Arly Hanks - O Little Town of Maggody Part 10

"s.h.i.t," Hammet said, proving himself equally magnanimous, "you kin do it for free iff'n you buy me a sundae." He wrinkled his nose. "Phew-whee! That dummy sh.o.r.e does stink like an outhouse in August."

Mrs. Jim Bob was steaming, but she got herself under control and said, "There is nothing wrong with the mannequin. You may take the photograph with it at no charge, as long as you take your child out of my store once and for all. I'll pay you a dollar if you'll take this heathen along with you."

I may not have been at my height of perspicacity, but I sensed there was something fishy going on. I released Hammet and approached the mannequin in the front window. The face was obscured by a cowboy hat and polyester wig, but even from a distance I could tell the hands were not plastic. They were tied to the guitar with transparent string, most likely fishing line, and dotted with freckles, dark hairs on the upper fingers, and on the left thumb, the residual whiteness of an old scar.

And it did smell bad. I ordered everyone back, then knelt down and looked up at the shadowy face. I was prepared for Dahlia's missing victim, so I was startled when I saw features that brought to mind Ripley Keswick. The nose was as thin and sharp, the blank, open eyes the same faded blue. Ripley's complexion was rosier, however, and I'd left him in good health less than half an hour earlier. "What's ... wrong?" gurgled Mrs. Jim Bob.

I stood up and tried to ignore the sour redolence. "Unless you got a hot deal at the morgue, this is not your mannequin. I don't know who it is. Do you?"

"It's a dead man," the brat squealed, still holding his nose and prancing around the back of the room. "Mama, why doncha take my picture with a dead man? The kids at school will have a cow when I show 'em!"

The woman took out her camera. "Well, go up there and stand next to him, Bernie Allen. Hurry up, now; we're supposed to meet your pa for lunch in ten minutes."

The other customers were crowding in, and the smell was threatening to dislodge the contents of my stomach. If Estelle had walked in with a box of snow, I would have buried my head in it. As it was, I ordered everybody out to the parking lot in front and went to the telephone to call Harve to report that I'd lost one body--but not to worry, I'd found another.

Hey, all in a morning's work in the Garden of Earthly Delights.

Chapter Thirteen.

Harve caught a whiff of the corpse and halted in the doorway, his thumb hooked in a belt loop and his lips pulled back to expose tobacco-flecked teeth. "A real ripe one, huh?"

Behind him in the parking lot, the customers had recovered nicely from their eviction and were photographing each other in front of the store. Mrs. Jim Bob paced in a tight circle, snapping at anyone who dared stray into her path. I was responsible for this noticeably un-Christian behavior; she'd wanted to rope off the area around the body and keep selling ashtrays and T-shirts, but I had not been amenable. Darla Jean sat on the top step of the porch and prevented the more adventuresome fans from peering through the window. Hammet was charging two dollars to pose and his pockets were bulging.

"I took a quick look at the body," I said. "There's blood in the left ear and a dark smear visible under the back of the wig, probably from a fractured skull. It looks as if the face was wiped, but there's coagulated blood in the nostrils and a small amount of blood froth around mouth. Lungs punctured by a broken rib, maybe."

"But no blood on the clothes?"

Harve seemed content to conduct his investigation from the doorway, but I was keenly aware of our audience. I curled my finger until he came inside and I could lock the door behind him. I pulled down the shade, but there was no way to block the view through the window. We might as well have been investigating the death of a guppy in the bottom of a well-lit fishbowl.

I moved away from the window. "Not on what he's wearing now and none that I could find on the floor. Even if the injuries are the result of an accident, someone brought him here, dressed him up, and propped him in the window. Someone with a real macabre sense of humor, that is. We know the body's been here since Mrs. Jim Bob arrived shortly after nine and discovered evidence of the break-in. Neither she nor Darla Jean paid any attention to the mannequin, but once the room warmed up, a kid noticed the smell."

"It's getting harder and harder to miss. Any idea of the time of death?"

"The local forensic pathologist eloped with the local forensic psychiatrist, Harve. All I could do was confirm the guy's dead, secure the scene, and call you. I've got my hands full with the Nashville folks and a town overflowing with tourists, and I don't have time to take on a homicide investigation, even with a body."

"You in the middle of one without a body?" Despite strict procedural guidelines to the contrary, he lit a stubby cigar. I didn't protest, because its stench was preferable to the one emanating from the body hunched over the guitar. At the moment of death, the body relinquishes any pretense of dignity. Now I could only hope neither of us followed suit.

