Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 03 (10 page)

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Brother Verber jerked his eyes open. It was no time for dozing, he told himself with a snort. He needed to focus all his mental and moral energy on how he was going to handle the womenfolk if and when they commenced their depravities. At the first hint of wicked ritual in the making, he would snatch up the Good Book -- his best defense against any personifications of Satan -- and march right over to them. They'd be prancing around a bonfire, he imagined, with blood dripping off their exposed bosoms and streaming down their bellies like dark red rivers. Sinful, curling, twining, ruby colored rivers that flowed straight to eternal damnation, among other destinations.

Unless he could save them. With prayer -- that went without saying. Yessirree, a hefty dose of fire and brimstone. With a stirring sermon about their evil, pagan, naked ways that were sending them on the express elevator to hell. Why, they'd all just hang their heads and beg for him to cleanse their flesh of sacrificial blood.

It occurred to Brother Verber that he might need another weapon in his battle against the devil: a towel, so he could wipe away that disgusting blood and restore them to piety and remorse. He went over to the kitchenette and found a dish towel. As he went to put it by the door, he caught himself mopping his forehead with it. Mercy, it was hot. He opened the door to let in what breeze the good Lord might provide his humblest of servants.

The good Lord seemed to have been occupied elsewhere, but what Brother Verber saw more than made up for the slight. Beyond the corner of the Assembly Hall was the flickering glow of a fire. A bonfire. The heathen ritual had begun, and right while he was priming himself to save their souls and cleanse their bodies. He was so excited he nearly fell over the coffee table in his rush to his bedroom. It wouldn't do to berate the naked, frenzied women while wearing pajamas dotted with beribboned teddy bears. He'd laid out his clothes earlier in hopes the good Lord would set off the heavenly smoke alarm and send him into battle. He hopped around on one foot and then on the other to get his trousers on, silently mouthing his opening accusations and subsequent warnings of the black, gaping abyss in front of them that led to you know where.

Panting something fierce, he hurried into the living room, snatched up the Bible and the dish towel, and stumbled down the steps of the trailer. Surely he would be there in time. The good Lord wouldn't play any practical jokes on his faithful servant, who once a month sent part of the Sunday morning collection to little orphans in Africa or some place like that. Surely the good Lord was smiling down real kindly on someone with the courage to meet the devil worshippers and fight for their souls.

Once around the corner of the building, Brother Verber stopped for a second to compose himself, then bravely lifted his eyes to meet the wickedness square on. His face crumpled like a wadded-up tissue as he realized that the bank was on fire and all the women were standing around fully clothed.

He gazed up at the smoky sky. "I don't reckon I'll be sending five dollars to the orphans anytime soon," he said through clenched teeth.

To the person hunkered down behind the forsythia, it sounded about as peculiar as it gets.

-- ==+== --

Staci Ellen Quittle watched Bruno fall to pick up the one-three-ten split. She kept her eyes glued right on him, because he always wanted to discuss every last ball he rolled when they went to the bar afterward. Staci Ellen's parents didn't know she went to the bar, of course, in that she told them every Thursday that she and Bruno would go to the diner for cheeseburgers and Cokes after the match. She didn't like lying to her parents, but she didn't see that she had much choice, since she knew for a fact that Bruno'd slap her around and call her a prude if she didn't go and her pa'd slap her around and call her a slut if he found out she did go. And it wasn't like she drank beer, for pity's sake. Bruno always ordered her a Dr Pepper and didn't even ask her if she might prefer something else. And made her pay him back when they got in the car, saying it was a sissy drink, not worth his hard-earned cash.

Jeepers, Staci Ellen told herself as Bruno stalked back to the plastic bench and glowered at her like she'd snuck down to the end of the alley and whispered something to the pins so they wouldn't fall, it really wasn't fair the way men kept telling her what to do and not do, especially when she was nineteen years old and a high school graduate and had a full-time job at the Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office and gave three quarters of her pay to her parents for room and board, leaving her with so little that she had to scrimp just to buy panty hose and shampoo and that sicky-sweet cologne that Bruno made her wear.

