Merry Wives of Maggody (21 page)

“Frederick Cartier assured me that he’d wait for Natalie. He seems like a gentleman.” Her hands curled into fists; if I’d encountered her in an alley, I would have dived into a cardboard box. “It’s my fault. Natalie’s had no experience with men,” she continued.

“I’ve protected her. If the media find any reason to gossip about her, she won’t get million-dollar endorsements. She has to be perfect.”

“That can’t be easy at her age,” I said, thinking of some of my less reputable escapades. Maggody had never provided much in the way of wholesome entertainment for teenagers, so we whiled away the time drinking beer on the banks of Boone Creek, tipping cows, skinny-dipping, and studying anatomy in the moonlight.

“Perfection’s not easy at any age.”

Janna regarded me with contempt. “Why aren’t you doing something?”

“If Natalie knew where she was going, then she came back at least an hour ago. Frederick dropped her off at the motel, and now she’s taking a hot shower and wondering where the hell you are.”

She stomped over to her car and drove away, splattering my car with mud. I suppose I should have braved the fallen branches and snakes to search the golf course for Princess Perfection, but I wasn’t in the mood. Frederick wouldn’t have abandoned her. I drove to the mayoral mansion. Mrs. Jim Bob’s pink Cadillac was parked in front. I assumed Frederick’s car was tucked safely in the garage. I hoped Natalie Hotz was tucked safely in the kitchen.

Frederick opened the door. “Arly. Won’t you come in and dry off?” He did not sound enthusiastic.

“Thanks.” I assumed that he was miffed because I’d asked for verification of his alibi. I went down the hall to the kitchen. Mrs. Jim Bob was seated at the dinette, a glass in front of her and a bottle of bourbon within reach. She gave me a bleary look as she filled her glass.

“Come to gloat, haven’t you?” she asked me. “Guess you think it’s funny that we had to stop the tournament because of the storm.” She gulped down her drink without so much as a blink.

“I’m sick and tired of your disrespectful attitude and your snide remarks. I hate to think of the grief you’ve caused your poor mother all these years.”

“Wait just a minute,” I said, pissed off at her standard litany of my faults. “I didn’t lift one finger to interfere with the golf tournament, not even my pinkie. If Ruby Bee is immersed in grief, she does a damn fine job of hiding it. I’m flattered that you think I can control the weather. Shall I hold my breath until the sun comes out?” I clamped my lips together and puffed out my cheeks.

“You can hold your breath ’til you turn blue in the face. That doesn’t change things, does it? I’ve been hearing rumors that you’ve got a bun in the warmer but no ring on your finger. Like mother, like daughter, I always say. Are you planning to raise your little bushcolt in a motel room, or have you set your sights on a double-wide at the Pot O’ Gold?”

I exhaled fiercely. “I thought I’d go to Jim Bob for advice. after all, he has at least one illegitimate child out there somewhere, doesn’t he?”

“He got down on his knees and acknowledged his weakness of the flesh, then prayed for divine forgiveness.”

“He’d better hope divine forgiveness comes with a lifetime warranty.”

“Ladies,” Frederick murmured, “let’s have a friendly cup of tea together.” He began to fill the teakettle at the sink.

Mrs. Jim Bob seemed more in the mood for Long Island tea than Lipton. She replenished her glass and took a deep swig. “As you know, Chief Hanky-Panky, I do not approve of alcohol in any form. I’m drinking strictly to calm my nerves. This last week has not been easy for me.” She grabbed a paper napkin and crumpled it in her fist. “The committee chairs failed miserably, so I had to step up and take charge of every last detail. Perkin’s eldest decided that she’s allergic to electricity. Every time I let her out of my sight, she starts unplugging things. Then I find out that my husband is a greedy, treacherous, conniving liar. How dare he take golf lessons on the sly and enter the tournament!”

“The very idea of him doing all that behind your back,” I said.

Her head bobbled emphatically. “All of the husbands—liars and rats! Not one of them volunteered to lift a finger to help us get ready. If Jim Bob or any one of them wins the boat, I swear I’ll take it out to the middle of the reservoir and sink it.” She raised her glass. “Damn the torpedoes and full storm ahead!”

I pulled Frederick aside. “Do you know where Natalie is?”

“At the motel, I should think.”

“Janna said you were going to wait for Natalie while she retrieved a golf club, then give her a ride. Did you take her back to the motel?”

