"Anybody hurt?"
"The drum major, Boo-Boo the clown, and Sister Mary Perpetua."
"Wow," I said. "Some tragedy."
"I should say. Now the Ali Baba Temple has temporarily mothballed the go-carts and Wilona is out her lead parade unit. She said she was so upset she drank a whole bottle of Maalox."
"Poor dear," I said, getting up from the table and grabbing the keys to the van.
"Where are you lighting out for? I thought there were some more calls you wanted to make."
"There are," I said. "But I'm going to run over to the cop shop and see if I can get anything out of Bohannon on whether or not they're going to consider Beemish and Shaloub as murder suspects now the feds are investigating them."
I had to circle the block twice to find a space in the tiny lot at the police department. Out of patience, I finally docked the van in a slot marked OFFICIAL POLICE VEHICLES ONLY. Quickly I scrawled a note indicating I was working undercover, signed Bucky Deaver's name to it, and tucked it under the windshield wiper.
It was obviously a slow day for homicides. Bohannon was leaning at a precarious angle in his chair, his feet up on his desk, when I walked into the office. The leg of his polyester pants rode up enough to reveal the .32 caliber revolver he wore in an ankle holster. The air-conditioning in the homicide office wasn't quite up to the job of cooling the place, so Bohannon had his jacket off and his tie loosened. I could see perspiration rings on the tan short-sleeved shirt he wore.
He couldn't see how I looked because he had his face buried in the box scores.
"Hot on the trail of another fiendish killer, I see," I said, as I sat down next to the desk.
Bohannon didn't bother to lower his newspaper. "What do you want, Garrity? I'm pretty busy right now."
"Just wanted to see if the feds are going to let you take a peek at all those files they seized out in Kensington Park this morning. Plus, I was wondering if you'd checked out how long Beemish was in town when he flew in here last Sunday night from Hilton Head for his little business meeting with the civic leaders of Kensington Park.
"Or if you've found out where Lilah Rose really was that Sunday. I called the restaurant she said she ate at that day. They've been closed for a month."
Bohannon threw the sports page down on his desk. "How the fuck do you know about all this? Goddamn feds can't keep their mouths shut about nothing. What are you doing, sleeping with Tommy Manetti?"
"Give it a rest, Bohannon. I heard about some of it from the city clerk in Kensington Park. She was right peeved about having all her files seized and being interrogated for two hours. The rest you can attribute to heads-up investigative work. Something you should try sometime."
"Big talk, Garrity. But I'm not telling you shit about an ongoing investigation." He crossed his arms over the mound of his stomach. "Now why don't you run along and chase dust bunnies instead of bad guys?"
I propped my own feet up on Bohannon's desk. "You gonna tell me you're not looking at Beemish and Shaloub as viable suspects in the Ewbanks murder now that the feds are in on this? Ardith Cramer didn't do it, you know."
"Bullshit." He snorted. "That Pakistani PD of hers has copies of our reports. You know what's in them. If I was him, I'd be worrying about pleaing her out instead of trying to pin the murder on somebody else. The DA doesn't give a shit about this case. One dyke killed another dyke. Big fucking deal."
"The DA's going to give a shit when he sees that the cops deliberately ignored two other much stronger suspects," I said. "One a former cop—that looks bad—the other a corrupt developer, both of whom are the subject of a federal grand jury investigation on vote buying. Wait until the newspapers get ahold of that story, Bohannon. You'll be back directing traffic and working security over at the Omni for Wrestlemania."
His face flushed pink, reminding me of raw hamburger meat. "We know all about the grand jury investigation. We even know where Lilah Rose Beemish was that Sunday afternoon." A slimy leer crossed his face. "Apparently what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Just between you and me, your friend Mrs. Beemish left the kids with a sitter and spent most of that Sunday afternoon and evening in a hot tub with a twenty-six-year-old tennis pro. Guess he was helping her with her foreplay, eh?" Bohannon chuckled happily to himself. "And yeah, for your information, we're looking at Shaloub and Beemish's relationship with the dead girl. So they both banged her. So what? That don't let your client off the hook. You satisfied, Garrity? Any other questions you want us to ask?"
