by Joan Hess
“She’s not running away.”
“What is she doing?”
“I told you that she wouldn’t say,” Darla Jean muttered as she crumpled the cup and dropped it onto the floorboard of the car. It fit in nicely with the existing decor (twentieth-century landfill). “I don’t understand why you’re so concerned about Chastity. Going into Farberville isn’t against the law, is it?”
“Not that I know of,” I said mildly. “Nor is having an affair when you’re married, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It can lead to divorce—or even murder.”
“Murder?”
“Coach Grapper didn’t hang herself. Someone strangled her and hung her body on the steel supports that hold up the backboard.” I took a breath and went in for the kill, metaphorically speaking. I wasn’t especially proud of myself, but I needed to jolt Darla Jean into a more forthright disposition. “Her face was beet red, and her eyes were bulged out. Her feet were dangling about three inches off the floor.”
“Stop the car! I’m gonna be sick!”
It probably wouldn’t have been a catastrophe, considering the debris on the floorboard, but I pulled over. Before I’d come to a full stop, Darla Jean scrambled out of the car and fell to her knees in the yellowed weeds. I waited for a moment, then grabbed a handful of napkins from the glove compartment and took them to her.
“Better?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said as she cleaned her face and stood up. “How could somebody do something awful like that? Coach Grapper could be mean sometimes, but she was just doing her job. We were third in the conference last year, and we won the tournament down in Pine Bluff.”
“Her credentials weren’t the cause of death. She was having an affair with Cory Jenks, and you and your teammates knew it.” So I was bluffing. I’m a firm believer in the “the end justifies the means” school of thought, and I was after a murderer, not a bowling trophy.
Darla Jean looked as if she might repeat her performance of a few minutes earlier. “Did Coach Jenks kill her?”
I crossed my fingers and said, “I doubt it. All I’m trying to do is get an idea of what was happening in Coach Grapper’s life. But it’s really important that you stay quiet until I’ve finished my investigation, so please don’t repeat what I said about her being murdered. You know how garbled gossip can become, especially when it’s gruesome like this. Now tell me what you know about Coach Jenks and Coach Grapper.”
Ten minutes later, I had the story—or at least what Darla Jean suspected had taken place between Norma Kay and Cory in motel rooms and cabins during the previous basketball season. The county prosecutor wouldn’t be eager to file charges based on what amounted to adolescent speculation, however, and it sounded as if the two had been discreet enough to avoid being seen slipping in and out of each other’s rooms in the wee hours.
She looked so dejected that I didn’t ask any more questions as we returned to Maggody. I made her promise not to say anything about the murder, dropped her off near her station wagon, and went to the PD to call Harve with an update. I was opening the door when Kevin Buchanon drove up and almost fell on his face in his haste to get out of the car. (Buchanons are mechanically challenged.)
“Arly! You got to do something!” he gasped, his arms waving like branches in a windstorm. “You got to come with me!”
“I do?” I continued inside, ascertained that the air conditioner was producing a cool if placid breeze, and sat behind my desk, where I was in less danger of being knocked over by his frenzied outburst.
“It’s all that Malachi Hope feller’s fault! Now she’s bakin’ a cake and eatin’ cookies and drinkin’ orange soda pop. I been on my knees in the kitchen for over an hour, but I cain’t make her stop, and when I told her I was gonna make her go to the clinic iff’n I had to drag her like a skinned mule carcass, she liked to—”
“Stop,” I said as the telephone rang, “but hold that thought.” I picked up the receiver. “Arly Hanks.”
“I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever track you down,” LaBelle said accusingly. “You really should stay in your office more, Arly. It’s bad enough around here without me haying to call you back over and over—”
“Hold that thought,” I said to her, put my hand over the mouthpiece, and looked at Kevin. “You have five seconds to tell me what’s wrong. Go.”
