Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 06

Maggody

In

Manhattan

Joan Hess

(Book 6 in the Arly Hanks Mystery Series)

Ruby Bee squeezed by Perkins and perched on the edge of the pew next to Estelle. “You ain’t gonna believe this,” she whispered, her face flushed with excitement clear up to her grayish-brown roots. Her eyes glittered like little sugar cookies, and her best blue dress had been buttoned so hastily that her bust looked as lumpy as an ungraded county road. “Why, you could have knocked me over with a feather duster when I opened the letter.”

Estelle glanced at her out of the corner of her good eye. “It’s about time you got here,” she said. Her lips barely moved, and her tone made it clear that certain people’s disreputable appearance and lack of promptness would be discussed later. She herself was above reproach in her aquamarine dress with matching shoes and eyeshadow. Her red beehive hairdo towered less than usual out of deference to those in the pews behind her, but there were some fanciful ringlets below her ears and framing her face, and the overall effect was appropriately festive.

“I’d say this letter’s a sight more important than an ordinary wedding, Estelle Oppers, and I don’t appreciate being scolded, neither. If you’re so dadburned worried about—” Ruby Bee stopped as she realized half of the congregation were openly staring and the other half pretending they weren’t but listening just the same. Even Brother Verber, his fingers entwined on his belly, was regarding her disapprovingly from the pulpit. She sat back and fumed in silence.

Having squelched the behavior in the fifth pew, Brother Verber figured it was time to get the show on the road. He nodded at Lottie Estes, who was sitting at the upright piano (the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall was not yet able to afford an organ, although another bake sale was in the planning stages).

Lottie stopped wondering what Ruby Bee was hissing about, poised her hands, and hit the keys with enthusiasm, if not accuracy. As the somewhat familiar strains of the wedding processional filled the room, throats were cleared, eyes turned misty, hands automatically fumbled for tissues, and everybody got down to the serious business of watching Dahlia O’Neill marry Kevin Buchanon. The general feeling was that both of them ought to listen real carefully to the vows before they took ‘em.

“A lovely ceremony,” I said for the umpteenth time as I wiggled through the crowd at the door of the Assembly Hall. I was having to bite my lip to keep from giggling, but anything that involved Kevin and Dahlia was apt to amuse me, and bless their pea-picking hearts (and pea-sized brains), they hadn’t let me down. Three inches of the groom’s white socks had been visible below his pants cuffs, his knees had knocked so violently we could hear them, and he’d had to be coached word-by-word through the entire ceremony, including his name. The bride, a majestic alpine figure in her voluminous white tent dress, had gone along with the love and honor stuff, but turned ornery when Brother Verber suggested she ought to obey Kevin, clamped her mouth closed, and refused to continue until a compromise was reached in which she grimly agreed to hear him out even when he was “bein’ stupider than cow spit.”

“Wasn’t it a lovely ceremony?” said Elsie McMay.

I nodded, but it seemed more was required of me as Elsie caught my arm and dragged me out of the flow. “Lovely,” I said weakly, “and Dahlia certainly made a … large bride. I need to run along now.”

“Your mother was acting awfully peculiar, wasn’t she? I don’t know when I’ve seen her seconds shy of being late for a wedding, and then to look like she dressed in the dark. Did she hear bad news about kinfolk? Did that cousin of hers in Texarkana finally die and leave her something?”

“I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll all hear the details.” I squirmed free and fled to the front lawn. As far as I could tell, there had been no explosion of crime in Maggody, Arkansas, during the last hour. Then again, a goodly portion of the seven hundred fifty-five residents had been at the wedding. The rest of them were doing what they usually did, which wasn’t much of anything. The hippies who owned the Emporium Hardware Store were out back unloading crates. A drunk was slumped in the doorway of the pool hall down the road, oblivious to the hound sniffing at his shoe with wicked intentions. A car was parked in front of Roy Stiver’s antique store, above which I resided in grimy, isolated splendor in what was quaintly called an efficiency apartment. Cattycorner to that, the redbricked PD sat serenely in the midst of its weedy, unpaved parking lot, the yellow gingham curtains flapping in the autumn breeze. I headed for it to check for messages from the dispatcher in the sheriff’s office. After I’d assured her that it had been a lovely ceremony, she made it clear that nobody had anything to convey to the Maggody chief of police (being me) and most likely wouldn’t anytime soon, since the sheriff had gone fishing and the deputy left in charge had started a poker game in the locker room.

