The Merry Wives of Maggody

by Joan Hess

  “I believe Bonaparte is the one who told you that it’s customary,” Frederick said, although he stayed well out of her reach. “I merely confirmed it.”

  “The death wasn’t caused by a drunken driver,” I said. “It was a different kind of driver. Tommy Ridner was beaten to death sometime after midnight. His body was discovered early this morning in the bass boat. I guess you didn’t notice the sheriff’s department vehicles in the SuperSaver parking lot on your way here.”

  She clamped her lips together and stared at me. “Is this another one of your nasty jokes?” she finally said. “If it is, you can consider yourself fired as of right now, Chief Hanks. If Jim Bob doesn’t back me up, he’ll find himself sleeping in the utility room ’til Boone Creek freezes over.”

  “Did I mention he’s a suspect—and you as well?”

  Seven

  Kale, honey,” Kathleen Wasson said as she tiptoed into the motel room, “I brought you a sausage biscuit and a glass of milk. You have less than an hour before the second round. You need to shower, get dressed, and eat before we go.”

  A voice from under the blanket said something that Kathleen pretended not to understand. “You have to get up now,” she went on brightly. “You’re only two shots off the lead, you know. It’s a wonderful opportunity for you to beat that sleazy PGA player. The state newspaper might mention it in the sports section. I must make sure to send them a photograph. I’m very disappointed that they don’t have anyone here to cover the tournament. You must be, too.”

  “Heartbroken. Where’re my clothes?”

  She opened the closed door. “I brought my travel iron in case your trousers got wrinkled in the suitcase. Where’s your lucky blue shirt, the one you wore at the state junior tournament last summer? I could have sworn I packed it.”

  Shrugging, Kale went into the bathroom. Kathleen sat on the bed, her hands folded in her lap, and waited while he showered. When he reappeared, she said, “I heard the most unsettling news this morning. Tommy Ridner was murdered late last night.”

  She finally caught Kale’s attention. He dropped the shirt and turned around to stare at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I would never joke about such a thing. His body was found in the bass boat. That explains why the police officer came earlier and asked that we not leave town until we made statements. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “A cop came here?” Kale’s fingers fumbled as he tried to buckle his belt. He gave up and sat down on the bed across from his mother. “What’d the cop say? Did he want to talk to me?”

  “She didn’t say anything other than everyone has to make a statement before leaving town. It’s not as though either of us has anything to tell her. I’m sorry about Tommy Ridner, of course. He was uncouth, but he did spend a lot of time conducting golf classes for underprivileged children and signing autographs at the celebrity events to raise money. I must find out if he was married so that I can write a condolence note to his wife. Do you know, dear?”

  Kale shook his head. “Are you sure this cop didn’t ask about me?”

  “Why would she?” Kathleen said. “It happened after midnight. You were in bed, fast asleep, at ten o’clock.”

  “Yeah, I guess I was.”

  “Unless some idiot gets lucky today,” Phil Proodle said into the telephone receiver, “the boat will be at my lot tomorrow afternoon. You need to make the back payments in cash. After that, it’s yours.” He listened for a moment. “No, it has to be cash. Until then, the boat stays on the lot. Don’t try anything funny after dark. The fence is topped with barb wire and the two guard dogs are vicious.”

  While he dressed, he calculated how much cash he had in various bank accounts. How much could a modest house on a beach in Mexico or the Caribbean cost? He could exist on bananas and mangos, as long as liquor was cheap. His passport was valid. Eventually he could open a small boatyard and keep expanding it until he could afford a mansion and a sexy young mistress. Or better yet, no one would make a blasted hole-in-one and he’d be done with the boat mess on Monday.

  Phil was feeling much better as he headed for Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill for a breakfast of eggs, grits, biscuits, and ham with redeye gravy. The only dark cloud on his horizon was the one settling over Maggody.

  “A shame about Tommy,” Amanda said as she put down the mascara brush before she poked her eye out. Her hand would be steadier after she’d had coffee, she thought as she regarded her face in the mirror. Her eyelids were puffy, and her hair was frizzled by the high humidity. At the moment she looked more haggard than some of the frumpy old biddies at the golf tournament.

