Madness In Maggody (11 page)

*****

Ruby Bee closed
the front door and went back across the dance floor to the bar, where Estelle and Hammet were sitting in gloomy silence. "I jest can't figure out what all's going on over there," Ruby Bee muttered, mostly to herself, since the other two had given up trying to provide answers. "First Arly and that nice state trooper come screeching up like there's an armed robbery in progress. The next thing, Hiram, Perkins's eldest, and a few other people come barreling out the door and looking mighty frightened. Then we get the sheriff and some of his boys. Before you can say boo, everybody's coming and going every which direction like they was driving those awful bumper cars at the county fair carnival."

Hammet sighed. "I wish Arly'd get back. It's nigh on time fer baseball practice. I got a hit yesterday—a real hard one that liked to have made that Martin kid squeal like a pig getting his dick chopped off."

Estelle rolled her eyes and sighed herself. "You already described it, Hammet. I'm sure it was a real hard hit. I do believe we've already heard enough about where it bounced and any sound effects that may have occurred thereafter."

"I can't for the life of me figure out what's going on over at the SuperSaver," Ruby Bee said. She shoved a basket of popcorn under Hammet's nose. "Here, eat some more of this. It'll keep your strength up for practice—if and when Arly shows her face. She left you here a good three hours ago. If that ain't irresponsible, then I don't know how to make biscuits from scratch. I'm her own mother, and—"

The whining of an ambulance siren cut her short. The three looked at each other as the sound increased, peaked in an earsplitting shriek as it passed the bar, and abated as it continued down the highway.

"Lord a mercy," Estelle gasped. "Do you think something's happened to Arly?"

"There ain't no reason to think that," Ruby Bee said with a look of warning in Hammet's direction. "Maybe Arly was sent out to investigate an accident on that bad curve just past the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall."

Estelle leaned forward, beckoned for Ruby Bee to do the same, and whispered, "If there's been a wreck or something, then somebody probably called over to the sheriff's office. Why don't you see if you can find out anything. Go on, I'll handle Hammet. " She sat back and smiled at him. "Tell you what, I've got a nice shiny quarter that'll pay for three songs on the jukebox. You can go right over there and pick out what you want to hear."

"I don't wanna hear some dumbshit song," Hammet said, his face wrinkled up like a Pekingese. "If'n Arly's hurt, I gotta go help her."

He jumped down from the stool and ran out the door before Ruby Bee or Estelle could open their mouths. He was a good ways down the road and still going full steam before either of them made it to the door to yell at him. And by the time a truck piled high with chicken crates moved out of the way, he was long gone.

Ruby Bee started for the telephone. "He'll be all right. He knows his way around town by now. I'm going to call LaBelle over at the sheriff's and ask her real politely if she knows where I can find Arly. If that doesn't work, I think I'll mosey on over to Jim Bob's SuperSaver and pick up a package of paper towels and a few other things."

"You got three cases of paper towels in the—" Estelle squared her shoulders and nodded. "I think I might go with you to keep you company."

*****

Brother Verber folded
his hands in his lap and gazed sternly at the sinners sitting right there beside each other on chairs he'd brought over from the dinette. He gave them a minute in case they wanted to take off repenting without any prodding on his part, then said, "I am deeply troubled, deeply troubled indeed. Y'all have been coming thrice weekly to the house of the Lord under false pretenses. People what come to the house of the Lord thrice weekly ought to do so without carrying a heavy, burdensome load of sin in their hearts."

Dahlia stared at the wall above his head. "I ain't done nothing," she said flatly.

Kevin twitched as Brother Verber's eyes bored into him. He wished he was almost anyplace else except in the hot, stuffy mobile home parked next to the particular house of the Lord under discussion. Mopping floors was better'n this, he thought glumly. Mopping floors weren't half so bad as being told he was some kind of pervert and sex maniac. However, he couldn't think of anything to say, so he settled for a gulp and a shrug.

"The only way," Brother Verber intoned, "the only way to cleanse yourselves of this sinful, disgusting lust that's sucking on your souls like a tapeworm is to repent. If you don't repent from the beginning and in detail, well...Satan's just waiting around the corner, hoping for two new workers in the eternal furnace. I ain't here to pressure you all, though; you can make up your own minds. Maybe you want to shovel coal into Satan's furnace for all eternity while little red devils poke you with pitchforks till you scream."

"I ain't done nothing," Dahlia repeated. She elbowed Kevin so forcefully, he nearly tumbled off the chair.

"Me, neither," he added hastily. "We was sitting on the swing talking about our new jobs at the supermarket, that's all. Anybody what says different is lying—and that's a sin, too."

