Merry Wives of Maggody (32 page)

“Mine put in a diving board last summer. So Tommy was a favorite of yours?”

“I cried when the manager told everybody this morning. I wanted to take the rest of the day off, but I can’t afford it. My kid got braces, and I’ll be making monthly payments on his wedding day. You sure you don’t want a drink? It’s on the house.”

I agreed to a glass of orange juice. I sipped while she went to see if any of the patrons were in need of refills and then came back around the bar. “Tommy and the Gilberts were close friends, weren’t they?” I asked her.

“I wouldn’t put it that way. Tommy and Dennis were tight. Used to be they were out here most afternoons and all weekend long, talking, playing gin, cracking jokes. after Dennis married D’Amanda—uh, Mrs. Gilbert, he and Tommy stopped hanging around together so much. Everybody slithers down in their seats when she marches in. I keep waiting for her to drag Dennis out by his ear.”

She was doomed to disappointment, but I decided to let the manager break the news. “Mrs. Gilbert didn’t like Tommy?”

“She’d just as soon spit on him as say hello. That’s what made it so darn funny when—” The waitress put out her hand across her mouth.

“When…?” I said softly, leaning forward.

“Nothing. If I get caught gossiping about the members, I’ll be fired in a split second. No excuses, no exceptions. They’re free to talk all they want about each other, but the staff isn’t supposed to hear one word of it.”

I slid a five-dollar bill under the napkin. “I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

The bill vanished. “I guess I can trust you. It was a week ago or so. Tommy and Dennis were at their table, talking about an upcoming golf tournament. They got to arguing about who could make a hole-in-one. I perked up my ears, since when somebody makes one at this club, he or she has to stand a round of drinks in the bar, and I get to add the gratuity to the tab. Anyway, in comes Mrs. Gilbert and sits with them. They make a bet right under her nose. She goes ballistic and jumps down their throats. after she’s gone, they keep laughing and raising the stakes. Half the room was snickering, since Mrs. Gilbert’s not real popular. Too old for the soccer moms and too trashy for the society ladies. Later Tommy scribbled on a napkin and had me witness it.” Her expression sobered. “He was a real kidder. It’s like his ghost is sitting at his table. No wonder there’s hardly anybody here today.”

“What did Tommy do with the napkin?” I asked.

“Tucked it in his shirt pocket. Hey, if Tommy has any family, be sure and give them my condolences. I’m gonna miss him.”

I couldn’t come up with any more reasons to linger in Farberville, so I headed for Maggody. When I saw a familiar roadside rest area, I pulled in. A short walk along a path strewn with paper cups and aluminum cans led me to a trickle of a creek. I sat down and watched the water flow over mossy rocks, leaving swirls of brownish foam. I became oblivious to trucks on the highway as I considered what I’d heard from the witnesses. Despite their best efforts, a few had slipped up and told the truth. Fragments began to fall into place. Tommy’s death had closed Act I, and Dennis’s death was the focus of Act II. That left Act III for the grand denouement, as soon as I came up with it. I was more in the mood for
Our Town
than
Hamlet
. I’d played Emily in our high school performance, and memorizing my lines had almost killed me. So had falling off the ladder.

It began to rain. I drove to Maggody and parked at the PD. The evil red light on the phone was blinking. For once, I was pretty sure it wasn’t Ruby Bee. I should have called Estelle to find out if Amanda had reappeared, but that would have given her the chance to sputter about car theft and ingratitude, along with what ever else occurred to her. I was running low on sympathy.

The first message was from Harve. I dialed his home number.

“Chief of Police Ariel Hanks,” I said. “What’s up?”

“Did you get in Ridner’s house without a hitch?”

I told him about the bottle of pills and Amanda’s ill-fated intrusion.

I then described Frederick’s purported poker buddy and the information I’d picked up at the country club. “I don’t think Amanda killed Tommy,” I continued. “She relished their encounters, when she could taunt him. Tommy must have, too. It was a game for them. That left Dennis as the spectator, his head swiveling back and forth while the two took cheap shots at each other.”

“You don’t think they had something on the side, do you? Pretending to be enemies makes a good cover.”

I leaned back in my chair. “No,” I said slowly. “Amanda’s been around the block a couple of times. She knew that if they had sex, she’d lose her power. No fun in that.”