  Dennis put his wallet in his back pocket. “At least he was feeling no pain. I didn’t think he could stagger that far without falling on his face. I’m going to miss him.” He smiled as he remembered some of Tommy’s more outrageous moments. No one could believe they were such close friends, he in his expensive, tailored clothes and Tommy in shorts and dirty T-shirts. His soft-spoken voice, drowned out by Tommy’s guffaws. His composure versus Tommy’s unrestrained passion. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d bailed Tommy out of jail because of some crazy prank. “I guess we ought to head for the golf course, although I don’t want to play golf today—or ever again. It won’t be the same.”

  Amanda was not known for her sentimentality. “Thank gawd we won’t have to listen to Tommy chortle any more about his damn hole-in-one. He was so obnoxious about it last night that I was ready to scream. Someone else must not have had my self-control.” She dabbed some liquid makeup under her eyes to hide the dark crescents. Her hair was hopeless. “Are you going to make the funeral arrangements? It might be nice to have the reception afterward at the club. Tommy practically lived there.”

  “Aren’t you curious who killed Tommy?”

  She pulled on a white tank top that emphasized her tan. “Of course I am. Tommy was your best friend. I said it was a shame, didn’t I? Do you think these shorts are too risqué for the locals? Maybe they all dress like Quakers on Sundays and ride around in buggies.”

  “The shorts are fine. We only have thirty minutes. There’ll be coffee and doughnuts at the tent.”

  “What I think,” Amanda said as they went out to the Jaguar, “is that Tommy must have been killed by one of these peculiar people who live here. Remember the guy with the live chicken? Did you see that man who lives in the shack next to the course? I saw him walking into the woods with an enormous, hideous, drooling pig on a leash. And while you were on the course yesterday, this creepy man with more fingers than teeth came over to me and asked if I wanted to ‘waller’ with him. I was so overwhelmed with revulsion that I gagged.”

  Dennis put on his sunglasses, then buckled his seat belt and adjusted the rearview mirror. “It makes sense that the killer is one of the locals. Tommy was waving money around. He had one of the caddies go buy him some cigars at the grocery store, then tipped him twenty dollars. After his coup de grace on thirteen, he sent the observer to fetch a bottle of champagne and cups from his trunk. The kid got twenty dollars, too.” He braked at the edge of the road to let an RV drive by. “He gave the checkout girl a ten-dollar tip when we stopped at the grocery store to buy tonic water and limes. Once the word got out, any one of them or their friends could have done it.” Despite the total lack of vehicles in either direction, he put on the blinker. “Money is a powerful motive.”

  Amanda twisted the rearview mirror so she could apply lipstick. “You’d think Tommy had better sense than that, but he never did. Last week one of the attendants found him taking a shower in the ladies’ locker room. He claimed he was looking for a partner for the mixed scramble, but Lissie Barquette said he was so drunk she and the attendant had to literally drag him out and put his clothes on him.”

  “May he rest in peace.”

  “I hope the golf course in heaven has a nineteenth hole.” She dropped the lipstick tube into her purse. “Not that it’ll matter to Tommy.”

  “If you won’
t tell me, you have to tell Chief Hanks,” Janna said grimly as she turned up the road to the golf course.

  “Yeah,” Natalie said.

  Janna sighed and switched tactics. “You were too upset to talk about it last night, and I understand that. I’ve seen the same thing with soldiers after a deadly encounter with the enemy. The worst thing you can do is bottle it up. Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a very real disorder.”

  “What’s my tee time?”

  “I hope this doesn’t have anything to do with Tommy Ridner’s death. Is he the one who . . . ?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Did you clean my clubs last night?”

  “They were so covered with muck that I ended up using a hose at the back of the motel. Kathleen Wasson was doing the same thing. She’s so dull that I’d rather converse with a rock. All she could talk about was her son’s lucky blue shirt and how sure she was that she’d packed it. If I had that punk at boot camp, I’d slap that smirk off his face so hard his head would spin. Their kind don’t belong on a golf course.”

