by Joan Hess
“Holy shit,” moaned Robert Drake.
“My knees are going to freeze up in another minute,” Ruby Bee hissed. “Eula’s been inside a good ten minutes, and I’m cold. I didn’t come here to hunker in the bushes and—”
“Then stop your bitching and come on,” Estelle said. She stood up and dashed for the back of the mobile home, praying Eula didn’t feel the need for a cup of tea during a commercial. Ruby Bee pounded along behind her, and the two reached the back door without hearing any hollers or cries aimed at them.
With trembling hands, Ruby Bee unlocked the door and slipped in like a tubby bolt of greased lightning, her partner in crime on her heels. Estelle closed the door, leaned against it, and put her hand on her chest.
“We made it,” she panted. “I just knew Eula was going to see us, or Bart Harkins on the other side. I don’t know what we could have told them that wouldn’t sound right suspicious.”
“Now that we’re here, what do we aim to do?”
“We went over that before, Ruby Bee. We got to find proof that Jaylee was getting money from somebody in Maggody—like Jim Bob, for instance. You take the bedroom and I’ll start in the kitchen.”
Ruby Bee looked over her shoulder at the dark hallway and the closed doors. There was a musty odor, as if something had died and been left to rot in a closet, and there was a presence of danger that was thicker than her best pan gravy. A chill raced up her back. “I think we ought to stick together,” she whispered.
“We already decided that would take too long,” Estelle said impatiently. “You ain’t afraid of finding a spook, are you?”
Ruby Bee realized that Estelle had hit the nail square on the head. “Of course not. But if we search together, we can do each room twice as fast. Besides, I might stumble onto something and not be sure if it was important. If you were there, we could decide faster.”
“All right, but I think you’re behaving like a kid. There ain’t no such things as spooks, Ruby Bee Hanks, and the Lord knows you ought to have learned that much in the last fifty-five years.”
“Why, Estelle Oppers, you know perfectly well I’m fifty-three!”
“Then you’d better go back to grade school and practice your subtraction! You are two years older than me, which makes you fifty-five if you’re a day old!”
“Am not.”
“You are, too! You think I can’t keep track of my own birthdays, Missus Hanks? I am fifty-three—which makes you fifty-five! We’ll just pull out my birth certificate and see!”
“That doesn’t prove nothing!”
Carl Withers, who was crouched behind the refrigerator, felt his temper begin to boil. He’d planned to jump out at them and scare them off, then grab the food he’d put in a grocery sack and hightail it out of there. Now the two old biddies sounded like they were going to rip each other up out in the living room over some fool woman thing.
He didn’t have all day to wait around while they gabbed at each other. He eased around the refrigerator and carefully opened a drawer. Taking out a knife, he felt a sudden warmth in his lower body. Shit, it might be fun.
10
Somebody must have been watching over us, because we saw the trailer sitting in a clearing about where I’d thought it would be. It was dingy, battered, and squatty, its belly overgrown with vines and weeds, its front door liable to blow off in the next good wind. About standard for such things, I decided, as we pulled to a stop behind a green pickup truck. Deer camps aren’t known for their luxurious accommodations or scenic settings. Or plumbing, I added as I saw a half-fallen outhouse behind the trailer. Just by looking at it, I could feel the spiders crawling up my leg.
“That pickup belongs to Roy Stivers,” I told Sergeant Plover. “I expected to see Jim Bob’s four-wheel around here, too. I wonder where in tarnation he’s run off to.”
“Somebody’s here. I saw a face in the window.” He cut off the engine and took out a handkerchief to clean his sunglasses, showing no inclination to storm the trailer. “Let’s sit here for a while.”
I was a little disappointed with his laid-back approach. “Shouldn’t we do something?” I suggested.
“And get ourselves blown to kingdom come by a shotgun? I’ve got too much respect for my backside to go rushing up to the door with my gun drawn. We’ll just sit spell and see what happens.”
“Is that what they teach at state police school?”
He gave me a slow, shit-eating grin. “Yep.”