I related Dahlia's ludicrous story, then pointed out that Dentha had called his office from Little Rock a couple of hours ago. "Also," I added, "she claimed her victim was sixty-ish with brown eyes and silver hair. Our friend up front has blue eyes, dark hair, and he's closer to forty."

"You check for a wallet?"

"No, Harve, I didn't check for a wallet. I just explained that this is your baby. I am a one-person department, and I'm a.s.s-deep in tourists, celebrities, reporters, traffic jams--"

"Keep your tail in the water. Today's the final day of deer season, so my absentee rate's sky-high, but the team's already on the way and the coroner will be here as soon as he gets the message at his cabin over in Comfrey County. I don't see any reason why you can't slip that fellow's wallet out of his pocket so we can have a look through it."

"This is not my case. Your department has jurisdiction over felonies in towns where the police department lacks resources to handle the investigation. I've already told you--"

"I heard you the first time." Harve ground out his cigar in one of the souvenir ashtrays and brushed ashes off his belly, watching me out of the comer of his eye like a wolf nonchalantly strolling through a flock of sheep.

"I can call in the state police," I bleated.

"They're as shorthanded as I am. Tell ya what let's do, Arly--we'll see if this victim has any identification on him. He may be nothing more exciting than a tourist or a vagrant who had a heart attack, fell over backward, and cracked his head. Some drunken crony decided to have a little fun. If that's the case, I'll take full charge of the investigation."

"And if he doesn't fit either of those categories?"

Harve picked up a Matt Map and studied it. "I didn't know Matt attended that old schoolhouse over near Emmet. Wasn't it shut down back in the late sixties? Last I heard, the Klan bought it for their monthly potluck suppers and cross burnings. You ever wonder if they wear pointy caps on account of their pointy heads?"

There were times when I suspected Harve and Ruby Bee shared a common ancestor. "Would you stop worrying about Matt Montana's school days and the county coneheads and worry a little more about that dead man in the window? What if he's not a tourist or a vagrant?"

Harve put down the map, but he kept on browsing so he wouldn't have to look at me. "Well, if it turns out he had some connection with the group from Nashville, it makes a h.e.l.luva lot more sense for you to take the case. You already know 'em, and they're more likely to confide in you than in a stranger."

"That is a detour on the highway to the garbage dump! I've had a couple of short conversations with the advance man, and Matt came by the PD last night for a few minutes. As for the others, we've exchanged nods and that's it. We are not bosom buddies, Harve."

"But your own mother is one of the organizers, so she'll know all kinds of things about them. Mrs. Jim Bob out there owns the store. Brother Verber has three racks of postcards in his vestibule. Don't forget about Elsie McMay and Eula Lemoy and Jimson Pickerell. All of 'em will do everything they can to help you."

I was too p.i.s.sed off to point out the holes in his glib reasoning, which was probably the response he'd hoped for. "All right," I said as I went stomping toward the window, "we'll just play your little game of Russian roulette. You're gonna be G.o.dd.a.m.n sorry when it turns out he's a salesman from Kalamazoo and you spend the next three days trying to explain this long-distance to his grieving widow. I hate to think about all the paperwork involved in transporting the body across state lines. He's wearing white just like the Klan, Harve. Hope you don't have to deal with the FBI, too."

I ignored the flutter of excitement from the crowd, felt the corpse's rump, and realized someone had put the white cowboy suit over a more mundane outfit. There was a bulge, however, of the right size and shape. "I'm going to have to disturb the body to get to the wallet," I yelled at the manipulative cigar-smoking son of a b.i.t.c.h in the back of the room. "You going to make the apologies to the coroner?"

"McBeen won't even notice, 'specially if he got a big buck."

I noticed all sorts of unpleasant things, but eventually I wiggled my hand under the belt, got my fingernails on the comer of the wallet, and eased it out. My audience applauded, but I failed to curtsy and went stomping back to join Harve next to the cash register.

"You want to open it?" I growled, then slammed it down on the counter and flipped it open. The driver's license, the dozen credit cards, the Social Security and group insurance cards, the business cards, and the wrinkled receipt from a dry cleaner all bore the same name: Pierce G. Keswick. Unlike Adele Wockermann, he had so many cards that we had enough identification for two or three corpses. We could have picked up his laundry, made reservations for a racquetball court, written or called him at his office, or even faxed him a message--if he weren't tied to a chair in the window of Matt Montana's Official Souvenir Shoppe.

