Malice in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  The whole goddamn mess was wearing down his soul faster than Brother Verber’s nonstop sermonizing, he told himself as he passed the Kwik-Stoppe Shoppe. An icy lump plopped into his stomach as he saw Mrs. Jim Bob and Brother Verber staring at him through the plate-glass door. There wasn’t anything to do but jam down the gas pedal and hope to hell they hadn’t really seen him, even though he’d had a clear view of the fire in his wife’s eyes.

  “Aw, shit!” he muttered through his teeth as he turned by the Pot O’Gold sign and sped away from Maggody—and the wrath of God.

  Mrs. Jim Bob snapped her lips together and snatched her purse off the counter. Shoving Brother Verber into step, she hurried him out the door to her car and put him in the front seat. She then ran around to the driver’s side, frantically digging through her purse for the keys, and slid behind the wheel.

  “Did you see where he turned?” she growled at her passenger.

  “Up there at the sign,” her passenger managed to gasp. Preaching required fortitude, not haste, and he wasn’t accustomed to being escorted at such a pace.

  “He’s headed for sin,” Mrs. Jim Bob said as they drove down the highway at a terrifying speed. She gritted her teeth while she squealed around the corner, then relaxed a tad as she spotted the taillights in the distance. “I don’t know where he’s going, but I know it ain’t to church to do some repentance at the altar. We’re going to follow him all the way, Brother Verber, and catch him in the very act of wickedness.”

  That sounded like a good idea to Brother Verber, who’d had to rely on his imagination most of his life. That and magazines, which he’d read only so he could grasp the enormity of all the sinfulness in the world and be armed with righteous knowledge of what he, personally, was up against. And the movie he’d slipped into in Little Rock, when he’d been attending a convention, had provided a heap of righteous knowledge; he’d sat through it three times to get all the details. Or was it four times?

  “How’d he get out of the men’s room?” Mrs. Jim Bob muttered, mostly to herself. She pulled in her lips until they formed a perfect circle of symmetrical disapproval.

  Brother Verber wrenched his mind away from the cinema and took it upon himself to explain how God worked in the most puzzling ways, that sometimes God arranged for a sinner to be sorely tempted one final time before salvation was given.

  “But how’d he get out of the men’s room?”

  Brother Verber moved on to the mysterious ways God did this kind of thing when you weren’t looking. This was one of his favorite themes; he figured it would last until they got where they were going and caught Brother Jim Bob at his most degrading. The anticipation warmed Brother Verber until his voice flowed like golden honey dribbling out of an overturned jar.

  Mrs. Jim Bob curled her fingers around the steering wheel as she stared at the distant red lights.

  Despite the sudden exodus of a goodly number of Maggody residents, the town was by no means devoid of life. Raz Buchanon moved up the side of the highway, pausing to nail flyers on telephone poles or to tape them on dirty glass windows that had once displayed the wares of long-gone shops. He muttered continually under his breath, with pauses only to expel tobacco juice or to wipe the tears of grief off his concave cheeks. The few other pedestrians moved out of his path, motivated by past experiences.

  Down at Ruby Bee’s Bar and Grill, a handful of hungry regulars stood in a group outside the locked door. Everybody agreed it was damned peculiar that nobody was there, the lights off and the inside quieter than the restrooms at the high school when the principal walked in. After a certain amount of good-natured jibes, one brave soul went around the corner to the Flamingo Motel, although he gave only a sideways peek at Number Three. He returned to report

  Ruby Bee wasn’t home, neither. Everybody was right puzzled, but after a while they got in their trucks and drifted toward the Dairy Dee-Lishus to get something to eat.

  Estelle’s five o’clock appointment was downright indignant, having left work early especially to have a permanent. It was real rude of Estelle not to be there, she fumed, what with her cousin’s wedding on Saturday and all. The appointment scrawled a nasty note and stuck it in the handle of the screen door. She rapped on the window once more just to be on the safe side, then puffed away to call her cousin in Starley City and relate the outrage.

