by Joan Hess
“See what?” Harve said with a growl.
“It’s kinda like a parade.” The deputy ducked back through the door.
“Vans from the television stations,” I said hollowly. “Buses filled with reporters, and a limo with lunatics from the tabloids.”
“I suppose we’d better have ourselves a look.” Harve slid out of the booth, and Plover and I followed him outside.
Estelle’s station wagon was creeping down the middle of the road. She was at the wheel, her face slathered with fury. Ruby Bee, jammed in the middle of the front seat, looked no happier. On the far side, Trudi Yarrow looked downright murderous, as did Billy Dick in the backseat. In that he was scrunched between Kevin and Dahlia (who spread across half the available space), his expression was understandable.
Other things were not. I shaded my eyes and let out a whistle when I saw Marjorie in the back of the wagon, her snout pressed against Dahlia’s neck. Willard Yarrow was plastered against the tailgate.
Only a few feet behind the bumper, Raz Buchanon was in his truck, leaning out the window with a shotgun in his left hand. Fuzzy Indigo sat beside him. He was the only one of the participants who seemed cheerful.
“Now you jest pull over right there!” Raz shouted, aiming the shotgun at the station wagon.
Estelle pulled into the parking lot and cut off the engine. Nobody so much as twitched. Raz parked behind her, slid out of his truck, and waved at us. “Got you another dead ’un here in my truck,” he said genially. “I don’t know what all these folks have to do with it, but they was all sneaking around up on Cotter’s Ridge. One of ’em was hiding in the outhouse, if you can imagine. I rounded them up and brung ’em down.”
“Oh,” said one of us, or perhaps all of us.
Chapter 17
Harve finally shook himself into action and ordered the deputy to escort Raz’s dubious crew into the bar and grill, separate them as he saw fit, and keep them from assaulting each other until we could try to sort out the latest development, which was a real doozy. A trooper was dispatched to retrieve the remaining members of Glittertown—Carlotta from the state police barracks, and Anderson and Frederick from their respective rooms. Of the original eight, we were down to four, with three murdered and one currently missing. It was beginning to look as if Maggody was not the perfect location for the filming of Wild Cherry Wine.
Plover went to his car to set the homicide team in motion for the third time. I stayed by the truck. Even though we’d covered the body with a canvas tarp, it was difficult not to hear the flies that had already converged on Buddy Meredith’s remains, and equally difficult not to react to the miasma that made it clear he’d been dead for several days.
After an interminable delay, the coroner arrived from Farberville, took a quick look, and sonorously pronounced Meredith deceased. He was willing to speculate that death was the result of the knife that protruded, from the corpse’s throat. I went around the corner, threw up on a spike of weeds, and returned in time to hear the coroner peevishly add that it was clear to anyone with more than formaldehyde for brains that the corpse had been dead for a long time—and in a warm place.
The team arrived. Plover issued orders, then took my arm and guided me into the barroom. We had quite a crowd (including a soporific sow) scattered around the room. I consulted with Harve and Plover, then took center stage and started with the firebug and his apprentice.
“Why were you on Cotter’s Ridge?” I asked.
Billy Dick gazed defiantly at me. “We fixed some sandwiches and went for a picnic. I thought we might all go skinny-dippin’ at that spring.”
Willard’s giggle held the same foul edge I’d heard the night of the gas station fire. “It was Trudi’s idea,” he simpered in the voice of a playground tattletale. “She wanted to tease Billy Dick.”
Trudi was scrunched down in the seat, but at the mention of her name, she flinched and said, “You little worm, I didn’t want to do anything. You and your creepy friend came up with this scheme all by yourselves. I just went along for the hell of it.”
“Scheme?” I repeated.
She shoved her hair out of her eyes and glowered at them. “Yeah, they were gonna steal some jars of moonshine and sell ’em to the kids at the Dee-Lishus. That’s what they said, anyway. Then it turns out they don’t even know where the still is, and he gets this bright idea we ought to go to some old shack and burn it down, just for kicks.”
“Which one of them had the bright idea?” I asked. “Billy Dick MacNamara?”
