Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 06 (7 page)

The elevator groaned and shuddered, but eventually I found myself walking down the corridor of the second floor. The carpet was worn and badly stained, the unappetizing beige paint curled off the walls, and the redolence was that of the restrooms in Grand Central Station—or any ol’ bus station in this great land of ours.

Some of the doors had numbers; others did not. I had no difficulty locating 217, however. It was crisscrossed with yellow tape and seals, and an officious sign threatened would-be trespassers with everything short of capital punishment. A few inches above the sign was a splintery hole … Ruby Bee’s signature, so to speak.

I tapped on 219. The door opened, and before I could speak, I was yanked inside. The door slammed so quickly my heels felt a breeze.

“Oh, thank gawd you made it,” Estelle said, collapsing on me in a bony hug. “I am worried sick, and all I’ve been able to do all day is sit here in case Ruby Bee calls or Geri finds out what’s happening or the police come back to drag me off in handcuffs or I just go plum out of my mind like ol’ Particular Buchanon. Remember when he decided there were Nazis in his attic? I could hear his shotgun all the way out at my house.”

I squirmed free, caught her shoulders, and pushed her down on the narrow twin bed. “Get a hold of yourself,” I said as I looked around the room. It was adequate for the two narrow beds, dresser, and night table, as long as you didn’t mind stepping over the furniture and suitcases every time you moved. The flowers on the wallpaper clearly were not perennials; their season had come and gone. The artistic spiderwebs dripping from the ceiling implied other life forms enjoyed more success, as did the tiny brown beads along the baseboard. All in all, it was your average New York hotel room.

“What’re we gonna do?” Estelle demanded. “You don’t aim to stand there gawking while your own flesh and blood’s being gnawed by rats in some filthy jail, do you?”

“I still don’t know what happened.” I sat down across from her, patted her knee, and suggested she begin at the beginning—slowly, thoughtfully, omitting nothing that might be important.

She omitted nothing, from the exchange between Ruby Bee and the cute lil’ stewardess (Mitzi) concerning the socalled food (worse than the specials at the Dairee DeeLishus) served on the airplane (cramped), the airport aswarm with foreigners (potential purse snatchers, every one of them), the cabdriver (as ornery as Raz and twice as dumb), the lack of a welcoming committee in the lobby (a disgrace), and the arrival of the contestants, companions, contest coordinators, and possibly enough workmen (real pushy fellows) to remodel the entirety of the city from 48th Street to the tip of the island (and it sure could use a facelift).

“Wait a minute,” I said, rubbing my face, “you were spouting off names too quickly. I met the manager when I arrived. His name’s Rick, right?”

“Geri called him Richard Belaire, but a carpenter called him Rick. He’s a real uppity sort whose, mama should have smacked some manners into him long before now. Anyway, he acted like he wasn’t gonna let us stay here, but Geri marched him off and told him how the cow ate the cabbage, and pretty soon he comes back with room keys and says this floor is okay.” She glanced disdainfully disdainfully at the room. “Okay if you do your redecorating at garage sales or flea markets! Why, the Flamingo Motel beats this place hands down—and costs a quarter of what that little framed sign on the back of the door says. You ain’t gonna believe it, but when you open the bathroom door, it hits the bed and you have to slither in sideways. And you’d better decide aforehand what you’re gonna do when you get inside, ‘cause there’s no room to turn around.”

“Who’s Geri?” I asked.

“Geri Gebhearn is the gal from the marketing firm. She’s in charge of the contest. A sweet thing, with big brown eyes and a heartshaped mouth. I’m not sure she’s real pleased about her job, even though she seemed to take to telling folks what to do like a hen does to a handful of corn. She’s the one who gave out the room keys, told us to get settled, and then said she’d send out for some food that we could eat in the lobby. The restaurant’s closed on account of the remodeling, so I don’t see how the contestants can use the kitchen, but Geri goes off again to talk to Mr. Richie Rick and comes back and says—”

“Why is the contest being held here?”

Estelle gave me a huffy look. “I ain’t the one running it, so how would I know? Catherine’s mother liked to have a fit over the sawdust, and I told her that if I was—”

“Catherine’s mother? Is she one of the contestants?”

