murder@maggody.com
Page 29
Kevin tried to imagine his pa riding in anything but a pickup truck, then gave up and took a closer look at the newspaper ad. “It sez they’re looking for babies and children. Why do you reckon they’d pick Kevvie Junior and Rose Marie?”
“Think, Kevin.”
He rubbed his chin. “Well, there’s no questioning that they’re cute as a pair of junebugs.”
Dahlia glowered at him. “And …?”
“Rose Marie has the sweetest grin I’ve ever laid eyes on. Kevvie Junior’s gonna be a fine football player; his little arms are just twitching to throw a pass down the field. I always thought I could be a quarterback, but then—”
“Your nose got broke on the first day of practice,” Dahlia said, “if you recollect.”
Kevin most certainly did recollect. Shirelle Pomfritte had been on the sidelines, practicing a routine with the pep squad. Instead of dashing to his aid with a lacy hanky or even an ice pack, she’d outright brayed while he staggered around the field, bleeding like a stuck pig. Remembering the moment brought tears to his eyes.
He blinked and peered at the small ad. “It doesn’t promise a million dollars.”
“Kevvie Junior and Rose Marie are twins. They’d probably earn more if they was triplets, but there’s not anything we can do about that.” Dahlia smiled at her five-month-old cash cows, or calves, anyway. “Can’t you just see ’em in one of those commercials on television? There they’d be, smiling at the camera and winning ever’body’s hearts.” Her expression abruptly darkened with a menace that rivaled a thunderstorm gathering over Cotter’s Ridge. “You got to promise me one thing, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon, and I mean it.”
“You know I’d hang the moon for you,” he said, meaning it but not real clear where this was going.
Dahlia sat down in his lap and wrapped her arms around him. “If we get all-fired rich and live in a mansion in Beverly Hills, you won’t go running after some skinny little actress in a bikini. I know I’ll be all swollen like last time, with my ankles thick as stumps and my belly so big it could be mistaken for a ten-pound sack of turnips. If I was to lose you to a starlet, I don’t know what I’d do. Swear you won’t leave me, Kevin.”
“Leave you?” he said, squirming as his legs became increasingly numb. “You are the light of my life, my dandelion wine princess. You are the mother of my fine, sturdy children, and the only thing I think about all day while I mop the floor at the SuperSaver and restock the shelves. Ain’t no sickly actress ever gonna catch my eye, much less steal my heart away.”
“Well, then,” Dahlia said as she stood up, “I’m gonna call this number on Monday morning. We got the two cutest babies in the country. Not even Brother Verber could say it’s a sin to take advantage of that.”
Kevin was kinda glad Brother Verber had rolled out on the bus, along with Mrs. Jim Bob. He didn’t want to think about what his parents would say over Sunday breakfast, but he had a good twenty-four hours to consider it. With any luck, about the time the scrambled eggs and grits were set on the table, the babies would commence to wail, Dahlia and his ma would get all flustered, and his pa might not hafta hear about the limousine just yet.
“Don’t go fingering those cupcakes,” said Jim Bob, glaring at the scruffy boy who’d been lingering by the checkout display. “Shoplifters go straight to the state penitentiary, where they’re locked up in cells with murderers and rapists. You won’t last twenty minutes with the likes of them. A little pissant like you’d be someone’s girlie about the time you took your first shower.”
“I ain’t dun nothing.”
Jim Bob was feeling pretty good, what with his wife gone for a week. Brother Verber was gone as well, meaning there’d be no tedious church service in the morning or one of those goddamn awful potluck suppers in the evening. Without green bean casseroles and raw carrot salads facing him in the immediate future, he figured to take home some tamales and beer, put his muddy shoes on the coffee table, and watch wrasslin’ on the television. He’d burp and belch so loud the windows would rattle clear across the county. His farts would scare off any skunk that dared come across the yard. He’d sleep naked and put on dirty underwear in the morning. It was unfortunate that Cherry Lucinda was peeved at him, but she might relent by the middle of the week if he showed up on her doorstep with a handful of daffodils from the garden out back and a pint bottle of peppermint schnapps.
It wasn’t all that bad being single, Jim Bob thought as he continued to glare at the kid. “Get your sorry ass out of here. I’m giving you a break this time, but if you ever set foot in here again, you’ll end up being a princess at the prison prom.”
“Fuck you,” the kid said succinctly.
“Haven’t I seen you before? Seems to me you’re one of Robin Buchanon’s bushcolts. Hammet’s your name, right? You and the rest of the runts did some serious damage to my house. All of you should have been hauled off to the pound and been put out of my misery, if not yours.”
“Want I should spell it this time?”
Jim Bob thought about smacking the kid, but he was in too good a mood to bother. “Go on now, and don’t come back. All the checkout girls are gonna be on the watch for you. Set foot in here again and I’ll whip your sorry butt, then have you arrested.”
“Like you could,” the miscreant said as he backed toward the door. “Like you could fuck your way out of a gunny sack.” His further parting remarks were obscene, implying without subtlety that Jim Bob’s mother had found satisfying sexual relationships with immediate family members and farm animals. Some of the combinations were highly improbable, but they were enough to cause Eula Lemoy to clutch her bosom and Constantinople Buchanon to clack his dentures as if they were castanets.