He was pretty impressed with his speech, but he could tell just from looking that Brother Verber wasn't. In fact, the more he looked, the more he could see the fat ol' pious pig cranking up to spew out all kinds of stuff. And although Kevin knew there hadn't been any fornicating on the porch swing, he didn't much want to discuss various incidents over the last two years. The outhouse, for instance. The back room of the Kwik-Stoppe-Shoppe, on numerous occasions. Once, while Dahlia sat on the stool behind the counter and he'd...

Kevin all of a sudden realized that he was about to get hisself in deeper shit, because the same devil that had tormented him on the swing was back for another visit. "I have to go to the men's room," he said in a strangled voice (although it wasn't his voice that felt like it was being strangled—not by a long shot).

Having been prepared for a detailed description of lustful abandon, Brother Verber was unprepared for this and he began to blink like an addled calf. He may have been staring at Kevin, but his mind was in the bathroom. To be precise, it was in the wicker basket beside the commode—along with two insightful issues of his study material. After a minute, he said, "Right now, we'd better get down on our knees and pray for the salvation of your souls. This ain't the time for wordly concerns, not with damnation seeping into the room like swamp gas."

"I got to go."

Dahlia snorted under her breath, but she didn't say anything and Kevin repeated his plaintive request once again. Brother Verber stood up and went down the hall to the bathroom, hoping for a chance to relocate the well-worn June issue of Kittens and Tomcats and the July issue of Rubber Maid, but Kevin was so close behind him, he could feel hot breath on his neck.

"Let me see if the hand towels are clean," Brother Verber said. He stepped inside and closed the door. The room was small and short on hiding places. If he put the magazines in the one cabinet, Kevin might poke around out of idle curiosity, especially if he had business that might take a while.

He waited for a bolt of inspiration, but when nothing struck, he jerked open the window and dropped both issues out. Then he folded a damp towel so it'd look fresh, ascertained there was ample toilet paper, and opened the door.

"Don't be all afternoon in here," he said grimly. "We got some serious praying and repenting to do."

Kevin hurried past him and locked the door. Brother Verber returned to the living room and told Dahlia he needed to step outside for a minute. He didn't have a handy explanation, but she sat in the chair like a great pink Buddha and didn't so much as turn her head. Once outside, he hurried to the back of the mobile home.

The bathroom window was open, of course, and from inside he heard a curious moaning sound that made him wonder if he needed a plumber. He stopped worrying about the sound when he looked down at the patch of brown grass below the window, where there should have been two magazines. He'd dropped them out the window less than a minute earlier. He'd heard them flutter like pigeons.

Brother Verber looked around wildly. Across the street at the Emporium, one of the hippie women came out the back door and dropped a bag in a battered garbage can. She didn't appear to notice him, though, and he figured she couldn't have gotten to the mobile home and back inside the store in that short a time. A truck towing a horse trailer came down the county road, braked momentarily in deference to the stop sign, and pulled onto the highway. A drunk stumbled out of the pool hall, but it was a good block away and the drunk wasn't exactly leaping like a ballerina.

Clasping his hands over his belly, Brother Verber looked skyward skyward. "Why me, Lord?" he said. He waited for a reply, but he didn't hold his breath or anything.

*****

Lissie and I
were sitting on the porch steps when Harve and Les Vernon drove up. I told Lissie to wait there, then went over to the car and gave Harve a rundown on what I'd discovered and what I'd done thereafter.

"Jesus H.," he said, taking off his hat to run his hand across his carefully oiled hair. "The little girl's okay?"

"She seems fine. The medics said Buzz was critical. They were more optimistic about Martin, the boy. His color was quite a bit better, and he was semiconscious when they put him in the ambulance. The coroner's on his way with Plover and a couple of men to take prints and photographs."

Harve got out of the car and stared at the house. "Did you look around at all?"

"I didn't see any half-eaten sponge cakes, if that's what you're getting at. Damn it, what's going on in this town? Have we got a maniac on our hands? Maggody's not big enough to have a resident maniac. Don't try to tell me—"

Harve hushed me and herded me away from the porch. We hissed at each other until Plover drove up, followed by other official vehicles. He issued orders, then joined us. "Do you want to come inside?" he asked me.

"I want to crawl under my covers," I said in all sincerity. "No, I've seen enough to hold me. You all can go look for cellophane wrappers and fingerprints and whatever it is you think you'll find."

"We'll need you to wait."

