murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  I stared at him. “Justin doesn’t worry that someone might steal the computers?”

  Brother Verber gave me a pious smile. “Just because the Lord giveth doesn’t mean anyone is gonna taketh away. We live in a Christian community. I never lock the rectory, and I don’t hesitate to leave the keys in my car when I go by the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread and a box offish sticks. Despite my vigilance, never once have I encountered crime in our little community.”

  Which only meant he’d been too pickled to notice an abundance of murder and mayhem over the last few years in the little “nothing-ever-happens-here” utopia. In need of fresh air, I said, “Put your sermon on the web page, Brother Verber. The more detailed, the better. I’ll swing by the Assembly Hall tomorrow morning in case you need crowd control. The parking lot next to the remains of the bank branch can take the majority of the spillage, but after that, I’ll just have to kill ’em.”

  “Kill ’em?”

  I rubbed my temples. “A stupid joke. Leona Holliflecker is a member of your church, isn’t she? I think she may be in need of your professional services.”

  I proceeded to tell him why, then left. Ruby Bee and recipes, Estelle and wholesalers, Dahlia and the sort of dark secrets only she could concoct. I was frustrated by my lack of knowledge about the prevailing activities of practically every last person in Maggody—except me. For all I knew, Raz was purchasing his jars on-line. Diesel might be ordering gourmet ingredients from animal shelters in Connecticut. Petrol was likely to be wallowing in porn at the old folks’ home, possibly encountering photos of Mayor Jim Bob engaging in activities I was loath to imagine.

  I put another dent in the oil pan as I careened across the cattle guard at the Pot O’ Gold. Eula was pinning underwear on her clothesline, but I did not wave. Justin Bailey might be as cooperative as a crappie on a cloudy day, I thought grimly, but he was by damn going to give me whatever it took to divine what was going on in this little obscure corner of the planet. If not, he might find himself in need of shipping and handling.

  To hell in a handbasket, as we’re fond of saying in these parts.

  I pounded on the door of the trailer. I was on the verge of ripping it off and chewing it up when Justin appeared, clad in a towel. Shampoo oozed down his neck, and his eyes were unnaturally red.

  “What?” he said, annoyed.

  “I need to talk to you,” I countered, not caring.

  “Right now? I was—”

  “I don’t care if you were negotiating a peace accord in the Middle East! Go get dressed and come out here.”

  I flopped down on an aluminum chair on the concrete slab that served as a patio, wondering if I ought to be enforcing a dress code within the city limits. The males were on an unfortunate streak; nothing could save me if the females followed suit and I encountered Dahlia in a thong bikini or Mrs. Jim Bob in hot lingerie. Or Ruby Bee in pedal pushers and sequinned sunglasses, for that matter.

  Justin was leery as he joined me a few minutes later. “What’s this about?”

  “It’s about Gwynnie Patchwood. She was found dead this morning on Cotter’s Ridge.”

  “Gwynnie?”

  “The seventeen-year-old girl in your computer class. The one who came by here most nights to whimper. She’s dead, Justin.”

  “But how …?”

  “That’s why I’m here. We’d all like to know.”

  “Dead?” he repeated.

  “Where were you last night?”

  He pulled off his glasses and gaped at me. “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

  I leaned back and regarded what sunshine could be seen through the gray clouds gathering above the ridge. “I wish I knew, Justin. Why don’t you tell me what was going on between you and Gwynnie?”

  “Nothing,” he said with an adolescent squeak, as though the very concept of sexual intimacy was alien, if not an abomination. “She was in the class, just like your mother and Estelle and Mrs. Jim Bob and Lottie Estes and all the other participants. She showed up on a regular basis. Some nights she came by the trailer to ask for personal advice. She’d had a hard time. All I could tell her was that she had to look out for herself and her child. I didn’t have the resources she needed.”

  “You weren’t flattered by her attention?”

