There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell - v4 (30 page)

“Rowena Spaulding is a revolting hag!” she screeched as she shimmied from side to side, swinging her totties out like seats on a YoYo carnival ride.

“You’re good at that!” Maye commented.

“I come alive in front of an audience,” Ruby shouted, her bazongas in full velocity.

Maye tried to avert her eyes from the whipping carnage and stretched her arms out to her sides, too, mimicking Ruby’s grinding and shaking.

“Rowena Spaulding,” she shrieked, “is a vile, sorry little bitch!”

Ruby abruptly stopped her shimmying, doubled over, and burst out laughing. “
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte
!” she cried, holding her sides. “That’s good! That’s good!”

“Well, look at this,” a male voice said from behind them. “Two women in the house—and one of them a redhead!”

Maye spun around immediately and was shocked to see John Smith, the plumber and cop, standing in the doorway in his officer’s uniform.

Oh shit, she thought to herself in a panic that clearly bore itself in her expression. He’s finally come for me. He’s finally come to bring me in. I’m going to the Big House for getting a cop all hopped up on organic cane sugar. “Hi there, John,” she said, trying to sound cheery.

“Hello, Maye,” he said flatly, in no way returning her attempt at cheeriness. “Been a while. How’s the bathroom drain?”

“Good,” Maye said, nodding, trying to act as nonchalant as anyone would when an officer of the law you’ve drugged walks into the room in the middle of your nasty-lady dance. “Good. You know. Draining.”

“What did you bring me?” Ruby croaked at her guest. “Did you bring me eggs? I needed eggs! And I’m outta coffee and I’m getting close to wiping with leaves.”

“It’s all in the car, Aunt Roo,” John said, finally breaking a smile. “I brought everything on your list, and I’ve got my tools so I can work on the kitchen sink.”

Maye looked at John, then Ruby, then John again. “He’s”—she pointed at one of them, then the other—“What? You’re related? I’m—why didn’t you tell me?”

Ruby and John looked at each other.

“’Cause it wasn’t none of your business,” Ruby quickly quipped.

“You’re Lula’s son?” Maye asked. “Lula and the Captain’s?”

“I’m John junior,” the cop explained. “The Captain was John senior.”

“He’s plain old Junior to me. And he’s also the reason you couldn’t find me in the public records. After Papa died, this house passed over to John, thank heavens,” Ruby said. “Now I’m going out to the car, and there better be some toilet paper in there, ’cause I gotta go.”

“No, I’ll get it,” he said, stopping her at the door. “I just wanted to make sure you were up and around before I started making a racket bringing stuff in. I had no idea you were running a stripping school.”

Ruby hit John on the shoulder and cackled. “The Girl here is working on her act for the Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant,” she said. “We’ve just got a little bit of spice in our show, that’s all. Her dog sings, too. It’s gonna bring down the house, I tell you.”

“Mmmm,” John mumbled, nodding. “I’ll bring your groceries in.”

Maye waited until she saw John out next to his car before she said anything.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was your nephew?” she whispered to Ruby.

“Why?” she whispered back. “What difference does it make?”

Maye thought about it for a moment, and other than the fact that she had roofied up an officer of the law to rat out his old, alcoholic, allegedly arsonist aunt, she supposed it didn’t really make a difference if they were related or not.

“Well, I guess it doesn’t,” Maye whispered back. “It’s just a surprise, that’s all.”

“Not as much of a surprise as waking up in the passenger seat of your patrol car on the wrong side of town as the sun is setting with jelly on your face,” John said as he crossed the doorway with a full grocery bag in each arm. “There’s more out there, Maye, if you’d like to help.”

“Of course,” Maye said, feeling instantly foolish, and she trudged out to the patrol car, where the backseat contained a forty-pound dog-food bag and a jug of milk. With the dog food hoisted over her shoulder and compressing her spine like an accordion, Maye made her way back into the house and to the kitchen, where John was unloading the groceries. She lifted the dog food off of her shoulder and onto the floor and placed the milk in the fridge. He kept unloading the bags onto the counter and didn’t say a word.

“I really owe you an apology, John,” Maye said with his back turned toward her. “I know what I did was really wrong. It was a horrible thing to do. I knew your weakness for Hoo Doo donuts, and I took advantage of it. I’m really, really sorry. I can’t say it enough.”