“It’d give her a motive to kill him. She might have thought Tommy was making a move on Natalie. Women in their forties don’t take kindly to being replaced by sweet young things.”

“You speaking from experience, Harve?”

He mumbled a phrase that made me glad I wasn’t within reach.

“I talked to McBeen earlier. He said he’ll do the blood test tomorrow. We found a few prints in Ridner’s room that were in the system, but Les already told you about Lucas Smithers and Bony Buchanon. It’s hardly worth mentioning, since Ridner’s party included half the town. I guess you didn’t make the cut, eh?”

“As in haircut?” I asked blankly.

“For someone who lived in New York City, you don’t know shit. At a big golf tournament, there’s a qualifying round. The cut is what decides who all gets to play the next round.”

“They don’t play much golf on Fifth Avenue. No, I didn’t go to the party. I had better things to do, like scrub my toilet. Life’s exciting out here, Harve. A regular roller coaster of thrills and spills.” I was getting bored, so I hung up.

The next message was from Estelle. As soon as I heard her shrill voice, I erased the rest of it. If Amanda hadn’t returned the car by now, there was nothing I could do about it. Well, there was nothing I was willing to do about it, anyway. The final message was from Janna Coulter, who sounded frantic in an incoherent way. I listened to her message again, then gave up and drove over to the Flamingo Motel.

Janna yanked open the door. Her eyes were embedded in swollen flesh, and her face was mottled. “It’s about time! I called you almost two hours ago. I even asked Ruby Bee where you were, but she claimed she didn’t have a clue. Is there an Elm Street in this horrid town? A black hole?”

“Calm down. I was following a lead, but here I am. What’s wrong?” I said to be polite, since I was fairly certain what her response would be. The police academy stressed the need for diplomacy with the public.

Wobbling, she backed into the room until she bumped into a bed, then sat down. “Something’s wrong with me. I’m so sleepy I can barely see straight. It’s like an out-of-body experience. Could it be a stroke?”

“Stay awake and tell me what’s going on,” I said sharply.

She tried to focus on me. “after you left, Natalie and I came back here. She suggested that I take another antihistamine and lie down. All of a sudden I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. One minute I was talking, the next I was passed out on the bed. A noise from the next room woke me up. Natalie was gone. I went to the barroom, but she wasn’t there. Phil Proodle said he hadn’t seen her. There’s no place to go in this town—no café, no gym, no shops.”

“Did she take anything with her?”

“Nothing’s missing except her purse.” She rubbed her eyes.

“Her suitcase and clothes are in the closet. She refused to tell me where she went this morning after the tournament was stopped. You have to tell me so I can go find her.”

“You’re in no condition to drive. You didn’t have a stroke; you had a reaction to the medication. The best thing you can do is sleep it off. With luck, Natalie will be here when you wake up.”

“What if she’s not?” Janna whimpered.

I was thoroughly exasperated. “What if pigs had wings? For starters, we’d be dodging pig shit. But we’re not, are we?”

I got back in my car and went to fetch Natalie. Again.

Fifteen

I
parked by the tent and walked back to Kevin and Dahlia’s house. The good news was that the rain had driven Raz inside; the bad news was that it had one less target. I was so annoyed that I wanted to stomp through the puddles, leaving a muddy path of destruction in my wake. Could these people not stay put for fifteen seconds?

I barged through the front door. It would be very awkward if Kevin and Dahlia were cuddled around a lemon meringue pie in front of the TV. They were not. “Natalie Hotz, haul your sorry butt in here right now!” I shouted as I detoured into the kitchen to dry my face with a dish towel. “You, too, Luke Smithers!” I sat down on the couch and squeezed a stuffed sheep. “I’m waiting!”

Natalie came into the room. She was in no way perfect, with mussy hair and smeared mascara. She looked more like a petulant convenience store clerk, doomed to chomping gum and selling cigarettes to underaged kids. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” she said fiercely. “I’m an adult, free to go where I want to go.”

“And do what you want to do.” Luke grinned at me as he posed in the doorway, dressed only in frayed jeans. His abs rippled like corrugated iron, and his biceps bulged. The state prison didn’t invest much in rehab, but the weight room had all the trappings of a pricey athletic club (except, perhaps, a smoothie machine).

“What brings you out in the rain, Chief Hanks?” he drawled.

“You noticed it was raining?” I said.

