Arly Hanks - O Little Town of Maggody Part 7

"I haven't any idea. I do ad campaigns, not mobs."

I lost my balance as the floor tilted, and Ruby Bee and I stumbled into him. "You'd better think of something!" I shouted in his ear before we stumbled away. I turned around to order the driver to get us out of there, but he had pa.s.sed out across the steering wheel. Splayed like a spider across the windshield was none other than Hammet Buchanon, waving excitedly at me. A woman with hair to rival Estelle's snapped off a windshield wiper and triumphantly held it aloft. She stopped grinning as several women charged her. Ruby Bee and I went flying back into Ripley, this time pinning him against the door. He winced as Ruby Bee's elbow caught him in the stomach.

Abruptly the bus stopped bucking. The chant faded to a few uncertain voices, then dried up. Hammet slithered out of view. Faces unglued themselves from the windows, and fans at the door of the bus drifted away.

"Are we missing the second coming of Christ?" said Ruby Bee. "Look over there at Jim Bob in the doorway of the bar. He sure looks like he's facing the wrath of G.o.d."

"More likely to be his wife," I said as I heard a disembodied voice singing reverently as if easing into a hymn, then growing stronger.

"My sweet angel Katie on the top of the tree, we'll celebrate Christmas for eternity ..."

Dentha was deeply confused. The car that had been parked down the street from the office was registered to one Earl Buchanon of MagG.o.dy. He presumed this Buchanon was related to his former employee in some way, but that didn't explain much. He hadn't fired the boy. He never fired anyone, no matter how poor their sales were. His problem was recruiting new salesmen, most of whom would sell at least one or two Vacu-Pro Systems to members of their families before they became discouraged and quit. He and Miss Vetchling were the only constants in the office, and she was beginning to sniffle about the lateness of her paycheck.

He went to the door of his office. "Miss Vetchling, would you be so kind as to hunt up the personnel file on Kevin Buchanon?"

"If I can find the strength, Mr. Dentha. I had only a bowl of soup for supper last night, and a cup of tea and a cracker for breakfast. I had to empty my checking account to pay my rent on the first of the month."

"I feel dreadful that the regional office is dragging its heels, Miss Vetchling. I'll call over there as soon as I have a look at the Buchanon file." He returned to his desk, and after she'd set down the file and limped bravely back to the front room, he wasted a few minutes wondering what she'd do if she learned her check had arrived three weeks earlier. Its paltry sum had saved him from a broken kneecap, or so his bookie had sneered. The memory of the confrontation was enough to set Dentha's heart beating arrhythmically, and he slipped a pill under his tongue and closed his eyes until he felt steadier.

He opened the file. Yes, Earl Buchanon was Kevin's father and lived at the address reported by the vehicle registration office. Had Kevin borrowed his father's car, or was the father implicated? And how did this Arly Hanks woman fit into things? He turned over the application form and flinched as he saw the name printed crudely but legibly. Kevin had listed his previous employers, and between stints as a convenience store a.s.sistant manager and a bank security guard, claimed to have served as an investigator under the supervision of Chief of Police Arly Hanks of the MagG.o.dy PD. This time Dentha could barely get the cap off the vial of nitroglycerine tablets. When he felt calmer, he went to the front office and waited impatiently until Miss Vetchling had finished her telephone pitch. "I'm going to be out of the office for the rest of the day, possibly until Monday morning. Can you look after things?"

"I'll do my best, Mr. Dentha."

"I've had a call from the home office. I can't name names, but I've been asked to investigate the possibility that someone at the regional level has been diverting funds to an account in the Cayman Islands. For obvious reasons, this requires the utmost discretion. If anyone calls, say that I'm at a sales meeting in Little Rock."

"What if there's a call from the regional office?" Miss Vetchling asked shrewdly.

"I'm confident you'll think of something." He put on his hat and coat, picked up his briefcase, and stopped to give her a look of avuncular concern. "You really should add red meat to your diet, Miss Vetchling. You look a bit anemic." He was already halfway down the sidewalk when he heard something inside the office shatter, but he was too preoccupied to go back and inquire.

