by Joan Hess
“The deputies and I did so conscientiously. I don’t have the list of his personal items, but I seem to recall we foundlint, a wallet containing the usual cards and about fifty dollars, a ballpoint pen, fingernail clippers, an asthma inhaler, a packet of tissues, a few coins, and half a roll of breath mints. Peppermint or spearmint—I’m not sure which it was. I can call the sheriff’s office and ask if you’d like.”
Jim Bob bit back what might have been a most entertaining reply, and after a moment, said, “Did you find a notebook?”
“What notebook?”
“I’m the one asking the questions,” he said. “You’d best be the one answering them, unless you want to end up trying to collect unemployment.”
“And you’ll be the one trying to convince Ruby Bee to serve you a pitcher of beer on Friday afternoons. I can always find another job.” As much as I wanted to drag him out of my chair and stuff him in the wastebasket like a piece of junk mail, I sat where I was. “Why don’t you tell me everything Wendell said this morning so that I can figure out whether I’m tidying up an accident or looking into a homicide?”
He managed to repeat the conversation that had taken place in his kitchen that morning, although I doubted the language had been quite that colorful. “He swore he found some clue about the location of the gold,” he added in a surly voice, as if I might go dashing out of the PD with a shovel. “He didn’t say much, except he wanted to do more research. When I went upstairs to take a shower, I happened across a copy of the journal in one of the bedrooms and took it with me to my office. Far as I can tell, the only thing this private knew about was runny bowels and lice. It didn’t sound like he ever killed a single Yankee.”
“But Wendell told everyone present that he’d run across a reference that would lead to the gold?”
Jim Bob stood up. “Dumb sumbitch was a helluva lot more excited about family plots. So did you find the goddamn notebook or not?”
“No,” I said, “but I have a witness who saw him with it before his death.”
“Who?”
I could almost see him pounding on Darla Jean’s bedroom door while Millicent shrieked and Jeremiah hunted through the coat closet for his shotgun. “I’m in the middle of an investigation, Mr. Mayor. You’ll have to direct your questions to Sheriff Dorfer, but not until after the baseball game is over. The Cubs and the Cardinals, I think he said. I don’t think it sounds like a fair match, what with bears going against little red birds, but what do I know? He mentioned that he’d be stretching in the seventh inning. That might be a good time to call him.”
After he stomped out, I took possession of my chair and realigned my pens and pads on the desktop, wishing I could realign my thoughts as meticulously. It seemed as though I was going to have to make sure none of Mrs. Jim Bob’s house guests—or Jim Bob, himself—had been on Cotter’s Ridge, perhaps hoping Wendell would lead him or her to the Confederate gold. It was hard to envision, but then again, their very presence in Maggody was due to a staged production, complete with roles, scripts, costumes, posturing—and violence.
It occurred to me, albeit a bit late in the game, that I hadn’t demanded a posse and bloodhounds to search for Dahlia’s granny. Which wouldn’t help. Cotter’s Ridge stretched for ten miles. It had been logged for more than seventy-five years, and was crisscrossed with roads, trails, dried creek beds, ravines, crevices, and, of course, caves. Census takers never even considered it. County social workers knew about a few of the remote homesteads, but rarely could find them.
I decided to focus on Wendell’s meanderings that morning. Based on Jim Bob’s hazy recounting of the conversation around the dinette, it sounded as though Wendell had encountered Hospiss Buchanon on a stroll before breakfast. It might be interesting to ascertain if he’d actually found her home, or even inadvertently left his notebook beside the family Bible.
Having never encountered Hospiss during my formative years, I called the keeper of the Encyclopedia Maggodica and politely asked for suggestions.
“Why on earth do you want to talk to her?” demanded Ruby Bee. “She’s got the brains of a June bug. You don’t think she has anything to do with this murder, do you?”
“As of now, there is no murder,” I said. “I’m writing up a report about this accidental death. There’s some indication that Wendell spoke to her early today.”