“Dahlia sez Malachi Hope cured her of diabetes and she don’t have to stay on her diet. I made an appointment at the clinic, but—”
I pointed a finger at the door. “Time’s up. If you want, you Can wait outside for me and we’ll discuss this further.” I removed my hand and said, “Why have you been calling me over and over, LaBelle?”
“Harve wants you to meet him out on County 102, about a quarter mile past the low-water bridge.”
“Should I bring a fishing pole and a bucket of bait?”
“You shouldn’t joke about these things,” she said in a hushed voice. “Some kids playing in the woods found a car, and there’s a dead body in it.”
“Did you and Fergie happen to be watching television last night at 12:30?” Ruby Bee asked as she took a swallow of iced tea and smiled brightly.
Leslie Bidens wasn’t sure what all to make of her unexpected visitor, who’d never before stopped by in the middle of the afternoon—or any other time, for that matter. At best they had a nodding acquaintance. “No, Fergie has to be at work at seven o’clock, so we always turn in early. Why?”
It was a poser. Ruby Bee hastily finished her tea and picked up her handbag. “There was a real amusing commercial, that’s all. I happened to see it and was just wondering if you and Fergie did, too.”
“What kind of commercial?”
“A real amusing commercial. I suppose I’d better be running along, Leslie. Thank you kindly for the tea.”
Once she was safely outside, Ruby Bee paused to think about the exchange. Leslie had said they always turned in early, but she hadn’t specifically said they’d done so last night. And she’d looked suspicious, even worried, as if she had an inkling of the significance of the time.
She made a cryptic note (in case her copy of the list fell into the wrong hands) next to Fergie’s name, checked the time, and drove out Finger Lane to find out if Lewis Ferncliff’s wife, Besseya, was home.
Across town, Estelle was faring better. As she sat in Eddie Joe Whitbread’s driveway, she drew a heavy line, and then another for good measure, right through his name. Once Kirsten had stopped blubbering about her hair and thanking Estelle for doing everything humanly possible short of shaving her head, she’d admitted that she was up until well after two, talking to her boyfriend who lived in Starley City and was in the process of divorcing his third wife. There was no way Eddie Joe could have gotten a phone call from the president of the United States, much less from Norma Kay.
Estelle considered her next move. Ruby Bee had said she’d think of a way to question Mrs. Jim Bob, and she was welcome to try. John Robert Scurfpea could wait until she and Ruby Bee could go together. The only other name on the list was Cory Jenks. The high school was closed and the gym locked, so it was possible she might catch him at home. There was a small problem of what to say to him if she did, but she figured she’d think of something by the time she got there.
“The total’s three hundred and sixteen dollars,” the clerk said, warily keeping an eye on his customer. The last time someone like this had come into the store, a weapon had been brandished and the cash register drawer cleaned out. “And fifty-five cents,” he added.
Mrs. Jim Bob slapped down a credit card.
“What do you have, Harve?” I asked as I walked down the edge of the road.
Sweat had spread across his shirt like an oil slick, turning the khaki fabric dark. He pulled off his hat, wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, and sighed. “We ran the plate first thing. The car’s registered to Malachi Hope. I was kinda surprised that’s his real name; it sounds fake to me.”
“Maybe he petitioned the co
urt to change it. Where’s the car?”
“About two hundred feet down a logging road in a clump of scrub pines. You have to get right up to it before you can see it. It’s a good thing those youngsters happened to take that way to the creek.” He took out a cigar and spent forever fiddling with it; I could have blurted out a bunch of questions, but I waited silently. “There’s a blond woman in the car,” he said at last. “We didn’t find a driver’s license in her purse, but there were all sorts of credit cards and a photograph of her and the preacher on a stage in a football stadium. We’re damn near certain it’s Seraphina Hope.”
“Natural causes?”
“What do you think?” growled Harve, then set off down the weedy road, obliging me to choke on his smoke as I followed him. One of these days I was going to report him to the EPA.
