Much Ado in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  Ruby Bee had been imagining what-all Arly would say, and the prospect struck a real sour chord. “I guess we can do this a while longer. I got five minutes left on my shift, and then it’ll be your turn.” Smirking under cover of darkness, she put the glass back against the wall and leaned into it. “Wait! I hear something. I think she’s getting ready to do something, because she’s walking across the room. Maybe she’s going to call someone!”

  Estelle cupped her ear against the wall, wishing they’d brought two wineglasses. Just her luck to be on break when things got interesting.

  It was getting dark as Carolyn opened the door and peered into the motel parking lot. She’d thought moments earlier that she’d heard voices, but the parking lot was empty and the units on either side were dark. Which was of small comfort, because it meant either the room was haunted or she was losing her mind. A few months back her therapist had listed symptoms of stress disorder, but she hadn’t mentioned hearing whispers emanating from walls.

  She took a final look at the lot, then closed the door and sat back on the chair to scribble more thoughts about Johnna Mae’s defense.

  It was getting dark and the sandwiches were gone. Dahlia’s rear end ached something awful, and her stomach was growling like an earthquake. Her throat was strained so bad from howling for Kevin that all she could do was croak his name every now and then.

  Big tears rolled down her cheeks. If she ever found him, she thought with a sigh, she was going to wring his scrawny neck. Here she was, sitting for nearly two days on a rotten log in order to rescue him, and he hadn’t shown the decency to come forward and get hisself rescued.

  Mebbe the woman lawyer was right. Men were no damn good. Oh, they strutted around and bragged about all the fish they almost caught and said how they’d hang the moon for their girlfriends, but in the end they were nothing but ungrateful brutes who wanted slam-bam sex all the time. Dahlia’s brow wrinkled like a bloodhound’s as she considered her last thought. Kevin wasn’t like that, not by a long shot. He was gentle and tender, just like in the movies.

  “Kevvvin,” she tried to say, but it came out sounding like the plaintive call of a lonely bullfrog deep in the swamp.

  It was getting real dark when the blue flashing light came on behind him. Bruno snarled under his breath, but he knew enough to pull over and jerk the helmet off his head before the pig walked up to him.

  “Driver’s license and registration,” the trooper said, resting one hand on his gun. “Are you aware you were going eighty-three miles per hour in a fifty-five zone?”

  Bruno couldn’t believe the pig was so fucking dumb as not to see the speedometer in plain sight on the bike’s handlebars. He decided not to say as much, and fumbled for his wallet in his back pocket. His hand slid in and out real quick because his pocket was fucking empty of anything, including wallet, which contained both license and registration.

  “Gee, I must have left it at home, sir,” Bruno said through clenched teeth.

  “Is that so? Will you please debike and come with me?”

  It was dark enough to require a light, but Truda Oliver was enjoying the gloomy ambiance as she wandered through her house. In her hands she carried a metal box. It had once been locked, but a brief session with a hammer and a screwdriver had taken care of that minor annoyance. How chauvinistic to think women couldn’t handle tools, she thought with a smile.

  She went into the living room and shook her head. The stain on the carpet was still visible. Grape juice was impossible to get out. She’d tried to keep Mrs. Jim Bob’s brat from running through the room with a glassful of potential disaster, but her lack of success was right there on the carpet. She’d hoped Mrs. Jim Bob would offer to have the carpet cleaned, but she might as well have hoped for Mrs. Jim Bob to engage in spontaneous combustion.

  Truda opened the lid and stroked the tidy stacks of twenty-dollar bills. It was so fortunate that Johnna Mae had warned her that Brandon intended to blackmail Sherman, if he wasn’t already doing so. Johnna Mae had suggested there might be a box of cash somewhere in the house. Truda had gone straight to the den, and now she had this lovely box of money. There was enough to recarpet the entire house. There was enough to put in a dishwasher so her hands wouldn’t look so red and chapped all the time. There was even enough to have Perkins’s eldest clean, and for years to come.

