Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 03 (17 page)

"I gathered from the reports that Oliver is hardly ever at the branch. He piddles around at the main bank and the golf course, with an emphasis on the latter."

"He piddles with great deal of the bank's money." I gnawed my lower lip for a moment. "I don't know much about how the portfolio is handled, beyond the explanation Oliver gave me yesterday. I wouldn't think he could skim off any money. He did snarl at a bond salesman who called, though, about a 'flimsy thing.' And the bond salesmen work on commission, which means they might do all sorts of favors for the purchaser."

"Kickbacks, for instance?"

"Why not? Oliver seems to have free rein in what he chooses to purchase. He might well accept a small token of esteem in exchange for the bank's business. It's bound to be way under the table, and I don't know how we could find out. Unless one of us had an off-the-record conversation with someone at the bank."

"You're looking at me," Plover said, squirming. "Shall I have Bernswallow Senior over for beer and pretzels? He sounds like more of a Perrier and caviar man, and you know how much I despise fizzy water and fish eggs. I've got it -- I'll take Miss Una to the drive-in movie and butter her up with greasy popcorn and coy little kisses. Remember the night we watched the late-late movie at my house?"

I assured him that I did not, although I may have turned a bit pink. "I hate to break your heart, my khaki-clad Romeo, but Miss Una wouldn't know anything about the portfolio. Bernswallow Senior's likely to be reticent, no matter how fizzy the water and fishy the eggs. I was thinking about Mrs. Gadwall, the head bookkeeper at the main bank. She might have a few learned comments about the contents of the portfolio. If she thinks there's a preponderance of flimsy bonds, we might be able to subpoena all of Oliver's bank accounts to search for large, inexplicable deposits." I frowned as something nibbled at a far corner of my mind. It stopped before any metaphorical light bulbs clicked on. "That's presuming he not only accepts kickbacks but also deposits them at his bank. Brandon might have stumbled across something and decided to blackmail Oliver. Blackmailing Johnna Mae wouldn't have paid for a used bicycle, much less a Mercedes."

"That gives Oliver motive. Does he have any sort of alibi?"

"He says he was in his den, with the door locked, the telephone off the hook, and a bottle of booze within easy reach. His wife was at the bank parking lot, busily playing Ms. Benedict Arnold by supporting the demonstrators. Maybe Brandon had already approached Oliver with the blackmail demand. In his cups, Oliver might have started brooding about all the treachery from his wife and his protégé and decided to show them both by bashing the protégé, torching the bank, and making the issue moot."

"If he murdered Bernswallow, nothing's moot," Plover said. "You do realize that even if we can determine that Oliver accepted kickbacks from bond salesmen, and that Brandon Bernswallow knew about it and intended to blackmail him, we still don't have a pot to piss in. No one saw him anywhere near the bank."

"Unless Kevin Buchanon saw something. Kevin's dim enough to have held the kerosene can while Oliver struck a match. Oliver then offers Kevin a three-month cruise as a reward, and Kevin starts pedaling for the port. For once, I'd actually like to talk to him, but I don't have the wherewithal to pedal in pursuit. Why don't you wait here for Miss Una, take her prints, and then see if you can chat up Mrs. Gadwall at her house? Ruby Bee and Estelle have had plenty of time to get back to Maggody by now; I'm going to swing by the bar and grill for a cozy conversation."

Plover murmured something about cattle prods and bruises. He ushered me out to my car and wished me luck. I asked him if it was hot enough for him, told him to keep up the good work, and suggested he have a nice day. He was still scowling as I drove away.

-- ==+== --

Carolyn McCoy-Grunders sat in the uncompromisingly uncomfortable chair graciously provided by the Flamingo Motel management on the off chance someone might want to do torturous things to one's back. Staci Ellen sat on the edge of the bed, which wasn't a whole sight more comfortable, a notebook in her hand and a resentful look in her eyes.

"In the matter of the café in Rose Bud," Carolyn said, scanning the complaint, "send the waitress a form and tell her to send it to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for a formal review. I loathe these minimum wage squabbles."