“And how to sell tickets to the state troopers’ ball?”
“State troopers don’t have balls.”
“So I noticed.”
After about five minutes of silence, Roy came to the door of the trailer and said, “Whatcha doing, Arly? Don’t you want to come and visit for a while? It’s pretty damn cold out there, and you are welcome to some beer and sandwiches if you’re hungry.”
I ignored Plover’s muffled laugh and marched across the weeds. “Who else is in there, Roy?” “Larry Joe’s here right now, and Ho and Jim Bob’ll be back pretty soon. You sure you don’t want to come in and sit a spell?”
“Thank you very much,” I said, shooting a haughty look over my shoulder in the general direction of the Nameless Wonder, who was still in the jeep where he’d taken root. “My driver seems to prefer to wait outside.”
“Oh, I’m coming,” Plover said. After he untangled his legs from under the wheel, he ambled over to my side and motioned for me to proceed him. The man was such a prince, especially when it came to allowing me to see if there was going to be a twelve-gauge aimed at my face when I stepped inside.
Actually, there was only Larry Joe’s affable smile and an incredible miasma of stale beer and cigar smoke. “Nice place you got here,” I said. “Where’d Jim Bob and Hobert run off to, by the way? We didn’t see them on the road.” “You must have just missed them. They went
into town a couple hours ago,” Roy said. “How about a bologna sandwich, Arly? The bread’s a mite stale, but it hasn’t turned blue yet.”
“Maybe later. When are they getting back?”
Larry Joe’s face went pale. “Why are you asking all these questions about Jim Bob and Ho? Is there some special reason you and this fellow here want to talk to them?”
“We all came up here to scout a stand before the season,” Roy said. “Play poker and brag. It ain’t exactly a crime.”
Sergeant Plover took a beer out of the cooler and opened it with a swoosh. “Kidnapping is,” he said.
“Who got hisself kidnapped?” Larry Joe said. Or squeaked, to be more precise. He went even paler, until he matched the slice of bread on the table in front of him. Good thing it wasn’t blue—I almost flunked my CPR course at the academy.
“A contract liaison from the EPA regional office in Dallas,” Plover said. “Man’s name is Robert Drake, about five foot six, dark hair and eyes, no distinguishing scars.”
“What makes you think we might know something about that?” Roy said, his eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted to one side. He even went so far as to put his hands on his denim hips. A nice bluff.
“Because you and the others locked him in Number Three at the Flamingo Motel on Friday.” Plover took a drink of beer. “Then you checked him out last night and brought him here. Is he tied up in the back somewhere?”
Larry Joe buried his face in his hands, moaning softly. Roy gulped several times, then turned on me. “This fellow’s crazier than Raz’s eldest girl. I’d like to think you don’t believe his fairy tales, Arly.”
I could see my rent rising faster then Boone Creek in May. “Ruby Bee and Estelle already admitted their part in it,” I said apologetically. “It came out when the body was found.”
“Whose body?” Roy snapped. He didn’t look real good, either; it was even money who’d go first—him or Larry Joe.
I told them about Jaylee.
When I finished, Larry Joe was nearly sobbing, and Roy was perched on the edge of an army cot, pale and dam close to comatose. Plover finished his beer and motioned for me to join him in the filthy kitchenette.
“Keep an eye on these two while I see if I can find Drake. They don’t look capable of trying anything, but you never know. You have any bullets in your gun?” I nodded. He went into the bedroom, then came out with a frown. “Nobody there. I’m going to look outside.”
“Holler if you need me,” I said.
I received another funny look before he went outside. Since I didn’t know what it meant, I forgot about it and sat down on the cot next to Roy. “Tell me what happened to the EPA fellow. Kidnapping’s serious, but murder’s damn sight more serious. Jaylee was visiting Drake in his room on a regular schedule. Now she’s dead and he’s missing. I’ve got to find him, Roy.”
“He ran off early this morning,” Roy said in a wooden voice. “Larry Joe and I searched the whole side of the ridge for him, but we couldn’t find any trace of him. He probably got himself eaten by a bear. Did he—did he kill Jaylee?”