John spun around quickly and put his hands on his hips. “You didn’t just drug me and make me spill secrets I had kept for my whole life,” he said sternly. “You put that old woman in danger. Do you know what would happen if some people knew she was out here? Do you? Sure, most everyone’s forgotten about it, but some people lost their livelihoods, they lost their homes and businesses. Even if they’ve gone on to rebuild, that’s an anger that doesn’t die away. There are people out there who, I dare say it, maybe wouldn’t like to see her dead, but they’ll like to see her in prison.”

“I didn’t know any of that when I force-fed you donuts, John,” Maye tried to explain. “I would never have done anything to hurt her, or you for that matter. I thought you were keeping a silly little secret and that she was some sort of Greta Garbo figure, hiding all the way out in the woods because she wanted it that way. I had no idea about the fires. I had no idea until she told me. When I was looking for her, the idea of Ruby Spicer was romantic and so mysterious. I didn’t know it would turn out to be…”

Maye stopped. She didn’t want to say it.

“Tragic, sad, and drunk,” John said it for her. “Drunk, tragic, and sad. Thank God no one takes that idiot Titball seriously, otherwise they would have swarmed her already. He’s been out here all sorts of times, trying to get her story out of her, trying to expose her, and I have warned him. Unofficially, of course, but he’s another one who never takes into account what would happen if they found out the woman who burned the town down was still living less than twenty miles away, and she’d never gone anywhere.”

“You…you think she did it?” Maye asked incredulously. “You can’t think she did it?”

“I would love to believe that she didn’t do it, Maye, that she was wrongly accused,” he said. “But she’s…she’s got a temper, and imagine that temper when something that she loved so dearly was threatened. Now, I love that old bag, she’s the only family I’ve got left. But I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want to cross her. The pieces fit, you know? Now, sure, the town made up some bullshit story about pipe-manufacturing competitors coming down here to set the fires to drive the factory out of business, but the truth is, she did it. Ruby Spicer burned down the pipe factory, City Hall, the movie theater, the bakery. Was it right? Hell, no. But is she to blame? I don’t know. You can’t tell me that you think she rows with both oars in the water. It’s not her fault, really, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that she did it, and that my father, despite the risk to his career in law enforcement and what it could have done to the rest of his life, protected her all of those years because he made a promise to my mother.”

Maye didn’t know what to say; her head was spinning. But she couldn’t believe it, she did not believe that Ruby had set those fires and had actually deserved to pay the penance that she had without so much as a fight.

“I don’t know, John,” she finally said, shaking her head. “I just, I don’t think I can believe that. Did your father believe she was guilty? She said she was here with her parents every time one of those fires broke out.”

“Maye,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s what
she
told you. That’s what she believes. He had proof it was her. She dropped a scarf at one of the fire scenes. My father found it. He never entered it as evidence, but he knew it was hers. And it was, my mother even said so. He covered it up. That wasn’t right, but for Ruby to do that, there was something else there, something not right. They tried to make her leave town, maybe even get some help. They knew that if it came out, the people would go berserk on her and that would make everything worse. This is a small town, Maye. They would have eaten her alive if she was a suspect. They would have gone after the family, too. But she wouldn’t listen, she was that crazy. Too crazy to even save what she had left of her life. In the end, she served her sentence anyway, sitting out here, watching old movies, setting herself on fire, and drinking enough to embalm herself. You didn’t tell anybody that you knew she was out here, did you?”

“I don’t know anyone, John,” Maye said, wanting to laugh. “Up until I drugged you and left you on the bad side of town with jelly on your face, you were my closest friend. Wait—no—I did tell someone. I told Rowena Spaulding that Ruby was coaching me for the pageant.”

John shook his head slightly. “Oh, Rowena knew she was out here,” he replied. “Her folks used to live on the next farm over. They were good friends of the family, nice people, watched out for Ruby after my grandparents died, for a while. They were nice, not like Rowena.”

“Yes,” Maye agreed. “I’ve had my run-ins with Mrs. Spaulding myself. She’s a piece of work.”

