Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 06 (22 page)

I put on my smiliest voice. “There’s no law against naming his department. It’s in the old catalogues, which means it’s already in the public domain.”

“Yeah?” she said dubiously.

“You can tell me.”

We discussed the issue at length. After I’d defined public domain” and assured her several times that I was merely tracking down a dear old friend, she told me he’d been in the sociology department. I went back through the switchboard and found myself speaking to the department secretary, a bored older woman. Her vocabulary was better, as was her attitude (when I explained that Durmond had inherited property in Idaho), and she suggested I speak to Dr. Ripley. I professed willingness to do so immediately and was told Dr. Ripley was conducting a graduate seminar and could not be reached the rest of the day.

All this had taken most of an hour. I now knew Durmond was no longer on the faculty of Drakestone College. I also knew he had a gun in the dresser and a peculiar affinity for disreputable friendships. Then again, I didn’t know how his mugging related to the murder, but I was convinced it did. He’d been shot in the stairwell by someone thoughtful enough to put him in a bed. Jerome had been shot in the kitchen by someone who’d felt the need to clean up afterward. Thoughtfulness and cleanliness were not traits I associated with the local criminal element.

I lay down on the bed and began at the beginning.

“I’ve just about had it with you,” Dahlia growled, not at her captor but at her husband, who was in a corner, tied up like a bale of cotton. Marvel had done a competent job of it, although he’d been careful not to cause any pain and had inquired solicitously throughout the process. Kevin had been real grateful, sort of.

“Now, honey bunny,” he said, his Adam’s apple rippling against the clothesline, “there’s no cause to get all upset again. We’ll get out of this somehow—I promise. And when we do, why, we’ll just go right to Niagara Falls like we planned. You’re really gonna like it.”

“I ought to drop you in the water while you’re still tied up so’s I could watch you bobble around like a cork.” Dahlia was going to elaborate, but Marvel came out of the kitchen and gave her a mean look. “What’s your problem?” she said to him, figuring she could get back to Kevin whenever she had a mind to. He sure wasn’t going any place farther than he could roll.

Marvel peeked out the front window. “My problem is two cops out back and about ten of them out front. Jesus, you’d think they had Al Pacino holed up in here.” He took another look, then glumly shook his head and sat down near the window. “You doing okay, man?”

“Yeah, I’m just fine,” Kevin said eagerly.

“Some honeymoon,” Dahlia sniffled. “I’ve been dreaming of our honeymoon since the day we got engaged. All this year I’ve been lying in my bed thinking of how romantic it sounded, and how I’d be Mrs. Kevin Buchanon and we could …” She snatched a napkin from the holder and blew her nose. “Aw, Kevvie, ‘member when I was working at the Kwik-Screw, and we’d go back into the storeroom and it’d be like there was violin music playing and we were in heaven in each other’s arms?”

Kevvie gurgled in agreement, although he wasn’t thinking about her arms or fool violins.

Marvel was getting pretty damn bummed out by the situation—and with Big Mama and his main man. He hadn’t had more than a few minutes of sleep for several days, and although he’d washed up as best he could in the restroom, he was feeling dirty and sweaty and real tired of his hostages.

And there didn’t seem to be a solution, not with the battalion of triggerhappy cops outside. He knew damn well they’d turn him to Swiss cheese if he so much as came to the door and tried to give himself up. They sure as hell weren’t going to let him hustle the hostages out to the station wagon so they could all go to Niagara Falls. No, somewhere along the line they were likely to get tired of sitting on their asses and blow up the diner like it was nothing but a target on the practice range.

He went back to the kitchen to make sure they weren’t pulling any tricks.

As Mrs. Jim Bob arrived at the rusty sign proclaiming the limits of Maggody, she slowed down, not out of respect for a sign telling her to do so, but out of a growing sense of dismay for what she’d done at Naughty Nights. Well, maybe not exactly dismay, since Jim Bob deserved to pay through the nose for the sin of having a charge account at a store that specialized in lasciviousness.

“One of our best customers,” the girl had said, just as if Mrs. Jim Bob looked like the sort of woman who’d be caught dead in a peekaboo bra and bikini-cut panties. He was buying presents for someone else, most likely a slut with brassy hair and makeup slathered on with a trowel.

