Mortal Remains in Maggody

by Joan Hess

  Damn straight. I went back to the house and told Millicent I had car trouble and would come back later. I waved off her offer of a ride, glanced at Darla Jean’s window as I crossed the yard, and took off down the road, swinging my arms so violently I could imagine one flying out of its socket. My heels crunched on the gravel.

  By the time I reached the highway, I was calmer. Clearly Les Vernon had not yet picked up Billy Dick and Willard, but he surely would before too long. They no longer faced misdemeanor charges. Their little hobby of removing eyesores from the landscape had escalated into attempted murder. It was likely that they would be tried as adults.

  As I walked toward the PD, I tried to determine what had provoked this sort of seriously antisocial behavior in them. Billy Dick’s father had been an alcoholic, but his mother seemed to be struggling to provide for the two of them. The house was adequate, as was the Yarrows’ house in Hasty, and in both cases, there were vehicles in the driveway and television antennas on the roof. No soul-twisting poverty, no indication of physical abuse or neglect.

  Darla Jean McIlhaney was in hysterics because she’d done something of which she knew her parents disapproved. Becky Hopperly had, too, and had suffered for it. But most of the local teenagers did so, and they survived. A few ended up at the state juvenile facility, but the majority eventually graduated from high school and either married or disappeared into the outside world.

  I considered my adolescence. My father (and this was the first time in years I’d allowed this to trespass into my thoughts) had walked out on Ruby Bee, and apparently kept on walking until he reached the edge of the earth and took the critical step. In a way, he’d walked out on me, although I’d been in utero and therefore unavailable for good-byes.

  My childhood had been peculiar. Not all children dine in a bar and reside in their own motel rooms. Peculiar, but not dehabilitating. I’d had enough sense to leave for college the day after high-school graduation. Which isn’t to say I hadn’t fumbled. There’d been mistakes resulting in vile hangovers, speeding tickets, ill-judged liaisons, and bad grades, and a particularly noteworthy one resulting in divorce.

  So why, when most of us blundered along the road, did Billy Dick and Willard head down a dark alley?

  A calculating expression came over Brother Verber’s face, and this time he remembered to rub his palms together. He took a deep breath and said, “And what all’s in it for me, Loretta? I ain’t gonna risk havin’ Cooter after me for nuthin’. If I let you hide in the choir room, you got to somehow do something to make it worth my while.”

  From the pew behind him, Gwenneth said, sniffling, “I ain’t got no money.”

  She spoke so sweetly that he wanted to pat her on the shoulder (or thereabouts), but Brother Verber was getting into the swing of things, and he made himself sound as cold as a well-digger’s ass. “I ain’t talking about money, honey child. I reckon I’m talking about that cot in the choir room. Is you comin’?”

  “And you a man of the cloth …”

  He almost leered, but he’d tried that earlier and the director had lectured him like he’d snuck a toad into Sunday school. “That’s why I keep a sheet on that little cot. Close enough.” He stood up, as did Gwenneth behind him, and he was keenly aware of her flowery perfume as she followed him down the aisle.

  “Cut,” Hal said. He and Carlotta conferred quietly. Then he glanced at his watch and said, “It’s past lunchtime, but we’ve only got one scene left, so let’s put on our happy faces and get it done.”

  Brother Verber watched Carlotta and Anderson unplug lights and carry them past the pulpit and through the doorway beyond it. “Excuse me,” he humbly said to Hal, “but now that I’m done, I think I’ll go over to the rectory for just a moment to make sure none of my flock has been trying to reach me.”

  “You’re in the next scene.” Hal beckoned to Gwenneth and Frederick, and the three of them went through the doorway that led to a small storage room.

  His copy of the script ended with CUT TO: just below his “close enough” line. Scratching his chin, he followed the others, and found the chairs pushed back and the room flooded with white light. While Anderson struggled with an Army surplus cot, Carlotta left and returned with the camera. Frederick positioned the lights in the middle of the room. Gwenneth flipped through her script, which was a sight thicker than his and scribbled up with marks.