"I am so honored to have you all as guests in my home," Mrs. Jim Bob said to Ripley as they sipped tea in the living room of The Mayor's Mansion, now officially filled to capacity. A fire crackled and snapped in the fireplace and the mingled scents of pinecones and potpourri added to the overall coziness. Every doily had been handwashed, starched, and pinned back in place on the arm rests, and every cushion plumped like a marshmallow. The spruce tree in the corner was decorated with red gla.s.s b.a.l.l.s, red-and-white gingham bows, and little plastic candy canes; the gaily wrapped packages beneath it were empty but the effect was festive.

Mrs. Jim Bob was proud of the ambiance, but as Brother Verber often expounded from the pulpit, pride went before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Having time for neither of those calamities, she lowered her eyes modestly and said, "I hope Miss Katie finds her room pleasant, and you, too. I put copies of the Bible in the top drawers of the nightstands. I want all my guests to go to bed knowing they're in an upright Christian household."

Ripley smiled. "It's charming. I hope you'll forgive Katie's haste to go to her room. She's tuckered out from the drive and needs a nap. I'm hoping to meet Mrs. Wockermann and warn her that Matt's coming to see her in the morning. If he surprises her, all that excitement might make her fly ... off the handle."

"First, we ought to drive around town so you can see for yourself how everything's all fancied up for Christmas. I myself went all the way to Farberville to find the perfect wreath for the front door of the house. Then, why, we can have a nice visit with Brother Verber, who said a special prayer last Sunday entreating the Good Lord to watch over your bus. The church is decorated for Christmas, too, but Millicent McIlhaney saw to that, and it's overdone, if you ask me. Millicent and I don't see eye to eye about--"

"I'm sure it's fine," Ripley interrupted. He winked rea.s.suringly at her, but rather than soothing her, it startled her tongue back into action. "You'll want to walk down to the creek and see where Matt was baptized. The official map shows it as being upstream just a ways, but we didn't think folks wanted to walk all that--"

"A brilliant idea, Mrs. Jim Bob. Let me pop upstairs for my coat and gloves, and we'll be on our merry way."

He started to rise, but she caught his shoulder and pushed him down. In an uncharacteristically tremulous voice, she said, "Why don't I call first and let everyone know we're on our way? You just sit here and have another cup of tea. I'll be back in one tiny minute." She went into the hall, realized he could overhear her call, and hurried out to the breakfast room to use the extension.

Ripley leaned back and crossed his legs, amused by her panic. Before long, he'd be back in Oxford, this time living in a fine old antebellum house with mahogany bookcases, books with cracked leather spines, and a group of students awaiting his learned remarks. Decorum would require that he invite pasty-faced young women with thick ankles and thicker gla.s.ses, but he would also include malnourished young men in dark cotton sweaters and baggy khaki pants. The thought was enough to bring a sheen of perspiration to his forehead.

"I wanna talk to you."

Ripley opened his eyes. "You're the mayor?"

"Yeah, the mayor of the f.u.c.kin' utility room." Jim Bob sat across from him and got right down to business. "I was over at the bar and grill when your bus drove up and that kid started caterwauling caterwauling out the back window. You and me got a few things to get straight, Mr. Nashville Hotshot."

Ripley put his fingers together and regarded Jim Bob as if he were one of the distaff students of his reverie who'd just made a disparaging remark about Miss Eudora. "Would you care to elaborate?"

Jim Bob, who could spot 'em a mile away and had bashed a few in his time, didn't give a s.h.i.t if this fellow was the fairy princess of Opryland. When money was involved, he could be real tolerant. "I sure as h.e.l.l would."

"About the time I was resigned to a broken back, Matt Montana came to the rescue," I said over the telephone to Harve, who was puffing away in his office in Farberville. I was in the PD, gazing wearily at the rings left on the desk by innumerable unfinished cups of coffee and at the wad of wax paper that had contained the lunch I'd gulped down. "After he gave the impromptu concert from the window of the bus, he was so gosh-darn grateful for their presence and golly-gee apologetic and all that c.r.a.p that his fans practically begged him to stay inside and rest. Some of the women were crying, for chrissake, and even Hizzoner looked all choked up. He's the last one in town I'd have accused of being a softie. Anyway, everybody backed off and the driver roused himself to move the bus around the corner of the bar. I blocked off the motel parking lot with sawhorses and deputized a couple of unemployed chicken processors to fend off the tourists for the rest of the day. I armed one of the deputies with a beeper that'll keep him in touch with your dispatcher, who can call me here or at home if there's a problem."

