murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  “Millicent McIlhaney came over here looking for you. She says Daniel never went to the conference in Springfield.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Millicent has no way of knowing that. She came across the number of the motel in Springfield and called it on account of Leona being … preoccupied.”

  I banged down my fork, inadvertently sending a slice of beet in Estelle’s direction. “He was here when Gwynnie was killed, and long gone when her body was found yesterday morning.” I muttered a decidedly uncouth word under my breath. “And he didn’t go to Springfield to learn how to maximize the chicken-plucking line.”

  “Lazarus is long gone, too,” said Ruby Bee. She held up her hand. “Don’t get your nose out of joint. Eula told me how he tore out on his motorcycle this morning. Did you find anything incriminating when you searched his trailer?”

  “Do you also know when I last sneezed?” I asked as I resumed my assault on the ham and sweet potatoes.

  They backed off, although we all knew it was temporary at best. After I’d cleaned my plate (my mother was in close proxim-ity, after all), I wiped my chin and said, “Let’s talk about the computer lab. Eileen seems to think she saw something odd while she was reading her E-mail. Did she tell either of you?”

  Ruby Bee’s jaw dropped. “Eileen saw something odd? I thought I was losing my mind when I saw.… well, it wasn’t pretty, if you get my drift. It wasn’t but a blink, and then it was gone. If Justin had been there, I might have tried to tell him about it, but later I decided I was just too darn old to be surfing the web like a teenager in one of those beach-blanket movies.”

  “What did you think you saw?” I asked, wondering if she was about to comment on Earl’s privates.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I saw something, too,” said Estelle, “or I reckoned at the time I might have. I couldn’t hardly sleep that night, and the next morning I studied all the labels on my cosmetics in case one of them contained some peculiar chemical. Don’t ask, ’cause I ain’t gonna even think about it.”

  “Eileen saw a picture of Earl,” I said cautiously.

  Ruby Bee took my plate and went into the kitchen. Estelle found a need to disappear into the restroom. Neither seemed in any hurry to return.

  It would have been really, really interesting if either of them could repeat Eileen’s claim, but I wasn’t going to hang around. Something damned odd was taking place in the portable building beside the high school gym. The one person who had claimed to have mastery over this small domain was going to have to answer for it.

  Five minutes later I parked beside the Baileys’ trailer. Rather than storm the door, however, I sat and thought about what I’d learned. Gwynnie Patchwood may have had some justification for her behavior, but she’d lied to any and all who might have had something she wanted. And what she’d wanted most of all was to avoid a future of cramped apartments in bad neighborhoods and a reliance on the bureaucracy to send her a piddling check each month. Jessie Traylor had not been good enough. Seth Smitherman did not seem likely to end up with a string of car dealerships—or even a string of pearls. Lazarus was a purveyor of pornography and based his daily diet on the discarded produce behind the SuperSaver. Daniel may or may not have provided pocket money in exchange for sexual favors, but she must have suspected what drove Leona to the close encounters with vodka. It was hard to imagine Gwynnie was quite as dedicated to the concept of obtaining her GED and taking courses at the community college.

  No, she needed a father for Chip and a husband with the potential for financial success. Relationships might smolder on the Internet, but they could be set ablaze closer to home, too.

  I was still sitting in my car when Justin came out of the trailer.

  “What do you want?” he asked. “If you’re looking for Chapel, she went into Farberville to spend the afternoon and evening with friends. She won’t be back until nine. I’ve already told you everything I know about Gwynnie Patchwood.”

  “Get in the car,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because, Justin, you promised this town that you could control the images on the Internet. I hate to say it, but I’m not convinced you’ve done a bang-up job thus far. We’re going over to the lab.”

  “Can I put on some shoes?”

  “No need,” I said with the warmth of Genghis Khan on a bad hair day. “Just get in the car. If it looks as if we’ll be there all night, I’ll run you back so you can leave a note for your wife. I’m sure you’d never do anything to cause her any unnecessary pain.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. “You don’t know anything about my relationship with Chapel. She wasn’t happy about moving here, but she’s adjusting. She understands that once I get my graduate degree in five or six years, things will be better.”

