by Joan Hess
“I’m afraid not,” he said. He glanced over her head as a door behind the registration counter opened. “Perhaps we have someone to help us?”
Ruby Bee wasn’t real sure the man was the one she would have picked, given her druthers. For one thing, he looked meaner than a rattlesnake, with his squinty eyes, fancy hair swept back in a televangelist’s pompador, and snooty sneer. He probably wasn’t even thirty years old, but he was regarding them like he owned the hotel and everything else on the block, and they were nothing but those homeless people that Arly had warned her about. Mr. Pilverman’s mustache was messy but friendly; this man’s was nothing more than a thin black line that could have been drawn with a felt-tipped pen. His lips were thinner than Mrs. Jim Bob’s.
She wasn’t a bit surprised when he said in a real cold tone, “The hotel is closed for remodeling. Please be about your business elsewhere.”
Durmond Pilverman stepped forward, saving both Ruby Bee and Estelle the necessity of what might have been a fine display of indignation. “These ladies and I were told that the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff is to be held here, and we have letters to that effect. Are you the manager?”
“In a manner of speaking. May I see this purported letter?” He extended a hand with well-manicured nails and a ring as gaudy as a carnival prize. His cuff fell back to expose a heavy silver bracelet. If that wasn’t bad enough, he had several gold chains around his neck like he thought he was one of those egotistical Hollywood movie stars.
Ruby Bee was about to warn Mr. Pilverman not to hand over anything to this fellow with all the jewelry when the door again opened. This time it admitted several folks, all of them looking unhappy in varying degrees. The unhappiest of them all was a pretty young woman in a pale green skirt and jacket, carrying a briefcase in one hand and a clipboard in the other. Her eyes were flashing like the taillights on a taxi.
“Are you Richard Belaire?” she demanded as she strode across the room. She sounded as if even a hint of affirmation would result in bloodshed. “Are you?”
The snooty man behind the counter got snootier. “No, dearie, I’m president of the Junior League, but I must have left my white gloves and pearls at home today.”
“You have not returned my last four calls, Mr. Belaire, and it’s caused me a great deal of inconvenience. We need to talk. In the office—now.” She went down the corridor, and after a pause, Mr. Snooty Pants went through the door from which he’d come earlier.
“Goodness gracious,” Ruby Bee murmured.
“What on earth is going on here?” gasped a woman in the doorway. She nudged her companion, a teenaged girl, then let her luggage fall to the floor. “What kind of hotel is this? This will not do—not at all!” She spotted them and managed a tight, harried smile. “I’m Frances Vervain, but please call me Frannie. I presume you’re here for the contest? Catherine is thrilled to be selected as a finalist, but we were led to believe we would be staying in a decent hotel, and this won’t do. Catherine has a terrible time with allergies. At the first hint of dust, her eyes water and she cannot breathe.”
Ruby Bee looked at the woman, who seemed pleasant enough despite her inclination to talk faster than a trout goin’ after a mosquito. She had blond hair that was a little too brassy, but nobody ever said there was anything wrong with helping Mother Nature every now and then. Maybe a little too much makeup, and maybe dressed more like a teenager than the mother of one. The hemline was far from flattering, to put it kindly, and the bright pink of the dress called attention to her thick waist and unfortunate hips.
The daughter, Catherine-with-allergies, was slender to the point of resembling a beanpole. She had a cloud of frizzy auburn hair and no makeup to speak of, except a hint of blusher beneath dramatically pronounced cheekbones. Her posture was erect to the point of rigidity, as was pretty much everything about her. She looked awfully humorless for someone her age, what with her sulky expression, but Ruby Bee could understand how a ride from the airport could do that to a body.
“So you’re a contestant, too?” she asked the girl, giving her a friendly smile.
The girl turned to her mother. “I hope you’re satisfied.”
“It’s going to be fine,” Frannie said coolly. She repeated her name to Durmond Pilverman and Estelle, and after a few minutes of conversation, all the adults were on a first-name basis and feeling better about the immediate future. Catherine stared out the glass doors.