I slid my foot off his desk, accidentally knocking a pile of reports onto the floor. "Oops, sorry." I paused at the door, though, to enjoy the sight of Bohannon's big brown behind stuck up in the air while he retrieved the scattered papers. "Oh, Bohannon," I said. "You are aware, aren't you, that Shaloub and both Beemishes used to work at Rich's years ago? Of course you know that. I know how thorough you big smart homicide guys are."
Driving home, I went over the pros and cons of the cops' case against Ardith. Lilah Rose had an alibi after all. It wasn't one that would do her marriage much good, but it definitely ruled her out as a murder suspect. Bohannon had a point, much as I hated to admit it. The cops had evidence that made it look like Ardith and Kristee had argued violently that night: the screaming coming from the room, the scratches on Ardith's hands, and Ardith's skin under Kristee's nails. Plus all the evidence showed that the two had set up the nanny scam in order to burglarize wealthy families. The worst strike against Ardith, though, was Ardith herself.
At her best she was sullen and uncooperative, with a giant chip on her shoulder. The DA would play that up, making it look like Ardith was some hardened pervert who'd seduced this poor innocent girl from South Carolina, then duped her into unwittingly participating in the nanny scam.
I wondered if we could get her off if the case went to trial. Idly, I wondered about myself. Wondered how Ardith would fare if I wasn't around to goad the cops into considering Beemish and Shaloub as suspects. All day long, I'd managed to push aside any thoughts about what was going to happen to me the next day. Unbidden, all the repressed fears now seeped into my consciousness. What if the lump was cancerous? What if they decided to do a mastectomy while I was on the table? Suppose they couldn't get it all? Could I run a business and cope with cancer? Shoot a gun? Make love to a man?
I heard a tapping on the window of the van. It was Edna. I'd been so absorbed in my worries and fears that I'd pulled into the driveway at home and shut off the engine and was just sitting there, staring off into space.
"I thought that was you," she said. "What are you doing, sitting here like a zombie?"
"Thinking," I said, heading for the back door.
"Well, you'd better get in the house," she said. "There's a long-distance phone call from Utah for you. Says her name is Patti Jo something. She's calling collect. Only reason I accepted was I thought it might have something to do with our case."
I dashed into the kitchen and picked up the phone. "Patti Jo? Patti Jo Nemeyer?"
"Yes, ma'am," a young girl's voice said. "I'm sorry to be so long returning your call. But after I left Atlanta I went touring around California with two other girls. I just got back home last night and got your message. My mother said this has something to do with Kristee Ewbanks?"
"I'm afraid it does," I said slowly, searching for a way to tell her the news. "I'm sorry to tell you that Kristee is dead. She was murdered a week ago. I'm a private investigator, working on behalf of Ardith Cramer, the woman who got Kristee her job here in Atlanta. Ardith has been charged with the murder, but I think she's innocent."
"Oh, my goodness," Patti Jo breathed. "My heavens. How awful." There was a silence. "Hello, are you still there?"
"I'm here," Patti Jo said. "I was just saying a little prayer. You know, for Kristee."
"That's sweet. I'm sorry to be so blunt about this, Patti Jo, but I was wondering how close a friend you were to Kristee."
"Not very close at all," Patti Jo said. "I took her
to some singles activities, when she first got to Atlanta, and got her to go to church with me once or twice. But after that I got the feeling she was avoiding me."
"Did she ever discuss her relationship with Mr. Beemish with you? Or talk about any other men she was interested in?"
"I know she liked men a lot." The girl giggled. "It's not very nice of me to say, but Kristee was man-crazy. She moved right in on the cutest guy in our singles group during the very first activity she went to."
"Would that be Whit Collier?"
"Yes," she said quickly. "I guess you already know all about Whit. If your client didn't kill Kristee, do you think Whit might have?"
"I've met Whit," I said cautiously. "What makes you think he could have killed Kristee?"
"Oh, I don't really," she said. "But considering where he's from and all—well, it's silly, but you hear things."
"I don't understand what you're getting at, Patti Jo. Is there something unusual about where Whit Collier is from?"
She lowered her voice. "I don't want my mom to hear me. She thinks I don't know about this kind of stuff. You mean you never heard of Beechy Creek, Arizona? I thought everybody knew about it, after the movie and all."