She nudged Wanda, who was droopy-eyed and yawning but nevertheless holding an equally intent vigil. "Does Vic tell you what kind of cologne you got to wear on dates?"

"Sure."

"Did he ever give you a bottle of it?"

"Why would he do that?"

"I was just wondering," Staci Ellen said with a small sigh.

-- ==+== --

As I drove into town, I was smiling at one of the jokes the amiable state trooper in Farberville had told me in exchange for my riotous account of the protesters et al. The joke was no more than midway on the knock-knock scale of humor, but my standards had plummeted at the state line a couple. of years back. The first thing I noticed was that the pickup trucks were no longer in front of the Assembly Hall. This was good. The second thing I noticed was that Estelle's station wagon was no longer at the front of the branch parking lot. Very good. I hit three when I noticed that the protesters were not snoozing on their army cots nor playing canasta by lantern light, due to the unmissable fact that the lot was uninhabited by cot, station wagon, card table, and protester. Perfect.

"Thank God," I murmured, working up to a grin. The grin turned into a grimace when I caught sight of the bank building. The remains of the bank building, to be more precise. I slammed on the brakes, put the car in reverse, squealed backward thirty or so feet, and pulled into the lot. My headlights illuminated the skeletal frame that had once housed money and ledgers and plastic plants and lines of impatient customers, all those things that make a banker's world go round and round.

Most of the brick walls were standing. The roof had fallen in, however, and all the plate glass lay in glittery pieces. With the perspicacity and agility of a zombie, I got out of the car and went over to the sidewalk for a better view. The air was acrid enough to sting my eyes and lungs, and smoke still drifted from the unrecognizable remains of furniture. Miss Una's teller window was silhouetted against a blackened (Cajun?) wall. A plant had been transformed into a vile-smelling puddle of toxic slime. Everything smoldered.

I cocked my head and studied the scene, then cocked my head the other way and studied the scene, then got on an even keel and studied the scene, but I couldn't quite assimilate that to which I was devoting all this studiousness. I'd been on my innocent jaunt for only a few hours. In my absence all hell must have broken loose. Grinding my heel into a charred lump of something, I went back to the police car and sat on the hood.

When that failed to evoke any startling insights, I got in the car and draped my arms across the top of the steering wheel. It occurred to me that a run-down battery was not likely to provide additional enlightenment, so I started the car and drove down the road to that renown mecca of insight and enlightenment, gossip running a close third.

The lights were on inside Ruby Bee's, and Estelle's wagon and the subcompact were parked out front. I hurried inside and discovered the embodiment of enlightenment, etc., on a barstool next to Estelle. Carolyn McCoy-Grunders was slumped in a booth, a glass of water and a large bottle of aspirin in front of her.

"About time you showed your face," Ruby Bee said. "I find it hard to believe you'd waltz out of town without bothering to tell your own mother where you were going."

"Did I miss my curfew?" I said, matching her tone with practiced ease.

"Did you see the branch bank?" Estelle said.

I nodded, making a face as I climbed up onto a stool. "I did indeed, and I was stunned. What on earth's been happening around here?"

I was given a lengthy account of the fire, with much interrupting and a few acerbic remarks about my absence in the middle of a catastrophe. Dereliction of duty was mentioned more than once, as was uninformed flesh and blood and gallavanting all over the county while Maggody burned. I was pretty well characterized as a modern-day distaff Nero when the two ran out of steam (some might use the term hot air).

Carolyn eased onto the stool next to me. "I still can't believe it. One minute we were trying to make a few modifications in the guard duty roster, and the next minute we're watching the bank burn and coughing our heads off from the smoke."

"Did the fire chief determine the cause of the fire?" I asked.

"Someone said something about faulty wiring, and they jumped on that as the probable cause. You aren't implying the fire was set intentionally, are you?"

"You mean arson?" Ruby Bee squeaked.

"I don't think so," Estelle said, nibbling on her lip. "Right after the fire broke out, I happened to overhear Miss Una telling Lottie Estes that she'd been warning Sherman Oliver for years about the wiring in the storeroom. She said she smelled burning rubber every time she went back there to use the ladies' room -- I mean the women's rest room."

