by Joan Hess
“What time did you get back from Emmet?”
“A little bit after midnight.”
That coincided with Malachi’s remark about seeing a figure next to a dark pickup. I made a note of the time, then said, “Did you go out again last night or early this morning?”
“No, I just watched old movies and drank beer.”
“Alone, I suppose.” I waited until he nodded. “So if a witness claimed your truck wasn’t in your driveway half an hour later, that witness would be lying—right?”
He shrugged. “I was home, watching television.”
“You can see the Grappers’ yard from your porch. When you got back from Emmet, did you happen to notice that Norma Kay’s car was gone?”
“I was thinking about other things.”
“Like where Malachi Hope was going at such a late hour.”
“I saw the Cadillac, if that’s what you’re talking about, but I didn’t know who was driving it and I sure as hell didn’t care where it was going.” He uncurled his fingers and rocked back in the chair, his arms crossed and his face stony. He would have made a dandy school-yard bully—or Mafia enforcer. “Is that all?”
“Oh, I have a few more questions. Were you aware Norma Kay often came here late at night to work?”
“Yeah, but she was always real careful. A couple of years back some jerks got into the gym and spray painted obscenities on the walls of the locker room. She made sure she locked the door whenever she was here by herself.”
“You have a key,” I said.
“Yeah, I have a key, but I already told you that I didn’t go out again after I got back from Emmet.”
“One more question,” I said. “How long have you been sleeping with Norma Kay?”
He came close to tipping over backward but caught himself at the fateful second and regained his balance. He did not regain his composure, alas. “What’s that supposed to mean? I know there’s been some gossip, but that doesn’t give you any call to accuse me of that! We worked together. That’s all we did, and anyone who can prove otherwise is a damned liar!”
“Were you here Friday morning?”
“I got here at eight and spent the morning on the phone, trying to cut a better deal on warm-up jackets. The vice-principal came by with my class schedule, and the boys that were doing inventory in the equipment room interrupted me every ten minutes with stupid questions. Were you planning to accuse me of holding up a liquor store or something?”
I stood up. “Give me the key to the gym, then gather up what you need to work elsewhere. This building is off-limits until we complete the investigation.”
He stomped around the room, cursing under his breath as he grabbed notebooks and folders, then followed me outside and glared at me while I locked the door. I doubted I would receive a complimentary season pass to root for the Marauders.
“Don’t leave town,” I said as I pocketed the key. The shade had shifted, and my car was hotter than a kiln. However, being a stoic, I did not wince as I slid into the driver’s side.
Jim Bob was fantasizing about a white beach and skimpy bikinis when the office door opened. “What do you want?” he said without looking up.
Kevin shuffled into the office. “I got to take the afternoon off, Jim Bob. It’s real important.”
“So’s the presidential election, but you don’t see me making a sign to stick in my front yard. You know damn well we’re shorthanded today. Get back to work.”
“But I have to take Dahlia to the clinic,” Kevin said, bug-eyed with desperation. “Otherwise, she’s gonna start eating pork chops and chocolate cake.”
Jim Bob reluctantly let the last bikini fade away. “Dahlia’s been eating pork chops and chocolate cake since she was three days old. She probably hasn’t missed a day of eating pork chops and chocolate cake since then—and I don’t know why today should be any different. Now how many times do I have to tell you to get back to work before it sinks into your pimple of a brain?”
“I cain’t.” Kevin collapsed into a chair and tried to keep hisself from bawling like a calf. “I got to take Dahlia to the clinic so the doctor can see if she still has diabetes. She swears she tingled—”
“I don’t want to hear how she tingled,” Jim Bob said, “any more than I want to listen to your pitiful whining. Take the goddamn day off and get your sorry ass out of my sight.”
“Gee, thanks,” Kevin said, leaping up so quickly he came near tumping the wastebasket. “I promise I won’t ask for another day off ever again. I’ll come in early and work late. You won’t be sorry, Jim Bob.”