Mrs. Jim Bob banged her glass on the table. “You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna sprinkle rat poison on the cot in the utility room. Jim Bob’ll get it on his skin and die in agony. When he begs me to pray for him, I’ll tell him to call one of his floozies at the trailer park and let her pray for him. Does the Lord Almighty listen to floozies? Ha! He’ll burn in hell for all eternity, regretting how he treated me.”

“Read the directions on the box,” I said to her, then turned back to Frederick. “Well, did you give her a ride or not?”

“No, I didn’t. after Janna left, Natalie came over to me and said she’d arranged for someone else to wait for her. There was a sparkle in her eye that hinted of young love. Who am I to interfere? Besides, I’m appalled by the way Janna treats the poor girl, bullying and berating her at every opportunity. What good is success if you sacrifice joy and passion to achieve it?”

“A lovely speech. Why don’t you go to the motel and repeat it to Janna?”

Mrs. Jim Bob stood up, clutching the bottle. “I should burn down the SuperSaver, that’s what I should do! There’s a can of gasoline in the garage. We’ll see how Mayor High-and-Mighty likes that. Then I’ll start a career in home decorating, and he can find out how hard it is to deal with gardeners and plumbers and Perkin’s eldest. Let him try to organize the spring rummage sale!”

She sat down and began to sob. “And the potlucks on Wednesday,” she said between hiccups. She splashed a goodly amount of bourbon on the table, then raised her empty glass. “If he’s in charge, we’ll end up with six green bean casseroles and no desserts!”

I looked at Frederick. “Do you have any idea who, or where they are now?”

“None at all,” he said distractedly, observing Mrs. Jim Bob as if she were a mutant lab animal. “Shouldn’t we do something about her? I’d hate to think she might actually follow through on her threats.”

“She’d never risk losing her exalted position in the Missionary Society. Where’d she get the booze?”

“Leftovers from the tournament. after this morning’s debacle, she insisted that all of it be put in her trunk. after she finished the vodka, she moved to bourbon. Gin is next.”

“Nobody understands me,” Mrs. Jim Bob wailed. “I’ve sacrificed everything for this community, everything! Without moral guidance, people would lie and steal and fornicate with farm animals. It’s up to me to maintain the standards of decency laid out in the Bible, even if it means living with ridicule and gossip behind my back. Don’t think I’m unaware of it, Arly Hanks!”

She was now drinking straight from the bottle. I gave Frederick a faint smile and left him to deal with her. The storm had rumbled its way out of the valley and the rain was easing up. I stepped in a puddle as I went to my car. My clothes were wet, and my right shoe squished as I drove down the driveway. I thought about Harve, stretched out in a recliner in front of the TV, the remote in one hand and a beer in the other. The kitchen at Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill would be redolent with the heady aroma of parsley, sage, rosemary, and chocolate cream pie. Even my so-called efficiency apartment with its mold and mildew was preferable to my car, which was beginning to smell like manure from my trips to the golf course.

Duty beckoned. I bit down on my lip and drove once again up to the tournament site, wondering if Natalie truly had arranged another ride or simply wanted to get away from Janna for a while.

All the likely suspects were at the motel. One of the ladies might have taken Natalie home with her, but I couldn’t imagine who.

Natalie was the enemy: young and willowly, reputedly an excellent golfer. Frederick had claimed she had a sparkle in her eye.

Such descriptions were better suited for romance novels, along with sultry smiles and tingles of lust. It was more likely she’d been slapped in the eye by a wet branch.

The tent looked even bleaker. As I turned around, I saw Raz sitting on his porch. I stopped and put down the car window.

“Have you seen anybody around here since the tournament was stopped?” I called.

“Mebbe.” He took a sip from a jar and smacked his lips. “Or mebbe not. What’s it to you?”

“A young girl’s missing. One of the golfers.”

“I don’t give a shit if all them golfers drownded in the pond. Long about August we’ll start seeing their swelled-up bodies in the muck. Won’t be a purty sight.”

“It won’t be a purty sight if I wring your scrawny neck. Have you seen anybody in the last two hours?”

“Saw you prancin’ around. I was hopin’ you’d fall flat on your ass in the mud.”

“Who else?” I said coldly.

“That woman you was talkin’ to. She’s a mean one, like my half brother Smutter. He was so ornery he used to dump kerosene in the well and toss in a bucket of frogs, just to watch ’em belly up. I reckon that woman would, too.”