"You didn't arm Hammet, did ya?" drawled Harve. In the background, LaBelle giggled like a serial killer.

"Heard about that, did you?" I said mildly, hoping he couldn't hear me grind my teeth.

"Ain't but a handful of folks in Stump County that haven't heard Robin Buchanon's bushcolt is back in town. Around these parts, he's a sight more famous than Matt Montana. His mouth any cleaner since his last visit?"

"No, and he's expanded his vocabulary to include a lot of obscenities I've never heard before. His foster mother lets him watch MTV."

Harve chortled until he choked. After he'd ordered LaBelle to thump him on the back, then hacked and wheezed for a while, he came back on the line. "Wait till dark, then bundle him up in a blanket and take him back to his foster home."

"You know I can't do that," I muttered, not allowing myself to entertain the possibility for more than an idyllic second or two. "Ever since he stayed with me after his mother was murdered, he's been convinced that I'm going to relent and adopt him. He watches me out of the corner of his eye for any sign of weakness. He's not a bad kid, considering he spent his formative years in a gawdawful sorry excuse for a shack up on the ridge, and he's really pretty bright. He's also unbelievably excited about being dressed up in a cowboy suit and brought onto the stage with a real live star. He kept me up all night talking about it. How am I supposed to drop him at the curb?"

"Your funeral. Did you get me and the missus tickets for the concert?"

I admitted I did, although I made it clear that the tickets were in exchange for a six-man security force outside the auditorium. Matt Montana was not in danger of an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt by a highly trained agent from a hostile country. I wasn't worried about snipers on rooftops or bombs in the auditorium. All six hundred tickets had been sold, with locals given twenty-four hours to snap them up before they were offered to the public. Rumor had it that scalpers were already commanding fifty dollars a ticket, and we still had more than forty-eight hours to go. It had overtones of a bad movie, R-rated for violence, if not s.e.x.

"... and they'll be there midafternoon," Harve was saying. "I'll send over some more sawhorses to set around the school parking lot to keep the gawkers at a distance. You want the bullhorn, Arly?"

I did not want the bullhorn, any more than I wanted half a dozen deputies, more sawhorses, six hundred concertgoers, or a horde of ticketless folks who'd sell their grannies into white slavery for a glimpse of Matt Montana. I did not want traffic jams on the highway, dented fenders in the parking lot, brawls outside the bar and grill, shoplifters in the souvenir shoppes, or witticisms from Harve Dorfer. "Nope," I said and hung up, the last being the only one of the above over which I had any control. I went to the door and regarded what I could see of my jurisdiction.

It was getting dark, which meant the souvenir stores would close shortly, the tours would terminate for the day, the one streetlight would come on of its own magical accord, and I could start rolling up the sidewalk.

But I'd have to unroll it the next day, when the hometown boy emerged from the bus for two days filled with photo ops at the Wockermann house, the a.s.sembly Hall, the high school, and whatever other sites the homecoming committee had decided he would fondly remember, given adequate forewarning. I'd tried to remember him, but all I could come up with were blurry images of bad acne. Nothing a kid did was of interest to a bona fide teenager, with the exception of said kid creeping through the moonlit scrub down by Boone Creek. All I'd seen of him then was his backside (which, possibly, was all he'd seen of me).

The faux-deputies had agreed to work all night in exchange for overtime, which I'd bill to Harve. The manager of the Pot o' Gold Mobile Home Park, as well as Earl Buchanon, could handle security in their respective campgrounds. The two potential hotspots were at best tepid. Ruby Bee kept a baseball bat behind the bar, and the guy at the pool hall had hired a bouncer who parked a chopper out back. I'd run the license plate, and his parole officer had told me she herself was making sure he stayed on his medication this time. The Springfield splinter of the Partridge family was likely to have arrived in Hasty before dark. If I'd read Patty May's mother's quasi-slip correctly, Patty May would soon be sipping egg nog and munching cookies in the kitchen with her kin. I decided to take Hammet with me. After my surprise visit, we could drive around Farberville and look at the Christmas lights, go to a movie, get ice cream, or anything else that appealed to him as long it took place outside the town limits of Montanaville.

