Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 02 (23 page)

Estelle looked in the opposite direction. "Let's not cross the Brooklyn Bridge until we come to it. Between the two of us we don't have near enough money to resemble a ransom payment, and I for one don't intend to end up in the county old folks' home. Besides, maybe we'll find Baby before Arly comes back from wherever she is and starts getting all haughty about how you lost the baby."

"How I lost the baby? It seems to me that you put the baby out in the car and said he'd be just fine by his little self. You were so all-fired sure there weren't any Gypsies on the road. You were plumb full of confidence that Madam Celeste would identify the father. You were -- "

"What do you think she meant?" Estelle interrupted, not enjoying the drift of Ruby Bee's remarks.

Ruby Bee made a rude little noise to let Estelle know just what she thought of the diversionary tactic, then shook her head. "Lordy, I don't know. Celeste claimed she saw a list, but she couldn't come up with any idea where in tarnation there'd be such a thing. We both agree that the hospital's out, and the welfare office hasn't sent anyone to Robin's cabin in a coon's age. So who has a list?"

"It doesn't make any sense," Estelle said. "I was wondering if we ought to go back out there and ask the madam if she has any visions of where to find Baby, but most likely she still won't answer the door."

They sat in silence for a while, considering options and lists and what to say to Arly when she showed up -- which she would, sooner or later. They almost leaped out of their respective skins when the jukebox blared into life and David Allen Wainright joined them at the bar.

"Any word from Arly?" he asked, once he had a beer in front of him and a bowl of popcorn within reach.

"Not recently," Ruby Bee said cagily. "How about you? Did you have any luck interviewing the Buchanon children today?"

He explained how they'd gone off somewhere, and how Mrs. Jim Bob wasn't exactly chewing her fingernails or sweating bullets over their disappearance. He then went on to say that in a way he felt responsible, but he couldn't figure out anything to do about it except have another beer.

Not quite willing to admit the whole truth, Ruby Bee told him how she and Estelle had consulted Madam Celeste concerning the delicate issue of paternity -- not that she'd doubted David Allen's professional abilities, mind you, but it never hurt to cover all the bases. Estelle butted in to repeat Celeste's murky pronouncement about a list, and how it didn't make a whit of sense. David Allen was forced to agree.

They had a companionable beer, and then he wandered off. Once the door closed, Estelle jabbed her finger in the air.

"Arly shouldn't have turned over those poor orphans to Mrs. Jim Bob in the first place," she said. "It's no wonder they ran off when they had the opportunity, what with her Bible-thumping and selfrighteous sermonettes and all. Not to mention her pie crust, which personally I find soggy."

"Arly's not going to be pleased," Ruby Bee said with a sigh. "Now all five of the orphans are lost. She'll be fit to be tied when she finds out. She may have my good looks, but she sure does have her daddy's temperament. She'll go on and on about how we wouldn't have lost Baby if we hadn't consulted Madam Celeste, and she'll also claim we were interfering in her investigation by doing so -- even though we weren't."

Estelle let out a sigh of her own. "Are you sure LaBelle won't give you any hints about when Arly gets back? I might feel the need to go into Farberville and buy an aqua uniform."

"You're not running out on me, you coward! It was your idea to begin with."

"You're the one who insisted on keeping Baby," Estelle pointed out. "If you'd let him go to Mrs. Jim Bob's house with the others -- "

"What'd you say earlier about Mrs. Jim Bob?"

"I said her pie crust was soggy. Now, if you'd let Baby go -- "

"Something else," Ruby Bee said excitedly. "You said something about Mrs. Jim Bob thumping her Bible, remember?"

Estelle was tiring of not getting out a single sentence without all the time being cut off. "I may have made such a remark, but I don't see why that gives you the right to blurt out anything that comes into your head."

"What's in a Bible?"

"The Old Testament and the New Testament, Miz Feathers-for-Brains. Chapters and verses like 'Thou shall not interrupt thy friends when thy friends is making a point."