  “She was a kid. So maybe I was flattered, but I have my own agenda. I’m focused on getting into grad school, doing research, writing my dissertation, landing a hightech job, and smiling all the way to the bank. Not that any of us will actually be going to banks in the future; those transactions will be on-line. I had a few students like Gwynnie when I was a teaching assistant at Farber College. Most of them were blond. When they showed up in my office after classes were done for the day, wanting to know what they could do to earn a passing grade, I suggested they study.”

  I rearranged my butt in the remarkably uncomfortable chair. “And your wife was okay with Gwynnie’s interminable visits?”

  “Not especially, but you can take it up with her. Chapel has no reservations making her opinion known. Last night, I supervised the lab, locked up, and went into Farberville to see some friends. Gwynnie left at eight-thirty, the same as we all did. She looked like she wanted to talk to me, but Lottie cornered me with some gibberish about seeing things on the screen. I told her to have her eyes tested.”

  Wishing I could better watch his reaction, I said, “There have been rumors that you and Gwynnie …”

  It took him the better part of a minute to reply, but he did so forcefully. “Then you’d better verify them, Chief Hanks. She was nothing but a kid trying to find a way out. The only potential husband on the scene is never going to earn more than minimum wage. Other than him, she’d have been stuck with welfare payments and food stamps. Her stepfather abused her, as did a steady stream of her mother’s boyfriends, and even dear Uncle Daniel. Maybe you should be questioning him.”

  I stared at him. “She told you that Daniel was abusing her?”

  “She made it clear she was afraid of him.”

  He hadn’t offered any rebuttal to the rumor, but I doubted he would. Ruby Bee had passed along her opinion that Justin and Gwynnie had been—well, consorting behind the classroom, but the source had also been observed hunkering under a trailer in the Pot O’ Gold. Said source had thus far failed to explain. For the record, in the past said source (and her cohort in crime) had claimed to see a luminescent extraterrestrial walk on water.

  Credibility was an issue.

  “What did Gwynnie say about Daniel? I asked.

  “Nothing explicit.”

  “Can you give me the names of the people you were with last night?”

  “No,” he said. “I was invited to a party at LaRue’s house, but there was some sort of screwup and nobody was home. I tried a couple of more places, then went to the beer garden on Thurber Street. I sat, I drank, and eventually I left. I most certainly did not commit any crime more serious than driving home after having a couple of beers.”

  “Gwynnie’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t kill her.”

  I wriggled around in the chair. “Then let’s talk about these computer classes. Jessie Traylor was kicked out, right?”

  “It was his decision not to attend, although he’s still using the lab during the day, along with a lot of other people. Next fall, I’ll most likely have a full schedule of classes, but for the moment the students come in during their study halls and lunchtimes. I’m working with maybe a dozen of them. A couple of ’em are pretty darn good.”

  “I’ll need a list of their names. Who else?”

  “The guy who lives in the last trailer. He’s been dropping by to play games on the computer. I tried to get him to come in the evenings, but he won’t.”

  “Did Gwynnie ever come during the day?”

  Justin shook his head. “I think she had baby-sitting complications. Why are you asking?”

  “She wasn’t exactly going to parties or dances
at the high school. Her opportunities to fraternize were limited to church and the computer lab.”

  “All I did was show, her how to explore community college and student-loan web sites. I was only trying to help her. I’m really sorry she’s dead.”

  “So am I,” I said wearily. “In the morning, drop off a list of everyone who’s set foot inside the computer lab over the last couple of weeks, including the janitor.”

  “That would be Lottie Estes and her feather duster.”

  I stood up. “Just bring me the list.” I took a step, then stopped. “Have you ever heard of someone named Robin Buchanon?”

  “I’ve heard of Jim Bob, Mrs. Jim Bob, Kevin, Dahlia, Eileen, a hair-impaired woman at the supermarket named Idalupino, and what I assume are urban legends”—he looked around—“or rural ones, I guess, about Buchanons who live in caves. That’s about it.”

  “Where’s Chapel?”

  “She left a note saying she was going to the library at the college to work on her proposal for a fellowship for the fall semester. She needed to photocopy some text that’s not available on-line.”

