Arly Hanks - O Little Town of Maggody Part 14

"Officer McNair, Larry, and I will try our best not to disturb your guests." I beckoned to the two figures outside the door. "Here they are now. Larry is also trained to find illegal substances, so we may have to bring in more police officers if ... well, I'm quite sure none of those lawyers and their spouses in the Razorback Room would be in possession of drugs, not even the designer ones."

"That's a dog," the manager said in a horrified voice.

I nodded. "I have a handkerchief with the missing woman's scent. We'll start here in the lobby, or maybe in the restaurant, and hope he can pick up the trail. If not, we'll go up and down the halls. Unless, of course ..."

"Unless what?"

"If I'm correct, these women have been here for almost three weeks. Someone on the staff has seen them, talked to them, taken them extra towels or trays of food. And while you're at it, calls may have been placed to Nashville from their room. The area code is six-one-five."

She made one last stand. "Do you have a warrant?"

"I have a dog. His name is Larry."

"Just don't bring him in here," she said, heading for the desk. "I'll try the long-distance records, and my a.s.sistant will start questioning the staff. Leave the dog in the parking lot, all right?"

I went outside to thank Officer McNair for coming to the motel. When I came back in, Hammet was scooping pennies out of the fountain and the manager was shrieking in her office. Within five minutes, she came out and said, "There are two women in 223, one young and one elderly, registered as the Misses Germanders. On six occasions, calls were made to a number with a six-one-five area code. Is that adequate, Chief Hanks?"

I thanked her, grabbed Hammet by the back of his belt, hauled him out of the fountain, and propelled him out of the lobby.

"I got seventy-three cents," he crowed, showing me his drippy treasure. "Coulda got more, too. Why do you reckon folks throw money in there? Don't they figger somebody's gonna fish it out?"

I admitted I didn't know as we walked past the frozen pool and up the concrete steps to the balcony. Room 223 was next to an alcove with ice and soda machines, convenient for either Miss Germander should she feel the need of a cold drink. Lights were on, and through the door I could hear the sounds of a television game show. I hesitated, recalling all the time and energy I'd spent trying to find Adele Wockermann and all the exasperation I'd experienced because of it.

Hammet leaned over the iron railing. "Do they throw money in the swimming pool, too?"

"You can go look, but don't fall in." After he'd gone back down, I knocked in the manner of a maid with an extra blanket.

Patty May opened the door, saw my badge, and tried to close it. I pushed my way inside. "Where is she?" I demanded, eschewing inquiries into her health.

Her mouth went limp. "Where's who?"

"Adele Wockermann." I made sure she wasn't in the bathroom or the closet, switched off the television, then sat down on the nearest of the two beds. On a table was a tray with the remains of a meal, although it appeared that only one person had utilized room service. "Come on, Patty May, I know what happened the day Adele disappeared. There were no unfamiliar cars in the parking lot that day--only yours and the ones that belong to the other employees. If no one saw any strangers, heard any strangers, or even recalled any strangers in the area, then there weren't any strangers. The dog did not bark in the night."

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said as she sank down on a chair across the room and stared at me, more stunned than hostile.

"The cook goes outside to have a cigarette during the dessert course. You carried a tray into the kitchen, cut the hose on the dishwasher, and went back to the dining room. Twenty minutes later water was spurting onto the floor, Mrs. Twayblade was mopping madly, and you were helping Adele out to your car. It was cold, so I hope you covered her with a blanket. She might have been forced to stay there until your shift ended at four, but fortunately Mrs. Twayblade told you and Tansy to take your cars and drive along the road."

"She did?" breathed Patty May, who apparently had no experience with drawing room denouements and therefore had not yet burst into tears and admitted her guilt.

I wasn't in any hurry. "So at three o'clock you drove away with Adele on the floor in the back. You needed to stash her somewhere for an hour, didn't you?"

"I did?"