The woman in the green suit reappeared. “I’m Geri Gebhearn, the contest coordinator from Prodding, Polk and Fleecum,” she told them. “There’s been a small problem concerning communication with the hotel, but let’s all hope it’s under control—at least for the time being. Mr. Belaire has arranged for rooms on the second floor for you, and of course we’ll be using the kitchen when the big moment arrives.”
“The sawdust,” Frannie said, glancing at Catherine’s glacial face. “It’s going to make it ever so difficult for Catherine. She’s had allergies since she was—”
“The saw will be removed,” Miss Gebhearn said firmly. “Mr. Belaire says the remodeling will be confined to the upper floors until the end of the week. This means we’ll have to tolerate a certain amount of noise and disruption, but there are union contracts involved that cannot be breached. In any case, there are enough rooms on the second floor to house you, and the lobby and dining room will be cleared and straightened for our use.” She flipped to a page on the clipboard and scanned it. “Let’s see who we’ve got, shall we?”
Despite lingering uneasiness on several people’s parts, they gathered around her.
I was in the back room of the PD, trying to decide how vile day-old coffee could be, when I heard the door open. The clickety-click of high heels gave me an idea who the visitor was, and I took malicious satisfaction in calling, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“Is this a café or a police department?”
“Beats me,” I said under my breath, then went to the doorway to regard Mrs. Jim Bob, who was not only the mayor’s wife, but also the president of the Missionary Society, the self-proclaimed Miss Manners of Maggody, and a royal pain in the neck (and other locales farther south). Physically speaking, she was not altogether unattractive, but her perpetual expression of grim, self-righteous disapproval was enough to put even the most generous of us in a fractious mood. She and I were not the best of friends, possibly because I had been known to be less than deferential on occasion. Any old occasion suited me just fine.
“I wish to file a complaint,” she began ominously.
“Anything in particular, or shall I arrest everybody in town and sort it out later?”
“I’m not in the mood for what you mistakenly find so amusing, Miss Chief of Police. There is a serious problem in Maggody, and your lackadaisical attitude toward law enforcement is at least partially responsible.”
“Are you trying to flatter me?” I asked as I sat down behind my desk and settled my feet on my favorite corner. “It won’t work. You’ll have to take a number like everybody else.”
I could almost hear her grinding her teeth, but after a dark look, she said, “Last night Brother Verber discovered three teenaged boys in the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. They were drunk. One of them was standing at the pulpit, less than properly clothed, engaged in blasphemy and disrespect for the good Christians of the community.”
“Oh, my gawd,” I murmured.
“What do you intend to do about this outrage?” Mrs. Jim Bob continued with the relentlessness of a torrential rainstorm.
“Shoot ’em?”
“The point is that they obtained the liquor illegally. You may waste your time reading magazines at the edge of town while pretending to monitor the speed limit, but I cannot sit by idly while the youth of Maggody sink into a moral quagmire of indecency and disrespect for their elders.”
“Then you’re going to shoot ’em for me? I can loan you my gun, but I’ve only got three bullets so you’ll have to aim real carefully.”
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“The liquor,” she said, sounding a bit strained, “came from Raz Buchanon’s still. Everyone in town, from the youngest child to poor Adele Wockerman out at the county rest home, knows that he’s running his still up on Cotter’s Ridge. I’m surprised that the chief of police has seen fit to allow him to do it right under her nose, and without any discouragement or suggestion that he cease.”
“The chief of police knows about this?” I said incredulously. “I can’t believe it, Mrs. Jim Bob.”
“Now listen here, Arly Hanks, I’ve had quite enough sass from you! As the wife of the mayor, who does pay your salary, I demand that you arrest Raz Buchanon and destroy the still before it destroys the moral fiber of Maggody!”
I put aside my urge to continue needling her (for fun, if not for profit). “I’m aware that Raz is back in business, but it’s a tad more complicated to stop him than you’re implying. I’ve tried four times in the last month to find the still. I can show you bruises and scratches, although the tick bites are more private. He may not be the smartest person in town, but he’s cunning enough to move his operation any time he catches wind of my imminent appearance, and not just to another spot on the ridge. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re surrounded by wilderness, all of it crisscrossed with logging roads. If it were a matter of watching Raz until he rented a U-Haul, I might be able to track him down. As it is, he ought to work for the Pentagon.”
