Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 03 (19 page)

"Why do you have a red mark on your ear?" I said.

"Who said I have a red mark on my ear? Don't you think you ought to be searching for Staci Ellen instead of badgering your own mother? The poor girl could be lying in a ditch somewhere, bleeding and bruised from being knocked senseless by a chicken truck or some fool kid on a motorcycle."

I looked at Carolyn, whose eyes were zipping from the wineglass to the witness to the wall at a very brisk clip. Before she could say anything, I said, "Well, I'm going to send this glass to be fingerprinted, but in the meantime, let's drive around and look for the girl." I carefully picked up the glass, took Carolyn's arm, and pulled her out the door and into the parking lot.

Once we were in my car, she said, "Why on earth would those two spy on me? Do you think Staci Ellen made some sort of arrangement to vacate the room for them? The women in this town are crazy, absolutely crazy."

I turned up Finger Lane. "Those two in particular are indeed crazy. They feel an obligation to assist in official police investigations, which usually means they get themselves into a major muddle and have to be rescued. I doubt Staci Ellen made any kind of arrangement, though, since they're genuinely worried about her."

"They were spying on me to assist in an official police investigation? Does that imply I'm an official suspect?"

"You came all the way to Maggody because of a complaint of insignificant proportions. You spent five days organizing a demonstration that ended with arson and murder. During the half hour preceding the fire, several women were unable to find you on the lot. You told me you went back to the motel to get some pamphlets, but no one can confirm this."

"Nor can anyone disprove it. My specialty isn't criminal law, but I took enough courses to know you need more than a few women with poor eyesight who couldn't find me for a minute in a dark parking lot. In any case, I had no reason to harm either the banker or the building."

"Perhaps not the building," I said as I turned around in Earl Buchanon's driveway and went back toward the highway, all the while keeping an eye out for a pedestrian with blond hair and a poor vocabulary. "However, you did have a problem with Brandon Bernswallow. You didn't come to Maggody because Johnna Mae Nookim was demoted unfairly; you came because you recognized her immediate superior's name."

Granted, I was fishing. I was fishing so hard I should have been driving a bass boat and wearing a canvas hat decorated with lures. I decided to go right for the gills. "I had an enlightening interview with Brandon's parents yesterday afternoon. They were overcome with grief, but they allowed me a few minutes alone with them in their library."

"How very polite of them," she murmured.

I stopped at the traffic light, turned left, and then left again on Coot Road. I was doing my level best to appear knowledgeable, but she wasn't spilling her guts out of guilt. She was, I noticed out of the corner of my eye, getting more tight-lipped by the mile. I tried to think of something brilliant as we passed the McIlhaney house, and I was still working on it when I saw Estelle's station wagon parked in Lottie Estes's driveway. It was partly hidden by the sprawling forsythia, but I had no problem recognizing the dent in the hood and the bumper sticker that inquired if you had hugged your cosmetologist lately.

I swung into the driveway. "Damn it, I told them to wait at the bar in case Staci Ellen came back. We left them not more than ten minutes ago; they must have hesitated all of thirty seconds before leaving. I'm going to the door. Do you want to wait in the car?"

"I wouldn't miss this for anything."

I went to the door and knocked loudly enough to provoke a riot in the morgue. Lottie opened the door a few inches, but it was enough for us to see that her hair was wrapped around pink sponge rollers and her face covered with white cream. "Why, Arly, how nice of you to ... drop by like this, and you, too, Mrs. Grunders. I'm afraid I wasn't expecting any company this morning. I was feeling badly when I woke up and called the school to say I wasn't coming in. A touch of the stomach flu, I suspect. If you'll give me just a moment, I'll wrap a scarf around these unsightly hair rollers and wipe the moisturizer off. We can have a nice cup of tea and what's left of an apple pie I made this morning. Are you here to interrogate me? Elsie said it was not the least bit what she expected, but she is quite religious about watching those dreadful police shows on television. I fear she was anticipating a spotlight in her face and a crowd of surly men looming over her with rubber hoses."

"I'm looking for Ruby Bee and Estelle," I said weakly.

She blinked at me. "I haven't seen either of them since the night of the demonstration. We had a nice talk about the weather and swapped a recipe or two. I'm sure Mrs. Grunders remembers it well."

Mrs. Grunders managed a pinched smile and allowed that she remembered it well. I pointed at the station wagon. "If Estelle's not here, why is that parked in your driveway?"