"Asking questions in response to questions is a very irritating habit, Patty May. It's almost as irritating as failing to return calls." I went to the window and looked down at the courtyard, where Hammet knelt by the pool wielding a long metal rod with a net on the end. He'd collected several beer cans and a black bra.s.siere. I let the drape fall back. "Maybe all this talk about the old homestead made Adele feel nostalgic. You dropped her off there, went back to the county home, and picked her up again once your shift ended. Is that right?"

She struggled to come up with a lie, but she lacked Katie Hawk's experience. "It was her idea to go there, and like you said, it was cold and I hated for her to have to huddle on the floor of the car for another hour. Her arthritis has been acting up lately."

"Did she mention going up to the attic?"

"Yeah," Patty May said with some reluctance. "It could have been awful if she fell on the stairs, but she didn't. She said all this talk about her great-nephew reminded her of what all was up there. I asked her what, but she told me to mind my driving because she wanted a jalapeno pizza as soon as we got to Farberville."

"Then the two of you came here and checked in under a pseudonym. Why'd you do all this, Patty May?"

"He told me to. He arranged to pay for the room and all our meals and told me to keep her here until it's safe. n.o.body is supposed to know where we are."

"Who is this benefactor?"

"Why, Matt Montana, of course. He found out about a scheme to kidnap Miz Wockermann because she's his great-aunt. An ordeal like that would be awful hard on her. He's cooperating with the FBI, but until the kidnappers are in jail, Miz Wockermann has to hide out."

I wish I could say I was so astounded by this unexpected turn of events that I was tongue-tied, but I'd had no theories whatsoever about why Patty May had helped Adele escape and this was plausible. More plausible than extraterrestrial involvement, anyway. "Where is Mrs. Wockermann?" I asked.

"She's out on a date."

This was less plausible. "Out on a date with whom, Patty May?"

"A man named Merle Hardc.o.c.k. He's from MagG.o.dy and they're old friends. When she and I first got here, we went out to eat a few times and went to matinees, but I ran out of money pretty quick. Once we'd watched all the pay movies, she got bored and called him to come over and play pinochle. Two different times they locked me out of the room and I had to sit in the lobby, and another time they were in the nightclub until two in the morning. Matt Montana's private secretary promised he'd send some money, but that was most of a week ago and n.o.body answers at the number he gave me."

"And this private secretary's name is Ripley Keswick?"

She nodded so vigorously that her gla.s.ses slid down her nose and into her lap. "How you'd know that?" she demanded as she squinted at me.

"Just a wild guess," I said. "Have you ever spoken to Matt Montana?"

"No, he's been real busy finishing his Christmas alb.u.m, but he sends messages through Mr. Keswick and is going to thank me in person when it's all over. I get all tingly just thinking about him shaking my hand. I finally remembered when he came a couple of years back to visit Miz Wockermann. He was just a regular person back then, so I barely paid any attention to him except to tell him when it was time to leave. He's a lot more handsome now that he's famous."

I returned to the window to check on Hammet, who'd perfected the art of pool retrieval and now had a sizable pile of undergarments on the deck, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the motel guests, who hung over the railing and shouted encouragement. "Why did you call me when Adele disappeared?"

"I thought maybe she'd be safer if the kidnappers found out that they couldn't get their evil clutches on her. If they heard on the news or read in the paper that she was gone, then they'd give up. They haven't, though. Last night they followed me, and one of them was hanging out the window trying to shoot me. I lost 'em, but it was so scary that I threw up something awful when I got back here. I don't reckon I ever hugged the porcelain that long in my whole life."

"I doubt the kidnappers will bother you anymore. When are Adele and Merle Hardc.o.c.k supposed to be back?"

Patty May's face turned the precise shade of the carpet, which, unfortunately, was avocado green, and she appeared to be in peril of a repeat of the previous evening's gastric extravaganza. "They left yesterday evening while I was visiting my family, and they haven't come back. I been trying all day to get hold of Mr. Keswick and find out what I should do, but like I said, n.o.body answers. It's not my fault. Miz Wockermann wasn't a prisoner or anything. I was just supposed to protect her until it was safe for her to go back to MagG.o.dy."