Billy Dick’s eyes began their now familiar retreat. “Not me. I might steal some hooch, but I don’t start fires.”
I shook my head. “Then why did you lie to me and make threats?”
“I d-dunno.” His voice thickened as he struggled with the words. “For once, s-somebody thought I was important. Somebody noticed me, didn’t dare laugh at me. So maybe I lied, acted g-guilty, said things to keep you curious.” He gulped noisily. “I don’t start fires.”
Willard giggled again. “Sure you do, Billy Dick. Remember in the tunnel below Balthazar, when the dragon belched and I was burned to a crisp?”
“I was the one who was burned,” Billy Dick said, frowning. “You were the d-dungeonmaster. You ordered the dragon to attack.”
“I couldn’t help it, Billy Dick. The dragon can’t be stopped, you know; he can only be controlled by a wizard. I’m not a wizard. I can’t be Willard the Wizard until somebody’s been sacrificed. I thought about you, but the dragon demanded a female sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” Trudi gasped. The blemishes on her face were bright red against her sudden pallor. “Is that why you wanted me to go inside that shack? Damn it, Willard, you’re a sight spookier than I ever dreamed. I thought that lacy red slip in your closet was Billy Dick’s, but now I’m not so sure it doesn’t belong to Willard the Wizard!” She raised her hand as if to slap him, then lowered it and looked at me. “It won’t do much good, will it? I reckon you’d better get hold of my parents. They’re at my great-aunt’s hospital room. I’ll give you the telephone number.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You’ll all have to wait at the barracks until we can notify them, and Billy Dick’s mother.”
The only sound in the barroom was a wheezy sigh from the sow as a trooper escorted the three away to locate their parents.
Once the door closed, I forced myself to move along to the next pair of miscreants, Ruby Bee and Estelle. “And you two? Why were you on Cotter’s Ridge?”
Ruby Bee looked almost as defiant as Billy Dick had. “We did it to save you the bother, so there’s no need to squawk at us like we were interfering in your official investigation. We went up there to save Fuzzy’s backside.”
Fuzzy smiled benignly at her. “Always nice to have your backside saved, isn’t it?”
Estelle snorted. “Ruby Bee happened to notice he was stewed to the gills when he came back from Raz’s on the morning they were making the movie there. We discussed it, and realized he’d most likely been drinking moonshine and might have gone up on the ridge to look for more. Raz got mighty perturbed when we delicately inquired about it.”
I looked at Raz. “How very curious that the kids, and now Fuzzy, would anticipate finding something as illegal as a moonshine still on Cotter’s Ridge. Why would they all entertain such a possibility?”
“How would I know?” Raz said. He started to spit, heard Ruby Bee’s hiss, and thought better of it. “I jest took Marjorie up there on account of her fondness for snufflin’ for acorns. Ol’ Fuzzy came lunging out of the bushes and liked to scare the britches clean off me, and Marjorie nearly run up a tree. I may have took a shot at him, and then got all worried he might be a-bleedin’ and tracked him down to the shack.” He went ahead and spat on the floor. “Marjorie still ain’t up to snuff. She was too upset to ride in the back of the truck with a dead man, and she’s always had a hankerin’ to ride in a station wagon.”
“Are you claiming there’s not a still somewher
e up the mountain past Robin’s shack?” I persisted.
“No, there ain’t, and iff’n there was, I wouldn’t have told that feller anything except mebbe the general area, and I wouldn’t have dun that iff’n he hadn’t come by one evening and started admiring the quality.”
“Took me hours to find it,” the feller contributed with a hiccup. “It’s dynamite hooch. Blow your head off—kaboom!”
Raz and Marjorie were sent away. I was going to get rid of Fuzzy, but he fell across the seat and began to snore. I moved along to Kevin and Dahlia.
“And you two?”
Dahlia’s tongue was on the trigger, so to speak. “It’s all Kevin’s fault. He kidnapped me and almost got me killed, and I want you to arrest him and lock him up in a filthy jail cell for the rest of his born days.”