  Perkins saw Raz taping something on the window of Roy’s antique store. He kept his eyes firmly on the yeller line as he drove past in his rusted gray truck filled with sacks of layer grit.

  Joyce Lambertino put her arm over the back of the seat to slap at a whining child, but she didn’t even slow down. After four children, she had enough experience to do it in her sleep. The grocery list was taped on the dashboard; the wad of coupons clipped together in her lap. If the children kept up the current volume of whines and squabbles, she’d be forced to buy a box of animal crackers and open it as soon as they got inside the store, although it wasn’t on the budget this week. Larry Joe had told her to hold the grocery money to fifty dollars a week. She’d like to see him try to feed six mouths on that much and still buy laundry detergent and toilet paper, too. Her pleasure at the mental scene evaporated as the child on the seat next to her commenced to throw up all over the place.

  Dahlia unwrapped a candy bar with one hand, the other occupied with a bright orange Nehi can. Crinkle and whoosh, her two most favorite sounds in the whole world. Jim Bob wouldn’t be back for a long time, she thought complacently. If’n Mrs. Jim Bob and the old fart ever caught him, he might never come back. Would that mean she and Kevin would get the store? She called him over and asked him what he thought.

  Kevin gazed at his beloved, all those glorious pounds of her. His mouth watered as he thought about the undulating flesh beneath the blue tent, and all the ways he’d learned to make it ripple like it was in a summer breeze. Speechless with lust, he took her hand and began the arduous chore of tugging her to her feet.

  “What’s that?” Plover said, slamming on the brakes. “What kind of damn fool leaves a car in the middle of the road?”

  “A damn fool with a tree on his car,” I said. I couldn’t see anyway to drive around it, so I sweetly suggested we walk the rest of the way. An objection from the backseat died when I mentioned he could wait there until we got back. With Daniel Boone Plover at the head of the line, we took off down the road.

  Jim Bob was too pissed to swear as he slammed on the brakes. Goddamn fools going off somewhere and leaving their cars where other folks couldn’t get around them. He dug a flashlight from under the seat and took off down the road.

  Mrs. Jim Bob felt an unnatural word spring to her lips as she slammed on the brakes. Realizing Brother Verber would never forgive her if he knew she harbored such unholy thoughts, she clamped her lips together tighter than a vice. An irritated squeak sneaked through.

  “How most amazing to find these cars here,” Brother Verber said, unaware of the internal struggle going on beside him. “I wonder if all these drivers are engaging in some sort of black mass or devil worship where they all get naked and partake in group sex?”

  “We’d better go see,” Mrs. Jim Bob said as she got out of the car, but Brother Verber was a good step ahead of her. He was taking off down the road so fast she wasn’t sure she could keep up with him.

  The child stood gaping at the treasure trove awaiting greedy little fingers. The money was tucked away where the others would never find it, but here was a lot more stuff just waiting to be plucked off and carried away.

  14

  I grabbed Plover’s arm and yanked him to a halt. Then, thoroughly and totally bewildered, I whispered, “That’s Paulie’s police cruiser over there next to the barn.” Before I could choke out any more, Larry Joe and Roy stumbled into us, setting off a less-than-comical chain reaction that almost put all four of us on the ground. Once I’d recovered my balance, I hissed at them to wait and show
ed Plover the shadowy form with the telltale bubble on the top. “It’s Paulie’s; I’m almost sure of it. What in thunderation is going on?”

  “He’s your deputy,” Plover said distractedly, gaping at the cabin in front of us.

  It was hardly a picturesque Lincoln Log structure surrounded by tidy vegetable plots, whitewashed outbuildings, and animal enclosures—unless you counted the cabin in the last category. The light from windows and innumerable cracks splashed on rusted skeletons of cans and car parts, piles of the more organic variety, and endless scattered debris. The air was ripe with decay. The aftermath of a nuclear explosion came to mind, when only the terminally deformed and walking dead were still around to pick through garbage. A pig grunted on the doorstep, and a few emaciated chickens pecked feverishly for a grub in the baked-dirt surface of yard. The whole scene was pure Early American squalor.