“What you gaping at?” Jim Bob snarled at the checkout girls, then went back to his office and pulled out the bottle of bourbon he kept in his desk drawer. Somebody ought to come up with a bigger fly swatter, he thought as he took a pull on the bottle. Little shits like the one up front needed to be slapped flatter’n a red flour beetle.
He amused himself with the scenario as he finished off the bourbon and sat back. Cherry Lucinda could stew in her own juices for a few days. In the meantime, there was no telling what pretty things might be at the Dew Drop Inn on a Saturday night.
While the cat’s away, he thought, rubbing his hands together, the mice got no choice but to play.
Hammet hunkered by the Dumpster behind the supermarket, greedily gnawing on a discolored head of lettuce. He would have preferred a sandwich, but at least he’d made it out the door with a candy bar in one coat pocket and a package of cheese in the other. He hadn’t had more than a few crackers in the last twenty-four hours, and he forced himself to eat as much lettuce as he could.
When his gut growled ominously, he tossed aside the lettuce and prowled through the vehicles parked alongside the building. All of them were locked. He supposed he could bust out a windshield with a rock, but it wasn’t gonna do him much good to steal CDs or magazines. It wasn’t gonna do him much good if he saw a key in an ignition switch, for that matter, since he didn’t know how to drive.
One truck caught his attention. It was parked nearest the steps leading up to the delivery dock, and a spray-painted sign on the wall indicated that the space was reserved for Jim Bob. Slashing the tires would have been entertaining, but required a knife or a screwdriver. He found a sharp rock and scratched lines across the doors and hood.
The problem was, he thought as he threw the rock into the trees at the back of the parking lot, Arly weren’t nowhere to be found. Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill was darker than the inside of a cow, and all the motel units were locked.
There weren’t no way of knowing if the shack was still standing up on Cotter’s Ridge. Even if it was, the only food he might hope to find there would be scraggly carrots and maybe a few ears of corn in the garden. Catchin’ critters was harder than it sounded, and it wasn’t like he had matches or anything to make a fire.
The church was l
ikely to be empty on a Saturday afternoon, he reckoned. He could at least stretch out on a pew and get some sleep.
Running away was damn hard work, even harder than memorizing multiplication tables and state capitals.
When I returned, Estelle’s station wagon was parked in front of the lodge. Jarvis and Billy Dick were unloading it, while Heather, Amy Dee, and Lynette watched from the veranda.
“Finished with lunch?” I asked them.
“Was that what you’d call it?” said Heather. “My pa’s hogs eat better than that.”
“And we had grapes for dessert,” Lynette added.
I tried to look encouraging. “Grapes are good. Were they green or red?”
“Brown and mushy,” muttered Jarvis as he went past me, bedding under his arms.
I found Larry Joe in the living room and told him about the two sacks of cheeseburgers in the bus. Once he’d rounded up the kids and led them toward the ball field, I went into the kitchen, where Big Mac and Parwell were washing dishes under Mrs. Jim Bob’s unwavering supervision.
“I assume you bought the bit,” she said to me.
I had no idea what she was talking about. Bought the bit? Bit the bullet? Bought the farm?
“The four-inch bit for the drill,” she continued. “That is why you took the bus into Dunkicker, isn’t it? I’d like to think you weren’t looking for an establishment that sells alcoholic beverages.”
I slapped my forehead. “Oh, the bit! The hardware had one, in a box on a shelf in the back corner. The Lord’s looking after us, Mrs. Jim Bob.”
“I will not tolerate blasphemy!”
Ruby Bee came into the kitchen. “Where’s the skillets and the mixing bowls?”
Mrs. Jim Bob sucked up a breath. “Although it is kind of you to offer to assist, Ruby Bee, I think it’s better that the teenagers take responsibility for meals. They tend to assume that food simply appears on their plates.”
“Fine,” said Ruby Bee. “You just make sure they understand whose decision it was to have spaghetti and lima beans, instead of fried catfish and hushpuppies.”
“Hushpuppies?” said Brother Verber, joining us. “Those moist, delicious morsels of cornbread and a delicate flavoring of onions, crisped to perfection and just beggin’ for a dollop of butter? The Good Lord created hushpuppies, Mrs. Jim Bob.”
“As He did lima beans,” she responded tartly.
Tears welled in Brother Verber’s eyes. “I’m gonna go upstairs and study my Bible, but I have a feeling that the Good Lord didn’t have much to say about lima beans.”
“Nobody has much to say about lima beans,” inserted Estelle. “Not Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, if I recollect. Loaves and fishes, on the other hand, were on the menu on one occasion.”
I left them to battle it out, grabbed the last sandwich off a tray, and went to make sure Darla Jean had not made good on her implicit threat to leave.
Which she had.
Buy Maggody and the Moonbeams Now!
About the Author
Joan Hess (b. 1949) is the award-winning author of several long-running mystery series. Born in Arkansas, she was teaching preschool when she began writing fiction. Known for her lighthearted, witty novels, she is the creator of the Claire Malloy Mysteries and the Arly Hanks Mysteries, both set in Arkansas.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Joan Hess
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3728-0
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