“My beloved …”
“Well, it was your fault, and you know it.” She proceeded to relate a farfetched tale of a wild ride up the mountainside, a wire thrown in the bushes, a body in the shack, and a miserable night in the car. “He didn’t even bring anything to eat or drink,” she concluded in condemnation. “I could have died of starvation up there.”
“Kin you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?” Kevin said, clasping his hands together.
“Not unless I get to be in the movie.”
Carlotta winced. “I think we’ll close down production of Wild Cherry Wine. It’s not feasible now that we’ve lost three of our five principles and the director.”
Dahlia was berating Kevin as they left. The room seemed larger and much more manageable. Ruby Bee offered to make fresh coffee, and although I wanted to throttle her, I gestured curtly at her to get on with it.
“I can’t believe Buddy’s dead, too,” Carlotta was saying to Anderson and Frederick. The three were huddled in one booth. Anderson had his arm around her, but she was shivering and nervously ruffling her hair.
“Gwenneth’s still missing,” Frederick reminded her. “No one can do anything for Kitty, Buddy, or Hal, but we’ve got to find Gwenneth before something happens to her.”
I listened to them from the middle of the dance floor, gnawing on my lip as I tried to see through the professional facades. Based on what I was observing, Carlotta was frightened, Frederick was genuinely distraught about the missing girl, and Anderson was depressed and defeated by what he’d seen in the mirror.
I caught myself wondering if my emotions were reflected so precisely. Plover didn’t seem to think so, but he was hardly the person to offer a critique.
Ruby Bee put a cup of coffee in my hand. Estelle carried a tray with more cups to the others. Harve wandered over, and in an attempt at optimism, slapped me on the back and said, “We’re only missing the blond actress, so I’d say we’re making progress.”
“Buddy Meredith wouldn’t agree with that,” I said, slurping coffee and sighing. “How in the hell did he end up at Robin’s cabin, Harve? We don’t have a local chamber of commerce that passes out maps detailing points of interest. Except for Fuzzy, the others couldn’t have known about the road and the shack. How could any one of them have taken Meredith’s body there?”
“It’s not exactly something that comes up in your basic conversations,” Harve said. He went to the bar and put down his coffee cup to dig a cigar butt out of his shirt pocket. I stared blankly at his back as I recalled a remark from an earlier conversation.
“Are you okay?” Plover asked, nudging me.
“I need to make a telephone call, but not from here. Hold down the fort while I go to the PD.” My frown deepened. “And I need to hunt up something in my notebook, too. I knew there was a reason for all my copious scribbling.”
When I arrived at the PD, I made the call, then took out my notebook and found the page of notes from the interrogation of Hal Desmond. What I’d thought would be there wasn’t, and I made myself sit still until I remembered the gist of my first conversation with him, when he and Carlotta had dropped by the PD to discuss the schedule.
Even though I knew Plover and Harve were waiting impatiently for my return, I leaned back in the chair and mulled over my theory until it made sense. The motive was obvious, and after staring at my notes a while longer, the means became obvious, too. All I lacked was proof.
I walked back to Ruby Bee’s, my fists in my pockets, and entered the barroom. Fuzzy was snoring peaceably. The remaining three members of Glittertown Productions, Inc., were in the same booth. Ruby Bee moved behind the bar, refilling coffee cups for Harve and Estelle. Plover was pretending to ponder the selections on the jukebox, but his shoulders were rigid and he snorted periodically.
I went to the booth. “I want to know precisely where each of you was the night of Kitty’s murder,” I began coolly. “This time let’s skip the evasions. Carlotta?”
“Gwenneth was in the room, so I went to the launderette and used the pay telephone to call my friend at Cinerotica,” she said. “Kitty and Buddy were shrewd enough to figure it out. I needed to make sure he’d shredded any paper trail.”
“And then?”
“I went to Anderson’s room.”
“Why?”
“I took him a check to reimburse him for something he picked up before he left California. I like to keep the books up to date so I can tell if we’re on budget.”
“Cocaine is one of your standard production costs?” I said.
She shrugged. “Preproduction, actually. Hal insisted it was necessary to boost his creative flow.”
I looked at Anderson. “Will you confirm this?”