She came out to the porch and leaned over the rail to look. "I swear, this is the first time I've noticed. I don't drive, you see, and Miss Una prefers to pick me up at the end of the sidewalk, so I rarely pay attention to that area of my yard. She is most kind about taking me to town, because, if I may say so myself, I take great pride in being prompt. Occasionally I must wait for her, but I really don't mind too very much."

I apologized for disturbing her, and Carolyn and I went back to the car. The whole thing was so screwy that I started laughing -- or maybe I had a screw loose. Carolyn began to laugh, too, and pretty soon we were edging toward hysteria. I sputtered out a synopsis of Elsie's third degree, right down to the lemon cookies and mint sprigs in the tea. Carolyn choked out the ingredients in the infamous green bean casserole, because she'd been forced to listen to a heated debate on the water chestnut issue that lasted more than an hour.

We finally ran out of people to poke fun at and our laughter faded. I wiped my eyes, switched on the ignition, and started to back out of Lottie's driveway. When it hit.

"Lottie Estes did not support the cause," I said. "She's a great proponent of stereotypic roles. If given half a chance, she'll lecture for hours about the importance of small appliances and needlework. Her idea of sex education is making sure everyone knows that girl babies wear pink and boy babies wear blue. Why on earth would she show up in the parking lot?"

"She might have been more comfortable across the road," Carolyn said, shaking her head. "Ms. Estes was definitely there, however; she was defending traditional ingredients with the intensity of Perry Mason. It's hard to place anyone at any given time, but I don't remember seeing her until after I returned from the motel room."

"Speaking of which, don't give me that crap about the pamphlets. You didn't need to walk down the highway at that hour. The pamphlets were to be distributed the next morning. Why'd you go to your room? If that's where you went."

"I needed to make a telephone call to the current wife of an exfriend. He's ... a fellow attorney in Little Rock."

"And his wife can verify this?"

Carolyn ruffled her hair and sighed. "I left a message at a Las Vegas hotel, so the call can be verified through telephone company records."

"Or through the hotel operator, which might be faster. Will she remember taking the message?"

"Oh, yes, she most certainly will. I dictated a few words she was unfamiliar with. Why do you think Ms. Estes crashed our hen party in the parking lot? Do you think she was there to spy on us?"

"Shit, I don't know," I said with a groan. I came to the end of Coot Road and turned back onto the highway. "I don't know anything. I don't know where Kevin and Dahlia are, I don't know whose fingerprints are on the wastebasket and the kerosene can, I don't know who-all Bernswallow was blackmailing, I don't know who killed him, I don't know who lit either fire, I don't know where Staci Ellen is, and I don't know what the connection is between you and Bernswallow."

"I thought you did," she said.

"The Bernswallow Seniors declined to discuss it," I admitted with another groan. "You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"Not while it might be construed as a motive for murder. Once this mess is resolved, perhaps we can share a gallon jug of rotgut wine and I'll tell you about it. In the very first year of law school, lawyers are taught the wisdom of not incriminating themselves."

I turned up Raz Buchanon's road, which hadn't been graded in a decade, and pointed out Marjorie's air-conditioned shed as we passed it. Then I asked her if she'd ever heard of a depository charge.

"There's no such animal," she said firmly. "I did several courses in banking law. The regulations on fee structure are complex and rigid."

"Raz was all fired up about it this morning. Not so much that he paid it, mind you, but that it wasn't mentioned on his statement and therefore caused grief at tax computation time." I slowed down to a crawl. "I wonder if all the branch customers pay this mysterious charge whenever they make deposits."

"And to whom?"

I stopped the car and looked at her. "To Miss Una, I'd guess. When Johnna Mae was head teller, she spent her time writing bogus loan applications. Miss Una sat at her window and did the mundane chores, including taking deposits and explaining the inexplicable to people like Raz. She's a prim Sunday-school-teacher sort, and authoritative enough to convince half the town the sun rises in the west every morning, or at least plant a seed of doubt about it. She wouldn't have any problem convincing some of the customers that they had to pay a fee to deposit money. We're not real worldly in Maggody, which is why Chase Manhattan hasn't opened a branch here. The majority of the citizens didn't make it to the eighth grade prom."

"So Miss Una's been pocketing a dollar or so every day for the last twenty years? That could add up to a neat sum for retirement," Carolyn said thoughtfully. "It doesn't implicate her in the murder, however, or even place her at the scene."