I'd turned him loose for the day, telling myself the townsfolk deserved no mercy for having dumped him on me in the first place. Everybody'd sworn it was Brother Verber's doing, but I figured the blame belonged to the entire committee, none of whom had best ease through a yellow light as long as I was in office. Was I vindictive? As Hammet would say, you bet your a.s.s.

I was headed out the front door when I heard a knock on the back door. Figuring my houseguest was being pursued by a lynch mob, I sighed and went to let him inside the sanctuary. I found myself admitting Matt Montana, who touched the brim of his cowboy hat as he ducked under my arm. He wore a fleece-lined jacket and denim pants, but his photograph had been held under my nose so often that I had no problem recognizing him.

"Evening, ma'am," he said.

I regret to say I was speechless.

"Hope I'm not disturbing you," he continued as if used to dealing with the dumbstruck, which he probably was. "I was feeling cooped up like a chicken in the bus, so I thought I'd slip away and hunt up some of my old friends in MagG.o.dy." He went into the front room and sat down in the chair across from the desk. "Bet ya don't remember that night down at the creek, do ya? Lordy, your eyes was a-blazin' when you came after us. I was surprised I didn't end up with burn marks on my b.u.t.t."

"The good ol' days," I murmured. I was so stunned that I had to clutch the arm rests of my chair as I sat down behind the desk. "Your memory's better than mine."

"Mebbe 'cause it was the first time I saw t.i.ts in the moonlight. Sure was a pretty sight."

I couldn't decide whether to grin back or go get my gun and shoot him in the middle of his forehead. I decided to delay the decision for the time being, although I had not unilaterally dismissed either option. "Everybody's excited about your triumphant return to MagG.o.dy. Guess you saw all the signs along the road?"

He pushed back his hat and did what he could to get comfortable in the chair. "Aw, they didn't have to go to all that trouble for me. I just came to visit with old friends and family and sing a few songs at the gym."

"Which is why press releases were sent to every newspaper and radio station within a thousand miles?"

"To tell the truth, the media folks have gotten kinda tiresome since I won the Country Sound Award back in October for best original song. You hear about that?"

"Something to that effect." I could not for the life of me figure out what the h.e.l.l he was doing in the PD, his boots now resting on my desk, his grin as wide and white as a crescent moon, his eyes locked on mine like we were sharing some steamy secret. "How'd you escape all those fans milling around the parking lot at the bar?"

"Weren't nothing to it. I cut around the back of the motel and across the field, climbed a barbed-wire fence, and stayed in the shadows until I got to your back door. I was awful glad the light was still on." His tone implied the light in question had metaphorical implications.

"Lucky you," I said levelly. I forced myself to withdraw to a more a.n.a.lytical perspective (yeah, sure I did) in an attempt to figure out why my stomach was in knots and my tongue hanging out. He wasn't all that handsome. His mouth was too full and wide, and his eyes protruded slightly as if he had a hormone imbalance. There were crinkles at the corners of his eyes, and deeper lines from incessant, lopsided grins. He was the cherub in the Christmas pageant, sincere and unaffected, oblivious to his impact on women. And I was Beverly Sills.

"So how come you're still stuck here after all these years?" he asked. "Seems like you'd have gone off your rocker by now, unless you're the kind who's content to just sit in it out on the porch."

"I moved away, went to college, got married, lived in Manhattan for a time, got divorced, and came back here to pull myself together again. It's a temporary situation."

"How long's it been temporary?"

"Not all that long. It's an undemanding job in an undemanding town, or at least it was until a few weeks ago. Long about noon yesterday the population doubled, and tomorrow the media alone will triple it."

He laughed at my minor display of belligerence. "Whoa, you don't think this was my idea, do you? I spent maybe three summers here before Aunt Adele got fed up and put me on a bus. I can still see her in a cloud of black smoke, shaking her fist and shrieking, 'Good riddance!' I hardly think of this place as my hometown, but I don't call the shots. I'm nothing but a simple country boy who got lucky. I jes' do what they tell me."