“I haven’t had a chance to ask him. He was your prisoner, not mine. Where was he last night after nine o’clock?”
“We collected him about eight and put him in Ho’s trunk while we split up to get our gear. We met at ten o’clock behind Jim Bob’s store, transferred the fellow to the back of the four-wheel, and left right after that. He was here all night. I’m sure of that because we sat up all night playing cards, and he dropped nearly two hundred dollars. He doesn’t have the card sense God gave a goose.”
“So he was locked in Ho’s trunk when you left the others about eight and went home?”
“That’s correct, Arly. Nobody called or came by while I was packing, but I was in the back of the antique store right up to ten o’clock.”
I looked at Larry Joe, who was slumped over the table but breathing a little bit better. “What about you, Larry Joe? What’d you do between eight and ten o’clock last night?”
“I went home, told Joyce what we were doing, and called in sick to the principal’s house. Then I kissed the kids goodbye, grabbed up my sleeping bag and some clothes, and went to the Kwik-Screw to meet everybody. Joyce will back my story if’n she has to, and I didn’t have any reason to hurt Jaylee.”
I sat and thought for a long time. It didn’t sound like Drake could have killed Jaylee, even if I could come up with a motive. Which would have been tough, since Jaylee was probably keeping him nicely entertained. Larry Joe and Roy didn’t have any motive I could dream up on the spur of the moment. It occurred to me that Jim Bob had at least two motives: blackmail and/or jealousy.
“Why’d Jim Bob and Ho go into town?” I asked.
Larry Joe groaned. “Senator Fiff was supposed to get back from Las Vegas and be in his office today. We was hoping Friday when we waylaid Drake that Fiff would do something to halt the EPA from allowing Starley City to dump their shit in Boone Creek. But Fiff wasn’t around, so we had to wait until today to telephone him.”
“That is the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time,” I told Roy disgustedly. “You committed a felony, involving my mother along the way, so you could get Fiff to save the creek?” Before he could answer, Sergeant Plover came back into the trailer. “He’s not anywhere around here. There’re some footprints in a circle of mud out front, but no sign of him.”
I told him what Roy had told me. We all looked at one another for a long time, then Plover sat down at the dinette across from Larry Joe. “Guess we’d better wait for Jim Bob and Ho to return,” he said.
It was as good as anything I could suggest, so I settled for a glare at Roy and a regal nod for the room at large.
Robert Drake had never been so utterly miserable in his life, so wet and cold, so nauseated from his own stinking body, so weak from trying not to breathe until his lungs threatened to explode. His half-blinded eyes teared continually, sending dribbles down his neck and under his shirt, where they seemed to turn to ice. His feet stumbled forward, each step a lurching spasm that put him on his hands and knees more often than not. His palms were bloodied, his legs so numb he wasn’t sure they were there.
He’d quit cursing the skunk an hour ago, mostly because he was too tired and sick to think of any more four-letter words. Several times after falls he’d lingered for a few minutes in the wet leaves, considering just staying down until he froze to death. But the stink would push him to his feet, as if he might escape himself if he moved ahead quickly enough. He just didn’t know where.
At least he wasn’t bothered by the noises of the animals in the underbrush around him or birds scolding him from the trees. They had deserted him after the incident, their noses and beaks pinched closed in disgust. Did anything ever smell quite so bad? Could a person die from the fumes that hovered around him like a foul green cloud?
He kept thinking about Dawn Alice, the conniving bitch who caused all his trouble. Starting up tennis lessons at her age, as if she had the body to romp all over the court without a bra, letting her boobs flop like rubber chickens for the benefit of the tennis pro! He’d put a stop to that once and for all when he got home. She could sit home and stare at the wall, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to whang the tennis pro’s balls anymore. He’d see to that, and wring her neck if she even tried to leave the house. If the pro showed up, he’d kill him, too. Kill them both. Leave their bodies draped over the net. He repeated his plan over and over in a singsong whisper.
