by Joan Hess
“I’ll give you the medical examiner’s number,” I said, “but he’ll have to tell you the procedure. It probably depends on locating Tommy’s next of kin.”
Amanda took a carry-on bag out of the closet. I held my breath until she pulled out a silver flask. “This is my emergency stash, and now’s definitely the time. I can’t think straight. Want a drink? It’s a cognac.”
“No thanks.” I waited until she’d poured herself several inches.
“I need to ask you about a bet between Dennis and Tommy. It concerns the tournament.”
“That silly thing?” She laughed as she sat in a chair and crossed her legs. “How on earth did you hear about it? No, let me think. We were at the club…” Her eyes narrowed as she took a sip of cognac. “Janna Coulter. Tommy said something about seeing Natalie at the first tee, and Janna never lets her stray too far. She told you, right? Janna has absolutely no sense of humor. The kindest thing I can say about her is that she’s single-minded, in every sense.”
“The source doesn’t matter. It’s my understanding that the bet was based on whether or not Tommy made a hole-in-one. If he lost, he had to pay Dennis a sum of money. If he won, then your, uh, sexual cooperation was the payoff.” I felt myself blushing, but Amanda didn’t so much as blink.
“Tommy was trying to needle me, that’s all. I pretended to be outraged and stomped out of the room like a diva. Dennis admitted later that they’d joked about it a little longer, but that was the end of it. I accepted his apology and bought myself a pair of Manolo Blahnik stiletto heels in Tulsa the next day. I have no idea why you think it was anything more than juvenile blustering.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but it does give either you or Dennis a motive to kill Tommy.”
Amanda put down the cup and began to towel-dry her hair.
“Give me a break. I just explained that this so-called bet was a farce. Dennis totally forgot about it until he saw the credit card statement. The shoes were expensive.” She peered at me through auburn straggles. “Even if there was a bet, I can assure you that they knew I had no intention of honoring it. I love my husband, Chief Hanks, but not enough to debase myself. I survived an ugly divorce in my twenties. I worked days and went to night classes to get a degree in communications, and I did it without anyone’s help. Do I sound like the sort of woman who’d allow herself to be sold to the highest bidder?”
I thought this over while she poured herself another shot of cognac. From what I’d been told, she’d been drinking since ten o’clock in the morning, first at the golf course, then in Proodle’s room, and now in her motel room. She appeared to be sober and articulate, but practiced drinkers could be sly.
“after Tommy won the stoplight pool,” I said, “you and your husband lingered behind with him. What happened?”
“Nothing,” she said as she shook her tangled mass of hair.
“Tommy asked Dennis if he knew anything about hooking up a boat trailer. They talked about it for a few minutes, then Tommy invited us to go sit in his stupid boat. It’s like he was the center of his own universe, so what ever made him happy was supposed to make everybody else happy, too. He was walking down the road when Dennis and I left.”
“Did you see anyone lurking, maybe behind the motel sign or next to the bar?”
“It was dark and we were exhausted,” she began, then hesitated. “You ought to ask Natalie Hotz. She and Tommy were awfully cozy this weekend, like sweet peas in a pod. I’ve been wondering about the two of them since a tournament last year at Hilton Head. I heard rumors they played nine holes in the moonlight.”
I tucked the gossip in the back of my mind for further consideration.
“Do you have any idea when Dennis will be back?”
“I don’t even know where he went. Some of us were having a drink in Phil’s room when Dennis just got up and left. I came here to wash the stench of smoke out of my hair. I was getting ready to take a nap when you knocked.”
“You’re not worried about him?”
“Not at all. He was this way after his mother died last year. Depressed, but not suicidal or anything like that. There was one thing. He wasn’t talking much, but he kept glancing around the room at people’s faces. All of a sudden he got this weird expression, like he’d come up with an idea. I tried to follow him, but I had to fend off Jim Bob. By the time I got outside, Dennis was gone.”
“Do you think he suspected someone?” I asked.
“You’ll have to ask him yourself. I’ll tell him to call you. Is there anything else, Chief Hanks? I have a splitting headache, and I need to lie down.”