I leaned back in my chair and watched her beady eyes dart as she considered her response. She rarely deigned to speak to me, much less to come into the PD and attempt to bully me into action. But here she was, fuming and ready to fight, dressed for battle in a navy dress, a prim hat, white gloves, and a girdle no doubt partially responsible for her pink face (I’d like to take a little credit myself). It finally came to me—she’d been ignored recently, what with the wedding of the decade and Ruby Bee’s well-publicized culinary triumph. Mrs. Jim Bob was feeling like a neglected middle sibling, and she was here to put herself smack-dab back in the limelight. That she intended to do so at my expense was hard to overlook.
This flash of intuitive brilliance required action. Before she could attack, I said, “It is a serious problem. I hate as much as you to see the kids drinking. If we could encourage some of the leaders of the community to become involved, we might be able to prevent the problem from escalating.”
This caught her off guard. She swallowed several words and forced a tight smile. “Then you agree with me that this should be taken as a serious threat to our youth?” I nodded to confuse her more. “Well, then, I suppose I could be prevailed upon to organize a committee of concerned citizens, and I shall accept the burden of leadership, no matter how trying it will prove. Brother Verber certainly will wish to be included, as will Lottie Estes and perhaps Elsie McMay. It’s just as well Ruby Bee is out of town; in that she owns and operates a saloon, she might find it awkward to join the battle against demon whiskey.”
“Just as well,” I said mildly. “I’m sure you’ll select your committee with as much regard for their upright moral standing as for their dedication to the cause of temperance. Keep in touch, and let me know if I can help down the line.”
“Tomorrow at seven, I should think,” Mrs. Jim Bob said as she stood up and smoothed away the wrinkles in her skirt. “Please have coffee made, and perhaps a nice platter of cookies. Store-bought will do. Don’t forget the napkins.”
I was still gaping as she swept out of the PD, and I have to admit I wasn’t feeling as damn clever as I had minutes earlier. There have been times when I’ve been known to underestimate the enemy. This appeared to be one of ’em.
“Some honeymoon,” Dahlia grumbled as she spread extra-chunky peanut butter on a cracker and glared at Kevin’s shoes. She would have glared at Kevin proper, but all that she could see of him were the shoes and a few inches of ankle, the rest of him being under the car. “If I’d wanted to watch folks crawl under cars, I would have gone down to Ira Pickerel’s body shop and watched Ira hisself do the crawlin’. I sure wouldn’t have chosen to stand on this dusty old cowpath watching someone who doesn’t know a tire from a hole in his head.”
Some of this was lost on Kevin, partly because he was engrossed in the oil pan and partly because she had popped the cracker in her mouth in the middle of her comments. “I’m working as fast as I can, my beloved,” he called back, hoping to appease her.
“What’s more,” she said, not at all appeased, “I was the one who said we needed to ask directions. I told you this wasn’t the right road, but you were too smart to listen to me. So where are we now? Nowhere, that’s where we are—and it’s all your fault, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon. I swear, if I’d realized how bullheaded you were, I would have married Ira. At least he’s got the sense to come out of the rain.”
“Why don’t you take a can of soda pop and go sit in the shade?” he called to her. “I seem to recollect there’s a nice patch of grass under that ol’ oak tree.”
Dahlia was about to tell him that was the stupidest thing he’d said yet, but then she realized it was a nice patch of grass and there wasn’t any reason for her to stand in the hot sunshine, sweat streaming between her breasts and gathering in the creases of flesh.
“Maybe I will,” she muttered. She put the crackers and jar of peanut butter in the picnic basket, took a can of orange pop from the cooler, and managed to transport it all across the ditch without losing her balance. Once settled in the shade, she removed everything from the basket and arranged things within reach, popped the top of the soda, and leaned back against the rough bark.