  “Catch any fish?”

  “The only thing I caught is a cold,” he said as he went inside.

  I was heading out of the Pot O’ Gold when Eula came dashing onto the road in a manner reminiscent of the suicidal squirrels I’d encountered earlier. I reluctantly braked for her, as I had for them.

  “You got to talk to Ruby Bee!” she shrieked.

  “Is she under your trailer? Whatever will we do with her now that she’s taken up this new hobby?”

  “She’s at the bar, but she has something real important to tell you. She’s been calling all over town, trying to track you down. I saw you drive by earlier, and I promised her I’d flag you down and make you promise to get over there as soon as possible.”

  “Any idea what it is?”

  Eula fluttered her hands. “Not really, but it has to do with that girl what was found dead in Robin’s shack. Drank herself to death, or so I heard. I for one am not surprised. I’ve already said a prayer that Leona will never find out about her niece’s unseemly behavior. Mum’s the word, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t speak ill of the dead, or of the living.”

  Kudzu vines may threaten to overtake the roadside vegetation and tear down the power lines, but the grapevine is far more relentless in Maggody. With Brother Verber and Mrs. Jim Bob gleefully ticking off my every sin, Ruby Bee and Estelle monitoring my daily grind with an eye to romance, and Mayor Jim Bob holding his breath in hopes I would do something worthy of getting myself fired, I might as well have been under perpetual microscopic scrutiny.

  “Was this on the local news?” I asked Eula.

  “No, but Ruby Bee called LaBelle at the sheriff’s department, trying to find you, and then called me. After what I went through earlier, I was entitled. Lazarus was downright rude to me on the way back from Farberville.”

  “You and Lazarus went into Farberville?”

  “You’d better get over to the bar and grill. Ruby Bee’s frantic to talk to you.”

  “On his motorcycle?”

  “No,” she said, averting her face. “If you’re so all-fired interested, ask Ruby Bee. It was her fault to begin with—hers and Estelle’s, that is. If you’ll excuse me, I got better things to do than stand here and gossip. So do you.”

  I was still sitting there as she flounced inside her trailer and closed the door. I finally put the car in one of whatever gears it had left and drove toward Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill to determine whatever earthshaking news was to be presented to me not on a silver platter, but more likely on a worn tin cookie sheet.

  Mrs. Jim Bob was on her knees in front of the dresser when she heard Perkin’s eldest wheel the vacuum cleaner into the bedroom. She hastily rose and smoothed out the wrinkles in her skirt. “You don’t need to vacuum in here today. Did you change the sheets?”

  Perkin’s eldest nodded, perhaps mendaciously.

  “Well, then, you can go on home for the day. I am doing an inventory of Mr. Buchanon’s underwear on account of a sale at Sears next week. He has been complaining about his lack of matching socks. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  Perkin’s eldest shook her head, perhaps mendaciously.

  “I’d like to think there aren’t any socks behind the dryer. Socks don’t grow on trees, as even you must know. It seems like every six months a good half of my husband’s socks have vanished, along with several pairs of boxer shorts.” She blinked beadily in case a confession was forthcoming, then waved her hand. “You run along. I hope to see you bright and early tomorrow morning at services. The Lord forgives those that admit to their shame, be it fornication or the stealing of socks.”

  Once she heard Perkin’s eldest go out the front door, Mrs. Jim Bob resumed her position in front of Jim Bob’s dresser. If she had seen on the computer what she thought she had seen, and she was still pretty much sure she had (except late at night, when she tried to convince herself it had been nothing more than a bizarre delusion caused by sausage past its prime), then Jim Bob had been secretly engaged in a lifestyle that made her sick to her stomach just to think about.

  But she couldn’t confront him without tangible evidence of his perversity, she thought as she tried to convince herself to pull open the bottom drawer. For once, Brother Verber might have been right when he’d suggested it was all in her mind. She’d seen daytime talk shows where men paraded around in women’s garments, pretending to be whores. Images could have lingered, just like cabbage and pinto beans.