“Didn’t they teach you to pay attention when you went to that police school? ” She stood up and would have paced had space allowed it. She was obliged to stand over me; her hair was such that I felt as though I were being intimidated by a six-foot fire hydrant. “Catherine Vervain is this sour pickle of a girl, and she’s the contestant, although if you ask me, her mother—Frannie—sent in the recipe and stuck Catherine’s name on it. The girl does nothing but sulk, and refused to eat the Chinese food on account of it having some chemical in it. I myself thought it was real tasty.”

“Catherine and Frannie,” I said humbly. “Who else?”

“Well, there’s nice Mr. Pilverman, who was naked in Ruby Bee’s bed. He’s a mannersome sort, a widower, and you can tell from looking at him that he’s not keeping company, not by a long shot. No woman in her right mind would let him wear that shoddy old raincoat out in public.” She paused, her good eye sweeping over me like a liposuction tube. “Not that old, either. Nothing to write home about, but kind of attractive and real polite. You might take to him.”

“Then he’s not dead?”

“Of course he ain’t,” she said with a snort. “They finally got the telephones fixed a while back, and Geri called to say that he’s gonna be just fine. In fact, as soon as they get him patched up, he’s coming back here so we can get on with the contest.”

I looked up at her. “And Ruby Bee?”

“Geri couldn’t find out anything. She said she and Kyle were gonna go down to the police station to see if they could fetch Ruby Bee, but she didn’t sound real optimistic.”

“Kyle,” I said, zooming in on the next name. If we continued at this rate, we might be ice skating at Rockefeller Center if and when Ruby Bee was released. “Who’s Kyle?”

“Kyle is the son of the KoKo-Nut company president. He’s a scrawny thing with oily hair and ferrety face, sorta like that cousin of Kevin’s who was in prison. That sure was a lovely ceremony, wasn’t it? I heard Mrs. Jim Bob was all hissy about Dahlia wearing white like she was a virgin, and there ain’t nobody gonna argue she was, not after—”

“Do you mind?” I said in an admirably controlled voice. “The contest is being run by a couple of kids, and in a hotel managed by a third. The contestants are Pilverman, who’s been shot, Ruby Bee, who shot him, and a sulky kid, who can’t tolerate monosodium glutamate. You and the girl’s mother are along for the fun. Is that everyone?”

Estelle put her finger on her lips, tiptoed to the door, and eased it open. After a peek, she closed it and tiptoed back to the bed, although we’d been conversing in normal voices all this time (and she’d squawked more than once).

“There’s one more,” she whispered. “Her name’s Brenda Appleton, and she’s with her husband, Jerome. They’re next door in 221. She’s kind of a featherbrain, always blithering about her girls in California and her house on Long Island and how she volunteers at the library and plays bridge on Wednesday afternoons. It ain’t hard to figure out why her daughters moved all the way across the country. She’s lucky they stopped when they came to the ocean, instead of renting rowboats and heading for China.”

“And her husband?”

“He doesn’t say much. He’s short and tubby, and his hair looks like freshly vacuumed shag carpet. He wears thick bifocals that make him look like a toad, and I wouldn’t be surprised if his tongue was long enough to snag a fly. I can’t quite put my finger on him, but he sort of reminds me of the oldest Nookim boy. You know, shifty-eyed and most likely thinking awful things about people. Not saying ‘em, mind you—but thinking them all the same.” She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “And he was sneaking peeks at Geri whenever his wife wasn’t watching him. He didn’t have to say what he was thinking then. No, it was smeared all over his face like cupcake icing.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, “I think I’ve got everyone sorted out for the moment. Now, what exactly happened last night? Where were you?”

“Well, we all gathered in the lobby and ate off paper plates. Not everybody, now that I think about it. Brenda’s husband said he had work to do and went up to their room. Catherine said she was feeling poorly on account of the sawdust, and she left in the elevator with Jerome. Oh, and one of the contestants hasn’t arrived. I disremember the name, but a female. So on one side of the lobby was Ruby Bee and me, Brenda, Geri, and Kyle. Durmond Pilverman was sitting on a sofa next to Frannie Vervain, who was so busy trying to cozy up with him that she tumped chop suey in her lap.

“And … ?” I said.

Estelle stepped over my bag, navigated through their impressive quantity of suitcases and canvas bags, and stopped in front of the cracked mirror over the dresser. Once she’d made sure her hair was intact, she began to apply lipstick with a heavy hand. “And Geri said that the kitchen would be cleaned so the contestants could take turns trying out the oven and making sure they had all their pots and bowls. That was supposed to happen this afternoon, but Geri didn’t plan on Ruby Bee shooting anybody and that awful mess with the police all night long.”