  But Sherman wouldn’t like that. He probably planned to use the money for a golf cart or a trip to one of those fancy golf resorts. He’d disappear every morning and not return until it was so dark he couldn’t find his golf ball on the fairway, much less in the rough or in a sand trap. From what he said, he spent plenty of time in the last two places. Sherman was a duffer, and she was nothing but an aging golf widow.

  Truda told herself she deserved better. Carolyn had told her that she had every right to finish her college degree, or to find a remote place and write the children’s books she’d dreamed about for years. Carolyn had said all kinds of things in that vein, until Truda started believing them herself.

  And now, as if via divine interference, she had the money to follow her dreams, to seek her destiny, to find total fulfillment. Divine in that somehow she’d known to search every nook and cranny of Sherman’s den. Human in that he’d hidden the box where anyone with a crowbar could find it.

  Truda went into the bedroom to pack her suitcase but turned right around and went back through the living room, detouring through the kitchen to get her purse and keys, and meticulously locked the front door on her way out. Who needed a bunch of poorly made dresses and cheap plastic accessories from a discount house? Truda Longspur-Oliver, as she decided on the spot to call herself in the future, was going to wear designer dresses and a full-length mink coat.

  It was so dark that Sherman Oliver tripped over a branch and went sprawling face first in the rough. As he pushed himself up, his hand brushed something smooth and hard.

  “I found my ball,” he called to the other members of the foursome, who were almost invisible out on the fairway. “I’ll play it from here.”

  “It’s blacker than the inside of a Baptist church, old man. You wouldn’t be able to see it if you made a hole in one. We’re going back to the clubhouse for a drink. You coming?”

  “Hell no.” Sherman stood over the golf ball, which was as likely to be his as the last damn fool’s, and swung back the club. Bunch of damn sissies, he thought as he chopped down on the ball. He moved a few inches to where the ball had bounced and chopped again at it. They were on the seventeenth hole, for Pete’s sake. Bunch of sissies wouldn’t even finish out the round.

  It was dim in the basement. Plover beckoned to the waiter and asked Mrs. Gadwall if she wanted another martini. When she nodded he instructed the waiter, smiling across the table.

  “You certainly know a lot about junk bonds,” he said, turning on the dimples until his cheeks hurt. “I’m very, very impressed.”

  Mrs. Gadwall giggled.

  It was seriously dark as Staci Ellen walked down the alley, the tiny kitty cradled in her arms. The moonlight helped, of course, and she was not some goofy girl who was afraid of the dark, or of a bunch of dilapidated fences and smelly garbage cans.

  The sweet little thing mewed, and she scratched its little head. “I’ll find your mama,” she said gently so’s not to startle the kitty. “You’re too little to have come very far, and I can’t just let you stay lost out here where some mean old dog might gobble you up in one bite. Gosh, though, I don’t know how I’m going to find your mama out here with nothing but garbage cans.”

  She was still talking to the kitty when a bobbing light came across one of the backyards. She almost screamed before remembering she wasn’t a scaredy-cat, no offense intended to her companion. It took her a minute to catch her breath and say, “Hello, there. Are you looking for a lost kitty?”

  Miss Una gasped. It took her a minute to catch her breath, too, and say, “How ever did you know the purpose of my mission?”

  “I found
her back that way,” Staci Ellen said. She joined the elderly woman at the gate and passed over the kitty. “I was worried sick about what to do with her. I knew I couldn’t leave her out here by her lonesome, where some nasty dog might hurt her, but I didn’t want to go across people’s backyards and right up to their kitchen doors to ask.”

  “Oh, you are an angel. I’ve scolded Martin so many times about straying from the yard, but he is just as stubborn as he can be. Aren’t you, you runaway rascal?” Miss Una rubbed her cheek against the kitty’s head.

  “So she’s a he and his name is Martin? My father’s name is Martin, Martin Quittle. He’s not a kitty, though; he’s more of a sign painter.”

  “Isn’t that something? My Martin is named after President Martin Van Buren. There is a familiar connection, although it’s convoluted after all these generations. Miss Quittle, I’d like to repay you for your kindness and courage. I would be honored if you would join Martin and me for a cup of tea. That way you can meet all my kitties.”