Jim Bob was sorry he’d ever hired Kevin in the first place, but familial pressure had been applied. “Now what?” he growled as Kevin hovered in the doorway.
“Mrs. Jim Bob came into the store earlier while you was out on the loading dock. She was carrying on something fierce. I jest thought you’d want to know.” Having done his duty, he started to close the door.
“Wait a minute, asshole! Why was she carrying on?”
“I don’t rightly know. It might have been because she couldn’t find any extension cords and was gonna have to drive to Farberville to get some.”
Jim Bob was relieved she hadn’t appropriated the remaining Mr. Coffees, but he was also perplexed. “Did she say why she needs extension cords?”
Kevin sucked on his lip as he did his best to recollect what all she’d said. “Nope,” he said at last. “She just said she couldn’t believe there weren’t any extension cords anywhere in the store, then told me to stop staring at her like she was a two-headed chicken. I ain’t never seen a two-headed chicken, but I guess if I chanced across one, I’d be right bumfuzzled. Wouldn’t you, Jim Bob? I’d call one of those tabloids so they could—”
“Get out of here,” Jim Bob said, although without the exasperation that usually entered his voice when speaking to Kevin. Extension cords?
“I think I can make a case,” I said to Harve, who’d called with the results of the preliminary report. Any lingering hopes that Norma Kay had committed suicide had been vanquished; the contusions and abrasions on her neck indicated she’d been manually strangled. The bruise from the slipknot was slight, indicating she’d been dead before the cord was put around her neck. The image was ghoulish, to put it mildly.
“Against who?”
“Cory Jenks,” I said, looking down at the chronology I’d written earlier and appended when I arrived at the PD. “He’s the most likely choice for her lover. He denied it, but I’ll bet the basketball players were aware of the affair. They must have felt it was to their advantage not to spread it around and find themselves on separate buses.”
“Teenagers keeping their traps shut?” Harve said doubtfully. “I ain’t run across one of those in a long time. There was a kid over in Bugscuffle who busted into a car to steal the stereo system, then bragged about it in his homeroom the next day. We picked him up while he was eating tacos in the cafeteria.”
“I’ll talk to some of the players,” I said, writing down Darla Jean’s name and drawing a circle around it. “Cory admits he was in his office Friday morning when Malachi showed up. He could have overheard Norma Kay begging Malachi to give her the courage to end the affair and publicly confess.”
“That’s not much of a motive.”
“I didn’t say I had a case, Harve—I said I thought I could make one. The body was discovered less than twelve hours ago, and this is not an episode from a TV detective show. Give me a break, okay?” I took a deep breath, then continued. “Cory may have seen Norma Kay hand the note to the usher and guessed what was going on, or she may have warned him in advance of her intentions to ask Malachi to meet her later. In either case, he saw the Cadillac come down the hill and head toward town. He could have followed it to the gym, waited across the road until Malachi left, and gone inside to try to reason with Norma Kay. When he realized she was too determined to listen to him, he strangled her. He’s already admitted he was drinking; that may have been a fact
or. What’s more, both he and Bur were adamant that Norma Kay would have locked the gym door for security reasons. Cory has a key.”
“Can you place his truck anywhere in the vicinity of the high school after midnight?”
“Not yet, but I will,” I said with more conviction than I felt. Harve might have reservations about Cory’s guilt, but I was proud of my theory. “I’m going to talk to the players, and then I’ll start questioning people who live near the high school. Why don’t you send a deputy to the Dew Drop Inn in Emmet to find out what time Cory left there?”
“You reckon that’s where he bought beer?”
“Come on, Harve, you raid the joint every election year, close it down, and get your photograph on the front page of the newspaper. Where else do you think he could buy beer on Sunday?”
“Okay, I’ll send Les over there this afternoon. If nothing else, it’ll scare the piss out of the owner. What you’ve got is circumstantial at best and flimsy at worst.”