"But she was there. Lottie didn't walk down the highway in the dark to exchange recipes. I'd wager the cost of a new radar gun that Miss Una stopped at the end of the sidewalk and tootled her horn. Furthermore, someone said Miss Una mentioned the faulty wiring as a logical cause of the fire." I put the car back into gear and sent a cloud of dust into the air as I grimly drove toward the highway. "I'd thought originally that we had one blackmail victim. Yesterday afternoon I upped it to two, because it fit so well with two fires. What if we had three victims -- Johnna Mae, Sherman Oliver, and Miss Una?"

"Isn't that a rather larcenous group of employees for one branch bank? A hundred percent seems a high figure."

"I know, but this was an obscure little branch in an obscure boondock of a town. Oliver was an absentee manager. Perhaps Miss Una and Johnna Mae had a quiet understanding not to see what the other was doing, a you-embezzle-your-way-and-I'll-embezzle-mine pact. Then Bernswallow appears and starts spending his nights studying ledgers and rummaging through files. He stumbles onto the bogus loan applications the minute someone comes into the branch with a letter about a missed payment. He digs harder and sees that Miss Una's drawer is usually off a little bit."

"So which one of them murdered him and set the fire?"

"Let's drop by Miss Una's house and ask her." I drove down the road with the fury of a demon conjured up from the bowels of hell.

-- ==+== --

Staci Ellen wrinkled her nose as the acrid smell became harder and harder to ignore. It was beginning to make her eyes burn, but she didn't want to say anything to hurt her hostess's feelings, having been brought up to say something nice or not to say anything at all, as well as to wear white gloves to church and skirts that brushed the middle of her knees and not one inch higher. The sacrilegious notion that she'd been brought up with a lot of foolish rules struck her. She smiled politely and said, "Do you think there might be a gas leak somewhere? I seem to be smelling something strange."

Miss Una rose and in an uncertain voice said, "Why, now that you mention it, so do I. You stay right here and keep an eye on Martin; I'll make sure the burners on the stove are off as tight as they can go. How about that very last piece of lemon meringue pie.

-- ==+== --

Mrs. Jim Bob pounded on the door of the mobile home, but there was not one peep from inside. She'd already been inside the Assembly Hall. She couldn't for the life of her think where Brother Verber could be. As she'd told Jim Bob, who agreed and then some, the sermon'd been sort of strange. Brother Verber's hand had been real wet when she shook it at the door; she'd been grateful she'd had a tissue in her purse. He'd mumbled distractedly when she made a few constructive comments about the contents of the sermon and how she didn't think it was proper to have all those words about private parts and buck nakedness said right out loud in the house of the Lord.

He'd been so much stranger at the potluck and prayer meeting last night that she hadn't bothered to invite him to the house for coffee and pie afterward. She didn't want those words said in her home. Why, she'd have to call in some kind of spiritual exterminator.

But she dearly wanted to know where he was, and she was more than a little miffed about having to pound on his door and holler his name. Finally she gave up and went back to her car. Still frowning, she pulled out onto the highway and right smack into the path of the biggest, blackest, loudest motorcycle she'd ever seen in her whole entire life.

Mrs. Jim Bob closed her eyes.

14

I parked in front of Miss Una's white frame house. Before I could open the gate, she came out on the porch and waved. "Hello, Arly. How are you today?"

"I'm fine, thank you. I need to talk to you."

I reached for the latch, but as I did so she said, "I'm afraid this is not a convenient time for me to visit with you. I already have company, and it would be rude to entertain someone else. Please don't open the gate; last night one of my kitties escaped that way. I was sick with worry until he was safe at home again. I scolded him quite sharply, and you should have seen his little face get all wrinkled up and sad." Her face got all wrinkled up and sad for a moment, then relaxed in an impish grin.

"I'm sorry to interrupt and I'll be careful not to allow any kitties to get past me," I said, trying to maintain a normal voice in the face of her odd demeanor. Even from where I stood I could see the red patches on her cheeks and the asymmetrical twist to her mouth. Behind her half-moon glasses, her eyes looked way too bright. "What I need to ask you is very important, Miss Una. I'll have to insist on coming inside."

She dug into her apron pocket and produced a disposable lighter. Flourishing it at me, she said, "Please do not force me to flick my Bic. The porch and a good deal of the house are saturated with kerosene. It will go up like a tinderbox, which it is. As I mentioned, I have company inside, and I see no way either of my visitors could escape."

I discovered new dimension to the phrase "stopped cold in one's tracks." I not only froze, I felt an icicle pierce my stomach. "Your house is saturated with kerosene? Why?"

"So it will burn more easily. Kerosene is highly flammable, or should I say inflammable? Oh dear, I'm never sure which it is. In any case, should I make even a wee little spark, it will catch fire immediately."