"s.h.i.t," I said as I stared at the photograph on the driver's license. "Put a pinch of thyme in the lamb stew, Harve."

Miss Vetchling sat alone in the Vacu-Pro office. The day's mail had been readied for attention on Monday morning. The plants were watered. The upturned coffee pot was drying on the counter, as was her mug. Her keychain lay on the desk, but Miss Vetchling continued to sit long past her designated hour to lock the office and depart for the remainder of the weekend.

She had always prided herself on the orderliness of her personal life. She had her cat, p.u.s.s.y Toes, her apartment in a quiet neighborhood, her meetings of the genealogical society, her knitting projects for nieces and nephews, and her annual vacation to a family-run hotel in Mexico where she remained drunk out of her mind for ten days straight (and was affectionately known throughout the village as Nuestra Senorita de las Margaritas).

Rather than shopping at the grocery store or visiting the public library, Miss Vetchling was contemplating the telephone call. She had studied art history at college and doubted the call had originated originated from the curator's office at the Prado in Madrid. What maleficence was Mr. Dentha in the midst of? What cryptic chain of events had sent him off on a mission fraught with pseudonymous callers and the need for mendacity?

Miss Vetchling did not regard the world through rosetinted bifocals. She eavesdropped on her boss's calls as a matter of course, steamed open his mail when the opportunity arose, corresponded with lonely gentlemen via personal ads, and read true crime articles as if they were recipes ("remove the eyeb.a.l.l.s and set aside, then simmer the tongue ...").

Something was afoot. Miss Vetchling had looked through Kevin Buchanon's folder long before Mr. Dentha had asked for it, but she'd found nothing to set her nose atwitch with the scent of intrigue. But he had, and that irritated her.

She went into his private office, sat down behind his desk and searched through the drawers, but his appointment book revealed nothing she hadn't known from the previous Sat.u.r.day's ritualistic perusal. She used a hairpin to open the metal box where he kept papers, but again, nothing had been added to explain his mysterious trip. Once she'd extricated twenty dollars from his emergency fund, she conscientiously locked the box and replaced it.

She halted her investigation long enough to fetch her mug from the bathroom and pour herself an inch of scotch, then sat back in the leather chair, lit a menthol cigarette from the crumpled pack she'd found in the middle drawer, and considered Kevin's brief tenure as a Vacu-Pro salesman. A polite young man, cursed with pustules pustules and more enthusiasm than intelligence, blindly believing in the integrity of the product and in Mr. Dentha's impa.s.sioned pep talks, eager to display wedding photographs that Miss Vetchling felt might bring a tidy sum from the tabloids.

Unlike many of the disillusioned salesmen, Kevin had come to the office to return his demonstrator kit. He'd been a good deal more emotional than she or Mr. Dentha, both of whom were accustomed to such resignations. What precisely had Kevin said? Miss Vetchling sent a stream of smoke into the air and watched the motes roil in the light from the desk lamp. Another job, he'd said, with a chance to make more money. That ruled out very little; Vacu-Pro salesmen usually qualified for food stamps.

She replenished the scotch in her mug, lit another cigarette, and foraged further into her memory. On the eve of his resignation, Kevin had come by the office late in the afternoon, joking half-wittedly about a disastrous demonstration, and she'd given him one ... no, two appointment slips for the evening. The next morning, before the other salesmen dragged in for the meeting, he tearfully tendered his resignation.

She returned to her desk and thumbed through the log until she found the last page that included Kevin's name. Two appointments during the day, neither resulting in a sale. Then one at six o'clock and one at nine. It was impossible to determine if he'd shown up at any of them; salesmen were known to seek solace at a bar after a particularly brutal reception. However, she had something to go on that Mr. Dentha did not. Once she'd copied the four names and addresses and placed the slip of paper in her purse, Miss Vetchling restored the log to the bottom drawer, turned off the lamp, put on her coat, and left the office. As she started down the sidewalk, she wrapped her coat more tightly around herself, wondering if she might need an umbrella before the afternoon was over. Not an umbrella, she corrected herself with a toss of her chin. Brolly was the term used by proper spinster sleuths.

It took two deputies and a solid hour to get everybody arranged to my satisfaction, and by then I felt as if I'd supervised the unloading of a circus train in the dead of nightin a blizzard. The Wockermann house seemed the logical choice to question the group; the PD was too small, and the bar, which I'd utilized in the past, was packed with tourists. I'd banished Ruby Bee and Estelle to the kitchen and the teenage guides to an upstairs bedroom (risky, but I needed to question them) and told Tinker to shoot to kill if the press attacked. Dahlia's granny had locked herself in the bathroom and, from what we could hear, was taking a bath.