“Well, concerning pieces of work, I gotta be honest with you, Maye,” John said, taking a deep breath. “I was not too happy with what you did and how you did it. That’s kidnapping, you know, and I also gained six pounds overnight. I had to buy new police pants. I was really going to let you have it the next time I ran into you, and when I saw your car out front when I pulled up, I thought for sure the showdown was on. And then, when I walked up to that door and heard that old girl laughing, well, I thought it was probably the right thing to do to put my anger aside and just let it be.”

“Well, we were just having fun, “Maye answered. “We do that sometimes when she’s not threatening to ram a lit cigarette into my face. I like her. She’s grown on me.”

“You don’t understand,” John interrupted. “She was laughing. I’m a middle-aged man, Maye, and I have never heard that woman laugh.”

Maye suddenly felt very heavy, like something had suddenly pressed down on her.

“Ever?” was all she said.

“Ever,” her plumber replied.

“Sure, she’s a little loopy,” Maye said to Charlie that night as she was making dinner. “But I just don’t think she did it. Even if John does.”

“He knows her better than you do, Maye,” her husband reminded her as he lifted his briefcase onto the counter and rustled through it. “Just the thought of you out there alone with her makes me nervous. What if her nephew’s right? What if she’s capable of suddenly snapping and just going off the deep end?”

“Charlie, please,” Maye said with a chuckle as she pulled a pot from the bottom cabinet. “If you ever saw her, you’d know there’s nothing to worry about. She weighs about as much as a toddler, and I can see all of her vital organs decomposing through her skin. She can do the splits, I’ll give her that, she’s as limber as a lemur, and I wouldn’t necessarily categorize her as harmless, but unless she’s packing a stun gun, even I could outrun her.”

“Well, according to her nephew, she’s a full-fledged arsonist with one oar in the water and a wooden house that’s a thunder-cloud away from collapsing,” he said. “Doesn’t sound so safe to me.”

“Charlie, you’re going to have to trust me on this one,” Maye tried to reassure him. “You’re worrying about nothing.”

“And what kind of cop was this Captain person, anyway?” he asked as he pulled a stack of mail from the front pocket of his briefcase. “I mean, if you have the criminal, you have the evidence—what kind of person just lets them go, even if they are a bit wacky—and your sister-in-law? Isn’t that a cop’s duty? To follow the law no matter what? Don’t they take a cop oath where they promise to serve and protect and obey and patrol or something like that? ’Cause I could have sworn I saw them do that on
CSI
. I mean, the Sopranos have an oath, don’t cops?”

“Who knows what was going through his mind,” she replied, filling the pot with water. “If you think this is a small town now—and there’s a hundred thousand people here, Charlie—can you imagine what it was like then? I mean, I see the same people at the grocery store, the bank, at restaurants—people I don’t know but just recognize from around. That never once happened to me in Phoenix, but here, I am always seeing people who made my checking deposit, people who served me pizza, people who are begging for a dollar on the street holding up a sign that says ‘Hungry Mom and Kids,’ and half an hour later, they’re sitting next to us eating a New York strip and there’s nary a child in sight. It’s easy to get found out in this town as it is—imagine it back fifty years ago when everyone knew everyone else. Even insinuating something would probably be enough to get a person and their family condemned to a life of shame and completely ostracized forever. You’d be convicted merely on suggestion and instantly become a pariah. All on one little red scarf? Anyone could have set those fires—Ruby was all over town at different events. She could have dropped it then.”

“Surrounded by photographers wherever she went?” Charlie scoffed. “I really doubt it. I think you’re just trying to believe something that you want to believe, Maye. That old lady set the fires. And I think you know it.”

“Well, for an insatiable firebug, she’s pretty lazy,” Maye said, taking the pot to the stove. “There hasn’t been a fire since.”

“That we know of,” Charlie reminded her. “We’ve been here less than a year. Who knows when she’ll get bitten by the pyromaniac bug again? If I start noticing a lot of spent matchbooks around here, or see that you have an unnatural attraction to Duraflame logs, I’m calling this whole thing off. I have the feeling she’s a bad influence!”

Maye laughed. “Charlie, you’re ridiculous.”

“Well, she’s teaching you how to shimmy,” he said dryly. “Are you going to sing to this song, or just lip-synch?”

“I am an entertainer now, I will remind you,” she said. “The shimmies are mine, and so is the voice, no matter how deplorable it is.”