I felt as if I'd fallen into Hammet's pool. "She left last night and hasn't come back?"

"She wrote a note that they were going to have Mexican food at a place called Matamoros. I looked in the telephone directory, and even called information, but there's no restaurant with that name. My ma says there's no town with that name anywhere around here."

"The only one I can think of is about a thousand miles away, but the food is authentic." I saw no point in further distressing Patty May by telling her that Merle Hardc.o.c.k owned a motorcycle the size of a Brahman bull. Oddly enough, he has no known links to the Buchanon family.

Patty May finally made the connection. "You mean Miz Wockermann's going to Mexico? You got to stop her. Can't you call the Texas Rangers or somebody like that?"

"And have her brought back in chains to the county home? No, she can do whatever she d.a.m.n well pleases, and she and Merle will undoubtedly have an intriguing time of it. Now stop worrying about Mrs. Wockermann and listen to me. I want to hear every conversation you've heard--or overheard--concerning Matt Montana's return to his boyhood home. Every word."

Patty May complied.

Miss Vetchling stuck out her tongue at the dog barking furiously on the opposite side of the car window. Its paws made muddy splotches, and drool flew from its mouth and dripped down its fangs. It was tempting to roll down the window and poke the brute in the eye, but there was no time to indulge in such frivolity. Later, there might be time to drive by and toss a doctored dog biscuit out the window.

She lit a cigarette from Mr. Dentha's rapidly dwindling pack, then checked off the third name on the list. Kevin had been to the house and demonstrated the system to Mrs. Karpik's satisfaction. Once again it was time to consult the street map.

The driver of the car parked half a block away would gladly have eaten a dog biscuit. There were no provisions on the seat, and the candy bar fortuitously discovered in the glove compartment had long since been consumed. Fingers had been sucked clean. The driver was beginning to feel downright crotchety.

Mrs. Jim Bob sat in the living room. The fire in the fireplace had sputtered out, and the lights on the Christmas tree were dark. Her tea was cold. Jim Bob had claimed he was going to the SuperSaver, but she knew where he was and with whom. She was too good a Christian to envision the specifics of what they were doing, but even her sanitized version was disgusting and wicked. If he'd paid attention to business instead of chasing after loose women, the store would have done better and she would not have been driven to glean and reap in another field. She would not have been seduced by Satan. Love of money would not have replaced her love of the Lord, who, now that she thought about it, could have sent a signal back in the beginning that she shouldn't open a souvenir shoppe. She wouldn't have needed a bolt of lightning to get the message. Surely He could have created an insurmountable problem with the lease or burned down the novelty company.

But He'd let the sun shine on her endeavor. Now it was dark and cold, and sleet would fall by morning. It would fall on the empty s.p.a.ces at the campgrounds and on the vacant parking lot beside the bank. It would fall on the yard of Matt Montana's Birthplace & Boyhood Home, but not on more than a few tourists waiting in line for a guided tour. It would fall on the roof of an almost empty Official Matt Montana Souvenir Shoppe. Worst of all, she thought with a shiver that ran clear down to her toes, it would fall on the Voice of the Almighty Lord a.s.sembly Hall, where there was a room used exclusively by the Missionary Society. Where they kept their trays, their coffee and tea pots, their packages of forks, napkins, and paper plates, their spiral notebooks with meticulous minutes of each meeting, and their checkbook that indicated to the last penny how much had acc.u.mulated in the treasury. In that the extent of their mission thus far consisted of meeting weekly for refreshments, the treasury had grown steadily.

A knock on the door startled her, and it took her a minute to unclench her fingers from the cushions and go to the door. She opened it, then gasped as she found herself regarding a sheriff's deputy in a khaki uniform. He pulled off his hat. "Sheriff Dorfer is conducting an investigation into an accidental death down by Boone Creek. We're asking folks if they saw the man around town or were down there in the last twenty-four hours."

"I heard about that." Mrs. Jim Bob took the photograph of a bearded man, studied it briefly, and handed it back. "If he came into the shoppe, I didn't notice him. Why would Sheriff Dorfer think I have time to go waltzing around the woods?"

