. This printer’s not bad, and the scanner is fairly new. The digital camera’s real nice. Still, the modem’s slow and—”

  “Shut up unless you want to wait while I go back to the PD and get my radar gun. I will annihilate you and sell the ashes to a web site featuring cremains.”

  Seth sank down on the stained sofa. “I’m looking to buy his computer equipment. No crime in that.”

  “Is there in stealing a car and driving off a bridge?”

  “Heard about that, huh?”

  “Yeah, Seth. I also heard Gwynnie Patchwood was in the car.”