I couldn’t think of anything, so I went out to the parking lot between the two buildings. Janna’s car was parked in front of number three, and the Wassons’ car in front of number four. Tommy’s car, the Gilberts’ car, and Phil Proodle’s car were in their respective places. Dennis’s whereabouts were unknown, but I could sympathize with his need to be alone to deal with his grief.
I left my car in front of Ruby Bee’s and walked to the PD, zigzagging between puddles. Roy had gone inside, I noted. Since the husbands were still outcasts, they could be in his back room plotting how to win the bass boat. They couldn’t write the test answers on their palms or hide crib sheets under their shirt cuffs.
No one was playing by himself, and each hole had a monitor as well. Mrs. Jim Bob was a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t stupid.
I, on the other hand, was feeling stupider than a flour beetle.
What could have occurred to Dennis in Proodle’s room? I hadn’t really seen who all had been there. Even if Dennis had an epiphany, it could have been provoked by an absence as easily as a presence. If Amanda had told me the truth. There was no reason to assume she had, since no one else had bothered to.
I was doodling on my pad and dreaming about pineapple upside-down cake when Les called.
“Got a good one for you,” he said. “The license plate number you gave me indicates the car belongs to Rosalie Wicket. Mrs. Wicket lives in a nursing home in Yazoo City, Mississippi. I called over there, and whoever I talked to said that Mrs. Wicket is in her mid-nineties, has outlived three husbands, wanders the halls wearing nothing but pearls, and lusts after Mr. Abelmeister, who resides across the hall and still has his teeth. She swears she doesn’t own a car.”
“But she does,” I said, perplexed. “It’s parked in Mrs. Jim Bob’s garage. I sat in it, for pity’s sake. Mrs. Wicket may be senile, but I’m not.” Or so I hoped. “It was a Mississippi plate. Maybe I got the number mixed up.”
“Chrysler Imperial Crown Coupe, right? That’s Mrs. Wicket’s car, whether or not she knows it. I couldn’t get much more out of the nurse’s aide, except that Mrs. Wicket hasn’t had a visitor in the ten years the aide’s been working at the Sunset Valley Retirement Home. If you want to call Yazoo City, have at it. I’m going home.”
I found the page with my notes from the interviews with Frederick and added the information about Mrs. Wicket. The car had not been reported stolen or totaled in an accident, so I had to presume that Mrs. Wicket had simply forgotten about it. If there was an explanation, Frederick hadn’t volunteered it.
I reread my notes on Kale and Kathleen Wasson. I had a fairly good idea about what Kale had been doing, which was partying like a deranged debutante. His mother was oddly unaware of this, either because she was delusional or because she was profoundly unintelligent. The previous night he’d been in the bar, and afterward in front of Ruby Bee’s trying to shatter the stoplight. Hadn’t she noticed the empty bed?
As for Kale, I had yet to take his statement. I wondered if there might be something between him and Natalie. In public, she snubbed him, but it could be a ruse. They might have been alone Friday night, which would explain her disarray when she got back to the motel room. Kathleen would have lied to give him an alibi.
And then lied about the previous night—even though she knew there were witnesses? Amanda had implied that Natalie and Tommy were overly familiar.
If Kale was besotted with Natalie, he had a motive to kill Tommy. Chivalry and/or jealousy, for starters.
So did Janna. So did everybody in Maggody. Everybody in the county, for all I knew.
I couldn’t revisit the scene of the crime, since it was behind locked doors in Farberville. I wasn’t in the mood to scramble all over Cotter’s Ridge to find Dennis. The only thing that I wanted to do was settle back and take a nap.
It proved to be an excellent choice.
• • •
Estelle had her elbows on the bar, her cupped hands holding her chin. She idly watched Ruby Bee, who was washing glasses in the sink and setting them on a towel to dry. The lunch crowd had gone except for the fellow in the back. She wondered if there was any reason to go find out about him, then decided that it wasn’t worth her while. She stirred her coffee. “You’re gonna have to tell her, Rubella Belinda Hanks,” she said for the umpteenth time.