"Then don't do it. Who's in your house?"

"I'm surprised at you, Arly. I'm sure your mother has told you time and again that it's unseemly to ask about other people's guests or take a personal interest in a lady's private affairs."

Carolyn had been waiting in the car, but she scrambled out and came up behind me. "Three to two odds Staci Ellen's one of her 'guests,' " she hissed.

"Is there a blond girl named Staci Ellen Quittle inside?" I called to Miss Una, who was squeezing the lighter so tightly her fingers were white.

"You're prying, Arly, and it does not become you. I was just about to serve a piece of lemon meringue pie to one of my guests, and I really must go now. I'll keep the lighter in my hand, so please do not try to come into my yard or do anything rash that will force me to flick my Bic." She gave me another impish grin, coyly fluttered her fingers, and turned to go inside, Bic and all. "Wait!" I croaked. While she hesitated, I tried to think what the hell to do. She was manic. I didn't doubt for a second that her house was ready to become a funeral pyre, and that it's occupants would fare no better than Brandon Bernswallow. Carolyn was jabbing me in the back and whispering all sorts of unintelligible things, which didn't do a whole lot for my concentration. I finally told her to cut it out and gave Miss Una a strained smile. "We seem to have an awkward situation. I promise not to set foot in your yard, but I'm not sure it's best for you to go back inside the house with your ... guests. Why don't you let them run along home so you and I can continue the conversation?"

"We haven't had lemon meringue pie yet."

"Miss Una, why are you doing this?"

She gave me a startled look. "Because I have no choice, of course. Once you mentioned how terribly clever they are at this lab, I knew it was a matter of time before you attempted to barge into my house and ask me all sorts of stupid, snoopy questions. You're somewhat quicker than I had anticipated, but I was ready for you, wasn't I? Mercy me, I hear Martin and he sounds distressed. I must go inside now."

"Please," I said, clutching the gate so hard my knuckles hurt, "please don't go inside yet. Are you worried about the fingerprints? We don't have to take yours if you don't want us to. Why don't you put away that lighter and we'll figure out what to do next?"

Carolyn peered around my shoulder. "I'm an attorney, Miss Una. If you're charged with murder, I'll do everything I can to help you."

"Murder? Why on earth would I be charged with murder? I may have been naughty, but I didn't murder anyone." Giggling at the absurd notion, she went inside and closed the door.

I gaped at Carolyn, my jaw so slack I couldn't seem to get out any words. Finally I swallowed a very large lump in my throat and said, "What just happened?"

"I think this is what is known on the nightly news as your classic hostage situation."

"Right, and I'm supposedly trained in the proper way to handle it." I wrenched my hands off the gate and got back in the car. The radio worked, bless its rusted soul, and after a bit of fiddling I told the dispatcher that I really, really needed to talk to Harve and to get him out of the goddamn rest room before I drove over there and parked next to the goddamn toilet and snatched the goddamn magazine out of his hands with my teeth.

Harve stopped grumbling when I told him what was going on. He promised to send backup as quickly as possible and to make a personal appearance in fifteen minutes or so. He also agreed to contact the state police, who were better trained and better armed than the rest of us, the Emmet volunteer fire department, and the media. Harve was up for re-election in a couple of months. I thanked him in a shaky voice, letting my head fall against the back of the seat.

Carolyn got in the car with me. "So now we sit and wait?"

"Unless you've got any astoundingly good ideas, yes. All hell's going to break loose in fifteen minutes or so. I wish I understood what's happening. She's lost it, obviously, and is beyond any appeal to reason. There're two people inside, one named Martin and the other unknown. She said she didn't murder Bernswallow, and oddly enough, I tend to buy it. However, she flipped out over having her fingerprints taken for comparison, which means she knows that hers match one set from the scene of the crime."

Carolyn looked at the house. "It's old and dry. The term 'tinderbox' is apropos, and I shudder to think about those trapped inside. Shit, I hope Staci Ellen's not nibbling lemon meringue pie as we speak. She may not have much going for her, but she tries. Who is this Martin person?"

I checked my watch -- the minute hand was creeping very slowly -- and contemplated the possibilities. "I don't know anyone named Martin. I've never known anyone named Martin. No one in Maggody is named Martin. The only Martin I can think of is Martin Van Buren, and I'd be surprised if he were in there eating pie. You may be right about Staci Ellen, but I'll put my money on Kevin Buchanon. He was inside the branch and might have run into Miss Una. Somehow or other, she convinced him to hide out at her house, in the upstairs bedroom on the right."

"That's a guess?"