"You took on this one," Staci Ellen pointed out. "Now your client's in jail, charged with embezzlement and waiting to be charged with arson and murder, none of which might have happened if you hadn't gotten everybody fired up enough to go storming down the highway to the bank. If you hadn't organized the demonstration, maybe Johnna Mae'd just be looking for another job."

"Would you like to be looking for another job, Staci Ellen?"

"I may consider the possibility," Staci Ellen said snippily, immediately wishing she could take it back. Why, lately her mouth had been operating of its own accord, and her mind had been running in all sorts of crazy directions, like a chicken with its head cut off. She decided she might as well go whole hog. "I've worked at the Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office for two years, and I haven't ever had a raise. You spend all your time making sure women get treated fairly. Maybe it's time to look a little closer to home."

"My goodness, aren't we feisty today?" Carolyn picked up the next folder and opened it, oblivious to the mutinous glare coming from her secretary. "This file is a mess, Staci Ellen. All the correspondence is out of order. How many times have I told you the importance of maintaining the correct documentation sequence?"

"About seven thousand times, not counting this one. I guess that makes it seven thousand and one."

"My, my, my," Carolyn murmured, looking up, "you are in a remarkably bad mood today. Shall I presume you're in the grip of a particularly bad bout of what seems to be an omnipresent state of premenstrual syndrome?"

"No, I'm not. I'm just plain tired of being treated like a bubble brain by everybody, including my father, my boyfriend, and my boss. I can do a lot of things, you know. I can make sense of those little squiggles you write in the margins of letters. I can write down obscene messages from your married boyfriend. I can even change a flat tire."

"I have a wonderful idea, Staci Ellen: why don't you take a nice long hike down the highway and see if you can find some helpless soul with a flat tire? I need to get some work done, and I'm really not in the mood to listen to you blither and bitch about this perceived mistreatment by the entire populace, present company included."

"All right, I will!" Staci Ellen snatched up her purse and stalked out the door, almost running into Ruby Bee and Estelle as they crept around the corner from the bar. She didn't stop to say excuse me, either.

Carolyn stared at the original letter from Johnna Mae Nookim. One corner was dog-eared, and there was a dirty mark that might have been made by a shoe. Furthermore, just below the red line she'd drawn under the Bernswallow slime's name, there was a smudge, as if someone had put a finger there. Carolyn's fingers did not leave smudges. She did not dog-ear correspondence, nor did she step on it.

It was peculiar, and frightening.

-- ==+== --

I went by the bar and grill, but Estelle's station wagon wasn't there. I went on to Kevin's parents' house to see if they'd heard anything. Eilene was sitting on the porch swing, which was as motionless as her face.

"No word from Kevin?" I asked.

"None, and Dahlia's granny called a while back to say she's been missing since yesterday. You don't think the two hatched up some fool scheme so they could run off and get married, do you?"

"It doesn't make much sense," I admitted, sitting down on the porch steps. "I don't want to alarm you, but I'm worried that Kevin saw someone or something involving the murder, and for reasons of his own decided to disappear. We've got some prints from the scene, and I need something with Kevin's prints on it for comparison."

"I'll fetch his cup from the bathroom." She went inside for a moment and returned with a yellow plastic cup. "He's had this since he was a little boy who had to stand on a step to brush his -- " She stopped as Earl poked his head through the door.

He smiled ingratiatingly. "I was thinking you might like a nice cold glass of lemonade. I made it myself."

"I told you I didn't want anything to drink. Now there's probably lemon juice on the counter and sugar scattered all over the floor. After you clean it up, why don't you go watch one of your damn fool football games and leave me in peace?"

Earl ducked back inside, but I could hear him mumbling under his breath as he crossed the living room. I'd observed versions of the exchange in numerous households in the last two days. Someone was going to have to tamper some tempers, or we'd end up with fatcat divorce lawyers licking their whiskers and a mind-boggling singles' scene at Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill.