  “No, over here!” Hal barked at one of them; Brother Verber wasn’t sure which. The cot was moved several times, as were the lights. Anderson went to a corner and began to brush powder on his forehead. Gwenneth took out a compact and applied lipstick.

  “Excuse me,” Brother Verber said to the room in general, “but I don’t seem to have a copy of this next scene.”

  “I must have left it in my motel room,” Carlotta said. “But you did splendidly, and all you have is one simple line. Why don’t I just tell you what it is and not burden you with a script?” Brother Verber nodded. “Your line is: ‘Cooter! What are you doing here?’ Think you can handle it?”

  “Cooter, what are you doin’ here?” he echoed obediently. “Who’s Cooter?”

  Anderson signaled with a finger and smiled. Carlotta hustled Brother Verber over to a corner, studied her clipboard, and said, “Cooter and Loretta have already blocked the scene. I’ll draw a nice ‘X’ on the floor for you, next to the cot where she’ll be. When the action starts, you’re standing there, looking down at her. Mustn’t touch, though. The door opens, Cooter comes in, and you say …?” She smiled encouragingly.

  “Cooter, what are you doin’ in here?” Brother Verber said, thinking how easily he had learned how to go about making a movie. It was kinda fun not knowing what was going to happen next. “Is that all?”

  “Cooter has some lines. He shoves you aside, and after that, you’re off-camera. From then on, be as quiet as a mouse and watch.”

  Brother Verber nodded, but he was distracted by the sight of Loretta peeling off her halter and exposing what he referred to as the devil’s handiwork. His jaw was on his chest, and his eyeballs zoomed halfway across the room. “Is—is the young lady—is she supposed to—where do I …?” he said, stuttering.

  “It’s all very symbolic,” Carlotta said. “Now, strip down to your boxer shorts and we’ll see if we can get a wrap on the first take.”

  “Say what?”

  “Do you mind?” Gwenneth said, rolling her shoulders and letting her head fall back. She flipped her hair over her face, then shook it back into place. “I’m absolutely starving. Let’s do it so we can eat.”

  Symbolic my foot, Brother Verber told himself. It was so unreal that it verged on an out-of-body experience. Why, he could be floating near the ceiling, watching himself and the others as they buzzed around. Most likely he’d be floating right above the cot.

  No one paid any attention as he sat down on a folding chair and took off his shoes and socks. He put his jacket and shirt on the chair, then held on to the back of it while he tottered on one foot to pull off one pants leg, then on the other foot to do the same.

  He felt naked. The lights captured each bead of sweat, each bulge of fat, each dimple of cellulite, each dirt-lined crease. More than anything he wanted to snatch up his clothes and cover himself, but as he hesitated, Gwenneth positioned herself on the cot and stretched out her arms to him.

  “Come find your mark, Preacher Pipkin,” she cooed. “And please don’t screw up your itty-bitty line.”

  His feet carried him across the room, where the view sent jolts of electricity throughout him like he’d poked a fork in an outlet. Someone said “Action!” but he barely heard it. Gwenneth gave him a resentful look, but her ripe lips and half-closed eyes said something entirely different.

  “I—er, I—is this …?” he managed to say, unaware he was engaging in what the Hollywood folks called adlibbing.

  The door opened. Out of the corner of his eye, Brother Verber saw Anderson stride into the room, his face that of a gargoyle and his fis
t held up menacingly.

  A line. He was supposed to say a line. He thought he heard the girl hiss something, but it might as well have been in a foreign language.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” this intruder roared. He took another step and swung his arm.

  Brother Verber’s nose exploded in pain. He touched it, and then goggled at the red smears on his fingertips. “Now, why’d you go and do a thing like that?” he asked wonderingly.

  “That’s what I’d like to know,” came a voice from the doorway. Not Cooter’s, by a long shot. Not any of the cast members, not Hal’s, not Carlotta’s. Not even Harve Dorfer, who’d been sent outside to recuperate.

  Even though he was wearing boxer shorts, Brother Verber’s hands flew down in the classic gesture of modesty.

  Mrs. Jim Bob tapped her foot in a staccato rhythm that spoke of doom. “Well?”