“McBeen’s on his way,” he went on as we arrived in a clearing crowded with deputies and the crime squad, “but we don’t need him to tell us she was strangled. For starters, there’s a leather thong cutting into her neck.” He took the cigar stub out of his mouth and studied it as if it were a significant clue in a dog theft. “There’s a whistle on the thong. The only folks I’ve met that wear them are coaches. You may be on to something with this Cory Jenks.”
I took a quick look through the passenger’s window, then backed away as the photographer moved in. “I was told that she was last seen at a quarter after twelve. The story is that she delivered Chastity to the RV and drove away to be alone for a while. Earlier today both Malachi and Thomas mentioned that she did that kind of thing fairly often, and I can’t say I blame her. I’d get tired of breathing secondhand air and bumping into a wall every time I turned around.”
“It beats getting murdered,” Harve said. “Could there be a connection between her and either of the coaches?”
“Not that I know of,” I admitted. “There was definitely something between the coaches, and they were both at the revival. I don’t see where Seraphina Hope fits into any of this, though. Cory could have seen her drive by on her way to the RV or on her way to wherever she was going afterward. He claims he arrived home a little after twelve, but he also claims he didn’t leave his house. As soon as we have an approximate time of death, I’ll talk to him, maybe bring him in to your office for questioning.”
“It was cool last night, but it’s been hot as blazes all day. McBeen’s not gonna be happy about this particular corpse. He gets all riled up when he has to count maggots.”
A young deputy covered his mouth and darted into the thicket. There was a lot of that going on, it seemed. And I was tempted to join him.
“We don’t take credit cards,” the assistant manager repeated, but with hesitation. The customer had already reduced one clerk to tears, and she was showing no signs of remorse. “We can take a check now, or put aside the merchandise if you’d like to come back later. Your total is twenty-three hundred and eleven dollars and forty-seven cents. We won’t charge you for delivery.”
Mrs. Jim Bob slapped down a checkbook.
Ruby Bee glanced up from her magazine as Estelle came clattering across the dance floor like a flamenco dancer. “I thought you were gonna be back here at four,” she said, letting her eyes fall back on an advertisement for a state-of-the-art food processor that came with so many attachments it could chop, mince, shred, slice, dice, and do everything short of wrapping a birthday present.
“Just get me a glass of sherry,” Estelle said as she sat on her stool and took a napkin from the dispenser to dab her forehead. “You will not believe what just happened. I swear, it was like an X-rated movie. It was all I could do not to faint right there on the porch.”
“Whose porch?” asked Ruby Bee, setting down the glass of sherry.
Estelle took a gulp and shuddered. “Cory Jenks’s porch. You’d think in the middle of the afternoon folks would know better than to engage in that kind of tomfoolery, but I saw what I saw with my own two eyes!” She made sure Ruby Bee was appropriately attentive, then continued. “I went to Eddie Joe’s house and found out that Kirsten was on the telephone at the time we figured Norma Kay called her boyfriend.”
“I thought you said you were on Cory Jenks’s porch?”
“Do you mind letting me tell this’my own way? I’m the one who had the misfortune to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, while all you were doing was reading a magazine.”
Ruby Bee sniffed. “I was reading this magazine because I was back here at three-forty-five. Fergie’s still a suspect, but Lewis Ferncliff is in the clear on account of him and Besseya having left Saturday morning to visit their son in Muskogee. Eula watched them load their car, and she said they were arguing so loudly she could hear every word from her kitchen window. I thought we’d said that it might not be smart to have a word with the two bachelors until we came up with a plan.”
“Maybe so,” Estelle said, taking dainty sips of sherry like she was perched on a bar stool in Buckingham Palace exchanging recipes with the queen—or at least the head chef. “If you must know, I came up with a plan all by myself and decided to carry it out without asking for your permission. It’s not gonna do Arly much good if we’re still working on the list of suspects when Dahlia goes into labor, is it?”
“Would you get on with your story? Folks will start showing up for happy hour any minute.”