"I'm supposed to show the picture to everyone in your house, so if you could ..."

"Ripley Keswick has gone off to the high school gym and Jim Bob's not here. I'll fetch the woman." She grudgingly told him to come inside, then went upstairs and knocked on Miss Katie Hawk's room. "There's a deputy to speak to you," she said, aware she was delivering the message in a manner that might alarm those with guilty consciences.

Katie didn't look all that guilty as she came out the door, but Mrs. Jim Bob was still seething over how she'd refused to come down for supper, so she went back downstairs without another word of explanation. The deputy repeated his request to Katie and handed her the photograph.

"That's--that's the fellow I talked to yesterday in the launderette. You say he drowned in the creek?"

The deputy wasn't expecting any positive replies to his inquiries and therefore had no idea how to proceed. "You'd better wait here until I find Sheriff Dorfer and see what he says, Miss Hawk," he said at last.

Mrs. Jim Bob went to the breakfast room to call Eula and tell her how risky it was to open your own home to strangers. It didn't matter if they were famous. The next thing you knew, the silver'd go missing, there'd be coffee stains on the place mats, and they'd get drunk and scatter cigarette ashes on the bedspreads.

She felt much more cheerful.

Hammet, who'd not been allowed to bring home the catch of the day, sulked in silence on the way back to MagG.o.dy, which allowed me to think about everything Patty May had told me. It fit in with what I'd learned from the interviews with the Nashville people and even with what I'd seen and heard--and failed to appreciate. Pure and simple greed seemed to be the primary motive behind everyone's behavior, from Matt Montana right down to Raz Buchanon. There was room in between for a lot of folks, including the local entrepreneurs. If my theory was correct, Hizzoner headed that list. It remained to be seen if the evidence remained to be found in Adele Wockermann's attic.

I stopped in front of the antique store and said, "Go upstairs and watch television until I get back, okay?"

"Yeah, I 'spose," Hammet said, his tone making it clear that I was asking a lot of him. "What's gonna happen after this concert tomorrow night?"

"I don't know if there will be a concert. I'm beginning to understand understand some things, but I still don't know who's responsible for Pierce Keswick's death."

"Is it Matt Montana?"

"It could be," I said. "He had a reason, and he was roaming around town last night. Then again, so were plenty of other folks. I'm going out to see if I'm right about certain things. I'll be back in half an hour."

He wasn't pleased to be excluded from the investigation, but he slouched upstairs to my apartment. I drove back down the road and turned on County 102. It wasn't all that late, but it was dark and there was no light in the attic. I could have waited until morning to test my theory, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep despite the fact that it had been, as I'd predicted with the precision of a Delphian oracle, one h.e.l.luva day.

I parked beside the house and took a flashlight from the glove compartment. Rather than charging up to the attic, however, I went to the patio behind the house. There was a vague discoloration on one of the flagstones, but Harve would have to send out the lab boys to determine if it was blood. A few splinters of gla.s.s glittered in the light. I turned the flashlight toward the attic and located a broken window almost directly above the patio.

I couldn't tell if the window had been broken the previous night or the previous decade when numerous other windows had suffered from rock-flinging vandals. I went around the house to the front porch. The key was where Ruby Bee had said it would be, above the door and therefore in the very first place anyone who grew up south of the Mason-Dixon line would try (if there wasn't a doormat). I went inside and paused in the doorway of the living room to shine the light on the unadorned Christmas tree. What a cozy scene it had been--the fake heirlooms, the fake relatives, the fake memories shared by those present. An artificial tree would have been more appropriate.

I went upstairs and continued up the squeaky steps to the attic. It had not been ransacked by any means, but several boxes had been pulled away from the wall and a wardrobe door was open. Bread crumbs were scattered on the floor, as if Hansel and Gretel had pa.s.sed through on their way to the witch's house. A greasy bag indicated they'd also stopped by the Dairee Dee-Lishus; it looked as if it had been put through a food processor.