  I backed up and headed for the gate. “And you see Chapel standing next to you when you have your portrait taken with a new Porsche?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  I kept my lips tight as I drove to the high school gym. “Watch out for broken glass,” I said politely. “I’d hate to have to drive you to the emergency room for a tetanus shot.”

  “Thanks a lot,” he said as he grimaced over every last bit of gravel. It was clear he could never dance alongside Boone Creek, even with a bottle of wine under his belt. Maggody boys had a tradition of stamping out bonfires with their bare feet.

  Two of said critters were inside the trailer, both hunkered down in front of a computer. It took me a second to recognize them from the second-class picnic table in front of the Dairee Dee-Lishus. It took them a split second longer to erase the images on the monitors in front of them. Poor reflexes on their part.

  “Hey, Mr. Bailey,” one of them said. “What are you and her doing here?”

  I crossed my arms. “Maybe finding out what you’ve been doing here. Want to give us a hint?”

  “I was thinking about buying a used truck,” one of them said. “I wanted to compare prices.”

  “Yeah,” the other said, his voice squeaking. “That’s all we were doing. We’ll just go on so’s not to bother you. I’ll be over at lunch time tomorrow, Mr. Bailey. You can show me more about setting up a database for the football team.”

  I stepped back and allowed them to flee like the terrified bunnies they were. “Were those a couple of the boys you mentioned as being adept at this?”

  Justin nodded. “Yeah, Byron’s been fooling around on computers since kindergarten. I’m surprised he’s not at home on his own system.”

  “He might have been worried his parents could walk in at any minute. Did you see what they were doing?”

  “I know I said I could block porn,” Justin said as he pulled off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirt, “but I also said some kids would find a way to get around my filters. Byron and Widget seem to have discovered one.”

  “No kidding. Can you read everybody’s old E-mail?”

  “Whose do you want to see?” he asked as he sat down in front of the computer recently abandoned by the boys.

  “Eileen Buchanon’s. She said she saw a ghost.”

  He began to click furiously. “Lottie Estes tried to tell me the same thing, but I thought she’d been having a spinster’s version of a wet dream.” The cursor danced between columns and columns within columns, but he seemed so confident of what he was doing that he continued to converse. “Most people think once they’ve deleted something, it’s gone for good. In reality, it lingers like a suppressed memory. Don’t ever write anything on a computer that might bring down the feds on you. It can be tracked back to the very machine.”

  “What about secret passwords?”

  “NASA and the Pentagon use secret passwords, but the hackers get in anyway. It’s easier for me, since I’m the systems administrator. Okay, here’s Eileen’s E-mail. Most of it seems to have gone to other people in the lab such as Kevin and Dahlia. She must h
ave met someone in a chat room last week; these E-mails are from someone who goes by the screen name ‘TDrinker.’ Nothing too exciting there. She sent an E-mail with a cookie recipe to someone called ‘Granny234’”

  “What about this ghost?”

  Justin chewed on his lip, his fingers never slowing down. “If she saw it, it’s in here, attached to an E-mail she sent or received. It won’t take up more than a microbyte. Okay, maybe this.”

  The screen flickered.

  Justin and I stared at each other.

  “Who was that?” he asked.

  “Earl Buchanon, purportedly with hijacked privates.”

  16

  When Earl went out into the front yard to change the oil in the pickup, he couldn’t help but notice the smoke drifting out of the house across Finger Lane. It wasn’t billowing or anything alarming like that, and there weren’t flames licking out of adjoining windows. Just wispy smoke, like flutters of tissue paper.

  He scratched his head. Jim Bob was usually sent out to the porch to puff on a cigar, and that didn’t happen all too often. What’s more, the porch was vacant and the smoke was definitely coming from an upstairs window. For a moment, he wondered if Mrs. Jim Bob had taken to sneaking stogies.