"Then it started in the back?" I asked. Ruby Bee snorted. "We were occupied with more important things than staring at an empty building. Elsie McMay took one look at the army cots and said she'd just remembered that her chiropractor didn't want her to sleep on army cots and she was going home to her orthopedic mattress that she bought last year when it was on sale at Montgomery Ward. Well, Estelle got her Stinger about half out and said she didn't believe a word of it. Truda had just volunteered to take Elsie's shift when the boys stampeded across the road, hollering that the bank was on fire."

"Is that right?" I asked Carolyn.

She propped her forehead on her hand. "That's a reasonably accurate description. Most of my organizational experience has been on college campuses. I've never dealt with this mentality before, and I was more than a little bewildered by some of the arguments that were advanced. However, I had the clipboard and was standing in the middle of a group when one of the women's husbands, a particularly chauvinistic pig if I've ever seen one, bellowed something about the fire. It was approximately ten o'clock."

"She's talking about Earl Buchanon," Estelle confided in my nearest ear. "He stayed on the other side of the road, slouched against his truck and staring at Eilene to try to frazzle her. I'm proud to say she'd stayed as cool as springwater the whole time, or at least up until the time she liked to flip her wig worrying about Kevin being inside the bank."

I closed my eyes for a minute. "Shit, I'd forgotten about him. He wasn't in there, was he?"

"We don't know for sure," Estelle said in her best Vincent Price imitation.

Carolyn shook her head. "As soon as someone mentioned the possibility, I ran around back and opened that door to yell for him. I don't see how he could be trapped, with exits at both ends of the building and windows in each office. All he had to do is leave through any one of them when he first smelled smoke."

"Surely he would," Ruby Bee said, not sounding particularly convinced. "Poor Dahlia was plumb out of her mind with worry. She was all set to go in after him, but I convinced her the idea was preposterous. She did some howling and carrying on until the firemen got the fire out. Then she demanded they poke around for Kevin in the rubble, and one of them said that was the doddliest thing he'd ever heard of, that no one in his right mind could be so damn stupid as to get trapped in there. You won't believe your ears when I tell you what happened next."

"Dahlia donned asbestos boots and waddled in like Smokey the Bear?" I said.

Estelle poked me in the arm. "There's no call to make rude remarks about Dahlia's weight problem. It's because of a gland unbalance. One of them doesn't work quite right, and that's why the food just puffs up her fat cells like they were teeny tiny balloons. She showed me a magazine article that explains every bit of it."

"And we shouldn't judge women by their physical appearance," Carolyn added smoothly. "Personal worth must be judged by mind and performance, not by the sexist precept that all women should torture themselves by dieting in order to resemble inmates from a prison camp. That's an outdated and immoral myth pushed on us by Madison Avenue admen."

"Yeah," Estelle said sulkily. Ruby Bee sulked silently.

"I apologize," I said. "It must be the lateness of the hour and the shock of finding the bank reduced to the remains of a campfire. Please tell me what Dahlia did in the moment of crisis."

"She swooned," Ruby Bee said.

"All three hundred pounds of her?" I said thoughtlessly, thus winning all sorts of dirty looks and setting myself up for another lecture on my sexist leanings. I hurriedly said, "Was she hurt?"

"No, she was not," Ruby Bee said. "It happens that she swooned atop Joyce Lambertino, who was right behind her. It took four of the men to drag Dahlia off Joyce, and the little thing was out like a light for nigh on to ten minutes. One of the firemen said he'd done a course in paramedics and she most likely had a mild concussion."

"But no one has seen Kevin?" I said slowly. "Surely he would have been seen by someone, even with all the confusion of the fire truck and clearing the cots and tables from the lot. I'm not terribly fond of him, but I really don't want to think he was still in the bank."

Ruby Bee looked away for a moment. "His parents are half wild with worry, and poor Dahlia is probably bawling into her feather pillow right this minute. It's too horrible a notion to even contemplate."