"Do you have any relatives left in Little Rock?" I asked, thinking about my missing person case. I could have told him why I asked, but I was reluctant to take him into my confidence, which would lend veracity to his implication that we were dear old friends who'd simply missed the opportunity to become lovers. He seemed to have forgotten he'd been nothing but a greasy little voyeur.

"Not a one. My grandparents died a few years back, and their only surviving daughter sold everything and became a missionary in Africa or some place like that. Her bishop wrote and said she'd died of malaria, but I'd like to think she made a tasty supper for her congregation."

"Then Adele Wockermann is your only living relative?"

"All that I know of. We're supposed to go see her in the morning. Do you reckon I ought to take flowers and candy to perk the old girl up?"

"Like you did two years ago?" The grin dried up faster than a raindrop in the desert. "Whatta you talking about?"

I wasn't any more inclined to explain the intricacies of the grapevine than I was to share confidences. "An aide at the home said something. You were here, weren't you?"

"Yeah, I came by to see how she was doin'. I'm surprised she remembered, that's all."

He was back to grinning, and I was trying to read his mind (if he had one) when he glanced out the window, gasped, and jerked his boots off the desk so hurriedly that he lost his balance and fell on the floor.

"Fans out there spotted me," he said as he scuttled into the back room. "Great to see ya after all these years." The back door banged.

"You, too," I murmured. There were a few people wandering around outside, but none of them was paying any attention to the PD. The price of fame appeared to be paranoia. I locked up and went across the street, where Hammet sat on the landing outside my apartment.

He'd been getting bored, he explained as we got into my car, because n.o.body was doing anything interesting (i.e., flippin' buses) and he'd been run out of the pool hall three times. Rather than learn why, I asked him about school and we discussed the sadly outdated philosophy of the public school system all the way to Hasty and then pulled into a vacant lot across the road from the Partridge house.

Lights were shining and half a dozen cars were parked in the driveway. I decided not to crash the party. Hammet was delighted to be on a stakeout, and after I'd dissuaded him from creeping up to the living room to peek through the window, we resumed our spirited discussion.

An hour or so later, several figures came out to the front porch. Kissing and hugging ensued. Then Patty May took a foil-covered plate from her mother, got into a small car, and drove down the road in the direction of Farberville. I waited a minute before falling in behind her. Hammet felt we ought to pull alongside her and aim a gun at her head, run her off the road, or at least shoot out her back tires, but I stayed as far back as I dared until we pa.s.sed the airport and traffic picked up.

"There she is!" Hammet shouted, pounding the dashboard between bouts of hanging his head out the window. "Watch out fer that truck! That sumb.i.t.c.h! Cut him off!" He went back out the window to wave his fist at a truck the size of Rhode Island. "Hey, f.u.c.khead, we kin arrest you!" Before I could stop him, he was in the back seat and hollering out the opposite side at a church van. Pale faces turned in horror.

Patty May exited at an intersection ablaze with neon signs. None of them read CITY PARK. She turned into the parking lot of one of the largest motels in Farberville and drove behind a row of yellow buses.

Cursing, I cut in front of several cars and took a speed b.u.mp hard enough to momentarily lose my grip on the steering wheel. Hammet whooped gleefully and almost climbed onto the roof of the car.

I had to stop at the last school bus as a group of teenagers emerged with suitcases, backpacks, pillows, sacks of provisions, and other vital paraphernalia. I finally eased through them and went around the corner. Parked cars lined both sides of a lot that seemed to stretch endlessly. Lights flashed and car doors slammed as families unloaded luggage and ice chests. Children dashed in front of me, clutching stuffed animals, and the balcony on the second story was as busy as a mall the day after Thanksgiving.

"s.h.i.t," said my deputy as he scratched his head.

I drove slowly down the asphalt, searching for Patty May's unprepossessing car amidst the bustle. We finally found it parked on the third side of the quadrangle, but Patty May was long gone.