Natalie flopped into a chair. “I cannot believe this. Did Janna send you? Are you like a bounty hunter in your free time?” She wiggled her fingers at Luke. “Would you be a sweetie and get me my purse? I feel absolutely naked without lipstick.”

“Sit,” I said to Luke. “No, Natalie, I am not working for Janna, but I am doing her a favor. If I’d told her where you are, she’d be crawling through the door in a couple of hours. She can barely walk, thanks to your tender loving care. Tommy had been using Dilaudid for a long time and built up a tolerance. Janna, on the other hand, keeled right over, didn’t she? Is this the first time you’ve switched it with her antihistamine?”

“At a tournament in Houston I put half a pill in her beer. It worked pretty good, but I was afraid she might build up a—whatever you called it. There’s no way to explain my absence in this town. It’s not like I could say I’d gone to the spa for a massage or to the pro shop to sign autographs.”

“Did you steal the pills from Tommy’s room?” I asked.

Her face flushed. “I am not a common thief. He gave them to me.”

“You were arrested for shoplifting, Natalie. That’s common around here.” I glanced at Luke, who was warily observing the exchange as his biceps deflated. “Did you go through basic training at Fort Sill? Don’t bother to lie about it. The army has records.”

Somewhere.

“Yeah, and it’s a hellhole. Flat, windy, dusty, hotter’n blazes in summer. I did officer training there, too. after ten months, I was begging to be deployed to Iraq.” He turned his liquid eyes on Natalie. “I wouldn’t have made it without you, honey.”

“It was exciting,” Natalie added. “There’s a dumb rule about army guys messing with civilians. Luke would go to the golf course, and I’d hide in the woods until we were sure it was safe. Sometimes I’d fix sandwiches and we’d have a picnic.”

He nodded. “If Janna had caught us, I would have been court-martialed in no time flat. Ironic, isn’t it? If I hadn’t taught Natalie to play golf, Janna wouldn’t have her precious protégé. None of us would be here now.”

“Right out of O. Henry,” I said, untouched by the travails of young love. “I assume you did more than play golf.”

“So what?” Natalie said.

I did not point out that by my calculations, she was no more than fifteen at the time. My jurisdiction didn’t extend into Oklahoma, but I’d make sure to mention it in the official report. The army’s jurisdiction extended past Andromeda. My job was to uphold the law, not to enforce Mrs. Jim Bob’s misbegotten version of morality. “You kept in touch?”

Luke cut her off before she could gush. “after I got back from overseas, I saw an article about Natalie in a golf magazine. It mentioned that Tommy Ridner lived in the same town, so I took a chance and enclosed a note for him in an envelope with my letter to Natalie. He turned out to be a nice guy.”

“It was incredibly romantic,” Natalie confided in the husky voice of a cabaret singer. “I mean, I saw Tommy almost every weekend at the club. I’d pass him my letters to Luke, and he’d slip Luke’s letters into my locker. My hand would shake so hard I could barely open the lock. When Luke moved so close, I thought I’d go out of my mind. Janna won’t let me have a cell phone, so there was no way Luke could call me. The tournament was like a miracle. I pretended I didn’t want to go so Janna wouldn’t get suspicious.” She glanced over her shoulder as if international spies were hiding behind the playpen. “I burned all his letters, just in case.”

Such a loss to posterity. “You found some opportunities to meet this weekend,” I said. “Is that what was going on Friday night?”

“Luke and I, uh, went for a walk. I tripped in the weeds and got all dirty and scratched. I was sneaking into the bathroom to use a washrag when Janna sat up in bed like a mummy in one of those scary movies. I had to tell her something.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Then I had to tell you something. I couldn’t tell you the truth because I was afraid you’d tattle to Janna.”

“You can’t trust cops,” Luke said.

“No argument from me. Tommy gave you the Dilaudid to knock out Janna?”

Natalie nodded smugly. “Three pills on Friday afternoon. It was his idea, mostly. He suggested that we should act all cozy so Janna would be distracted. There were a couple of times when I thought she was ready to kill him.” She put her fingertips on her lips. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Weren’t you worried that she might recognize you?” I asked Luke.

“She didn’t pay any mind to recruits. I had a different drill sergeant. We all stayed out of her way on account of her reputation. She almost bit one of my buddies’ head off —and I mean literally.”

A gory image flashed across my mind. “What are your plans for the future?”