  Her hand faltered. If she searched his drawers and found proof, then what would she do? She’d have no choice but to throw him out of the house, but actual divorce would violate the sacred vows she’d taken that terminated with “till death do us part.” Causing his death would have serious consequences for her presidency of the Missionary Society, and she’d lose all chances of being reelected to the school board in November. She might even be relieved of her duties as administrator of the Sunday school.

  What’s more, there was no way she could slip a little rat poison in the scalloped potatoes without the Lord taking note and frowning down on her. “Thou shalt not kill” was spelled out with no ifs or buts. Jim Bob paid scant attention to the Ten Commandments, being especially oblivious to the one about committing adultery, but she was a devout Christian who never so much as allowed her big toe to stray off the path that led to heaven.

  Nobody in the congregation dared argue with that.

  It took her a good minute to finally ease open the drawer. There was, as she’d anticipated, a jumble of socks and T-shirts, along with a box of smelly cigars and several magazines with shameless hussies on the covers. She had expected no better, and was almost feeling relieved when her hand encountered something decidedly silky and lacy stuffed way in the back.

  She slammed the drawer closed and stumbled down the hall to her bedroom. Once she’d locked the door and made it to the bed, she forced herself to remain collected. All these years of marriage could not have been a mockery. She’d fried chicken every Sunday, after all, and planted begonias out front, done the laundry, washed the windows once a year, dusted the silk flowers, and saw to it that Perkin’s eldest brushed away the cobwebs in the utility room. She’d offered the spiritual guidance in their relationship, but only because of his frailties in matters best left unspecified. There’d never been any doubt in her mind that she would bring him around, or at least wear him down to the point of docility.

  But now that she had learned of his depraved secret, was it possible other folks had, too? Could she continue to hold up her head while seated in the front pew of the Assembly Hall while everyone snickered at her behind her back?

  There was only one thing to do, she decided grimly. Confronting Satan would not be easy, what with Jim Bob as his witless prodigy, but she had no choice.

  “Till death do us part,” she said as she went back down the hall to his bedroom. “We’l
l just have to see which one of us goes first.”

  Ruby Bee came skittering out from behind the bar as I came across the dance floor. “I have been trying to find you ever since you left!” she said in a whisper that could have carried to the back row of the balcony (had there been one). Several of the diners in the booths looked up, chunks of brisket impaled on their forks. Gravy dribbled on more than one chin.

  “I left about an hour ago,” I pointed out. “Hardly enough time for an army to invade or an epidemic to break out. Was it necessary to get Eula involved in whatever this is?”

  “This is real important.”

  I caught her arm and propelled her toward the bar. “Then why don’t you just tell me?”

  “Go on out to number six and see for yourself. Estelle’s waiting for you. We figured one of us had to protect the scene. That’s one of the things you learn from watching police shows on television.”

  “The scene of what?”

  Ruby Bee gave me a shove. “I don’t reckon we can discuss it in here, not with all these vultures in the booths. Go on, Arly. Estelle must be getting antsy by now.”

  Rather than argue, I went out the back door of the bar and grill and between the two parallel buildings that comprised the six units of the Flamingo Motel. The unit under discussion was the last on my right; had I kept on going straight, I would have been obliged to duck under a barbed-wire fence and take my chances with a frustrated bull.

  Estelle met me outside the door. “Thank gawd you’re here! I wanted to call Harve, but Ruby Bee insisted that we wait for you. You know how she keeps all the curtains drawn so the carpets and bedspreads won’t fade. Well, earlier she happened to notice the curtain was pushed back kinda crooked and came to straighten it. That’s when she realized … well, see for yourself.”

  “Maybe I should do just that,” I said, not sure if I’d find Diesel clinging to the light fixture on the ceiling or Jim Bob sprawled in the tub with a bottle of whiskey. I stepped inside. “Okay, the furniture’s intact. No blood-splatters on the walls. No heavy breathing or groans. Should I check the bathroom mirror for messages written in blood?”