I was about to protest, when the front door flew open and Ruby Bee skittered into the room.
“Call an ambulance!” she shrieked.
“Hang on,” I said into the receiver, then frowned at Ruby Bee. “What’s going on?”
“There’s been an accident right in front of the bar and grill. I could have called the ambulance from there, but I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone by coming here to tell you. Don’t just sit there like you’re glued to the chair—call an ambulance!”
10
Harve agreed to make the call. I grabbed Ruby Bee’s arm and propelled her outside, where pedestrians were gathering in the middle of the road. Traffic was already snarled up in both directions. “Who’s involved?” I said as we hurried toward the scene.
“Lottie Estes,” Ruby Bee panted. “She ran over some little old lady. I think she lives out at the county home. The old lady, I mean. Lottie lives on Coot Road.”
“I know where Lottie lives.” I pushed through the crowd and saw Estelle kneeling next to a supine figure partially covered by a jacket. “How badly is she hurt?” I demanded.
“She’s mostly shook up and bruised. I’m just trying to keep her quiet until the ambulance gets here. If she’s not in shock, she should be.”
“I’m so sorry,” wailed Lottie Estes, stumbling forward. She put her fist to her mouth and stared down with wide, horrified eyes.
Ruby Bee put her arm around Lottie’s shoulders and eased her out of the crowd. I looked down at the victim, who was conscious if somewhat confused. White hair and an overbite, I noted as I gave her an encouraging smile, then found Lottie and Ruby Bee next to a beige Edsel.
“What happened, Lottie?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I went out to the high school earlier, but it was locked and nobody was there. I sat in the parking lot for the longest time, waiting for everybody to arrive for the teachers’ meeting. Finally, I gave up and left, although I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why no one was there.”
“You didn’t see the sign on the door?”
“I can’t say that I did. I decided to stop by the SuperSaver and pick up a few things. All of a sudden that poor woman was right there in the middle of the street. I swerved, but I’m afraid I knocked her down. She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”
“Of course, she is,” Ruby Bee said soothingly. “It was an accident that could have happened to any of us.”
“I disagree,” I said, earning a sharp look from Ruby Bee and a startled one from Lottie. “If you’d been wearing your glasses, you would have seen the sign at the school—and Mrs. Teasel when she started across the street. Why aren’t you wearing them?”
Instead of answering, she leaned against her car and began to sob. Ruby Bee patted her on the back, then turned to me and in a low voice, said, “She isn’t wearing her glasses because Malachi Hope cured her astigmatism last night. He told her to come up on the stage, put his hands on her shoulders, and prayed that Jesus should restore her vision. He carried on until I thought he was going to blow her off the stage. Then he announced that she was cured, and she fell backward into Seraphina’s arms.”
“That’s it?” I said. “Somebody ought to give him a shot at the federal deficit.”
“This is not the time for wisecracks, Miss Glib Lips. After Seraphina got Lottie steadied on her feet, she told Lottie to throw away her glasses and prove she was cured by reading the Twenty-third Psalm. Lottie took a card and read it, although she was so choked up that it was hard to hear her.”
“Lottie Estes could recite the Twenty-third Psalm while undergoing a triple bypass. For that matter, so could you.” I looked up as I heard a siren. “I don’t want Lottie to drive until she either replaces her glasses or has her eyes tested by a professional. Can you take her home and fix her some tea?”
“I’ll see to her. You might drop by the bar later and find out what else went on last night at the revival. Malachi Hope performed more than one so-called miracle.”
“Hallelujah,” I said as I went to speak to the paramedics, get traffic rolling, and call the county home.
“That comes to two hundred and eighty-six dollars and seventeen cents,” the clerk said, wishing her manager would come back from lunch and deal with this unbalanced woman who’d just about cleared three shelves—and here it was only August.
Mrs. Jim Bob slapped down a credit card.