  Staci Ellen hesitated for a moment, wondering if Ms. Hotshot With a Hyphen was worried about her by now. She decided that she didn’t care. “That would be very nice, thank you. Can I carry Martin? You know, the way his whiskers shoot out sort of reminds me of my father. Isn’t that hysterical?”

  Miss Una agreed as they went into the house.

  Raz Buchanon squinted at the much creased bank statement, but for the life of him he couldn’t find the damn fool charges listed anywhere. It seemed to him that if’n they took his money, they ought to have to say so right on the paper instead of just telling him about it to his face. He considered the wisdom of approaching Miss Una one more time and asking where the damn fool charges were, then threw the paper down and reached for his tobacco can. Weren’t much sense in that, he thought as he scratched Marjorie behind the left ear, which she loved most of all.

  Marjorie was ecstatic.

  13

  I called the sheriff Monday morning and we decided to hold off on any further charges against Johnna Mae, mostly because we didn’t have any evidence and the DA was a stickler about such things. All we knew about prints on the metal wastebasket was that they hadn’t been made by Johnna Mae, Sherman Oliver, or Brandon Bernswallow. Plover and I had compared the partial from the kerosene can with the prints of the above mentioned printees, and we hadn’t found any promising similarities. I admitted that Kevin and Dahlia were still missing and I was becoming increasingly worried about them. I declined to discuss Ruby Bee’s and Estelle’s latest caper, because I knew how Harve would respond and the guffaws were more than I could face on an empty stomach. He said to hang on until we got some more goodies from the state lab, told me to have a nice day, and rang off.

  I decided to play fast and loose with the PD budget and called the lab in Little Rock. I was transferred to four different departments and spent a total of nine minutes on hold, listening to saccharinized old Beatles melodies. When I finally got the medical examiner on the line, he told me he was up to his goddamn neck in corpses and I was going to have to wait my turn.

  I was grinning at the image when Raz Buchanon stomped into the PD. His cheek bulged dangerously, so I hastily went into the back room and found a coffee can kept for such emergencies.

  “Much obliged,” Raz said as he let a golden thread of amber dribble into the can. “I want to ask you something, Arly. You may not know the answer, and I’d be mighty surprised if you did.” He flashed his sparse brown teeth at me so I’d know my abysmal ignorance wouldn’t offend him none.

  “I’ll give it my best shot, Raz. But if it has anything to do with show sows, you might have better luck at the co-op in Starley City.”

  “I don’t reckon it does. It has to do with bankin’ practices.”

  “Again, Raz, it’s not my field of expertise. Why don’t you take it up with Miss Una, or better yet, Sherman Oliver?” I gave him a smile meant to send him away, in that the growing redolence in the PD was affecting me in the same manner as Harve’s brayish laughter. It was obvious to those with noses that Raz and Marjorie had been watching a lot of television together.

  “Miss Una’s got a sharp tongue these days. I dun tried over and over for her to explain things to me, but I never could make out what she was saying. And I don’t care for that Oliver fellow. The sight of his knees in those baggy shorts is enough to make a growed man cry.” He took a grubby piece of paper from somewhere in his denim overalls and put it on my desk. “I just want you to take a gander at this, Arly. You see if you can find where it says I paid a depository charge.”

  “There’s no point in me looking at it. I wouldn’t recognize a depository charge if it bit me on the ankle. My bank charges a service fee if my account drops below a certain level, and they go berserk with overdraft charges if I screw up and write a few bad checks, but they don’t have anything called a depository charge. Are you sure that’s the right term?”

  “Hell, no, I ain’t sure,” he said, scratching his head. He spat into the can and shrugged. “It’s not that this charge is so all-fired much. It’s the principle of the thing. I can afford this twenty-five- or fifty-cent charge when I deposit my Social Security and my veteran’s disability, but I think they should have to put it somewhere on this paper so I can balance my checkbook every month and figger my taxes at the end of the year.”

  “I wish I could help you, but I can’t, especially in the middle of a murder investigation. If you can’t understand Miss Una’s explanations, why don’t you go to the main bank in Farberville and let them have a turn? Ask to speak to a Mrs. Gadwall; she seemed pleasant.”