“What about before that? A blond girl, maybe carrying a golf club?”

Raz grinned complacently at me. “What’s it worth to ya?”

“You think I don’t know about that stash of ’shine in the root cellar behind Belcher’s old cabin? What’s
that
worth to you?”

“Ain’t no root cellar up there, and iff’n there is, there ain’t nuthin’ in it.” He spat an amber ribbon toward a bucket, then glowered at me like a treed possum. “About ten minutes after ever’body left, the gal walked by. I offered to let her sit a spell on the porch to git out of the rain, but she acted like she din’t hear me.”

“Did you see anybody else?”

“I had to go inside and change channels on the TV. Marjorie gits right bored watching baseball. If she had her druthers, she’d watch them reality shows all day and half the night.” He cackled so hard that moths flew out of his beard. “She likes cooking shows, too. Jest last night we was watching—”

“Thanks, Raz,” I said, then returned to my car. Close encounters with Raz always made me itchy, but I didn’t have time for a shower and a change of clothes. Natalie had been on foot, heading toward the highway. It was less than a mile, and the chances of being attacked by a buffalo were slim. I would have noticed if she was lying in a ditch. But she had been talking with Kevin earlier in the day, I thought. With almost no encouragement, Kevin would bleat out all his woes—including the fact that Dahlia and the kids were staying at his ma’s house. If she’d seen him leave with Jim Bob or one of the tontine members, she’d know his house was unoccupied.

• • •

I parked, opened the gate, and went up squeaky steps to the porch.

It seemed silly to knock, since I was a cop and she was committing a crime. If this were a scene from a TV drama, the SWAT team would have kicked in the door and stormed the house. This being mundane reality, the door wasn’t locked. I went into the living room, which was decorated in yard sale chic. An upturned playpen dominated the middle of the room; mangled toys were scattered among juice boxes and bits of orange peel. The plastic house plants were near death. A golf club, quite possibly a wedge, was propped in a corner.

“Natalie?” I called. “I know you’re here. I’m not in the mood to play hide-and-seek, so don’t make me come find you in a closet.”

I wandered into the kitchen. Jars of peanut butter and grape jelly on the counter tempted me, but I didn’t want to humiliate myself in front of my imaginary SWAT team. I squared my shoulders and returned to the living room.

“Hey, Chief Hanks,” she said as she came in from the hallway, a towel in her hand. “I know I’m trespassing, but I had to get out of the rain. I kind of feel like Goldilocks. Thank gawd I didn’t find three bowls of porridge on the kitchen table.”

Her skin was perfect, I had to admit. Her teeth were white and even. She wasn’t as tall as I was, but she probably weighed thirty pounds less. Her ash blond hair was wet but neatly combed and tied back with a pink ribbon, accentuating her high cheekbones and guileless blue eyes. She’d managed not to get mud on her short pleated skirt or bug bites on her ankles.

“Janna’s worried about you,” I said. “She expected to see you two hours ago.”

Natalie sighed. “I know. I keep waiting for her to have a GPS chip implanted under my skin. That way she’ll be able to tell when I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.” She pushed aside a plastic truck and sat down on the sofa. “Can you imagine what it’s like to have someone spying on you every minute? She keeps a record of everything I eat and drink. I take a handful of vitamins and supplements twice a day. She inspects my fingernails. Sometimes I want to scream.”

“Slavery was abolished in the nineteenth century. Why don’t you leave?”

“It’s hard to explain. It’s like I was a scruffy dog at the pound and she rescued me. I’d be a terrible person if I wasn’t grateful to her. I was living with my mom and a brood of brothers and sisters in a little town near Fort Sill, over in Oklahoma. My mom’s an alcoholic and, well, a slut. She doesn’t even know the names of the fathers of most of the kids, including mine. I don’t remember her ever keeping a job for more than a couple of weeks. I dropped out of school and started working at a café when I was fourteen. I was terrified I’d end up like her.”

“And Janna rescued you.” I sat down and gazed steadily at her, trying to get a sense of her sincerity. I’ve always had a tendency to mistrust beautiful people. “How did she do that?”

“Fort Sill’s an army camp. I started dating a corporal, a real nice boy from Iowa, and he taught me how to play golf.” She picked up a stuffed animal and squeezed it in her arms. “It wasn’t serious or anything. He had a girlfriend back home, and he was crazy about her. He told me he kept all her letters under his pillow so he’d dream about her. I thought that was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.”