Which was okay with me. I settled back in my canebottomed chair, propped my feet on the corner of the desk, and allowed myself the minor pleasure of replaying the highlights of the wedding ceremony. The demands of my position were typically no more rigorous than this, although we’d had a few upsets since I’d slunk back home to sulk after a nasty divorce. Back home from Manhattan for those unschooled in Maggodian lore, and within shouting range of my mother, the infamous Rubella Belinda Hanks. Not that she shouted all that much; she preferred oblique barbs about my appearance being dowdy enough to put off any man worth his mettle, about my disinclination to socialize with same, and particularly about my smart mouth and woeful lack of respect-especially when she and Estelle went out of their way to help me solve crimes. Lucky me.

She was shouting this time, however, as the door banged open and she whirled into the room like a dust devil. “You ain’t gonna believe this! I couldn’t believe my eyes, and I had to get out my glasses to make sure of what it said!” She banged down an envelope and put her hands on her hips. Everything about her was atwitter, from her suspiciously blond curls to her grandmotherly face and short, stubby body. She looked like a respectable matron of some fifty odd years (the precise number was an issue of debate), but there was something about her that kept the would-be rowdies at the bar and grill—and yours truly—leery of pushing her beyond some hazy limit.

I cautiously picked up the envelope and noted the return address. Prodding, Polk and Fleecum Marketing Associates had a Madison Avenue office, the location not too far from where my ex had toiled with clients during the day and embroiled with female friends in the evenings. Only in retrospect had I realized his office was the only one equipped with a sofa bed.

“Why’re they writing you?” I asked, not yet courageous enough to take out the letter.

“Because I won a contest, that’s why.” Ruby Bee snatched the envelope from me, pulled out the letter, and made a major production of squinting and blinking at it, no doubt aware that she’d gotten me curious and was in a position to make me suffer.

“That’s nice,” I said with a yawn. “It was a lovely ceremony, don’t you think? Dahlia’s dress must have taken twenty yards of fabric, but—”

“A national cookoff contest, if you must know. I read about it in one of my magazines and upped and decided to enter just as a lark. I used my chocolate chip bundt cake recipe, the one you get all slobbery over, and just threw in a cup of Krazy KoKo-Nut so it’d qualify.”

“A cup of what?” Ruby Bee shot me a look meant to discourage jocularity. “Krazy KoKo-Nut. It’s this nasty stuff made from soybeans that’s supposed to taste like real coconut. I wouldn’t use it if you paid me, but the contest rules said your recipe had to have KoKo-Nut in it, along with your three proofs of purchase. I thought about giving the flakes to Raz to feed his sow, but I figured he’d be madder ‘n a coon in a poke if she got a belly ache. You know, I’m beginning to wonder if there isn’t something a mite unhealthy about that relationship …”

“So what did you win?”

“An all-expense-paid trip to Noow Yark City to compete in the cookoff a month from now. It’s for me and a companion, and the KoKo-Nut people are paying for the airplane and the hotel where we’ll be staying right smack in the middle of Manhattan.” She puffed up just a bit, and she made me wait a good ten seconds before she continued. “There’ll be cocktail parties and a press conference, and when the winner’s announced, the president hisself of Krazy KoKo-Nut presents the tenthousand-dollar grand prize.”

My resolve cracked, and I croaked, “Tell me you’re making this up, Ruby Bee. Please, tell me this is a joke.”

“It’s all in this letter, every blessed word of it.”

I held out my hand, trying not to whimper. “May I read it?”