"I'll wait." I went across the yard and sat down in the grass, battling to maintain a professional composure. I'd seen nasty things in my life—and some of them in a shabby little town where, in theory, nothing ever happened. When something happened here, however, it happened with an intensity that made it a hundred times worse. A corpse in Manhattan was a corpse. In Maggody, it was someone's mother, someone's child, someone who lived next door or sang in the choir. It had a name. The violence wasn't isolated in a Bowery doorstep. It was a blister that enveloped all of us; we couldn't dismiss it as an inexplicable act of greed, or lust, or rage.

My eyes were closed and my shoulders trembling when I felt a small hand on my knee. "Don't cry, Miss Arly," Lissie said softly. "When I cry, Pa says all it does is make my nose turn red. He says it don't help to act like a baby and that I have to be a big girl now that Mama's in heaven."

"I'm sure your pa loves you very much," I said, aware of the incongruity of a police officer being comforted by a ten-year-old child whose father might be dead within the hour. There was a bright yellow dandelion near my foot. I picked it and handed it to her with a weak smile.

She searched my face for a long while, then crawled into my lap and put her thumb in her mouth. I wrapped my arms around her, and the two of us rocked back and forth in the grass.

Lissie couldn't stay
at home, so I told her to wait by my car and went into the house. One of Plover's men was taking photographs of the recliner. The coroner was in Lillith Sinew's room, pronouncing the obvious to Deputy Vernon, who looked ill. In the kitchen, a trooper with an exceedingly grim expression was removing items from a garbage can and placing them on the table. Plover and Harve muttered to each other as they examined the items.

I kept my eyes averted from the bunk beds as I packed a few things in a small suitcase. I told Plover I'd be back, then put the child in my car and drove toward the Lambertinos' to see whether she could stay there for the time being.

"Where'd they take Pa and Martin?" Lissie asked.

"To the hospital."

"Why didn't they take Gran, too?"

I glanced at her, but she looked only mildly curious. "I'm afraid Gran was too sick for the medics to help her," I said gently.

"Is she gone to heaven with Mama?"

"Yes, she has."

"Oh." Lissie leaned down and pointed at the battered police radio. "What's that thing do?"

As I explained what the thing was supposed to do but rarely did, I pulled into the Lambertinos' driveway and cut off the engine. "Lissie, I need to ask you some questions. Is that okay?" She nodded, still frowning at the radio. "We think that Pa, Gran, and Martin all ate or drank something that made them sick. You're not sick, so you obviously didn't have whatever they had. Can you think what it might have been?"

"Huh-uh. Does the siren work?"

"Upon occasion," I said, watching her closely. "Let's talk some more about what happened today. Were you awake when Pa came home from the supermarket at seven?"

"Yeah, I woke up real early like I always do, but I didn't get out of bed right away. I read a story to Roxanne, and then we made up our own stories."

"So you and Roxanne made up stories?" I said encouragingly. "Then what did you do? Did you have breakfast?"

She nodded, but her forehead was wrinkled and her lower lip was extended. "I didn't make up the stories. Roxanne did. I just listened." She held up the doll as if to verify the statement.

"Fine, fine. And then you went to the kitchen, right? Was everybody having breakfast?"

"Is this where I'm gonna stay until Pa and Martin get back? I don't think I want to stay here, Miss Arly. Saralee might hit on me, and she's mean."

"Mrs. Lambertino won't let Saralee bother you." I reminded myself of the necessity of eliciting information, and let an authoritative authoritative edge creep into my voice. "Lissie, you do understand that I'm the police chief and I have to find out what happened at your house today. You need to help me. Once you've done that, we can talk about the radio or anything else you want. Okay?"

"Okay, Miss Arly. Gran fixed me cereal, but she was grouchy, so I ate real fast. Then Pa came in and she said she wanted to talk to him in the back room. He said he had a gawdawful headache, but she said they was going to talk right then."

I nodded. "Good, Lissie. Did they talk?"

"In the back bedroom. I couldn't hear much, but I think they were both mad at Martin. He came in from the backyard, and pretty soon Gran came out and told Martin to go talk to Pa. I finished my cereal and went into the living room to watch television."

"Did Martin tell you why Pa and Gran were mad at him?" She shook her head so vaguely that it seemed to drift back and forth. "I watched television all morning. Gran came in and looked hard at me, but all I was doing was sitting in Pa's big chair with Roxanne. Martin went back outside, and I think Pa went to bed on account of how he had to stay awake all night."

"You're doing great, Lissie. What about lunch?"