“If you don’t stick to the story, I’m going to take that lipstick tube from your hand and use it as a weapon,” I said sharply—and sincerely. “Most of the group were in the lobby. At some point, Geri mentioned a rehearsal scheduled for this afternoon. Presumably, everyone came upstairs for the night.”

“You can presume anything you want,” Estelle retorted archly, then stopped and cocked her head. “Do you reckon that’s the elevator?”

“I don’t care if it’s a newly installed escalator to heaven. What about last night?”

She opened the door, popped her head out, and with a squeal, vanished into the hall, leaving me to ponder how much damage I could do with a tube of Strawberry Soda Gloss.

“Will the meeting come to order!” Mrs. Jim Bob said, tapping on the desk with a pencil. “Elsie, just pass the cookies along and stop picking at them. Eula, I thought you agreed to take minutes? You’ll have to find something to write with, won’t you?” She turned next to Joyce Lambertino. “We’ll need another pot of coffee.”

Joyce obediently went to the back room of the PD. She was there only because Jim Bob had bullied her husband, Larry Joe, into promising that she—not he—would come. That meant Larry Joe was obliged to babysit the kids, so it wasn’t the worst thing ever happened to her. She wasn’t real comfortable, since the others looked ready for church and she was wearing jeans and a faded sweatshirt, her hair back in a ponytail, “How many cups shall I fix?” she called.

Mrs. Jim Bob rolled her eyes for the others’ amusement. “The whole pot, Joyce. Arly should be showing up any minute, and Brother Verber assured me this very afternoon that wild horses couldn’t stop him from coming to our meeting. He was so inspired by the opportunity to go to war against Satan that he went by Raz’s shack to size him up. I expect him any second with a report so we’ll know who and what we’re up against.”

“Raz Buchanon is who we’re up against,” Elsie said, peering more closely at the plate of cookies. The lemon ones were out; the tiny candy sprinkles always caught under her dentures. But chocolate gave her heartburn, and the sugar cookies looked stale. She poked one. It was harder than a lump of salt, just as she’d suspected.

“I know that,” snapped Mrs. Jim Bob. She was irritated with the poor turnout for the first meeting of her committee, which she intended to call Christians Against Whiskey, as soon as everybody voted for it. Jim Bob had made up a flimsy story about having to be at the supermarket, although she’d seen right through that and let him know she’d stop by to make sure he was there. Eilene Buchanon had refused flat out, saying she had to stay home to wait for a call. Millicent and her husband were more interested in television than the mortal souls of the youth of Maggody. She’d gone so far as to invite the mothers of the three boys who’d been so disgustingly drunk, so they’d find out what the good citizens of Maggody thought of the way the boys had been reared without regard to solid Christian values. They’d declined—every last one of them, and in outright offended voices.

While Mrs. Jim Bob waited, she began a mental list of those who’d made it clear which side of the devil’s fence they were on. It never hurt to keep a tally.

In the back room, Joyce got the coffeepot to gurgling, then, in a spurt of daring, slipped out the back door. It was so quiet and calm that she felt like she was in a cathedral. She wouldn’t have been surprised if a monk stepped out from behind the lilac bush and started chanting away in a low, singsong voice. For a few minutes, she was a million miles away from her never-ending housework, screaming kids, whiny husband, leaky washing machine, blaring television set, not to mention Mrs. Jim Bob and the other self-righteous committee members busily telling each other how sinful everybody else was and how nigh unto saints they were. Joyce figured she was the one who deserved a halo for putting up with them.

Way up on the slumbering blackness of Cotter’s Ridge, an owl hooted. It wasn’t a monk, but it was the best Maggody could do on short notice.

“Jesus!” Marvel said as he kicked the side of the station wagon. “What kinda cars are they makin’ in Detroit these days? No wonder the Japanese are running us off the road. Jesus!”

He took a knapsack and a carton of milk from the car, kicked it once more, and took off down the road, asking himself why he even bothered to steal American cars. There wasn’t anything patriotic about having to walk on his own two feet like an army recruit.

He drained the milk, crumpled the carton, and hurled it at a squirrel at the base of a tree. “Have yourself a feast of cardboard, my fuzzy little man.”