“Thought you wanted to talk about Dahlia’s wedding dress and wasn’t-it-a-lovely ceremony? You, missy, can suit yourself. I got more important things to do, like shopping and packing and practicing my recipe.” She flapped the letter at me as she left.

“You’ve got your maps?” Eilene Buchanon said as she bent down to peer through the car window. “You just be sure and stick to the route I drew, and don’t go gallivanting off on some side road that’s likely to dead-end in a swamp. And call collect every other night, and don’t talk to strangers, and be sure and keep an eye on the gas tank, and—”

“Ma!” Kevin protested. “I am a married man now, and you can’t treat me like a kid anymore. I aim to take care of my bride in a befittin’ manner.”

His bride belched softly from the passenger’s side. “That wedding cake sure was tasty, wasn’t it? Come on, Kevvie, we got to get started. Just imagine going to Niagara Falls on our honeymoon! I can’t think of anything more romantic.” She belched again, dreamily and with a look of bovine contentment that made Kevin feel like a frontiersman in buckskin.

“Mrs. Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon,” he said as he patted her hamlike thigh while stealing a peek at her wondrously pendulous breasts—his to have and to hold from this day forward.

Earl came out of the house and thrust a sack at Kevin. “Here’s some cans of oil in case you run low. Make sure you check it every time you gas up, along with the water in the radiator, the tire pressure, and the fan belt. This ol’ heap’s on its last legs.”

“I can handle it, Pa,” Kevin said in his Daniel Boone voice. After all, he and his goddess were setting forth into the wilderness, in a manner of speaking. Neither of them had ever been farther north than Springfield, Missouri, and that had been in a rusty blue church bus with the choir. This was different. This was an adventure … a love quest.

“Do you have a sweater?” asked Eilene. “It might be chilly at night, and you don’t want to run the risk of getting sick in some unknown place so far from—”

Kevin cut her off with a steely look. “Good-bye, Ma and Pa. My wife and I are leaving now.” He glanced at the object of his adoration. “Are you ready, woman?”

“I might just visit the little girls room one more time. That pineapple sherbert punch was so good I couldn’t seem to get enough of it.”

Thus the wagon master was obliged to lower his whip and listen to his ma for another ten minutes before he was finally allowed to round ‘em up and ride ‘em out, rawhide.

Geri Gebhearn was finding it increasingly difficult to read through the file, since the words were distorted by the tears that filled her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks to linger on her chin and then plop like gentle rain upon the page beneath.

An outsider would be perplexed to see this display of unhappiness in such a pretty young woman, dressed in discreetly expensive clothing, her short dark hair expertly styled to draw attention from her square jaw and emphasize her exceptionally large (although currently watery) brown eyes. Her body was sleek and slender, her jewelry not one carat less than twenty-four, and her keys to an Upper East Side condo and a forest green Mercedes tucked in her hand-sewn leather briefcase beside her desk.

Her desk was in a spacious office on the twenty-seventh floor of a Madison Avenue building, and although the view was not intriguing, it was hardly the interior of an airshaft. On the opposite side of the door was a gloomy yet competent secretary who took dictation, juggled meetings, winnowed calls, picked up Geri’s dry cleaning, and made reservations at chic restaurants. She came in at nine and left at five, and she never cried.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,” Geri muttered, not at the splattered file but at the framed photograph of a handsome young man. Like her, he was perfect—except for his sudden desire to date some slutty girl he’d met in Barbados whose father owned a dumb insurance company in Providence.

She turned the photograph face down and tried to pay attention to the work at hand. It was utterly absurd to have this dropped in her lap like a chunk of plaster from the ceiling; she’d been out of college for less than four months and was only beginning to feel able to make valuable contributions during the interminable meetings. Now that beastly Scotty Johanson had betrayed her, all she wanted to do was go home to Hartford and … No, not home to Hartford, where Mother would insist the best cure for a broken heart was participation in whatever charity fund-raiser most recently had begged for her renowned expertise. To the summer house on Cape Cod, where she could lie on the wicker chaise lounge, paint her fingernails black, and drown out her sorrows with Tab.