“He must have run into her at the Methodist cemetery. She steals the plastic flowers from the plots and tries to sell them to tourists driving through town. She usually waits till right after Memorial Day, though.”
“And you never mentioned this to me?”
“So you could arrest a senile old woman trying to make enough money to buy groceries?”
“I wouldn’t have arrested her, for pity’s sake,” I said, “although I suppose I might have tried to discourage her.”
“Nobody minds, and what’s more, I know a few folks who set out canned food along with their sprays of flowers from Wal-Mart. Just last fall Estelle and me took her some sweaters and a few blankets we bought at a flea market. It ain’t like any of the high-minded members of the Missionary Society would see fit to help her out. They save their energy to pray for heathens before they sit down to coffee and cinnamon rolls.”
I waited until she stopped sputtering, then said, “Do you know how to find Hospiss’s house?”
“No, but I know how to find her trailer. It’s at the back of the Pot O’ Gold, right by the drainage ditch that runs along the fence. Now if you don’t mind, I got to go deal with this smart-mouthed Yankee from St. Louis afore I have a brawl in the middle of the dance floor. Some of the ol’ boys that come here for happy hour don’t cotton to being ragged about the Confederates gettin’ their asses whipped. I ain’t so fond of it myself.”
I drove over to the Pot O’ Gold and parked by one of the more squalid trailers. A few plastic roses were set around the cracked concrete patio. The sole aluminum chair was bent and in need of new webbing. Hospiss did not appear when I tapped politely on the door, or even after I gave it a few thumps with my fist. The windows were too high for me to peer into unless I risked my life by balancing on the chair.
“She’s in there,” said a thin voice behind me.
I turned around and regarded a scruffy girl perhaps six or seven years old. “Are you sure?”
“No, I ain’t sure for sure, but she never hardly goes anywhere. Are you a cop?”
“Maggody’s finest,” I said as I reassessed my chances of teetering on the chair frame in order to look inside. “Then you know her fairly well?”
“I’m not allowed to on account of she’s crazy, but sometimes she lets me come inside and eat crackers with her. She sez I’m her best friend, the only one that believes her. She sez that when she has a big, fancy house, I can come live with her. There’s gonna be feather beds and gardens with real flowers and even a swimming pool. We’re gonna stay up all night watching TV and eating all the chocolate we want. In the mornings, somebody’ll serve us eggs and biscuits on china plates.”
“And you believe her,” I murmured.
The girl shrugged. “Might as well.”
“Will you tell me your name?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.” She gave me a puckish smile, then darted away into the chaos of trailers, bass boats, campers, pickups, sickly trees, dingy laundry flapping in the breeze, and men in undershirts drinking beer and hollering at each other.
I knocked once again on the front door, and then, leery in that I was operating on the utterance of a first-grader, took the tire iron from my trunk and went around to the back door of the trailer.
When I received no response, I pried it open. If the town council wouldn’t pay for the damage, I figured Ruby Bee could have a bake sale and Estelle could run a special on pedicures. Ten toes for the price of five.
Hospiss was indeed inside, but she would never again pilfer plastic flowers. Her body was sprawled across the worn carpet, her arms splayed, her thin hou
secoat tangled around her knees, her bare feet shriveled like dried apples. Blood from the wound on the back of her head had left an irregular brown blotch on her faded gray hair.
The putrid odor and presence of flies suggested as much, but I kneeled down beside her and made sure she was dead. I quickly checked the other rooms in the trailer on the obscure chance someone had lingered, and then drove to the PD to call Harve.
“Did I mention it’s the Cubs and the Cardinals?” he said as soon as I identified myself. “Mrs. Dorfer did the dishes and went over to visit her sister, leaving me in the most splendid solitude to sit back in my recliner, pop open a cold beer, and appreciate the poetry of the game. I realize some folks think it’s on the slow side—”
I cut him off and told him about the body in the Pot O’ Gold Mobile Home Park. I did not spare him the details. “And before you even bother to try to justify sitting there on your butt with all that poetry flickering on the screen, it was not an accident. There’s no piece of furniture she could have fallen and hit her head against. I didn’t see a weapon, but I was more concerned about making this call than doing a thorough search.”