His eyes lowered, he nodded. “After she gave me the check, we just relaxed for a while, talking about the town and the script.”
“Sure you did,” Frederick said, smirking.
“Don’t be so quick to cast the first stone,” I said to him. “Darla Jean told me the truth about your evening in a motel in Farberville. Sergeant Plover suggested we book you on contributing to the delinquency of a minor, but I lean toward handing you over to Darla Jean’s father. Who knows? He might use a shotgun to make you marry her. I wonder how she’d do as a Hollywood hostess. I’m confident that she knows how to make cornbread, but I wouldn’t count on her for anything fancier than that.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not gonna encourage her to tell the world that she got blind drunk and screwed the night away with someone she barely knew.”
“She did get blind drunk, didn’t she?” I glanced over my shoulder at Harve and Plover, who were only a few feet away and clearly interested. Ruby Bee was glued to the nearer end of the bar, and Estelle was leaning at such an angle she was apt to topple off the barstool. I explained for their benefit. “I called Darla Jean from the PD to make sure I’d heard her story correctly. After she drove him to a drugstore, Frederick bought a bottle of whiskey and insisted they take a motel room. He started pouring booze down her, and even though she protested that she wasn’t like slutty Robin Buchanon, he forced her to have sex with him.”
“I didn’t force her. She wanted it,” Frederick said. “Now she may claim she didn’t, but at the time she was a hot little number.”
I shifted my attention to Carlotta and Anderson. “Robin Buchanon was a rather unique individual who lived in the shack where Meredith’s body was found earlier this afternoon. You may not care about a decrepit, abandoned shack, but Frederick was interested enough to ask Darla Jean for details. He then poured more whiskey down her until she passed out. When she awoke later, a second bottle mysteriously had appeared in the room. She can’t remember anything about the trip home except for a brief episode of vomiting. She’s just grateful she made it home at midnight and the car was parked in the driveway the next morning.”
Frederick grinned. “So what if I drove home? She was cross-eyed, and I was doing her and the car a favor.”
Carlotta looked as if she wished she had her clipboard on which to make notes. “Are you saying Frederick got the girl drunk intentionally? It’s sleazy, but it’s a long way from—”
; “Murder?” I suggested. She nodded, watching Frederick as if he were a cobra poised to strike. “I’m afraid so. He left Darla Jean unconscious in the motel, came back here to kill Kitty and Meredith, and put Meredith’s body in the trunk. He bought another bottle of whiskey, and after he’d finished with the girl, took her home and waited until she was inside the house. He then had the use of her car for several hours.”
Cigar smoke drifted over my shoulder. “Why not leave both bodies in the motel room?” Harve asked. “Seems a sight easier.”
“Easier, but not as ironic,” I said. “Buddy Meredith had escaped his rural roots and gone off to the big city. Frederick must have felt it was only justice to allow the body to decompose in a piss-poor excuse for a shack. Lots of maggots and big green bottle flies. A godawful stench. Rats and other vermin to gnaw on it. A charmingly ironic location for Buddy Meredith’s final scene, don’t you think?”
“And why would I do that?” demanded Frederick.
“Because he abandoned your mother,” I said more gently than I’d intended to. “Did she point him out at the movies? Did she tell you how he’d run off the night before they were supposed to be married?”
“You’re full of it, Chief Hanks. I told you I lived in San Diego, not St. Louis.” He was inching toward the outside edge of the seat, but Plover stepped forward and impassively blocked the egress.
“Who said anything about St. Louis?” I said.
“You must have said something,” he said. He assessed his chances of getting past Plover, then slumped into the seat.
I continued. “We will track this down, eventually, over the phone or in person, if we have to. Your grandfather denied your existence in order to appease his guilt, but we’ll find your birth certificate. You can change your name, but not your little baby footprints on the birth certificate. You let Hal send you to an orthodontist to get rid of the gap between your front teeth, and send you to a speech coach to correct your ‘hayseed’ accent. Correct, but not erase entirely, I might add. No one from San Diego does anything as quickly as ‘a snake goin’ through a hollow log.’ That’s a colloquialism indigenous to the Ozarks region. You must have learned it from your mother.”