  “Do I?”

  “I’m beginning to wonder,” Janna said.

  Bony graciously allowed Aunt Eileen to drive him to the tournament site. He’d asked for a glass of orange juice and, when her back was turned, had spiked it with vodka. Since he was a little fuzzy about what all had happened the previous night, he didn’t know if he was drinking the hair of a pit bull or a chihuahua. The one thing he remembered vividly was that smug asshole Ridner strutting around the barroom, crowing about the goddamn bass boat. Anyone could have lucked out and made a hole-in-one, he thought darkly. All of the holes would be par threes at a real course. The so-called ladies’ tees were halfway down the so-called fairways. At least the blond chick had the decency to play from the men’s tees. Now it was a brand-new game, and he was confident he’d walk away with the trophy and the boat. Whatever had happened in the previous twelve hours was history, but it would be nice to know exactly what had.

  “I think it’s my left elbow,” Eileen said as she whipped around a tractor that was barely moving. “I don’t know how much to bend it on my backswing. Halfway through my swing, I second-guess myself.”

  “Hmmm,” said Bony. He had a vague picture of whacking balls in the middle of the road, although he couldn’t recall why it seemed like a fine idea.

  “Earl hit three balls into the middle of the boggy bottom,” Eileen continued more cheerfully. “I was hoping he’d jump in to fetch them and be attacked by giant leeches. Can you imagine the gall of him saying that I belonged at home, cooking and cleaning! If golf is such a manly game, why do they have the LPGA? Is that supposed to be like the PTA? You don’t hear about Michelle Wie organizing a bake sale for the boys.” She turned so abruptly that half of Bony’s drink splashed onto his trousers. “I’m going to make the first hole-in-one today, and Earl can throw his clubs in the pond along with his balls.” She veered toward a squirrel, but it scampered into the woods.

  “That’s the attitude. You have to think positive.” There was something about the stoplight. An argument about whether it had to be green. That only made sense if they were driving. Bony took a gulp of orange juice. But if they were driving, where did they go?

  Eileen smiled as she imagined herself accepting the key for the fancy bass boat. Earl’s face would crumble like a dried mud daubers’ nest. He could beg all he liked, but she was gonna sell the boat, turn over the hefty tithe, and spend the rest of the money exactly as she chose. Not one penny of it would go for a bucket of bait.

  • • •

  Brother Verber hadn’t given much thought to his sermon, even though the blessed hour would be upon him pretty darn quick. ’Course there wouldn’t be enough worshippers at the service to get up a game of canasta—not that he condoned playing cards on Sunday. The majority of the congregation was involved in the golf tournament, either playing or volunteering. The rest probably knew about the murder in the bass boat, or would shortly, since the grapevine missed only the most remote households. He’d heard it from Chikeeta Buchanon when she stopped by to get the key to clean the Assembly Hall before the morning service. She’d heard it from her ex-brother-in-law, who was sleeping with her niece. He’d heard it from his fishing buddies, and so on. Everybody else who could drive, walk, or crawl would be drawn to the golf course in hopes of more violence.

  He was itching to follow them. Before the first person teed off, he could offer a prayer for the deceased, and then a homily about the sin of envy. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his slaves, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s, including his bass boat,” he intoned solemnly. “For the Almighty Lord will smite you with a bolt of lightning afore you reach the first green!”

  It had a nice ring to it, he decided, but he was gonna have to stretch it out into a thirty-minute sermon for whatever church members showed up. He sat down on the couch to wait for further inspiration, idly looking at the three trophies lined up on the coffee table. He’d never won a trophy. The best he’d ever done in a competition was a second-place ribbon for Bible drill in Sunday school. He had a certificate for perfect attendance in high school and a diploma from the seminary. But never a trophy, not even an itsy-bitsy one.

  He went to the kitchen and buttered a square of cold cornbread, slathered it with raspberry jam, and took a bottle of sacramental wine out of the refrigerator. When he sat back down, he realized that he’d forgotten to get a glass. He looked at the largest trophy, a plastic loving cup atop a fake marble base.