I told Eilene I'd let her know if I heard anything, and she agreed to do the same and gave me the yellow cup. The screen door slammed before I was halfway down the driveway, and voices were raised before I reached the car. Although the topic was sugar, the words were far from sweet.

It was getting dark as I drove past said soon to be fern bar to look once again for Estelle's station wagon. When that proved pointless, I parked behind Stiver's antique store and dragged myself up the back stairs to my apartment. If Plover had any astounding revelations, he would call me. If Ruby Bee and Estelle wanted to hide for a few hours and sweat bullets over my impending lecture, more power to 'em. If Sherman Oliver was on the telephone with a Swiss banker, comme ci, comme ça. If Kevin had Dahlia perched on the back of his bicycle, he could pedal all the way to Tierra del Fuego for all I cared.

I got in the shower and turned on the cold water.

-- ==+== --

It was getting dark as Staci Ellen marched down the edge of the road, but she didn't care one bit. Ms. Hotshot With a Hyphen was the meanest woman Staci Ellen had had the misfortune to meet in all her born days. She stopped and found a used straw to do a bit of calculating in the dirt. All six thousand, nine hundred and thirty-five born days, to be precise. But that wasn't right, since she was twenty-seven days into her twentieth year. She scratched some more, carried the one, and eventually arrived at the amended number of six thousand, nine hundred sixty-two born days.

And what had Bruno given her for her birthday? Nothing. What had he done when she hinted timidly, then hinted so broadly any dummy could get it, and finally out-and-out announced it was her birthday and she'd like to go to a real restaurant for dinner? Told her they were going to an industrial league softball tournament across town, and she could get a chili dog when they got there. If she had any money with her.

Staci Ellen threw down the straw and marched ahead. Ol' Hyphen hadn't bothered with a birthday card or suggested the afternoon off. Ol' Hyphen had barked at Staci Ellen something awful just because a few words were misspelled in a letter to the EOA. Nobody could keep ence and ance straight all of the time, for pity's sake, or ede and eed.

If she was going to succeed in life, she thought, she was going to have to stand up for herself and not let everybody knock her around as if she were nothing but a bowling pin at the end of the alley of life. She liked that analogy so much that she turned up the next alley she came to, her shoulders thrown back and her head held high.

So high, in fact, that she almost stepped on the kitty cowering in the weeds.

-- ==+== --

It was getting dark, but Kevin didn't bother to switch on the lamp beside the iron bed. He'd been trying to get interested in the wedgehead jigs in the Bass Pro Shops catalog, since according to the fine print below the picture they were supposed to be dynamite for walleyes and both largemouth and smallmouth bass, none of which he'd ever had any luck with. The lures looked like little oneeyed dancers in colored hula skirts, but instead of envisioning Hawaii or even a deep pool in Boone Creek, Kevin was thinking about Dahlia.

Her final words had been so gosh darn harsh, he told himself as he flopped back on the bed and banged his head on the iron rail. But he loved her, and he figgered she must love him because she let him do such wondrous things between her legs, even when she used to be the clerk at the Kwik-Screw and he'd been obliged to crawl under the counter. Or when they'd been trapped in the outhouse, with the moon shining through the crescent in the door, she'd snuggled his face between her enormous breasts until he couldn't breathe and had started seeing polka dots inside his eyes.

Kevin wished he could talk to Dahlia, if only for a moment so he could ask her if she still loved him as much as he loved her. But that would be dangerous, he reminded himself as he cautiously explored the growing lump on the back of his head. They would all be in terrible danger, and Dahlia in the terriblest danger of all. Why, he couldn't bear to live if the light of his life was snuffed out. This worst-case scenario made him so sad he ate the piece of lemon meringue pie without even tasting it.

-- ==+== --

It was getting dark as a mysterious figure darted across the highway and into the shadowy sanctuary of the old feed store. A bag clinked softly as the figure looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had seen him, looked ahead to make sure the moonlit coast was clear, and then cut across the back lot and entered the woods, being careful not to snag the cuff of his best plaid shirt on any thorny vines.