"Martin and me had canned spaghetti and leftover corn bread. Gran fixed it, but she said she wasn't hungry. While we ate, she talked on the telephone about how people were getting sick from something. I think she was talking to somebody named Eula, 'cause she said, 'land sakes, Eula,' and 'I can't believe that, Eula.' Pa came out later and had a baloney samwich and a beer." In that I didn't know what poison had been used, I didn't know how long it had taken until the symptoms became serious. Breakfast seemed innocuous, and Buzz and Martin had eaten different things for lunch. According to Lissie, Lillith hadn't eaten anything. I scowled at myself in the rearview mirror, then tried to smile. "I want you to do something for me, Lissie. Close your eyes and try to think if your pa brought home a bag from the supermarket."

She obediently scrunched up her eyes. "No," she said in a faraway voice, "he just came in and said he was tireder than a fiddler's elbow at a barn dance. Then Gran started in on him and they went to the back bedroom."

"Did you see anyone have something to eat or drink after lunch?" I asked without much hope.

"No, but everybody was fumin', so I stayed in Pa's chair until he told me to go outside and play. I wanted to watch television some more, but he said the noise was giving everybody a royal pain." She began to squirm on the seat. "It's awful hot sitting here, Miss Arly."

"You're right," I said as I took her overnight bag from the backseat. "Let's go talk to Mrs. Lambertino."

Joyce wasn't thrilled, but after I explained the situation, she agreed that Lissie might as well sleep on the other roll-away cot and keep Saralee company.

"Saralee's not here," she added as she took the bag from me and sent Lissie inside. "She went to practice about half an hour ago.

"Practice," I said hollowly, having been preoccupied with more important things for most of the afternoon. "There's no way on God's green earth I can get over there, not even for a minute. I don't suppose there's any way you can...?"

"The baby's teething and has been howling nonstop for three days. Larry junior's running a temperature, and Traci's acting like she's coming down with something, too. I'm smack in the middle of fixing supper. Larry Joe's off practicing with the SuperSavers, so he won't be home for another hour. I'm real sorry, Arly, but there ain't no way."

I asked if I could use her telephone and then dialed the number of Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill. It was answered with alacrity. "Arly? What in heaven's name is going on? Is it true half the folks in town have been poisoned, including the entire Milvin family? All four of them found dead in their beds?"

"Calm down," I said through clenched teeth. "The grapevine's a little ahead of itself. Yes, there have been a few isolated...problems with items purchased at the SuperSaver. The Milvin family seems to have gotten the worst of it." I stopped for a moment, puzzled. "Where are you getting your information, Ruby Bee?"

"Here and there. In fact, Estelle heard a most astonishing story from Perkins's eldest, who cleaned at Mrs. Jim Bob's this afternoon. I'll be the first to agree that Perkins's eldest may be a few logs shy of a rick, but Estelle said she said Mrs. Jim Bob said—"

"Stop! I don't have time for this—now or ever. Can you and Estelle handle practice for me?"

"Baseball practice?"

"No, parachute practice. The plane's waiting for you out front."

She sputtered for several seconds before she said, "You know I have an aversion to heights. My eyelid starts twitching when I have to ride an escalator. Now why would you think I—"

"Of course I'm talking about baseball practice. I've got to go back to the Milvin house. Have Hammet go to my apartment and get the equipment bag, then trot yourselves out to the pasture and make sure everyone survives. Don't worry about teaching anyone to do anything. just tell them to play catch for an hour."

"But I have to keep the bar open."

"Then tell Estelle to do it. You'll only have seven players today, since neither Milvin child will be there. But the rest of them are probably waiting by now, and you're liable to find fresh blood on home plate if you don't get over there—now."

"But what if they start acting up? What if they ask me about how to play or bat?"

"What if you had wheels? Then you'd be a tea cart, right? For Pete's sake, Ruby Bee, I've got other things to do, and unless you want Georgie McMay's untimely demise on your conscience, you'd better get over to the field." I hung up on her and shrugged at Joyce, who was trying to pretend she hadn't been listening. "I think it's different in the major leagues."

"Me, too," she said. She promised to call me if Lissie remembered anything of importance, and I drove back to the Milvin house.

*****

Brother Verber was
sweating like a roofer in August, but it wasn't because of the paltry confessions he'd wrung out of Kevin. Even if he'd been paying attention, hearing stories about a few smooches and a bizarre-sounding encounter in an outhouse (of all the dadgum peculiar places) wasn't going to begin to compete with his study material. Which brought to mind a serious problem, and in spite of himself, Brother Verber let out a groan that sounded like a Greyhound bus belching carbon monoxide.

Kevin stopped in mid-confession. He glanced at Dahlia, who hadn't moved in so long that he was beginning to worry, then he looked back and said, "Are you all right? You look mighty sickly."