  “Cut!” Hal threw the script into the air. It fluttered down noisily in the ensuing silence.

  He had hoped for a sacrifice, but it hadn’t happened. The man had been burned—badly, from all reports—but had survived. He needed a sacrifice if he was to become a wizard. He hadn’t known it at first. The fires had been enough. The fires made him feel strong, potent, superior.

  Now the dragon demanded more than dry wood, or even gasoline tanks and tires. The dragon demanded flesh to devour. His put his fingertips on his temples and waited. When it came to him, he smiled. The dragon wanted a woman.

  Chapter 15

  “Les can’t seem to track your firebugs down,” the dispatcher told me on the telephone. “He called and said to tell you he’d been to both houses. The MacNamara boy’s ma had no idea where he was, and nobody was home at the other boy’s house. Les is heading back to Hasty one more time.”

  “When you hear from him, tell him at least one of them was in Maggody less than an hour ago,” I said. “We’ve got to find them before they go totally out of control.”

  “Amen to that,” she said, then hung up.

  Plover still hadn’t shown up, but I couldn’t wait for him any longer. People were popping underground like a bunch of prairie dogs. I called the state police barracks and requested that someone examine my car and Ruby Bee’s for explosives, tucked in my shirttail, and walked down the highway to the Assembly Hall.

  The deputies watched me as I came up the walk, but I merely nodded and went inside. What I saw was not my envisionment of a movie set. Carlotta and Hal sat in a back pew. She had the clipboard on her knee and a pencil in her hand and was saying, “No, this’ll work and we can salvage the first half minute. The camera swings around Cooter’s back and comes in from his left for a close-up of Loretta’s reaction. He yanks her up and drags her out the door, snarling, and then a freeze frame of the empty cot and cut to Billy Joe and the earth mother. The audience won’t have time to wonder if Pipkin bled to death or what.”

  Hal chuckled nastily. “Then we keep the bloody-nose bit? Gawd, that was classic. I haven’t heard anyone stutter like that since I ran over the maid’s cat in the driveway.”

  Neither of them looked up as I continued down the aisle. Brother Verber was on his knees in front of the first pew, clad in boxer shorts and a sloppily buttoned shirt. His head hung down and his hands were clasped so tightly his fingers were bloodless. Mrs. Jim Bob stood over him like an executioner (sans ax), and as I went past, said, “And in the house of the Lord! Nakedness and fornication! Bare breasts!”

  I found this intriguing, but to my regret his response was not audible. I crossed the platform and went into the storage room, where things seemed more normal. Gwenneth sat on a cot, filing her nails. Frederick Marland leaned against the wall, watching her, and Anderson glanced up from a book and smiled.

  “The cavalry arrives,” he murmured.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him. “Why’s Brother Verber out there in his underwear?”

  “Oh, just one of those artistic scenes,” Anderson said. When he approached me, I could see a veneer of greasepaint on his face and a day’s growth of stubble on his cheeks and chin. His hair was combed back in an oily pompador, and his ill-fitting suit and crooked bow tie did nothing to enhance his appearance.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” I asked. “The PeeWee Herman of the Ozarks?”

  “The evil, scheming villain, my pretty.” He squeezed my shoulder and leered. “If my hopes are dashed—and they will be in six or seven scenes—I’ll throw myself on your tender mercies, and perhaps your bed.”

  Frederick and Gwenneth were observing his theatrics, although without much interest. I plucked his hand from my shoulder and led him by the wrist to the dimmest corner of the room. “What’s this movie about?”

  “Film, not movie,” he said, edging forward until he had me blocked off (not that I was in any great hurry to escape). “The film’s about love, dear Arly. Spring flowers, fragile dreams, young lust.”

  “And half-naked preachers?”

  “Very symbolic, that.”

  “Symbolic of Thanksgiving, maybe,” Gwenneth said. “One look at him and all I could think of was a self-basting turkey.”

  I lowered my voice and upped my intensity. “What’s this film about, Anderson?”