"We'll find out for sure in the morning," I said, patting her shoulder. "There's not much point in sitting here fretting about it, and it's well past midnight. I think we'd better get some rest."

"I had an appointment at the branch tomorrow," Estelle said, dabbing the corner of her eye with a dishrag. "I don't suppose there's any use showing up for it."

"Bernswallow might be hanging around the lot," Ruby Bee said.

"But all the papers in the branch burned up. You know what I ought to do? I ought to get myself a lawyer and sue the bank for making libelous remarks about me."

Carolyn smiled wearily. "Slanderous remarks. Libel is written defamation. Slander is oral."

"That's what I said," Estelle said. "They remarked in a letter that I was delinquent on a loan I never took out. If that's not libel, I don't know what is!"

"Letters don't remark," Ruby Bee said under her breath, but not softly enough to get away with it.

Estelle flounced around to the cash register and yanked open a drawer to take out a letter. Flapping it so hard it cracked, she said, "I find this pretty darn remarkable, not to mention libelous. Implying I don't get the difference -- that's slander."

I bade them good night and went out to my car. I sat for a while, feeling awful about Kevin Buchanon and even regretting having once told him I was going to jerk his head off and donate it to a local soccer team to use during practice. Hell, there aren't any soccer teams in Maggody -- we play all-American games like football and baseball, not foreign sissy games.

I drove to my apartment above the antique store and did my best to follow my own advice and get some rest. Dahlia's pillow was not, as it turned out, the only sodden one in town.

8

At some point while watching the shadows on the ceiling, I had what amounted to an olfactory flashback. The charred, sodden rubble had created an unpleasant smell, but there had also been that acrid stench of a methane byproduct lingering in the air. Methane in and of itself is an easily recognizable odor, a product of the decomposition of organic matter in swamps and other fun places, or a result of the carbonization of coal. I'd dutifully memorized all that at the police academy, but not in a chemistry class. Not by a long shot. We'd been working on the procedures of arson investigation. Kerosene, for example, is a hydrocarbon that produces odor when burned.

When the alarm went off not too much later, I called my amiable state trooper. He listened to my story and agreed to alert the deputy state fire marshal, who worked out of the same office. Before I'd finished fooling with my hair he called back to say they'd be there in an hour.

I stuck in a last bobby pin and went in search of sustenance. Ruby Bee's was still closed, most likely out of respect for the Earl Buchanon family, so I settled for coffee and a few bites of a stale, sticky honey bun at the PD. I thought about calling the above mentioned family, but decided I wasn't ready to hear any bad news just yet. I did rouse myself to call Ruby Bee to find out if she knew anything and found myself bullied into admitting I'd requested an arson investigation. Things went from bad to worse, and she, Estelle, and Carolyn were in the parking lot when I got there shortly thereafter.

"Earl and Eilene haven't seen hide nor hair of Kevin," Ruby Bee told me in a mournful voice. "Dahlia's at the bar and grill. She wanted to come with us, but I put my foot down and told her not to go one inch outside until we got back."

"The poor thing's white as a pillowcase," Estelle added.

Carolyn stared at the remains of the bank. "I truly do not understand what happened last night. The firefighters seemed satisfied with their faulty wiring theory, but it's too much of a coincidence."

I said I'd had the same thought most of the night. We were rehashing the story when a white Chevy drove up and two men climbed out. Sergeant Plover, with whom I'd had interesting encounters in both the distant past and the more immediate past of twelve hours ago, introduced me to Sergeant Merganser. Merganser was a slight man with a nervous squint, perhaps from all the smoke in his eyes over the years. For those of you who don't remember, Plover was as tall as I and disarmingly armed with a crooked nose, blond hair, freckles, and a divorce. Our romantic entanglement waxed and waned, depending on whose nose was bent out of shape and who would rather eat snake eggs than apologize. We both had malleable noses and enough stubbornness to shame Perkins's pet mule.

Once we'd gotten through Ruby Bee's rambling account of the fire, the two circled the exterior and began picking their way into the blackened rubble, Merganser with a methane meter and a camera and Plover with a shovel, a trowel, and several shiny evidence cans.