“Mind your own business.” Ruby Bee set down the last glass and let the water drain out of the sink. “She’s better off not knowing.”
“She has a right to know,” Estelle persevered. “What if she decides to get a copy of her birth certificate? All you have to do is fill out a request form and send a check to Little Rock.” She waggled her finger at Ruby Bee. “Don’t pretend it couldn’t happen. She might want a passport so she can take a vacation in Mexico or Hawaii. Mark my words, sooner or later she’ll find out the truth.”
Ruby Bee began to wipe the surface of the bar as she mulled it over. “Now’s not the time,” she said at last. “She’s up to her neck with this murder investigation.”
“That’s exactly why it is the time.”
“I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
“At the beginning, that’s how,” Estelle said mercilessly. “You were nineteen, and it was your first time away from home…”
• • •
I was lost in a dream about hail-sized golf balls when the phone rang. I rubbed my eyes as I picked up the receiver. “PD,” I said, glancing at the ceiling in case I needed to take shelter under my desk. I knew the drill, having practiced once a month throughout elementary school. It was always disappointing when nothing happened.
“Chief Hanks?” said Amanda. “Am I disturbing you?”
“What’s the matter? Has Dennis come back?”
“No, and I’m worried. He’s been gone for more than four hours. I went to the bar, but nobody’s seen him.” Her voice thickened.
“What if he went up that mountain and broke his leg or sprained his ankle?”
Déjà vu all over again. First Natalie, and now Dennis. Clearly golfers had more difficulty than ducks when it came to keeping in a row. Then again, I’d never dealt with drunken ducks.
I looked out the window. The sky was once again steel gray, and the light had an eerie green tinge. A second storm was moving in. If there was more rain, the golf tournament would be delayed yet another day, and I’d be doomed to listening to lies and evasions until my brain trickled out my ears. “It’s too early to get alarmed, Amanda. Dennis may have been taken in by a church lady and is currently being subjected to tea and cookies. Sit tight and I’ll make some calls.”
“How can I when Dennis might be lost? He’s all I have. I don’t have any family, and I don’t have any close friends. Well, there is Jame, but I can’t get hold of him.”
“Jame?” I echoed.
“My hairstylist. He’s on a cruise with his partner. He’s very good, by the way. Remind me to give you his number. He could do miracles with your hair.”
“My hair doesn’t want to walk on water,” I said. “Give me fifteen minutes to see if I can locate Dennis. I’ll either call you back or come over there.”
I called all the wives and dowagers, with the exception of Mrs. Jim Bob, who was liable to be comatose. None of them claimed to have seen Dennis, although there was a remote possibility that one of them had locked him in her basement. (Grendal Buchanon had kept her sister in the root cellar for six months before anyone noticed, and another three months before the family called the sheriff’s department.)
I walked across the road to Roy’s antiques shop. In the back room, the tontine was having an official meeting that involved cards, poker and potato chips, beer, and overflowing ashtrays.
Larry Joe was asleep on a sofa, and Big Dick was snoring in a recliner.
“Has anyone seen Dennis Gilbert?” I asked from the doorway, unwilling to fight through the pungent haze.
My presence was not met with cordial smiles. Roy slapped down his cards and said, “In Proodle’s room, a while back. Not since then.”
Jim Bob raked in a mound of chips. “Does it look like we’re running a fuckin’ babysitting ser vice?”
“Has anyone seen him since Proodle’s party?” I demanded more loudly.
“He took off like a bat outta hell,” Tam said as he popped open a beer. “You aimin’ to deal anytime soon, Jeremiah? The cards are starting to grow moss.”
I went into the room and snatched the deck out of Jeremiah’s hand. “I want everybody’s attention. Did Dennis say anything before he left?”
“Don’t reckon he could have if he tried,” said Ruddy. “He was damn close to mewling like a baby. His eyes was full of tears. I figured he went outside to puke, which was fine with me. Whenever my dog pukes in the house, Cora makes me get on my hands and knees and clean it up.”
“Anyone else notice him when he left?”
Earl looked up at me. “He was real upset. He was mumbling to himself, mouthing the word ‘Tommy’ over and over again.”