The elegantly wrapped packages piled high in the backseat had a redolence of sinfulness that was beginning to suffocate her. She’d bought them in a rage, but what could she do with them now? Distribute them at the Missionary Society’s next meeting? Donate them as door prizes at Jim Bob’s SuperSaver Buy 4 Less? Hide them in a closet where her cleaning woman, Perkins’s eldest, might come across them and see those gold stickers? Perkins’s eldest was taciturn, but she might take a wicked pleasure in spreading the word around town.

Mrs. Jim Bob turned off the air conditioner and rolled down the window, but the sinfulness emanating from the back seat was worse than swamp gas. It was … Satan’s flatulence. Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill was closed, which saved her from having to keep her chin up while she drove past a bunch of rednecks who could tell just from looking what was in the backseat. The police department was closed, too. If that smart-mouthed Arly Hanks ever found out, she’d laugh herself silly before settling down to needling Mrs. Jim Bob till the morning of judgment Day. Roy Stiver was sitting in a rocking chair outside his antique store. Although he failed to do anything except keep whittling on a chunk of wood, she was sure there’d been a funny look on his face as she went by. The willowy hippie woman who owned the Emporium Hardware was on the porch, talking to disgusting Raz Buchanon. They both looked at her, as did Marjorie from the back of Raz’s pickup truck, and the hippie even smiled and waved—just like she could see right through the car door.

There was only one thing to do, she concluded grimly as she pulled into the grass beside the rectory of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. She had to seek spiritual guidance. She had to get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness for whichever sin applied, after which she could tell Brother Verber to dispose of the packages in a discreet manner. The episode would be over with. Jim Bob would never dare to mention the charge slip (not if he valued his skin, anyway), and she would simply get back to the Christian business of cleansing the community of illicit whiskey.

After a quick look to make sure no one was watching, she took the packages out of the backseat, careful not to inhale the miasma, and knocked on the metal door.

“Brother Verber, open this door immediately!” she called. “I have no intention of standing here like a salesman with a case of brushes. Open this door!”

Brother Verber did as ordered. “Why, if it isn’t Sister Barbara behind that stack of pretty boxes. Are they gifts for the little heathen orphans in Africa?”

She went past him, checked to make sure he wasn’t in the midst of counseling any errant members of the flock, and dumped the packages on the dinette table. “They are not for little heathen orphans in Africa,” she said with a pinched smile. “They are proof of Jim Bob’s perfidy. I brought them to you so you could get rid of them in a manner befitting your position as spiritual leader of the flock. We have to pray over them until Satan flees, and then burn them until they’re nothing more than ashes.” She’d been planning to suggest he run them out to the Farberville landfill, but this new idea was better, more symbolic, more likely to keep her secret. In fact, she thought with a slightly wider smile, she could scoop up the ashes and put them in a bag to present to Jim Bob. Wouldn’t his expression be amusing when she explained they represented over four hundred dollars of lasciviousness?

“What’s in ‘em?” Brother Verber asked uneasily.

“It doesn’t matter. What’s important is that they reek of depravity, and we have a duty to make sure they never fall into the hands of some innocent child or good Christian. Go ahead and sprinkle them with holy water, Brother Verber, and we’ll commence to pray over them until we see the fierce red devils go swarming off to find another home.”

He approached the table, dearly hoping the fierce red devils weren’t residing amongst sticks of dynamite. “If that’s what we have to do, we’ll do it, Sister Barbara. I’m fresh out of holy water, but I do have some sacramental wine in the ice box. If that’s not sufficient, I ‘spose I could drive over to the Church of Christ in Emmet and ask ol’ Cornell about borrowing a cup of holy water.”

“Fetch the wine,” Mrs. Jim Bob said as she settled down on her knees on the kitchen floor. “The fewer folks that know about this, the better. I cannot in good conscience risk the mortal souls of members of another congregation.” She closed her eyes and assumed an appropriately pious expression. The Almighty, in appreciation of her effort, sent down another idea, this one even better than the first one. She looked up at Brother Verber, who was hovering in a way not dissimilar to a blimp. “What’s more,” she told him, “as soon as we finish this business, we’ll take these packages and drive to Cotter’s Ridge to destroy Raz Buchanon’s still. We can pour his wicked moonshine on them, and they’ll blaze all the way to heaven so the Almighty can see we’re doing our Christian duty. He’ll approve of the way we’re killing two birds with one stone.”