  “Someone lives in that miserable thing?” Plover whistled softly through his teeth.

  I presumed that was rhetorical. “I just cannot see any reason for Paulie to be here. It doesn’t make a toad’s hair of sense. You said you thought he had a woman in the cruiser with him—” I stopped, my mouth open wide enough to trap a swarm of flies.

  There was someone not too far from us, someone who was hunkered down behind a bush watching Robin’s cabin. I screwed up my face and squinted real hard, but I couldn’t make out who it was, except it looked too big to be Paulie. I jabbed the Nameless Wonder in the ribs to get his attention, then pointed out the mysterious watcher in the woods. After cautioning Larry Joe and Roy to be quiet, I took out my gun and eased my way around one side while Plover went the other way.

  Once he was positioned, I stepped forward and tapped the figure (whom I had now recognized, being a graduate of the academy and all) smartly on the shoulder. “Psst! What in blazes do you think you’re doing, Ho?”

  “Arly?” Hobert Middleton gasped, clutching at his chest. “Lord, you liked to give me a heart attack!” His piggy eyes were round and yellowish in the darkness, like small harvest moons coming over the ridge. His voice wasn’t near that romantic. “Jesus, woman, don’t you know better than to sneak up behind a man like that!”

  “Now don’t you lay into me, Ho Middleton,” I said. “Why don’t you tell Sergeant Plover and me what the hell you’re doing hiding outside Robin Buchanon’s cabin? And don’t give me any more of that a-good-offense-is-the-best-defense crap! We’ve heard the whole story of the Drake kidnapping, and your role in it.”

  Ho stood up and brushed the dirt off his knees, making sure he got every last bit of it. I could almost hear the wheels spinning in his head, but I did want to hear his explanation. Plover looked interested, too, as did Larry Joe and Roy as they joined us. All we needed was a picnic basket and a babbling brook. All we got was the babble.

  “Well,” Ho said at last, “I guess you could say I’m here out of civic duty, to make one of those citizen’s arrests. I didn’t mean to give offense earlier, Arly, and I’m right relieved that you and the other police fellow are here to help me out.” His tongue flicked out to lick his lips, and he gave Larry Joe and Roy a cold look that could have stopped coffee halfway to the cup. “What happened was I chanced to see Carl Withers in the act of kidnapping some folks that are mighty dear to us all: Ruby Bee, Estelle, and Paulie Buchanon. I have to tell you I was shocked—”

  “Who?” I demanded in a muted screech.

  He repeated the list, and the identity of the kidnapper. It took several minutes to grasp what he had said, because it didn’t make a whit of sense. He kept on with his incredible story, while I sank back and concentrated on breathing. At some point I realized I was leaning on a warm body, but I wasn’t in any condition to do anything but lean and keep the lungs going.

  From about an inch away from my ear, Plover said, “Where are they now? Have you seen them through a window or heard any of them?”

  “And where’s Jim Bob?” I squeaked.

  Ho admitted he hadn’t seen or heard anybody and that, as far as he knew, Jim Bob was still in Maggody trying to talk to Senator Fiff about the trouble with a capital T. No, he hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Robin or Drake, and he didn’t have any clues to what was going on inside the nasty-looking cabin. No, he hadn’t heard any gunfire or screams, neither. He reckoned he’d been there thirty minutes.

  He joined Larry Joe and Roy at a distance for a whispered conference, while Plover and I alternately watched the cabin and made puzzled faces at each other. After a few minutes the moon rose, spreading white light across the yard. I wouldn’t have been too surprised if a passel of ghosts had wafted in for a dance amid the scraggly rows of com next to the house. The whole thing didn’t make any sense—not any. Well, maybe a little bit.

  I went over to Ho and poked a finger in his chest. “I don’t think I’m going to buy that story of yours just yet. According to Larry Joe and Roy, you went into town with Jim Bob this morning to do some business. Were you meeting the same fellow you met last night?”