"What else is in a Bible?" Ruby Bee continued, her eyes bright enough to compete with the jukebox. "Right in the beginning?"

"I'm not sure I remember my Sunday-school lessons perfectly, but there's Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and so forth."

"Before that -- right on the first page?"

"I am finding this most tedious," Estelle said. "If you want to see if you qualify for one of those TV game shows where you shout out the answers, that is your business."

"Right on the first page of everybody's family Bible is a record of births, marriages, and deaths. It's a list."

Estelle's jaw dropped so hard it almost hit her chest. "You're right, Ruby Bee. A list of births, marriages, and deaths. We ain't interested in the last two, but we are in the first. Do you think that's what Madam Celeste was referring to?"

"She wasn't referring to a grocery list, for Pete's sake. That's got to be what she was referring to." Ruby Bee's face fell. "Of course, that's assuming Robin Buchanon had a family Bible, which is a stretch of the imagination."

"Or that she bothered to write down the names of the ole boys who fathered her bastards."

"Or that she could write down names or anything else."

"That she had a pencil in the cabin."

"That she knew the names of the fathers."

They both slumped down on the stools and propped their elbows on the bar and engaged in a lot of sighs. At last Ruby Bee pulled herself together, squared her shoulders, and said, "It's the only clue we have, especially since the other Buchanons have run off. We don't have anything else to go on except the possibility that Robin Buchanon kept a list in a family Bible."

"If we find the list, we'll know the identities of the fathers. Maybe Baby was kidnapped by his own father," Estelle added.

"Then we wouldn't have to tell Arly how we lost the little sweetums, or even where we were and what we were doing at the time. Assuming there is a Bible, for one thing, and for another that it has a list." Ruby Bee tried to keep her sense of optimism, but it wasn't easy. "And that we can get our hands on it. Robin didn't live in a condominium on the highway, you know. It's not all that simple to just run up there and pick up this Bible off the coffee table for a look-see."

They finally agreed that there wasn't much choice, and once Ruby Bee'd put up the Closed sign for not the first time, they got into Estelle's station wagon. After all, they told each other several times, they'd been there before on that other distasteful matter. There wasn't any reason why two full-grown intelligent women couldn't remember a few turns here and there. They were still engaged in the pep talk as they turned off the pavement and bounced up a rough trail that led toward Cotter's Ridge.

Hammet made sandwiches and told everybody not to be gettin' crumbs all over everywhere like they was uncivilized animals. They sat in the dim room, watching the soundless antics on the television set. Hammet tried to explain the finer points of the football game, based on observation alone since he'd never seen anything quite so all-fired dumb in his short lifetime, but he could tell not even Sukie believed his theories. "If they's tryin' to kill each other to win that ball, why don't they have shotguns?" she asked.

"They wants it to last for hours and hours, so all those other people screaming and jumping up and down can watch 'em," he said. "They puts up those numbers to show how many they've kilt."

"Why don't those people jest shoot 'em and put 'em out of their misery?" Sissie asked, equally enthralled by the violence.

"He don' know shit," Bubba inserted.

Hammet settled for an eloquent shrug, since he didn't know shit about it anyway.

At six o'clock (or maybe a few scant seconds earlier), I stored my blanket and thermos in the tent, then slipped and slid through the sodden leaves to the jeep. The beeper was clipped to my belt, so I would be alerted instantly if LaBelle found some obscure reason to desire communication with me. No one would know I wasn't expiring of pneumonia in a damp sleeping bag on the ridge all night; I would tuck the beeper under my pillow (the soft, warm, dry pillow on my soft, warm, dry bed) and if it beeped, I could go down to the jeep and radio in.

As I drove down the back side of the ridge, I told myself over and over that it wasn't a deadly sin, or even a dereliction of any significance. No, not at all. It was the intelligent thing to do. It was not evidence of weakness or self-indulgence to avoid a slow, miserable death by freezation and ennui. The mythology of superheroes was immature. Television cop shows were aimed at viewers with IQs in the single-digit range. Besides, no one would ever know. So there.