“Well, I drove to the house where Cory lives and knocked on his door. When he didn’t open it, I kept right on knocking because his truck was parked in the yard. I was feeling like a redheaded woodpecker by the time he came to the door. He had jeans on, but his shirt was unbuttoned and his feet were bare. He pretended to be pleased to see me, but I could tell right off the bat he was real pissed about being interrupted. I jumped in with my story, and he was just standing there scratching his butt and staring at me when a door behind him opened and out waltzed Chastity Hope.”
“Could be she went by to borrow a cup of sugar,” Ruby Bee said, “or to find out what’s gonna happen to the girls’ basketball team.”
Estelle gave her a pitying look. “I don’t think they were discussing basketball. She was naked as a picked chicken except for a shirt that looked like it came off his floor. Her makeup was smeared and her hair was all tousled, too.”
Ruby Bee was so stunned that she poured herself a glass of sherry and drank half of it without realizing what she was doing. “Why, she can’t be half as old as he is.”
“You could have knocked me over with a feather. Cory snapped at her to get back in the other room, but she sauntered right over and gave me a smirky smile. My plan went clean out of my mind, and I sputtered something and made a beeline for my car. My hands were shaking so hard I could hardly get the key in the ignition.”
“And her being a preacher’s adopted daughter. After seeing her last night in that white gown, I’d have thought she would behave better than a common strumpet.”
“You didn’t think that when Sagina Buchanon played the angel in the Sunday-school Christmas pageant three years back,” Estelle pointed out. “You were muttering so loudly I was embarrassed to be in the same pew with you. Anybody can get dressed up like an angel. Or undressed, as the case may be.”
Ruby Bee put her glass in the sink while she tried to decide what this meant in terms of the murder in the gym. “If Cory was having an affair with Norma Kay, he didn’t take her death real hard. He was a conceited sort back when he was in high school, always strutting around like he was being recruited left and right to play for one of those professional teams. His mother and I used to be in the same county extension club, and she told me he was so grateful he liked to have cried when some little college finally offered him a scholarship. I heard he had to beg Bur Grapper for three days straight to get a job at the high school and get paid less than seventeen thousand dollars, and I don’t recollect him in any television commercials for overpriced athletic shoes.”
Estelle reached for a basket of pretzels and carefully selected one that wasn’t broken. “I
f he was having an affair with Norma Kay, maybe the only reason he was doing it was so she’d help him get the head coach’s job. Once she was dead, he wouldn’t have any call to keep pretending he was smitten with her. He was free to take up with the first strumpet that came along, and it happened to be Chastity Hope.”
“That could be,” Ruby Bee said, wishing she could make better sense of everything that had happened in the last two days—or the last seven days. She had a feeling that no matter how long and hard Malachi prayed, he wouldn’t be able to coax Jesus into curing her of her confusion.
And it might take a miracle to keep Arly in Maggody.
11
I parked by the tent in what was becoming a familiar spot and went over to the RV to deliver the deplorable news. Chastity came to the door and gave me a sullen stare, clearly more than willing to kill the messenger (meaning me).
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“I need to speak to Malachi.”
“He’s not here. He and Thomas went to Farberville. I’ll tell him you were here.”
She tried to close the door, but I caught the knob and kept it open. “Then I need to speak to you,” I said as I forced my way into the RV. “You’d better sit down.” Once she’d done so, I told her about Seraphina, but without the storm trooper kind of description I’d used to jar Darla Jean.
“Murdered?” she said as her eyes filled with tears. “But who …?”
“I don’t know.” I went into the bathroom to get a box of tissues, then sat down and waited until she’d finished crying and blowing her nose. I was a little bit surprised at her display of what appeared to be genuine distress; our previous encounter had not suggested she was devoted to her sister. “I know this is a bad time,” I said, “but I need to ask you a few questions about last night.”
“Oh, God,” she said, her face wrinkling with a second bout of distress, this time approaching anguish, “the last thing I said to her was that I hated her. I didn’t hate her, though—I was just mad at her. I slammed the car door and went inside without so much as looking back at her.”