As he pushed through a clump of firs, he saw Dawn Alice at the edge of the tennis court, the clubhouse behind her. No bra, of course, and a sheen of perspiration on her forehead from humping in the pro shop. She had a racket in one hand. He ignored her startled look and lunged at her, screaming. “Goddamn you, you bloody bitch! I told you that you weren’t going to play tennis anymore! I’m going to rip your smirk off your goddamn face!”
He never saw the shovel that smacked the back of his head, but he heard Dawn Alice laughing as he crumpled down in the mud in front of the clubhouse.
“If I wanted to, I could mail-order a birth certificate and write in whatever date I wanted to,” Ruby Bee said, grinding her teeth as she glared up at Estelle. “I could make like I was eighteen years old if I wanted to. But that wouldn’t make it gospel, would it?”
“You have totally lost your mind. I ought to call the insane asylum and have them put you away, Ruby Bee Hanks—before everybody finds out now crazy you are.”
“Well, I never! Let me tell you another thing, Miss Oppers.”
They were never going to quit, Carl decided wearily. The knife handle was damp in his palm, the blade tapping against his thigh in an impatient, silent rhythm. He’d hovered just inside the doorway for a long time, all set to grab one of them around the neck while he stuck the knife in the other one’s throat and ordered them to shut their damn traps if they didn’t want to see a lot of blood. They’d even moved toward the kitchen at one point, and he’d gotten on his toes, licking his lips and swaying eagerly. Then they’d retreated to the middle of the room. Women. They kept telling each other who was crazier, but Carl figured he was getting crazier than the both of them put together.
If they didn’t get back to business pretty damn quick, he was going to have to go after them. His leg was useless now, so swollen he couldn’t feel anything but pain and fire. Chasing them around the living room was going to put him in a bad mood once he caught them. Just like when he was a kid and had been sent to catch a chicken for Sunday dinner—he’d taken real pleasure in twisting the scrawny neck so slowly it took a long time for the final death squawk. The broads in the other room had scrawny necks, too. He wondered how they’d feel in his fingers.
Jim Bob stomped into the Kwik-Screw, told Dahlia to lay off the candy bars once and for all or he’d slap her up against the wall, and went into his office. He called Fiff’s office and sat down behind his
genuine oak veneer desk, praying the twit hadn’t decided to stay an extra week in Las Vegas. After a few choice cuss words for the receptionist on the other end of the line, he found himself speaking to the Honorable Fiff himself.
He decided to ease into the situation. “Those damn fools in Dallas okayed Starley City’s construction grant, Fiff. They sent some sort of liaison to check out the contract. What are you going to do about it—we don’t want shit in the creek.”
“Why, Jim Bob, it’s good to hear your voice again. How’s Mrs. Jim Bob?”
“She’s fine,” he said, not knowing or caring. “You’ve got to throw a monkey wrench in this EPA nonsense. You’re the elected representative and you’re supposed to care about your constituency if you plan to get elected again next year.”
“Of course I do, Jim Bob; I take great pride in serving the people of my district, even if it means late nights with the candle burning away at both ends. Hold on for a minute while I have my secretary round up the paperwork on this here sewage disposal plant. I been out of state for several days, doing an analysis of one of my colleague’s pork-barrel projects. I have to watch every penny of the taxpayers’ dollars.” He chuckled, then covered the receiver and gave out some orders too muffled for Jim Bob to get. “You and the boys all het up for the deer season?” he added.
“Just get the papers, Fiff,” Jim Bob snarled.
The line rustled, and he could hear Fiff humming under his breath as he shifted papers. After a long minute, Fiff cleared his throat and said, “On the face of it, this appears to be in order, Jim Bob, and there ain’t a thing I can do about it. Lemme see … Yep, the BOD and the TSS are right at ten parts per million, as specified in our great country’s Federal Water Quality Act, and the phosphorous and ammonia are going to be right good. I remember you telling me about this before, Jim Bob, but I don’t think you have any cause to worry about it anymore. Your creek’ll be plumb full of bass and crappies, and I’ll come over to catch a string and prove it to you.”