"I am wrasslin' in my soul on your behalf," Brother Verber snarled. "If you weren't such a revolting, perverted sex fiend, none of this would have happened."

"You mean we wouldn't be here?" Kevin said, his voice cracking in bewilderment.

Brother Verber couldn't explain exactly, so he nodded and pursed his lips as if he was thinking real hard. "Just get on with your disgusting story, and don't take all day about it. I got better things to do with my time than to listen to you snivel about every little peck and every little pat on the fanny."

"But you said to tell about all that and not skip anything," Kevin pointed out, now so befuddled that he wouldn't have known which end of the fork to scratch his head with. It was out-and-out mystificating, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say and what he wasn't and why Brother Verber kept looking out the window window like he thought there was more sex maniacs loose on the grounds of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall.

"There was the time we went for a walk out to Boone Creek," he suggested, then waited to see if it qualified or not.

Brother Verber shook himself like a wet dog in a snowstorm. "Okay, okay, let's hear it. But if you're going to describe nature, you'd better make sure you're talking about the birds and the bees. Otherwise, I'll be sorely disappointed, Kevin Buchanon. I may be so sorely disappointed that I'll be obliged to send you away and get to work on my Sunday sermon."

Nervously wetting his lips, Kevin again peeked at Dahlia. She didn't so much as quiver, so he took a deep breath and said, "It was a right pretty evening. The birds was chirping, but I ain't sure we saw any bees. Dahlia had fixed us a nice picnic supper. Deviled eggs, if I recollect rightly, and pimento cheese sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off and double-fudge brownies with icing. The dogwoods were beginning to bloom, and you could smell the sweet evening air like it was perfume."

He continued along these lines, working himself into a veritable poetic frenzy that would have irritated Brother Verber, had he been listening.

*****

Mrs. Jim Bob
rang Eilene's doorbell, her foot tapping steadily and the corners of her mouth veering downward with each passing second. "This is most inconsiderate," she said under her breath. She'd driven all the way over to have a talk with Eilene, and now it looked as if Eilene had just gone on her merry way without worrying one bit about keeping people standing on her front porch as if they were peddling burial insurance.

When Eilene opened the door, she didn't appear to appreciate how much she'd vexed Mrs. Jim Bob, who was in the midst of a trying day. "We're having supper," she said with a vague look toward the kitchen.

"I heard about the pin in the cupcake," Mrs. Jim Bob said briskly. "I came over here to talk to you about it. Shall we sit in the front room or out here on the"—she glanced at the porch swing and shuddered—"I believe the front room will do nicely."

"For a minute." Eilene opened the screened door without noticeable enthusiasm and gestured for her visitor to come inside. Once they were seated across from each other, she said, "What have you got to say about the pin?"

Mrs. Jim Bob realized Eilene was not going to be an easy row to hoe, not with her sitting there like she was a judge facing a common criminal. "I heard how you scratched your tongue," she began, sounding as solicitous as possible.

"On a cupcake that came straight from Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less."

"That doesn't mean Jim Bob had anything to do with it, Eilene. Use your head; why would Jim Bob want to make everybody mad at the SuperSaver?"

"I don't know, but he's doing a real fine job of it," Eilene said unhelpfully. Mrs. Jim Bob regretted not wearing her white gloves, since she always believed they gave her an authoritarian air. She went ahead and waggled her finger anyway. "Now, let's not go leaping to wild conclusions. Jim Bob didn't put pins in the cupcakes or poison in the sponge cakes...but I know for a fact who did!" She waited for a moment, but Eilene didn't budge, so she had no choice but to lift her chin and plow ahead. "It was Lamont Petrel, that fellow from Farberville who was Jim Bob's partner. You may not have heard, but he fled the scene of his crime right when everyone started getting sick in the picnic pavilion. His wife called the police yesterday to report him missing."

"I heard. Doesn't mean he did it."

"Then why did he run away? You just tell me that, Eilene Buchanon."

"I don't know why he ran away, but he doesn't have any more reason to poison everybody than Jim Bob has. You yourself said he's a partner." She stood up. "If that's all you got to say, then I'll be getting back to the supper table. My tongue's so sore, all I can have is liquids. Earl says we ought to get ourselves a lawyer on account of my injury."

Mrs. Jim Bob stood up, too, but her knees felt like gelatin and she had to hold on to the arm of the sofa until she got herself steadied. "I cannot believe my ears," she said coldly. "Neighbors don't treat each other like that, and it's hardly the Christian thing to do. You and Earl have been upstanding members of the Voice of the Almighty for years, and I'd like to think you're above spite and malice."

"I am—but my lawyer ain't." Eilene smiled as the blood drained from her visitor's face.