  “Kevin!” he bellowed. “Git your ass out here!”

  Kevin came stumbling out the door and nearly made it down the steps without tripping over his feet. “What, Pa?” he asked as he got up and brushed grass clippings off his shirt, having mowed the lawn as an act of contrition for whatever his love goddess thought he’d done wrong.

  Earl gestured at the opposite house. “What do you make of that?”

  “It’s right handsome. I’d sure hate to mow that yard, though, unless I had one of those rider-mowers with an umbrella and a cup holder. It must take most of four hours.”

  “I am speaking of the smoke.”

  Kevin hung his head. “Sorry, Pa, I thought you was asking about Jim Bob’s house. The one and only time I smoked a cigar, I turned pea green and came close to puking my guts out. With Ma gone like she is, I reckon you can do what you like out here, but it’d be risky inside. Ma has the nose of a bloodhound, and she said if you ever—”

  Earl held back a growl. “I am speaking of the smoke coming out of a bedroom on the second floor, son. It don’t look like there’s a fire, but I might should call the volunteer fire department in Hasty, just to be on the safe side.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  Earl turned around and stared across the road. He knew damn well what he’d seen a minute ago, but now Kevin was giving him a funny look. “Not right now, mebbe.”

  “Then right now not be the time to call the volunteer fire department,” said Kevin, making more sense than usual. “Most of ’em are probably out fishing or watching baseball on TV. I don’t think they’d take kindly to rushing over here for no good reason.”

  Earl went to the edge of the road. “Mrs. Jim Bob’s Cadillac is there, but Jim Bob’s truck is gone.”

  “Jim Bob goes to the supermarket on Sundays to work on the payroll, except during football season. We’re all grateful to get paid by Friday till after the Super Bowl. Luckily, he ain’t much on baseball. He sez they wear girly pants.”

  Yanking off his cap, Earl continued to stare at the redbrick house. “You know something, Kevin? I wish your ma was here. She’d know what to do.”

  Kevin wasn’t sure what his ma would do if his pa dragged her outside and started carrying on about smoke that only he could see, ’specially these days, when she fancied herself to be a tugboat. It was all too mysterious to think about. “You want to come watch the Cubs game?” he asked his pa. “We got lots of pretzels, and I kin put a frozen pizza in the oven if you want.”

  “Just go get the hose out of the shed,” snapped Earl. “Get a bucket while you’re at it.”

  “Whatever you say,” Kevin said, wondering if he’d hafta start looking at nursing homes afore too long. His parents were in their mid-forties, which seemed a might young for senility to strike, but their behavior was gittin’ downright odd. And hadn’t his own granny kept a rowdy flock of sheep in the parlor for the last eleven years of her life? It occurred to him that the room in which he was watching the ball game was taking on an eye-watering stench, mostly on account of the accumulation of beer cans and bean burritos he’d bought for lunch from the Dairee Dee-Lishus.

  He didn’t want to be there if and when his ma came home.

  I finally regained my composure. “It’s not like I can identify Earl’s own privates,” I said. “What’s going on, Justin?”

  “Someone’s been having a fine time—and most likely the culprits are Byron and Widget. Let’s look at other E-mail.” Again the clickety-clackety. “This is Mrs. Jim Bob’s mailbox. She’s received digests, from a coalition advocating antiabortion violence and one that parallels flag-burning with Nazism. She was E-mailing what seems to be a cousin in Omaha, and …”

  “What was that?” we said in unison.

  After a minute of silence, I realized it was getting dark outside and got up to close all the gingham curtains. “You saw it, too,” I said as I sat down.

  “I don’t know all that much about Earl’s privates, but I doubt Jim Bob was ever photographed in a negligee,” he said weakly. “Red’s not his color.”

  “Good for you, Justin. You may have made your first joke.”

  “You want to hear the one about the programmer with the floppy disk?”