The second deputy was due back any minute with the remaining members of the Nashville party. Ripley, Matt, and Katie knew only that Pierce's body had been discovered in the souvenir shoppe and that we'd confirmed the ID with his driver's license. Now we sat in awkward silence in the living room.

"I don't get it," Matt said suddenly. "Why the h.e.l.l would Pierce be in MagG.o.dy? I mean, there ain't any reason for him to be here. This is my homecoming thing, the kickoff for my tour." He went to the window and waved. "Look at all those folks out there in the road. They came to see me back here celebrating Christmas like a true blue country boy. You think there'd be so much as a dead armadillo out in the road if I weren't inside this house?"

"Or a dead executive in the souvenir shoppe?" Katie asked in a husky voice.

"Aw, Katie," he said as he squatted beside the rocking chair. He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away and rubbed her neck. "Come on, honey, none of this is my fault. You want me to get you a nice cup of tea?"

I cleared my throat. "The kitchen's closed for the moment. As soon as Les comes back with the others, I'll question everyone as briefly as possible and have you all escorted back to your rooms. The sheriff's promised enough deputies to make sure none of you are disturbed by the press."

Ripley leaned back and crossed his legs. "What have you told the media, Arly? I need to at least call the office and let them know before they hear it on the radio."

"His ident.i.ty hasn't been released. The coroner arrived just as I left, and the boys from the lab will crawl all over the store for several hours. At some point, Harve will have to hold a press conference. I'll let you make your calls to family members before then."

"You're looking at the last of the Keswicks. Our mother, one of the Savannah Grahams, died while Pierce was in the army and I was in graduate school. Father was so distressed that he drank himself himself to death within the month. I'd submitted my dissertation proposal the day before his body was discovered in the library. He'd fallen across the maidenhair fern that Mother brought back on the train all the way from Atlanta. She'd gone to rescue Grandfather Ponder, who'd been put in the state asylum by mistake. To this day I remember what she said to me when she arrived home. She said, 'Ripley, imagine a world in which you can go fifty miles away and people don't know who you are!' The fern that Father crushed never did recover, and I told my advisor I simply could not continue with the influence of indigenous flora on Faulkner's early works."

I looked sharply at him, but he was lost in thought and mumbling to himself (or to his advisor) under his breath.

Odd noises came from behind the kitchen door. Neither Matt nor Katie seemed inclined to comment, and I was relieved to see Les pull into the driveway. Tinker was forced to fire a couple of shots in the air, but at last Lillian came into the living room.

She was teary, her lipstick smudged and her face etched with pain. "My G.o.d, Ripley," she said, sinking down next to him. "I can't believe it. Not Pierce. He can't be dead. Somebody confused him with someone else, found his wallet by mistake. Pierce can't be dead." She fell against his shoulder and began to cry. Ripley put his arms around her and bent his head to whisper in her ear.

I waited for a few minutes in case someone wanted to share secrets with me, then said, "I realize this is a terrible shock, and I'll do what I can to be brief." I stopped and frowned at Les, who was admiring Katie from the hallway. "Where are the boys in the band?"

Lillian sat up and took a tissue from her purse. "My fault, I'm afraid," she said, wiping ineffectually at the smears of mascara on her cheeks. "They never get up until late in the afternoon. I'm not sure what would happen if any of them set foot outside in direct sunlight. They may have seen Pierce at the studio, but I doubt they've ever even met him. There's nothing they could tell you."

Ripley nodded. "Lillian's right. They're just hired help. Pierce could hardly tell them apart."

"Imagine that," I said. "Okay, I'll talk to them later if I need to. Do any of you know when or why Pierce Keswick came to MagG.o.dy?"

The ensuing eruption was remarkable only in its lack of consequence. Ripley was sure Pierce had never heard of MagG.o.dy until Matt's relationship surfaced. Lillian admitted she'd talked to him on the telephone in the bus, but he'd said nothing about coming. Matt said Pierce had displayed no curiosity about MagG.o.dy beyond strategic photo opportunities. Voices from the kitchen contributed that he'd never called anyone on the committee. Dahlia's granny broke into a song about a rubber duckie. Lillian began to cry, but Ripley was too engrossed with the ramifications of Faulkner's flora to provide a shoulder. Katie went to the bathroom door and begged to be allowed to use the facilities. Someone in the kitchen mentioned a second bathroom at the top of the stairs. Someone else asked if there really was a telephone on the bus. I finally put up my hand. "We can't do anything until I get a preliminary report from the coroner so we'll have an idea of the time and the cause of death. In the interim, the deputies will take you back to your rooms. Please don't make any comments to the press."