"No," I said, trying not to lose my temper. "What about Beechy Creek?"
"They still practice polygamy there," she whispered. "I know a lot of Gentiles think all LDS are polygamists, but the church officially banned the practice a long time ago, back in the 1890s. But the people in Beechy Creek still do it. Most of them have been excommunicated from the mainstream LDS church. They're like some offshoot or something. They use the Book of Mormon and the D and C, but they're very fundamentalist, totally weird. Their leader, they call him their patriarch, is this old guy they call Uncle Something. I can't remember what. Just about everybody in town is related to him. A few years ago, Uncle Something wanted to have this young girl sealed to him, like for his fourteenth or fifteenth wife. But the girl's father wouldn't let her, and this man killed the father and the girl in some kind of ritual thing. Are you sure you didn't see the movie? Blood Atonement, it was called."
I'd never seen any movie about Mormons that I could recall, unless it was that old Gary Cooper film Friendly Persuasion. No, wait, that was about the Quakers, I think.
"Patti Jo," I said. "Do you mean that Whit Collier was a polygamist or a member of this weird sect? He seemed pretty normal when I met him."
"I know," she agreed. "He never talked like a polygamist or anything, and he did go to our LDS ward. So he must have had a temple recommend from his bishop back in Arizona. But I had kind of a creepy feeling about him, even though he was so cute and all. You'd think a young guy like that would have some other interests. You know, sports or something like that. But Whit was always at church. Every Sunday, all day. He was a home teacher and he led the singles group and was in everything. I don't know what Kristee saw in him. He was too serious for me. And she was a real live wire, you know?"
Patti Jo lowered her voice even more, so that I could just barely hear.
"She told me she was going to get Whit to have sex with her. She even set a deadline. She said she'd get him in bed by their third date, and if she didn't she'd drop him."
Before I could ask any more questions, I heard a woman's voice in the background, calling Patti Jo. "I have to go now," she said. "My mom needs to use the phone. Good luck."
34
AS I HUNG UP THE PHONE, a car roared up the driveway, followed by three long blasts of the horn. "Neva Jean, get your butt out here," a man's voice called.
I could feel my temples starting to pound. "Just what I need now," I said. "Swanelle McComb. Mama, go out there and tell him we don't expect Neva Jean back for another half hour. Tell him we'll give her a ride home. Get rid of him."
It was too late. He swaggered into the kitchen, slamming the screen door behind him. "How y'all?" he said casually, flopping down on a chair. "Neva Jean back yet?"
Swanelle McComb thought he was God's gift to white-trash women. And in a way, maybe he was. I always thought of him as James Dean with pellagra. His hair was jet black and greased into a sort of pompadour with elaborate mutton-chop sideburns reminiscent of Elvis Presley in his Viva Las Vegas days. His eyes were light blue and his lips were full, sensual, if you like that look. I didn't, personally.
"Neva Jean won't be back for another thirty minutes or so, Swanelle," I said. "You go on home. We'll give her a ride."
"I'll wait," he said, glancing meaningfully at the refrigerator. "Y'all got a beer for a man dying of thirst?"
Edna started to get up to get him one. "Sorry," I told him, stopping her short. "We're out."
"What was that you started to tell me about the phone call?" Edna said.
"Oh, yeah. Patti Jo said the town Whit Collier comes from, Beechy Creek, is a hotbed of fundamentalism. They've got polygamists, and some guy named Uncle Something has a cult, and one of the cult members killed another one and—"
"Uncle Nehemiah," Swanelle said. "Dude had about two dozen wives and forty dirtball kids. One of the Carradine boys played him in the movie. David Carradine, I think it was, the dude who did the kung-fu movies."
"You saw Blood Atonement?"
I don't know why I was so amazed. Swanelle and Neva Jean devour bad movies like most people do peanuts. They've probably seen every Grade B drive-in movie ever made, at least once.
"Yeah, like I said, David Carradine was in it, so I figured it was gonna be an action flick. Me and Neva Jean seen it over at the Starlight Drive-in a couple summers ago. Turns out it was some kind of true-crime-type deal, but hey, there was some heavy shit in that flick."