Congratulating myself on my brilliant deductions, I went to the back of the attic. An empty box sat under the window, surrounded by stacks of books. A briefcase had been knocked over. I righted it and took out a Methodist hymnal with a warped cover and brittle yellow pages. Also inside the briefcase were doc.u.ments with the letterhead of Country Connections and some correspondence addressed to Pierce Keswick. Nothing seemed to relate to MagG.o.dy or to Matt Montana, and I replaced them to read in a less hostile environment. The thick layer of dust on the windowsill had been disturbed. I looked more closely and found two crescent marks that very well could have been made by the heels of shoes-if someone had stood on the sill while facing the interior of the attic. The edges of the broken windowpane were clean. Thirty feet below was the discolored flagstone.

I sat down on a box and regarded the room from a perspective eight or ten feet lower than someone teetering on the windowsill. Katie Hawk had called Pierce with information that sent him racing to the Nashville airport and ultimately to MagG.o.dy. The signs on the main road would have led him to the house, and even the most architecturally impaired among us can find an attic. It was impossible to tell if he'd found anything more entertaining than a Methodist hymnal before he climbed onto the windowsill and fell backward to his death.

If he'd arrived around eleven, Dahlia might have been chugging past, although he certainly could not have seen her by standing on the sill behind me. I went down the trunk-lined pa.s.sageway to the front of the attic and looked out at the road. She'd knocked out poor Mr. Dentha at nine, she'd said, then sat in the living room and considered what to do for most of an hour before she put him in a sleeping bag, carried him out to the Matt-Mobile, and drove out to the chicken house. There are no great distances within the town limits of MagG.o.dy (unless someone had gotten real carried away with sign relocation), but she'd come a couple of miles at a turtlish pace.

I went to the side window, rubbed a circle in the dusty gla.s.s, and stared until I could make out the oblong shapes of the chicken houses by the creek. A third shape was discernible, a shape suspiciously like that of a truck that belonged to an ill-tempered moonshiner moonshiner who thought he was so d.a.m.n clever. How d.a.m.n clever would Raz have been if he'd arrived with a load of whiskey and found a body? Even love-besotted Dahlia had realized it would be difficult to explain the presence of one in her bedroom. Raz would have faced a similar problem. He hadn't killed (or even beaned) anyone, but he would be forced to explain what he was doing in the chicken house after dark--and why'd he bought the property to begin with. Even if I couldn't prove he was using the chicken house for illegal purposes, I'd keep an eye on it and he'd be out of a warehouse and whatever he'd paid for it.

So what had he done? He'd moved the body, then cleared out the whiskey temporarily. Now it looked as though he was bringing the whiskey back. I waited. Light flashed as a door opened for a moment. A figure moved toward what I was sure was a truck, disappeared, and shuffled back slowly, carrying a load with the care of a grave robber.

If Pierce Keswick had been in the attic, heard the Matt-Mobile pa.s.s by, and then come to this window in time to see Dahlia unload a body and carry it inside, or even taken a break an hour later and seen Raz Buchanon load it into his truck ... what had he thought? Could he have been so bewildered that he'd not heard a squeak as someone came up the steps to the attic?

I say this because I heard a squeak.

Chapter Seventeen.

I climbed over a trunk, dropped to my hands and knees, and crawled down the narrow s.p.a.ce below the eaves until I was jammed behind a wardrobe with a canoe paddle stuck in my side. A hatbox fell on my head. Dust swirled into my eyes and nose, and airy strands brushed my face. I'd turned off the flashlight while watching Raz out the window. Now my hand was so sweaty that I could barely hang onto it, but doing so was high on my list of priorities. Real high.

Two more squeaks were followed by profound (as in when you can hear your hair growing) silence. I listened intently, forcing myself to breathe through my nose and battling not to sneeze as decades of dust and mold tickled my sinuses. At the last second I clamped my nostrils together and imploded a sneeze that reverberated through my ears and made my head throb.