  Raz chawed over my suggestion, stuffed the paper back in his overalls, and asked if it was hot enough for me, or would be by noon, anyways. I assured him that it would be by noon, anyways, and sent him away before I dumped the vile contents of the coffee can over his head.

  Having savaged the air conditioner until it produced a mild breeze, I sat in my shabby chair and once again played fast and loose with the budget by calling all seventeen miles to the barracks. I survived a round of “I’ll see if he’s in,” and “He doesn’t seem to be in his office,” and “Please hold; I’ll transfer you” with my customary grace and charm.

  When Plover finally came on the line, I said, “Well?”

  “Well what?” he drawled, clearly amused by his quick wit.

  “Well, did you have a chance to talk to Mrs. Gadwall about the portfolio? This call’s costing money, you know, and I’m saving up for a new radar gun that picks on European imports.”

  “I did indeed speak to the woman, and I now know more about junk bonds and grade B, double B, and even C bonds. She promised to study the portfolio this morning, if she could handle it. It seems martinis give her horrible hangovers, and she drank them straight through dinner and well into the night. The bartender was whelmed.”

  “I’m delighted to know you had an entertaining evening,” I said coldly. “I had a marvelous time listening to Kevin Buchanon’s parents squabble and then driving by Ruby Bee’s a dozen times to gaze at an empty parking lot. And I mustn’t forget a shower and a can of soup. The crackers were on the stale side, but they were passable. Anyway, I’ve got Kevin’s prints on a plastic cup, so you can send someone to pick it up. As for Ruby Bee and Estelle, put out an APB and mention that the two are armed and dangerous. Maybe some weak-kneed rookie will shoot them, thus saving me the cost of the bullets.”

  “You’d better spend more time on border patrol, Chief; you’re losing your residents at an alarming rate. Maybe I can find a roll of barbed wire and we can set up a blockade at both ends of the city limits. Only to keep folks from escaping, of course, since no one in his right mind would want to come in.”

  “Did I tell you how funny you are?” I waited a second, then said, “There’s a reason,” and hung up. I sighed, jabbed the back of my head trying to adjust a loose bobby pin, propelled myself up and out the door, and walked down the highway to Ruby Bee’s mumbling under my breath every ste
p of the way.

  Estelle’s station wagon wasn’t parked out front—naturally, but I banged through the door and stomped across the dance floor, around the end of the bar, and into the kitchen, where I found Ruby Bee and a man in a grease-stained jumpsuit arguing about the estimate to fix the vent.

  “Go away,” I said to the repairman.

  He looked at my expression and my badge and started for the back door. Ruby Bee grabbed his arm. “Don’t take one more step, Peewee Thrasher. I’ve waited three darn weeks for you, and you ain’t going anywhere.”

  “Yes, he is,” I said, folding my arms and glaring.

  “No, he ain’t,” Ruby Bee said, hanging on for dear life and glaring.

  “Yes—he—is. You and I have important things to discuss. Had you been in residence last night; we could have conducted the discussion at that time. I not only drove by here several times, I also called your unit until well after midnight. You chose to lurk under a bush all night.”

  “This kitchen’s hotter than a final-night revival sermon. I’ve waited three weeks to get the vents repaired, all the while slaving over a hot stove so folks like you wouldn’t whine about how hungry you are. Peewee’s here to fix the vents and he’s gonna do it right now.” Her face was turning redder by the word, and her voice was climbing toward double-digit decibels. The repairman’s head was going back and forth as if he were at Wimbledon, and I suspected he wished he were—or anywhere but where he was, for that matter.

  “We are going to talk about your presence in the Bernswallows’ library yesterday,” I said. “He’ll have to come back later.”

  “It took three weeks to get him here and he is not going to leave without fixing the vents, even if he charges a poor widow woman an arm and a leg to do it!”

  We were still snarling and glaring when the kitchen door swung open and Estelle hurried in. Ignoring the ambiance, she said, “Well, it’s about time you showed your face, Arly. We’ve got a problem. I’d even say we’ve got us a tragedy in the simmering.”