"Patti Jo was telling me about the movie," I told Edna. "But she couldn't remember much more about it, other than the title."
"Man, this Uncle Nehemiah, he was into some radical religious stuff," Swanelle said, enjoying being the center of attention. "See, he wants to marry this fifteen-year-old chick. I think Audrey Landers played the chick.
She spends the whole movie walking around in a torn halter top and hot pants. But her old man goes 'no way,' and he takes her up to the mountains and hides her from Uncle Nehemiah. Actually, he wants to get it on with her himself, 'cause he's really only her stepfather. So Uncle Nehemiah and his sons get guns and knives, and they hunt Audrey Landers and her old man down. But they catch 'em in the sack, so Uncle Nehemiah goes batshit and decides they have to die because they got it on and it's like incest, almost."
Edna by this time was drumming her fingers on the tabletop and anxiously eyeing the clock, hoping Neva Jean would arrive soon to deliver us from Swanelle McComb, White Trash Film Critic.
"So they beat up the father and choke Audrey Landers, but just before the two of them die, they drag 'em outside in the snow. Audrey, like, is only wearing these red bikini panties. Talk about bodacious tits. And they cut Audrey and her old man with a knife, and they let the blood run out on the ground. See, that's why the flick's called Blood Atonement, because this Uncle Nehemiah guy thinks the only way Audrey Landers can get to heaven is for her blood to mix with the dirt."
"Wait a minute," I said.
Swanelle looked startled. "Well, maybe it was Judy Landers instead of Audrey. I get them mixed up."
"Did you say they cut the girl, even though she's almost dead from strangulation?"
"Yeah," he said enthusiastically. "And Audrey—or Judy—man, she's groaning and wiggling around in the snow, and the blood's all over the place. Man, it was really something."
"And the movie's called Blood Atonement? You're sure?"
"Hell, yes, I'm sure. Swanelle McComb knows his movies," he said hotly. "Especially movies that got David Carradine in 'em. He's my main man."
"What's so important about this movie, Jules?" Edna wanted to know. "Is it supposed to be true?"
"Patti Jo said it was based on a true murder that happened in this fundamentalist sect in Beechy Creek, Arizona. That's the same place Whit Collier's from. And Kristee had a cut on her finge
r that Ardith said wasn't there when she left the motel. I don't know. It's sort of far out."
"I told you that CPA was a homicidal maniac," Edna said. "Just like Sam Arnold who lived next door. It's always those quiet accountant types. One minute they're figuring depreciation on your Chrysler; the next thing you know they snap, just like that. And the neighbors are on the eleven o'clock news telling the reporter, 'He kept to himself. We were shocked when he went over to the mall and blew all those people away with an Ouzi. We didn't even know he had an Ouzi.'"
"Calm down, Edna," I said. "The Easterbrooks should be back any minute. I still think Collier's just a harmless religious nut. Beemish is the one, you wait and see. The rest of it is all circumstance. Hell, if Swanelle and Neva Jean saw Blood Atonement, maybe Beemish did too. Maybe he set it up to look like some kind of crazy Mormon ritual killing. Beemish is smart enough to pull it off, you've got to admit."
We heard loud voices outside, quarreling. "I told you I can't stomach that Mexican food," Baby was yelling. "Last time I stayed up all night with the gas. It's my turn to decide, and I say we go to Mary Mac's Tearoom."
Baby and Sister didn't stop quarreling after they came into the kitchen, Baby guiding Sister by the arm, Sister trying to yank away from her.
"Selfish hussy," Sister hissed.
"I heard that," Baby said. "You better watch your step, missy, or you can stay at home tomorrow while I go off to wrasslin' with somebody else."
"Sit down, girls, and I'll get you a Coke," Edna promised. "Did you find anything suspicious in that Mormon's townhouse?"
"Never seen a bachelor's place so clean. Neat as a pin, that boy is," Baby marveled. "And Bibles? That boy has a Bible in ever' room. Met him when we got there. Sweet little blond-headed boy."
"This fool stood there and swapped Scripture verses with the man for thirty minutes," Sister griped. "We like to never have got rid of him."
Every Crooked Nanny Page 24