Another squeak indicated the intruder had not heard the m.u.f.fled sound--or was coming to investigate. One of these days I'd learn to bring along my gun, I thought, as I peered futilely around the edge of the wardrobe. There was no utility pole near the property, no moonlight, no hazy diffusion of light from the big city in the distance. I'd been in caves that were better lit.

I became aware of wheezing as the squeaks became more frequent. The intruder was asthmatic or sadly out of shape, I told myself, as if this were information that would be invaluable when I battled for my life. I realized I was reacting as Dahlia had when she found Mr. Dentha in her house, allowing my imagination to run hog-wild. Just because the squeaks were twice as loud as the ones I'd made coming upstairs, and just because the intruder raled like an incubus (or a succubus--gender was not yet established), there was no cause for alarm.

The squeaks were now coming from the floorboards of the attic, not more than fifteen feet away from me. The wheezing was interspersed with low growls. An earthy, fetid smell found its way to my hiding place. The squeaks continued toward the window, pa.s.sing by the opposite side of the wardrobe with such tentativeness that I suspected I too was putting out a tattletale smell that announced my presence.

A new sound was added to the cacophony of squeaks, wheezes, and thuds from my heart. This one was best described as a plop punctuated with a sputter. Abruptly the smell was so gawdawful that my eyes watered and my stomach convulsed. Acid shot up my throat. Breathing through my nose was impossible, but I was afraid that I'd retch if I removed my hand from my mouth. All in all, this was not a scene from a genteel traditional mystery novel, where fragrant sherry mingled with the aroma of scones baking in the oven.

"s.h.i.t!" I said, standing up so recklessly that I banged my head on a rafter. I switched on the flashlight and straddled the trunk beside the wardrobe. There it was in all its organic glory: plump, moist, steaming on the floor. Its producer had lumbered away at the sound of my voice, but to another part of the attic rather than down the steps to the second floor.

I continued over the trunk, careful not to place my feet in a regrettable location, and swung the flashlight as if it were a gun. I certainly wouldn't have minded pork chops for dinner and ham for breakfast.

"Marjorie?" whimpered. a voice from the second floor.

"She's up here!" I shouted. "Hiding in disgrace behind a trunk, I guess. Come get her before I"--no explicit threats came to mind, obliging me to make a generic one--before I think of something to make both of you sorrier than you already are!"

I turned the flashlight toward the top of the steps. Raz's face appeared, his eyes screwed up as the glare caught him and his cheek bulging in alarm. Droplets of sleet dotted his greasy hair and whiskers, but he looked more like something from a Himalayan mountainside than from Santa's workshop. "Is that you, Arly?" he said as he tried to block the light with a shaky hand.

"Just get your d.a.m.n sow."

"Ye might oughtta not rile her," Raz said, still whimpering and looking as panicky as I'd felt earlier. "Mebbe ye should jest come down here and let her leave when she's of a mind."

"I am conducting a murder investigation. I am not going to allow a d.a.m.n sow to snuffle around the scene of the crime until she gets bored or deposits another load of evidence." I walked toward the window, shining the light into the crevices between the trunks and boxes. "I don't know what the h.e.l.l she's doing up here," I continued irritably, "but I'm not about to ..."

Marjorie charged out from behind a trunk, her pink eyes flashing savagely. Her wheezing had been replaced with snarling, s...o...b..ring, and grunting. Four hundred pounds of fury thundered across the attic at me.

"Watch yerself," Raz called helpfully as I leaped onto a trunk, lost my balance, and scrabbled to hang onto a rafter, my feet skittering because I'd misstepped in my haste. I still had the flashlight; it bobbled and jerked, adding to the madness of the moment.

Marjorie snapped at my ankle, and for the first time I realized how powerful her jaws were. This was not the sort of pig that tricked huffy-puffy wolves or went wee-wee-wee all the way home. This was a pig possessed with a l.u.s.t for blood. I kicked out at her head, then decided I was in danger of losing the piggy that went to market, if not the ones that stayed home and had roast beef. I resumed my slippery tap dance on the top of the trunk as splinters dug into my hand.