They all limped out except Ripley, who stopped and said, "What about that woman's claim that she put a corpse in the chicken house? Couldn't there be a mix-up?"

"I'm sorry, but that has nothing to do with this. The driver's license has a recent photograph. Unless there's a third Keswick brother ..."

He shook his head and left.

I went back to the kitchen, told Lucy and Ethel to do something about Dahlia's granny before she disappeared down the drain, then remembered I'd left six hot-blooded teenagers in proximity to a bed for better than an hour. I hurried upstairs. For the most part, they were on the bed, but fully clad and playing cards. I'd told them earlier that there'd been a fatal accident at the souvenir shoppe, and they appeared to be disguising their fear of the specter of eternal nihilism with accusations of cheating at poker. All of them, that is, except for the two who were making out in the closet.

"Who was the first to arrive this morning?" I asked.

"Me," said the dealer.

"When was that?"

"Mrs. Jim Bob said to get over here by eight to turn on the s.p.a.ce heaters, pick up trash in the yard, that kind of s.h.i.t. n.o.body else had to show before nine, since tours don't start till then."

"I came at eight-thirty," contributed a mousy girl with braces. "I brought Billy d.i.c.k some doughnuts and a carton of chocolate milk from the supermarket."

"That's nice. Billy d.i.c.k, did you notice anything out of the ordinary when you arrived?"

"Like what?"

"Like I don't know. I'm asking you."

"I noticed the living room was colder than a well digger's a.s.s."

"And ...?"

"There was popcorn scattered all over the porch."

"Anything else?"

"The front door was unlocked, but I figured one of these other burgerbrains forgot to lock it."

In response to my look, the accused burgerbrains denied any carelessness. I forced myself to continue pulling insights out of Billy d.i.c.k's head with questions as small and precise as tweezers. "Was anything missing?"

"I didn't notice."

"Moved?"

"Nah, I don't think so. I mean, somebody could have switched the candy dishes with the candles, or the pinecones with the holly, but nothing like that jumped out at me.

The girl touched his shoulder. "What about the sign?"

"Oh. yeah," he said, smacking his head as if to dislodge a stray thought. "That sign that says welcome to MagG.o.dy used to be right out front by the edge of the driveway. I dint ever pay it any mind, but Traci here"--he squeezed her thigh hard enough to elicit a whinny of protest-- "noticed that it'd disappeared. I went out to the road to see if it was lying in the ditch, and then I saw it. How the h.e.l.l did it git all the way down by the low-water bridge?"

They all stared expectantly at me.

"Bernie Allen, you stop poking that stick in there. You're gonna be real sorry when a big ol' copperhead comes outta there and bites you and you're dead before I can drag you out of the woods."

He stood up and reluctantly joined his mother, who was sitting on a log while studying a map. "Ain't no snake in there," he said, thinking about poking her to see how high she'd jump. It'd be a lot more interesting than hunting for a stupid creek. "I wanna go back to the camper, Ma. My stomach hurts. I think I'm gonna throw up."

"Suit yourself." She ran her finger along a line that was supposed to be the path that started out behind the church and ended up at Matt Montana's Baptism Pool. The map made it took like it was right handy, but she and Bernie Allen had been wandering for the best part of an hour and hadn't so much as seen a mud puddle. Of course Bernie Allen had insisted they take a shortcut and had raised such a fuss that she let him lead the way.

She glanced up at the sound of retching from behind a pine tree. "Stop that, Bernie Allen. This isn't the time for your playacting. If you're throwing up, it's because you got your fingers stuck down your throat. Now come out from there so we can find this Baptism Pool before dark."

He didn't obey her, but this was so unremarkable that she went back to trying to figure out the map. At least they were moving downhill, so they'd find the creek sooner or later. Bernie Allen had chocolate syrup stains on his shirt, but he was gonna stand right on the edge of the creek where Matt Montana was baptized and he was gonna give her a nice, wide smile. They'd come all the way from Joplin to visit Matt Montana's Boyhood Home, and she was going home with the slides to prove it.

"Bernie Allen," she said more loudly, "I said to stop making those disgusting noises and come out from behind there. I don't want to have to tell your pa about this, but I will if I have to."

"You might ought to tell somebody," called Bernie Allen before he resumed retching.