“You want me to come racing out there with flashing lights and sirens, along with half a dozen more official vehicles and an ambulance? How about a helicopter? Maybe I can get some black ones so’s to send half the Buchanons in the county scurrying into their bunkers to hunker down and prepare for a UN invasion. Most of ’em wouldn’t pop up till Groundhog Day next year.”
“You, McBeen, and a couple of deputies to search the pasture for the weapon will do just fine,” I said sweetly.
“Score’s tied and one of those home run sluggers is coming up in the next inning. How long’s she been dead?”
“Some number of hours, but not days. Harve, I’m real sorry about this. I suppose I can sit here in the PD until the end of the baseball game, but I might just pass the time by alerting the media to the crime spree right here in little ol’ Maggody. I’ll do my best with the reporters, cameras, lights, and microphones. I’ll just tell them you’re delayed.”
He harrumphed. “I’ll be on my way soon as I make a couple of calls. Give me directions to the trailer and we’ll meet you there.”
It was beyond credibility to categorize Hospiss’s murder as a coincidence, I thought as I drove back to the Pot O’ Gold. Wendell had spoken to her earlier, and both he and she were dead within a matter of hours. Harriet Hathaway had been adamant that Wendell’s fear of heights would have kept him at a prudent distance from the edge of the bluff. His notebook, containing not only genealogical notes and a map, but also hints as to the location of the Confederate gold, had disappeared. It did not seem likely that he’d left it at Hospiss’s abandoned homestead or failed to notice if it had dropped out of his pocket. And surely he wouldn’t have mentioned his encounter with her if he’d followed her back to her trailer and dispatched her. The Methodist cemetery had few visitors at an early hour, or even a much later one. Wendell had seemed harmless, to put it politely. His ancestors would not have ridden with Quantrill’s Raiders.
I had a few minutes before Harve and his platoon would arrive, so I stopped at Eula Lemoy’s trailer on the off chance she’d noticed anything that morning. I knocked on her door, and was rather surprised when she threw it open, grabbed my arm, and yanked me inside.
“Is this about Lottie?” she demanded. “Is she all right? I haven’t been able to eat a thing for two days, not so much as a bowl of soup. I know Elsie and I were cowards to drive off like we did, but we were planning to go back and fetch her if the police didn’t show up. There wasn’t any reason for all three of us to get ourselves arrested, was there?”
“I don’t know,” I said, backing away. “Was there a reason why all three of you should have gotten yourselves arrested?”
“Of course not. What Lottie did most likely wasn’t against the law. Elsie and I was nothing but innocent bystanders, like those folks you see standing behind the yellow tape.” Eula sat down and wiped her eyes. “So what have they done with Lottie?”
“Who?”
“Didn’t your mother teach you to pay attention when folks are talking to you? Where did the police take Lottie after she was arrested?”
“Arrested for what?”
“Breaking and entering, I suppose, although she didn’t break anything. Entering’s another matter.”
I sat down next to her and waited until she stopped twitching and told me the whole story, from the unauthorized entry into the Headquarters House to the confrontation at the county jail. “It doesn’t sound as though she was arrested,” I said, frowning. “Could she have ended up at the hospital?”
Eula shook her head. “We thought of that, but we called and they said she wasn’t there. Would they tell us if she was locked up on the psychiatric ward, maybe on account of amnesia?”
“The hospital staff would have been happy to share information if they had an elderly patient without a Medicare card.” I went over to the window to watch for county vehicles gliding by without the benefit of lights and sirens. It was a little late for melodramatics. “This took place Sunday afternoon? Is there any chance she’s still inside the house?”
“Elsie and I went there first thing yesterday morning. This tight-lipped woman came to the door and scolded us for not reading the sign that said the only time to tour was on Saturdays until after Memorial Day. I suppose it’s possible that Lottie hid under a bed after the alarm went off, but she wouldn’t still be there. I’ve been sleeping on the couch so’s to be by the telephone in case she calls. She might be unhappy with us on account of how we drove off like we did, but she hasn’t turned up in more than two days. Elsie’s seeing to her cats and I’ve been stopping by to water her plants.”