  “ ‘Therefore God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of cornbread and wine.’ ” He filled the cup and picked up the base with trembling hands. “And the winner is Willard Verber for his outstanding leadership in the Lord Almighty’s war against Satan hisself!” After the riotous applause died down, he drank the contents.

  By nine forty-five, a diminished number of golfers had arrived at the tent. The vast majority were locals, since most of the visitors had left as soon as Tommy made the hole-in-one. Mrs. Jim Bob admitted she hadn’t mentioned the rule until after supper because she was too busy overseeing the buffet line and reprimanding those who’d imbibed to excess. I had my doubts. After all, the fewer the eaters, the more bountiful the leftovers. I wasn’t surprised as other locals drifted in, some of them with coolers, blankets, and folding chairs. Mothers smeared bug repellent on their children’s bare arms. Men slapped each other on the back and remarked on the likelihood of rain. Middlin Buchanon pulled his wizened granny in a little red wagon, ignoring her squawks. Constant Squirtty led her blind husband to a picnic table and parked him so she could continue to mingle. The unsavory crowd from the poolroom had taken over a picnic table and were stuffing doughnuts in their mouths. Someone had brought a radio but turned it off after a withering stare from Mrs. Jim Bob. I found Darla Jean, who produced a folder with photocopied forms that included disclaimers for injuries on the course received from a boggling array of flora and fauna. Rules forbade the use of alcohol, inappropriate attire, obscene language, threats of physical intimidation, weapons, and violence. I could barely make out the last line that required winners to be present at the final ceremony. “They’re all signed and dated,” Darla Jean said proudly. “I thought I’d wait to see who showed up this morning before I alphabetized them. Mrs. Jim Bob wants everything alphabetized.”

  “From armadillos to water hemlock,” I said, nodding. “Would you and your friends try to figure out who was still here when the meal was served yesterday evening? I’ll need their registration information.”

  “Gee, I dunno. You’d better ask Mrs. Jim Bob.”

  “I’m the chief of police, Darla Jean. Mrs. Jim Bob can bawl you out. I can arrest you for impeding an investigation.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  I regarded the remaining players. No one appeared to be in mourning for Tommy, but conversations were muted. The husbands and wives of
Maggody were again seated on opposite sides of the tent, and hostile looks were flying hard and fast. I wondered how many husbands had slept in tool sheds or pickup trucks for the last three nights. None of them seemed well rested. Jim Bob had sneaked into his kitchen, but only after Mrs. Jim Bob left.

  Kevin was sitting by himself, nursing a cup of coffee. “Did you and Dahlia make peace?” I asked him as I joined him.

  “Not ’xactly. She packed up the younguns, and they’re staying with Ma. I reckon I should have told her about the golf practice, but she cain’t keep a secret for ten minutes. She’d have called my ma, and then my pa’d be in boiling water. It jest seemed safer to say I was working late.”

  “Not your best decision, Kevin.”

  “Ma said she’ll buy us new tires after she makes a hole-in-one. Pa was there to pick up a clean shirt and overheard her. They got into it and she ended up hauling all his clothes out to the driveway and running over ’em with the lawn mower. He’s staying with his third cousin Byle in Hasty. Bony’s still there, though. I saw him sneakin’ sideways looks at Dahlia. If he so much as tries to lay a finger on my wife, I swear I’ll knock him clear to the Missouri line. He thinks his poop don’t stink jest because he can play golf better than me.”

  “Then go try to talk to her now,” I said, although I hardly qualified as a marriage counselor. When I’d finally caught on to my ex-husband’s extracurricular activities in Manhattan, he had frequent flyer miles with an escort service.

  “I cain’t cross Jim Bob,” Kevin bleated. “Yesterday some of my balls landed on the greens. He thinks I have a chance to make a hole-in-one today. Iff’n I do, I wouldn’t put it past him to hogtie me and keep me in his truck until the ceremony. He wants that boat so bad he’s sweating diesel. He ain’t the only one, neither.”