"No problem," I said. "We'll ask at the desk." I made him wait in the car and went inside the lobby, found the desk, and got a clerk's attention long enough to request the manager. She was a thin woman with an expression that reminded me of Mrs. Twayblade. I showed her my badge, asked for Patty May Partridge's room number, and sat down in the shade of a plastic rubber tree.

"No one here by that name," she told me as she came out from behind the desk.

"Try Adele Wockermann."

"Anyone else while I'm looking?" she asked. "We're full, which means we have at least eight hundred guests. There's a wedding in the Razorback Room and private Christmas parties in the Ozark Room and the Clinton Room. The high school kids have taken over the indoor pool and the hot tub, and we're already getting complaints. I simply cannot hunt through the--"

"Adele Wockermann," I said, spelling the last name for her.

She returned shortly and with a strained smile said, "There's no one here registered under that name either."

Temporarily foiled but not defeated, Hammet and I went to the movies.

Chapter Ten.

"I am so sorry to keep you waiting, Ripley," chirped Mrs. Jim Bob as she swung around the corner into the living room. She was momentarily startled when she saw who else was sitting there, but she was too uneasy to worry about it. "I do hope you two had a nice chat while I was on the telephone. What with one thing and another, I didn't realize how late it was getting, so we'll just have to wait until morning for our tour of the town. Jim Bob, I was thinking that our guests might enjoy a nice picnic supper. You go down to the SuperSaver deli and pick up some cold cuts and rolls, and I'll whip up a batch of potato salad. I seem to think there's most of an apple pie in the refrigerator, and it won't take any time at all to make some fresh iced tea and a pot of coffee. How does that sound?" She put her hands on her hips and defied them to offer an argument. If either had, she might well have burst into tears, a most unbecoming rejoinder from a mayor's wife.

"That sounds fine," Ripley said, nodding faintly, preoccupied with what Jim Bob had told him and not sure how best to profit from it. "I'll ... uh, I'll go knock on Katie's door and let her know." He was considering whom to blackmail as he went upstairs, which is why he failed to see the figure glide into a bedroom and close the door.

Jim Bob waited until Ripley was out of earshot, then rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Next year come winter we can take a vacation to one of those resorts where they bring you pastel drinks while you lie by the pool."

"What in heaven's name has gotten into you?" snapped Mrs. Jim Bob. "Here we've got a houseful of paying guests, supper to be served, disaster breathin' down our necks in the morning--and you're spouting nonsense. Exactly how are you planning to pay for this so-called vacation of ours?"

It hadn't occurred to Jim Bob to take his wife along, the "we" having referred to himself and Malva, or whoever was deserving of his generosity when the time came (his manhood being significantly longer than his attention span). He pretended to consider her question, then said, "The shoppe's gonna do real well now that Matt Montana's here. Keswick was just telling me how well the souvenirs sell whenever they come to a town. Business has picked up at the SuperSaver, too, on account of all the campers."

Mrs. Jim Bob could see the evasive flickering of his eyes, and she knew perfectly well that the two men hadn't been discussing any upswing in the local economy. But she, like Ripley, was too preoccupied to do more than purse her lips at him for a moment before saying, "Come into the kitchen while I make a list. You can get a pint of coleslaw at the deli, too. I'll serve it in one of my Tupperware bowls and the Nashville folks will never know the difference. Maybe I'll see if Brother Verber would like to join us. He'd be real tickled to say the blessing in front of Miss Katie Hawk."

Jim Bob was too relieved to suggest the old fart would be more tickled at the prospect of a free meal than at the opportunity to consecrate the coleslaw. Once he had the list in his hip pocket, he went whistling out the door, climbed in his truck, and was sipping bourbon and trying to recall which islands had topless beaches before he reached the brick pillars at the bottom of the driveway, which is why he failed to see the figure crouched in the shadows.

Mrs. Jim Bob put the water on to boil for the potatoes, then sat down at the breakfast table and called Brother Verber to invite him for supper--and to warn him that she'd had no choice but to initiate the contingency plan. They'd discussed it earlier and, after a bout of ardent prayer, had both agreed that lying to the media was an insignificant sin, if that.

When Brother Verber answered the telephone, she commenced to rattling off a description of the crisis, which is why she failed to see the figure skirt the oblong patches of lights on the back lawn and vanish into the darkness.