"Well, I saw him at the window a second ago," I admitted. "Maybe we're doing the wrong thing by sending for the sheriff's men and the state police. If Miss Una panics, she's liable to flick her damn Bic and send all of them up in flames. Why don't you go down the road a hundred yards or so and stop the cars from screeching up here with sirens going and lights flashing? I'll try once again to coax Miss Una outside."

Wishing I'd stayed awake during cop shows, where hostage situations are invariably resolved in time for a dozen commercials, I went back to the gate and called Miss Una's name. She came out to the porch and gave me a stern look. "What is it now, Arly? I was pouring a bowl of half-and-half for Martin; he's still traumatized by his misadventures last night."

"A bowl of half-and-half? Martin is a cat?"

"Well, of course. Did you think I would offer a bowl of half-and-half to a dead president, even if there is a familial connection? Martin is my prodigal kitty."

"Oh," I murmured, finally seeing the light, although it was a very small pinprick of enlightenment in a vast black sky. "Did you meet Staci Ellen while you were searching for Martin?"

"How very astute of you," she said, beaming at me. It would have been more encouraging if one side of her mouth hadn't been twitching like a spider on a hot skillet. "That's exactly what happened. She discovered a little lost kitty in the alley and was trying to find his home. I was so grateful that I invited her in for tea."

"And the two of you are still drinking tea this morning?"

"In a manner of speaking. We had a tiny problem last night when she asked if she might freshen up before returning to her motel. She opened the wrong door and met another guest. The two began chatting, and I'm afraid Staci Ellen told my guest several things I would have preferred he did not hear at the moment. I was obliged to lock his door and to tie the girl up so she couldn't carry tales. I promised her a piece of pie, so I really must go back inside and feed it to her. These modern girls are so helpless." She waved and turned around.

"Please," I said (okay, ululated like a coyote), "please. Don't go inside yet. I -- ah, I need your advice about -- about something. It's -- it's -- important." I was stammering so badly I wasn't sure she could understand me, but I had a legitimate reason. The window directly above the roof of the porch had been inching open. The opaque curtain was pulled aside, and a naked leg came through the gap. A second leg followed, along with lacy pink underpants.

"Advice?" Miss Una said doubtfully. "Advice about what?"

"Something important," I said, trying not to stare at the apparition coming out the window. I put my hands on my face and scanned my mental Rolodex. "About banks. Yeah, that's it. Do you think I ought to take my business to the Bank of Farberville, even though they may not reopen the branch?"

"I really don't feel qualified In that regard, now that I'm retired. However, I will pass along something. Please don't repeat this, but I've heard rumors that the portfolio has gone downhill over the years, and that many of the investments are dubious."

I took a quick look at the blond girl, clad in nothing but the pink panties and a matching bra, who was now out on the roof and moving cautiously toward the gutter directly above Miss Una's head. I gulped and said, "Did you hear that from Johnna Mae Nookim?"

"Goodness gracious, Arly, I am very impressed with your deductive powers today. However did you know that?"

Kevin Buchanon's face appeared in the window. He gave me a bewildered look, then climbed out onto the roof. His face was as white as flour, and his Adam's apple was lurching up and down so hard it looked as though it might shoot out the top of his head. I took some small comfort in the fact that he was dressed in his normal jeans and T-shirt. If he'd been nearly naked, too, I would have said good-bye to all concerned and driven away to check myself into one of those nice, quiet, stressfree environments and sign up for tole painting classes.

I gulped again. "I ... I ... I ... " couldn't think of anything, obviously. "I thought she might have come over to your house after she talked to Bernswallow."

"After she killed Bernswallow, you mean? Yes, she did come over. She was shaking so hard I made her sit down and have a cup of chamomile tea. I find it so soothing, especially after a long, hard day at the bank."

"After she killed Bernswallow," I repeated numbly. "Did she tell you that?"

"She told me that she banged him over the head with that trophy he kept in his office. I always found it on the pretentious side. There's nothing wrong with a small photograph or a postcard. That's the sort of thing that gives a bank a homey atmosphere. But, in my opinion, a big trophy like that is tooting one's own horn."

As I desperately tried to come up with my next stall tactic, Plover strode up beside me, blessedly wearing civilian clothes. "What the hell is going on?" he said in a low growl. "The sheriff's dispatcher said to get my ass over here, and the woman who flagged me down babbled something about kerosene and a hostage situation on the nightly news. Who're those clowns on the roof and what in God's name do they think they're doing?"

"Miss Una, have you met John Plover?" I called. "He's a friend of mine from Farberville."