The earlier conversation had put Brother Verber off balance, but this was enough to slam him into the nearest wall, metaphorically speaking. He snatched his handkerchief out of his pocket and tried to stanch the rivulets of sweat on his face and neck. “Why, I don’t think we should waste any time destroying these … proofs of perfidy, Sister Barbara. We can just use my barbecue grill out back. I think I have most of a can of lighter fluid, but I can always get more at the Emporium. We can be done in no time flat.”

Mrs. Jim Bob was not about to risk being seen at the grill, doing something odd enough to rouse speculation and provoke pointed questions. “No, the Almighty won’t mind waiting while we drive to the still. You told me that you knew exactly where it was, Brother Verber, and I would never doubt so much as a single word from your lips, what with you being a man of the cloth.”

“Thank you, Sister Barbara,” he said, although he was a ways from being overcome with gratitude. He thudded to his knees and started praying that the Almighty, who seemed real generous with His suggestions, might feel inclined to share some with him. The location of the still, for starters.

Ruby Bee and Estelle were waiting for the policeman to come knocking on the door of 219. They were doing it with about as much enthusiasm as a couple of coons treed by a pack of hounds.

“I think you’re better off with the warm milk story,” Estelle said from within the bathroom, where she was trying to stabilize her hair without bruising her elbows every time she moved her arms.

“You’ve said that about a million times already,” Ruby Bee said, sighing. “I jest don’t know what all Arly and Durmond told the policeman. If you hadn’t gone and said something about visiting a porn shop, then Arly wouldn’t have figured out what I was doing in the first place. She’ll be smirking the rest of her born days, at you for shopping at such a place and at me for doing what needed to be done to win ten thousand dollars. It won’t matter one bit to her that I planned to use part of my winnings to buy her some decent clothes.” She wiggled around on the bed, trying to find a comfortable spot. She might as well have been lying on a corncob mattress. “Now that I think about it, what all did you buy at that place?”

There was a moment of silence in the bathroom, followed by a muttered response.

“You’ll have to speak up. I didn’t hear you,” Ruby Bee said real nicely.

“I said there’s not enough room in here to turn around. My poor knees are gonna be black and blue, and I still can’t get the bobby pins in at the right angle.”

Ruby Bee got to her feet and crept over to Estelle’s suitcase. “I’ll bet that outhouse behind Robin Buchanon’s cabin is a sight bigger,” she called as she squatted down and began to rummage through the dirty laundry that had accumulated over the last few days. “I can’t imagine how Dahlia and Kevin managed to spend all those hours locked in there the night they thought a killer was after ‘em. They must have felt like the stuffing in a Thanksgiving turkey, don’t you think?”

“I’ll thank you not to go pawing through my personal belongings,” Estelle said from the doorway. She waited until an abashed Ruby Bee scuttled back to the bed, then added, “I was thinking about something more important than a couple of silly souvenirs, Miss Snoopy Britches. I was recollecting about how Durmond came to be bucknaked in your bed and you had to go and shoot at the police.”

“All I did was pick up the gun,” the accused said sullenly. “I came into the room, and there he was, all bloody and indecent. Then out of the blue there’s footsteps and pounding on the door and yelling like a bunch of drunks in my parking lot. The gun was right there on the floor. I picked it up and was going to answer the door when it liked to explode in my hand. Things took a downward turn after that.”

“I’ll say they did,” Estelle muttered as she sat down on her bed and took out an emery board. “The thing is, I myself heard the shot as I stepped off the elevator. I was right there in the hall when the policemen took to butting the door until they broke the lock, which is why I was there to see them tackle you like they did. You ought to get yourself a lawyer and sue ‘em for it, if you ask me.”

“What’s your point?”

“Didn’t you hear what I just said? I swear, Adele Wockerman listens better than you do, when she ain’t got her hearing aid tuned to her favorite Martian station.” With an aura of smugness she knew would irk Ruby Bee, Estelle began to file her nails.