  The tongue started flicking like a lizard’s. “I didn’t meet nobody last night, Arly. I went by my office to write up a credit form so I could settle up the last shipment of trucks. I didn’t have an appointment with anybody. And today I just happened to drive by Jaylee’s mobile home because … well, because I was thinking how sad it was for such a fine young woman to get murdered the way she did.”

  “Why, Hobert, what a softie you are under that shitheel exterior,” I said admiringly. “When did you hear of the tragedy?”

  “When I got to the lot this morning. Everybody was talking about it so much they couldn’t be bothered trying to sell cars.”

  “It must have been a real shock for you, too. I suppose you and Jaylee used to have a little something going when the credit forms were all filed away for the night?”

  He drew back, his fingers tugging at the end of his string tie. “I beg your pardon, Arly Hanks. I got the best reputation in the county, and I couldn’t risk it by courting a married woman, even if her husband was locked up tight in prison.”

  “Not anymore,” I pointed out, gesturing at the cabin. “Carl must have holed up in the mobile home last night and half of today, until he somehow got hold of Ruby Bee, Estelle, and Paulie. Did you know he was here, Ho? Is that why you drove by?”

  “How could I know that?” He gulped and said, his tongue was doing fifty miles per hour in a thirty-mile zone,”I’m not friendly with Carl Withers’s sort. I may have given him a job in the body shop a couple of years back, but I didn’t have him over for Sunday dinner just because of it. When he got arrested, I offered to help with a lawyer, which I’d do for any employee of Ho’s New and Used. That don’t mean I consider them my personal friends.”

  “I didn’t know you paid Carl’s lawyer bill,” I said, sucking on the inside of my cheek. You may be wondering why I wasn’t preoccupied with schemes to storm the cabin to rescue my mother, et al. It didn’t look like anybody was going anywhere anytime soon—that’s why. Ho’s squirmy narrative, on the other hand, was giving me all kinds of ideas. “That was right nice of you. Carl must have been grateful afterward, even though he pleaded guilty and got four years for his trouble.”

  Ho puckered up and tried to look modest. “He was, and Jaylee came up to me right after the trial with great big old tears in her eyes to thank me kindly for my generous support. I was right touched.”

  Plover chose this moment to butt in. “Especially when it was a car off your lot that Carl stole and wrecked. You must have been upset when you found out what he’d done.”

  “I was hurt to the quick, but I didn’t let that interfere with my duty to my little family of employees.”

  “What were you doing the night that Carl was arrested?” I inquired sweetly.

  “Why, I seem to recall I was home that night, maybe with a touch of the stomach virus. When the police called, I was tucked in bed with a thermometer and a
hot-water bottle.”

  “You was playing poker with us,” Roy said in a low voice. “In the back of my store. You and me, Larry Joe, Jim Bob, and some ol’ boy from over at Hasty that appreciates the opportunity to lose his spending money to us. You remember him, don’t you?”

  The squirming intensified. “Damn it, I do recollect a poker game that night,” Ho allowed with a modicum of grace, if not with much gratitude. “I was still there when the police called to give me the bad words, wasn’t I?”

  Roy’s smile was malicious. “Nope. You said Robin’s latest batch of hooch was made out of skunk piss and was eating through your gizzard so bad you was going home to bed. Jim Bob offered to drive you, but you were too ornery by that time, having donated some of your own money to the house. I guess I thought you were driving the Caddie that night. Didn’t know you lied to the police.” He glanced at Plover and me to see if we had figured it out by now.

  I had. “It was right nice of Carl to drag himself out of bed and take the rap for you, Ho. How much did it cost?”

  There was a ponderous sort of silence, while everybody thought on that one or passed the time with mental estimates. Ho finally threw in the towel with a drawn-out sigh.

  “A thousand up front and two thousand when he got out. I didn’t expect him to go AWOL from prison and show up right when we had to worry about that EPA fellow from Dallas and Starley City’s smartass plan to dump shit in Boone Creek.”