“Very thoughtful of you,” I said. “As soon as I have a chance, I’ll call the police department in Farberville and ask them to search the house from attic to cellar, as well as yards in the vicinity in case Lottie took refuge under a bush and lost consciousness.”
Eula gasped. “You mean she could be lying in muddy leaves, all wet and cold?”
“Does she have any family or friends in Farberville who might be looking after her?”
“No, her only sister lives over in Blytheville and I seem to think both of her nieces live in Dallas. Do you think she’s—no, I can’t bring myself to say it. Arly, you got to do something! I won’t be able to live with myself, knowing I was responsible. Well, and Elsie, of course. She’s the one who dragged me back to the getaway car, and then did the driving.”
I went over and squeezed her hand. “I’m sure she’s fine, Eula. I’ll make some calls, but you and Elsie don’t need to worry. Have some tea and keep watering her house plants until she shows up.”
“She ain’t gonna be happy with us when she does,” Eula said glumly.
“Most likely not.” I took a breath, then said, “There’s been some violence in the mobile home park. Hospiss Buchanon was killed in her trailer this morning. Did you notice anyone unfamiliar walking or driving by?”
Eula blinked at me. “Why would anyone hurt Hospiss? She never bothered anybody. I’m not saying she wasn’t above stealing other folks’ laundry off the lines, including my favorite brassiere, or going through their trash bags looking for aluminum cans, but mostly she just stayed in her trailer. She wasn’t more than a pitiful sparrow. Every now and then I’d have her over for supper, and she was always real grateful. Why would somebody do such a thing? What is the world comin’ to?”
“I wish I knew.” I gave her hand a final squeeze, then left and drove to Hospiss’s trailer. It was past sunset, and the packs of feral children that roamed the Pot O’ Gold had been hauled inside, some to be bathed and fed, others to be smacked and sent to bed.
Harve and his posse arrived shortly. McBeen, who was more than chunky, prickly as a pine cone, and lacked the social skills of a troll under a bridge, examined the body. After he’d pronounced her dead at the scene, he stood back while a few
photographs were taken and a nervous young deputy collected fingerprints from the doorknob. No one seemed eager to linger, even after a window had been forced open.
“Time of death?” Harve asked him.
“How the hell would I know? I wasn’t here, and I presume you weren’t, either. Eight to ten hours, give or take. Blunt object to the back of her head. She was so old and frail that her skull just caved in like a ripe melon.” He gave me a speculative look. “You’re finding all manner of corpses today, aren’t you, missy? Are you finished for the day, or should I hang around town and save myself another trip out here?”
“Suit yourself,” I said levelly.
Harve took me outside before McBeen and I exchanged more words, some of which were apt to be less than professional. More deputies were poking sticks in the muddy water in the drainage ditch or tromping in the weedy pasture with flashlights. A few gawkers had gathered, but I didn’t see the child with whom I’d spoken earlier.
“So what’s the connection with her and that fellow on Cotter’s Ridge?” asked Harve.
“He talked to her today, sometime before breakfast. According to what I’ve been told, she claimed that one of her ancestors had been involved in the skirmish and was buried on her old homestead. She also claimed that she had evidence in the family Bible that she was a direct descendant.”
“So what?”
“Wendell was excited about it. He was into that sort of thing.” I repeated what Jim Bob had told me, then added, “So he must have gone looking for a stone marker to confirm her story. Someone followed him, or happened to encounter him. Darla Jean said he—”
“Darla Jean?”
“She was up there, looking for Petrol.”
“Looking for Petrol?”
“Yeah, Harve, she thought Petrol would lead her to Diesel, who would then take them to the gold. Petrol—or even Diesel—could be this ghost everybody’s been spotting. Then again, Dahlia’s granny could be wearing a dress with shiny buttons.”