  “No, I want you to tell me how this ephemeral image of Jim Bob was created. Did it originate from this lab?”

  “I’ll find out.”

  Screens filled with gibberish came and went almost as quickly as the images had. If a nonexistent sprinkler system had gone off, Justin would not have faltered. A bomb in the parking lot would have caused no more than a moment’s hesitation. I was afraid that so much as opening my mouth might cause flames to erupt from not only the computer, but also his ears and nostrils.

  Systems administrators were kinda scary.

  “Okay,” he announced, resting his hands on the edge of the desk, “all of it came from this very machine. Byron, I’d think. He was clipping faces off the Maggody web site and pasting them on …”

  “Naked bodies from other sites?” I suggested.

  “And then sending them in split-second E-mail. I need to apologize to Lottie Estes, and everybody else in this town. I’m not as good as I thought I was. Byron’s fifteen, but he outwitted me. He downloaded a program called—”

  “This kid and his cohort terrorized the adults?”

  “It looks like they clipped faces from one source, then pasted them onto other … well, poses. I’m sure they thought they were being funny.”

  “Will they think a hundred hours of community service is funny? Will they think those orange vests are funny while they pick up litter from here to Missouri?”

  “A couple of kids,” Justin said lamely. “Smart ones, I admit.”

  I put aside the avowed retribution for the moment and rubbed my face. “Let’s look at Gwynnie’s E-mail.”

  “She wasn’t getting these images,” he said after a few seconds.

  “What was she getting?”

  “One was to someone named Broz; it’s kinda cryptic.”

  “Then let’s read it.”

  Justin reluctantly sat back. “All it says is that he’s heading off. He wishes her well. Here’s a generic one from Brother Verber with a Bible verse and an invitation to participate in the spring talent show. She sent one to Ruby Bee to confirm what time she’d be at the bar and grill to clean out the pantry.”

  I saw him wince. “Why don’t you go back to that last one? I didn’t have a chance to read it.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Go back, Justin, or go away while I call in experts from the state FBI. If you can get it, so can they.”

  If he’d possessed any cognitive skills outside his field, he would have laughed and turned off the compu
ter, the FBI most likely not having been at my beck and call—or my beck and anything. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he repeated.

  I leaned forward. “Gwynnie sent an E-mail saying she was pregnant. Who’s it to?”

  “An E-mail address in Germany. There’s a ‘de’ in the address that identifies the origin. Byron’s most likely behind this, too.”

  “Show me the next message,” I said coldly.

  Justin was looking less and less confident as the next message appeared. “It’s from the same address in Germany,” he said. “Must have been a person she ran across in a chat room.”

  “How would someone in Germany know about the Flamingo Motel?” I asked as I peered at the screen. “How would someone in Germany expect to meet Gwynnie and Chip in the last unit on the right, and then take them into Farberville to a safe house until he could divorce his wife and marry her? And, look, Justin, this person in Hamburg or Guttenburg has the same first name as you. The World Wide Web is just amazing, isn’t it? The global community is shrinking every minute.”

  “I didn’t send her this!”

  “When did she receive it?”

  He ran his finger across the top of the screen. “Friday night, about eight, o’clock. I swear I didn’t send her this. We were both here. Why would I send E-mail like this when all I had to do was talk to her?”

  “You couldn’t have this conversation with Ruby Bee and Lottie hanging on your every word, could you? If you didn’t send it, then who did?”

  “Anybody. It’s an anonymous server. A subpoena might jar the provider into identifying the account holder, but it could take months. Byron probably has dozens of accounts like this. It takes a matter of minutes to set one up.”

  I stood up and moved away from him. “A pimply fifteen-year-old would hardly interest her. Semen samples from the sheets at the motel are on their way to the state forensic lab, and you can expect a deputy on your doorstep in the morning to take your fingerprints to compare to those found at the scene. You must have heard by now that she was murdered at the Flamingo Motel on Friday night in the very same room where she got pregnant. Later, her body was moved to a shack on the ridge.”