Joey came out of the tent in time to see Chastity get out of a battered car with fins high enough to scrape an underpass. The car itself dishonored the entire automotive industry.
“Thanks for the lift, Arnie,” she said to the unseen driver and waved as the car careened back toward the road. Then she came across the pasture. “Where’s Malachi?”
“He and Thomas went into Farberville to look for Seraphina. They’re worried about her, so they decided to cruise by some motels and restaurant parking lots in hopes of spotting her car. Where have you been?”
“Around.”
Joey grimaced. “You’d better come up with a more plausible explanation by the time Malachi gets back. He raised all kinds of hell about you taking off this morning while he was in the shower. If I were you, I’d think twice before I did something calculated to infuriate him.”
“I don’t give a shit about him,” Chastity said, pushing back her bangs and staring angrily at the road that led down the hill. “And I don’t give a shit about Seraphina, either.”
“What happened between you and her last night?”
She went past him into the tent and sat down on the end of a metal bench. “She yelled at me, so I yelled back at her. When we got here, she practically shoved me out of her car and told me she was going for a drive to cool off.”
“She was in a real bad mood,” Joey said, sitting across from her. “Right after the show, she stormed into the van and fired me, but I had enough sense to wait until this morning to make my dramatic exit. Malachi ended up having to double my salary.” He took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one, wondering what Chastity was up to.
Instead of asking the obvious question, she extended her hand. “Gimme one, Joey.”
“Get rid of it damn fast if you hear a car coming,” he said as he handed her the pack and a lighter. “Did you hear about the basketball coach killing herself last night?”
“I heard about it.” She lit a cigarette, dropped the pack and lighter, and walked out of the tent.
Joey watched her until she’d disappeared down the hill. Agreeing to stay might have been a bad decision, he thought as he finished his cigarette. When he took a vacation next week, he might take off for Mexico and points south. The five-thousand-dollar bonus he’d demanded to stay through the weekend could buy a lot of enchiladas.
Darla Jean was staring at the dashboard, her expression reminiscent of a possum paralyzed by headlights. I got back in the car, handed her a cherry limeade, and said, “Do you want to stay here and talk, or go for a drive?”
“Not here,” she whispered.
“Somebody’ll see us.”
I pulled away from the Dairee Dee-Lishus and turned north. If Darla Jean was responsive, we might not make it all the way to the Missouri line, but I had a full tank of gas and as much time as it took.
As we passed the remains of Purtle’s Esso, I said, “Where would you like to begin, Darla Jean?”
“I’d like to begin by asking you to turn around and take me back to my car, but I don’t guess that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
“How about Chastity’s current whereabouts?”
“She called me this morning, all upset, and begged me to give her a ride to Farberville. Heather and I picked her up by the low-water bridge around nine.”
“Did you bring her back?”
“No, she insisted that we let her out on Thurber Street, down at the railroad tracks. She said she’d hitch a ride back when she was ready. The last I saw of her, she was walking up the hill in the direction of the college campus.”
“Did she say where she was going or what she was going to do?”
Darla Jean slurped the last of her drink before she answered. “We asked her, of course, but she told us to shut up. She can be pretty hateful when she’s a mind to.”
“And after you were nice enough to give her a ride,” I said. “I don’t know why you put up with her.”
“Well, we’re just about her only friends, and I feel sorry for her having to live in that RV and sleep on a sofa and be bossed around all the time like she’s a little kid. She’s nearly sixteen, but Malachi won’t let her learn to drive or date or do anything except stand up on the stage in an angel costume and make a fool of herself. She tried to run away once, but he sent a private detective after her. I’d have been so humiliated I would have died.”
“Is that what she’s doing today?” I asked, watching Darla Jean as best I could while navigating the narrow road. It occurred to me that it might be wise to find a wide shoulder and pull over before I plowed into a chicken truck. “Did she take a suitcase with her?”