  “Gwenneth and Frederick, better known as Loretta and Billy Joe, have the hots for each other, but her father, Zachery, insists that she must marry yours truly, a thoroughly despicable fellow named Cooter who’s in need of a shampoo and a competent tailor. There are a few diversions, but ultimately the two dewy-faced youngsters escape and consummate their love.”

  “How do Verber, Dahlia, and the others fit in?”

  “Background. Peripheral characters dedicated to either helping the lovers or thwarting them, depending on how many lines they can remember. Hal feels that they give the film texture and a sense of locale, and, conveniently, they’re eager to work for pocket change and promises.”

  I tried to ignore the heat of his body and the faint odor of after-shave mingled with makeup as I thought about the film’s plot. “Does the girl have to get married? Is she pregnant?”

  “Good heavens, no. It’s a veritable tribute to Gwenneth’s talent, in that she’s supposedly a virgin throughout. A ripe virgin, certainly, and in the mood to alleviate the condition, but determined to save herself for Frederick over there.”

  “But her cruel father is forcing her to marry your character?” I said, frowning so hard I could barely see through my eyebrows. “She’s upset about it?”

  “He slaps her around, if that’s what you mean. Oh, and there’s a scene in which he takes a tad too much pleasure in her butterfly, but she hightails it to safety.”

  “And Kitty Kaye was the mother?”

  His smile disappeared. “That’s right. She’s the one who makes the original deal with Cooter. Carlotta doctored the script to exclude the role.” He started to run his hand through his hair, then stopped before he gave a literal translation of the phrase “greasing one’s palm.” “Have you found out anything about what happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I thought I might have, but I’m more confused now than I was this morning. Meredith’s the only one who can answer some of my questions, and he’s not available.”

  Other witnesses were, however. Metaphorical gloves laced tightly, I came out of the corner and told Anderson and Frederick to wait in the main room of the Assembly Hall. Gwenneth appeared to be fascinated by her fingernails, but she was watching me as I pulled over a chair and sat down near the cot.

  “Want to discuss Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and an outstanding warrant for a hit-and-run?” I asked pleasantly.

  She held out her hand to admire her work. “No, I don’t believe I do. Do the girls around here have manicures, or do they chew off the rough spots and spit out the pieces?”

  “How’d you end up in Hollywood?”

  She resumed filing her nails. “I bounced around foster homes until the accident. I decided I’d better split for L.A. and stardom. Stardom wasn’t quite
ready for me, so I turned some tricks, did some supersleazy flicks, and waited tables.” She looked at me through slate-gray eyes, and her voice seemed as scratchy as the sound emanating from the file. “That accident happened a long time ago. Nobody cares about it, and nobody’s gonna stop me now.” She stood up, dropped the file on the cot, and sauntered to the door. “Are we here to have a prayer meeting or to shoot some footage?” she called in a sugary voice.

  “We’re ready to resume,” Carlotta said as she came into the room. “Arly, I didn’t know you were here.”

  “I’m here,” I said, “and I need some answers.”

  “Try out to be a Jeopardy contestant,” Hal said as he took Gwenneth’s arm, led her across the room, and settled her on the cot. “We’ve got this thing pulled together, and we’re going to shoot it. Anderson, this is right after the punch. Carlotta, over Cooter’s right shoulder, and then quickly to his left. Frederick, get the lights.” He looked stonily at me. “This is a closed set, Chief. If we want spectators, we’ll issue engraved invitations.”

  Clearly I was dismissed, but before I could mention that a murder investigation had precedence over a movie scene, he continued. “Okay, Anderson, glance over the lines. You’re furious. Gwenneth, doll, Cooter just burst into the room and smacked the preacher. You’re terrified, so do a whimper and cringe thing.” Without looking up from the clipboard, he pointed a thumb at me. “Carlotta, my beloved, she’s still here. Clear the set. Let’s have continuity in terms of undress, Gwenneth. Where’s Frederick? I told him to get the lights. Can’t you people do anything without wasting time? We’ve got a film to make, fer chrissake!”

  Somehow or other, I found myself in the empty Assembly Hall, the storeroom door closed firmly behind me. Brother Verber and Mrs. Jim Bob had departed. As I went slowly up the aisle, I heard Hal Desmond shout, “Action!”