Kevin was sweating as copiously as his new bride, although for reasons beyond the stupefying heat. For one thing, the car was swilling oil the way his love goddess did orange soda pop, and he was pretty sure there was a crack in the oil pan. The fact that oil was dripping rhythmically on his forehead also made him suspicious. He’d heard you could put oatmeal in a leaky radiator, but he didn’t know if that worked with oil pans.
The way the car had stopped with a wheezy shudder alarmed him something fierce. And Dahlia’s remarks about this being the wrong road did nothing to ease his panic. Unless they’d gone through downtown Nashville without noticing, they were on about the wrongest road in the country. Pavement had turned to gravel, and eventually petered out into rocks and dust. They hadn’t seen a cow in over an hour, much less a house or another living soul.
Tears welled in Kevin’s eyes, adding to his inability to trace the source of the leak and try to figure out what to do about it. Thus far, the honeymoon had been nothing but a series of disasters. The first three days they’d been obliged to stop every few miles because of recurring gastric distress Dahlia blamed on his ma’s pineapple sherbert punch. Intimate marital relations had been out of the question (he’d asked the particular question, of course, but she’d locked herself in the bathroom, sobbing and flushing all night).
The fourth night they’d ended up in a motel with an hourly rate, and the undeniable presence of insect life in the sleazy room had resulted in Dahlia sitting in the middle of the bed directing him while he stalked critters with a rolled-up newspaper. That, coupled with the roar of trucks on the freeway—and the squeals and shrieks and groans and howls from the next room—had failed to kindle a romantic ambience.
Now they were lost in Tennessee, unless they were lost in Kentucky or Idaho or Florida, for that matter. It had been a good thirty minutes since Dahlia had mentioned exactly which of them had left the well-marked maps in one of the motels behind them, but he reckoned it was near time to hear about it once more.
He bravely wiped his eyes and spotted a bead of oil beginning to swell. He flicked it away with his finger, plucked the wad of gum from his mouth, and stuck it on the exact spot. It wasn’t how smarmy Ira Pickerel would have done the job, but Kevin figured it might hold until they found a town and a garage. And maybe a motel with clean sheets, an air conditioner that worked, and the chance for cool showers, a jug of fancy wine, a loaf of
bread, and …
He wiggled out from under the car, stood up and brushed the dust off his backside, and with a manly smile, gazed across the top of the car at his little wife picknicking amongst the wildflowers. She had fallen asleep, he noted with the proprietary air of a rancher regarding his prize heifer. She was flat on her back, her legs spread apart and her skirt bunched up enough for him to catch a shadowy glimpse of that driveway to heaven. Her mouth had fallen open, and her melodious snores mingled with the twittering of birds and the lazy drone of insects on the sylvan glade beneath the tree.
He hitched up his jeans and strode toward her, lost in a vision in which he knelt beside her, woke her with a gentle yet demanding kiss, and was welcomed into her arms for the consummation of their vows (which had been consummated a lot in the past, but not since they’d become betrothed one long, cold, celibate year ago).
“My dreamer of desire,” he practiced to himself, rather impressed with the alliterative ring of it. “How about we find passion in the wildflowers? Shall we give way to youthful lust and make mindless love here on the silky grass dotted with gay yellow buttercups, tiny violets, and …”
There was no mistaking the red, waxy, three-leafed stems on which his sleeping beauty slumbered. Even Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon, who had trouble remembering which end of the fork to use to scratch his head, could recognize poison ivy.
CHAPTER THREE
I was day dreaming about the automat on 42nd Street, the last one in town—Manhattan, not Maggody—and the only place where I’d felt like a perpetual winner at the slot machines. There were no maitre d’s, no waiters to introduce themselves and rattle off the specials, no haute cuisine or haute anything else. All it took was a pocketful of change to win the sort of food that sustained my soul, like macaroni and cheese, limp broccoli in watery sauce, and soggy egg salad sandwiches. Even after ten years of life in Manhattan, a little bit of Maggody had still flowed within me like a secondary infection in my bloodstream. Maybe there was no cure for it, and never would be. A chilling thought.