Roy took out his pipe and a tobacco pouch. “I was surprised he could stand up, much less make it out the door. He damn near knocked over one of those college boys fawning all over Amanda. Didn’t act like he’d even seen him.”
“Drunk as a skunk,” said Jim Bob, remembering that he was supposed to be helping me solve the case.
I put down the deck and went outside. Lightning flickered beyond the crest of Cotter’s Ridge. Surely Dennis wasn’t so intoxicated that he was unaware of the approaching storm. I continued to Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill. A trio of good ol’ boys nodded politely at me as I walked by the booth. I pretended not to notice the bottle in a brown bag. Estelle gave me an unusually hard look as I sat down next to her.
“Has Dennis Gilbert been in here this afternoon?” I asked.
Ruby Bee came out of the kitchen, then froze. “What do you want?”
“I’m hunting for Dennis Gilbert,” I said, momentarily unnerved by her show of hostility. “His wife’s worried.”
Estelle put her hand on my shoulder as if I were the one behaving like a startled cat. “Amanda came in a few minutes ago and asked the same thing.” Her grip tightened until I could feel her fingernails dig into my flesh. “You should go talk to her right away.”
Wondering if Dennis was a prisoner in the kitchen, I glanced at Ruby Bee, who was more deeply rooted than a stump and about as friendly. “Yeah, I’ll do that. See you later.” I gave her a chance to respond, then went out back and walked slowly along the gravel lot toward the door of number six. It was not unthinkable that Ruby Bee and Estelle were responsible for my latest missing person; on one occasion they had participated in a conspiracy to hold a bureaucrat hostage. Anything was possible.
I noticed the tape on the door of Tommy’s room had again come loose and was puddled like a bright yellow rattlesnake. As I gathered it up, I saw a smear on the step. A dark brown smear, as in dried blood.
I opened the door cautiously, listening for a gasp or a telltale creak. I took a step inside, then shrank back as I saw Dennis Gilbert’s body on the bed. Blood had soaked the pillow and splattered on the bedspread, the carpet, and the wall next to the bed.
The back of his head looked as gruesome as Tommy’s had.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, closed my eyes, and concentrated on breathing slowly until I could trust myself. I inched around the bed to get a better look at Dennis’s slack face an
d filmy eyes. There was no point in checking for a pulse, but I forced myself to lift his wrist. His skin was still warm, his hand flaccid.
I made sure no one was hiding in the bathroom or the closet, then called Harve. I told him what I’d discovered and then, after he finished sputtering, said, “I don’t care if the score’s tied. You’re the Stump County sheriff, not the referee. Call McBeen on your way out the door.”
“Umpire,” he growled.
“Is that German?”
“Baseball has umpires. Football has referees.”
“That is so good to know, Harve. I’ve been sending my résumé to the wrong people all these years. I’ll expect you and McBeen in half an hour, at the Flamingo Motel behind Ruby Bee’s.”
I went outside and leaned against Tommy’s car. Amanda came to the door of her room and said, “Chief Hanks? Have you found out something about Dennis? Is he having tea and cookies somewhere? If he is, he’s in big trouble when he gets back. I’ve been crawling the walls. I could just kill him!”
I wanted to tell her she was a tad too late for that. “I’m afraid I have some bad news,” I said gently as I herded her back into the room. I tried to glide over the gory details, but she seemed able to visualize the scene on her own. Her face turned chalky white as she sank to the bed and began to whimper like a wounded animal.
I fluttered over her for a minute, then gave up and called the barroom. Ruby Bee’s chilliness melted when I told her where I was and why. In the background, I heard Estelle volunteer to administer first aid. I suggested that a bottle of sherry might serve better than a tourniquet.
As soon as I saw Estelle march out the back door, I returned to Tommy’s room. I was not surprised to see a bloodied golf club in one corner. The carpet was scuffed from all the guests on Friday night. I doubted footprints could even be differentiated. Dennis’s face looked serene, as though he’d dozed off. There were no defensive marks on his arms or knuckles. I wondered if he, like Tommy, had been too drunk to fight back.