I felt a flicker of guilt as I drove past the abandoned jeep. Maybe Kevin and Dahlia were out there in the woods, as wet and miserable as I'd been for a solid twenty-four hours. They'd taken the jeep late Thursday afternoon; Merle had happened across them toward dark. That worked out without much effort to forty-eight hours. And no one had bothered with a missing persons report, or a search party, or dogs, or helicopters, or anything. No one had informed either set of parents that said twosome were lost somewhere on the ridge.

Then again, there wasn't a bear or a wildcat mean enough to tackle Dahlia O'Neill. With any success, anyway.

I pulled over and cut off the engine. I fiddle with the radio until I got through to LaBelle, who hopped right in with the time. I waited until she ran down, then told her to check with the parents to make sure the prodigal pair hadn't returned. If they hadn't, I instructed her to put out an APB on Kevin and Dahlia.

"You want I should book a posse to comb the ridge?" she asked.

"Not yet. If we bring in a posse, our dope growers won't dare to come back to their pot patch, which means we'll never catch them," I said, sighing. "The dopers committed murder, and I'll be damned if they're going to get away with it because Kevin and Dahlia are snuggled up in a cave somewhere. Maybe Dahlia'll shed a couple of pounds. If they haven't turned up by tomorrow night, we'll do the posse thing."

"Whatever you say, Arly. Have a nice night."

"I fully intend to," I said earnestly. Boy, did I get that wrong.

12

It was dark by the time I hit the highway to Maggody, which was just fine with me since I intended to sneak into town like the cowardly wimp I was. Everything looked dead (normal), but as I braked for a possum in front of the Emporium, the dark-haired distaff hippie came dashing out the door to the side of the road. She gestured for me to pull over, and I obliged, albeit reluctantly.

"Oh, thank God," she gasped, clinging to the jeep. "Poppy's gone into labor, and we have no way to fetch the midwife."

"How far along is she?" I asked, albeit reluctantly.

"According to the manual we ordered from the feminists' commune near Bugscuffle, she could have the baby anytime now. Unless you know how to deliver babies, we've got to get the midwife!"

"We certainly do," I said briskly (and without a trace of reluctance). "Tell me where to find her, and I'll run out there while you -- ah -- read the manual and time the contractions and boil the water."

"Don't you think you'd better come inside for a minute? Poppy's in the back room on the sofa. She's white and in a lot of pain."

I wasn't going to fall for that one. "I'll go for the midwife. Your friend might be better off at home in bed, you know, or on the way to the hospital."

"Poppy doesn't want to have our baby in a sterile environment with a bunch of strangers poking and prodding her," Rainbow said in a shocked voice.

"Hospital delivery rooms are politically and morally incorrect, and symptomatic of the exploitation of women by male doctors concerned with their own convenience and their ill-disguised need to subjugate women. Natural childbirth is a step in the cyclical cosmic framework that carries us from birth to death and beyond to our next life. Birth should be a joyous family experience in the woman's own bed, where the child was first conceived." When I raised my eyebrows, she added, "Nate left in the truck, and it's too late to move her."

"Where does the midwife live?"

She gave me convoluted directions that began at the edge of town, continued along the county road, and ended on some narrow, unpaved lane that would take me to the top of the hill and the midwife's house. I was informed that I couldn't possibly miss the turnoff, even though it was your basic dark and stormy night. It wasn't the time to suggest a small wager, so I said I'd be back as soon as humanly possible and drove down the county road.

Estelle's house was dark. I'd hoped that I might spot Estelle and Ruby Bee inside, doing something perfectly innocent in the front room. It was not written in the stars (and no doubt they were at the Bar and Grill, since it was Saturday night). The psychic's house was dark, too, but there was a dim glow in what I presumed was the solarium. I idly considered stopping for a bit of astrophysical advice about the turnoff, but drove on like an unenlightened innocent abroad.