Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 04 (8 page)

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For the longest time, I felt if we'd all been frozen in time and space, because nobody seemed to have anything to do or say. I finally cleared my throat and said, "Good afternoon, Sergeant Plover."

"Yeah," he said without moving his jaw. It was a rather classic cop mannerism; I'd seen it countless times on The Late, Late Show.

"I'm Anderson St. James," my visitor said. He held out his hand, and after a minute Plover had the grace to shake it briefly. "I dropped by to introduce myself to the chief of police and beg for cooperation during the next two weeks."

"I doubt you'll have to beg," Plover said. He looked at me as if I were a two-bit hoodlum in a Chicago alley. "I had a note from Merganser. He sifted through that last site and found a few rags that had been soaked in gasoline. You'll get the report in a few days."

"I knew it was arson," I said, keeping an eye on his itchy trigger finger. "Thanks for coming by. Tell Merganser I'll get back to him as soon as Harve and I have discussed the report."

Plover stomped out the door. His car shot out of the gravel lot, the engine roaring, and I'm quite sure he was exceeding the local speed limit as he disappeared down the road. And to think he had sworn to uphold the law, tut-tut.

"Testy chap, isn't he?" Anderson St. James murmured as he sat back down in the chair and resumed his visual dissection. "I do hope my presence doesn't cause any problems for you, Chief. I really am the official ambassador for the company, calling on you to assure you we'll do everything we can to make our stay pleasant for all."

"The entire town's looking forward to it," I said, opting not to discuss my personal affairs. Plover and I were going to have to discuss them, though, I told myself with a small sigh. "Why are you the official ambassador, Mr. St. James? I've been hearing a lot about a woman named Carlotta, who seems to be making all the arrangements."

"Please, call me Anderson, and if we get to know one another on a higher plane, Andy. Carlotta will be by tomorrow to run through the shooting schedule with you so you'll have an idea where we'll be each day." He gave me a facetiously despondent look. "Each night I suppose we're stuck in the motel, unless some of the good citizens take pity on us and offer to show us the nightlife in the adjoining towns."

"The Dew Drop Inn in Hasty? The third shift at the poultry plant in Starley City? I don't know how to break it to you" -- I took a breath -- "Anderson, but there's not much to do anywhere around here." I realized I was on the verge of simpering as he continued to watch me through these divine eyes, and I abruptly thought of several things to do in the immediate vicinity ... of my apartment. I'd be calling him Andy-baby by the end of the day if I didn't get myself under control.

He smiled as if he'd read my mind. "Perhaps we'll find a few divertissements. Would I risk being accused of bribery if I offered to buy you a martini in the establishment down the road?"

"It's strictly beer and pretzels," I mumbled with all the poise of a junior-high girl being asked on her first date. However, I made it to my feet without disgracing myself, and managed not to squeal when he slipped his arm through mine and escorted me out of the office. I was almost surprised we didn't step out onto the streets of Manhattan.

-- ==+== --

Brother Verber was engaged in an argument with the Almighty, although it was pretty much one-sided. He'd taken the telephone off the receiver so he could concentrate on a message from Upstairs, but he was beginning to think he wasn't getting through.

"I don't mind making sacrifices if I know I'm doing it in the name of righteousness," he said, trying not to sound too eager about offering to make sacrifices because you never knew what might be suggested. "It's a sinful place, what with beer and dancing. I've been told they dance so close they look like they're in the midst of a perverted sexual ritual. But I won't look, and I won't touch a drop of alcohol. I need to find out exactly how wicked these Hollywood folks are so's I can prepare my sermon."

There wasn't a divine nod, but there wasn't a rumble of thunder, either. Brother Verber peeked outside warily, just in case there might be a lightning bolt with his name on it. When nothing happened, he hitched up his trousers and set off for the den of iniquity known as Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill.

-- ==+== --

"I'm not at all sure what the protocol is in this situation," Mrs. Jim Bob said loudly to Perkins's eldest, who was last seen dusting in the bedroom next door. She pulled free a few tendrils of hair so it wouldn't look as if she'd just that minute come home from the beauty parlor. But was the green silk dress too much? She didn't want the movie folks to think she'd gotten all gussied up for them, but she didn't want to be mistaken for a common cleaning woman, either.

She decided to leave off the mink stole but to stay in the green and let them assume she always dressed as befitting her position in the community. "When you get done in there," she continued loudly, "run the vacuum around the living room once more and put on the tea kettle. They may think they'll be offered whiskey, but they might as well get used to Christian behavior in this house."

It was getting late in the afternoon, and she knew some people called it the cocktail hour, especially Californians and other heretics. While she studied her image in the mirror, she wondered just how sinful it would be to offer them sherry. She went so far as to dial the number at the rectory, but it seemed Brother Verber had chosen to disregard his duties in order to talk to someone else, and in her hour of need. "Is that bottle of cooking sherry still in the cabinet under the oven?" she yelled to Perkins's eldest. She interpreted the lack of response as an admission of guilt, but being charitable, said, "If you been tippling, get down on your knees and confess aloud to myself and the Almighty. I can't promise you won't be damned for all eternity, but I won't fire you, and you can make up what's missing from your wages." She waited graciously for repentance to ring through her house like Christmas bells, but while she was waiting, she noticed a smudge on her collar and began to unbutton the dress.

-- ==+== --

Perkins's eldest was in seventh heaven, or fifth or sixth, anyway. On the stool to her left, the best-looking man she'd ever set eyes on was talking to Arly Hanks. On the stool to her right, Estelle Oppers was jabbering away to another movie star. The director fellow had bought everyone a beer or the refreshment of choice, which meant her glass of diet soda pop was courtesy of Hollywood. Behind her, Eula and Lottie and Joyce were squeezed into a booth with famous Miss Kitty Kaye, and before too long Brother Verber came slinking in to stand by the door and gawk. The whole barroom was humming like a room chock full of sewing machines.

She herself wasn't talking or jabbering to anyone, or even letting on that she was drinking in the scene, because, as mentioned earlier, she considered herself an enigma.

Chapter 6

When the noise at Ruby Bee's grew intolerable, I decided I'd had enough beer, music, smoke, and pleasant if not piercing conversation with an incredibly handsome movie star. Said movie star gallantly offered to walk me home, and I graciously consented, although I suspected he was more interested in my badge than my body. I could almost hear Ruby Bee advising Carlotta to send an attractive man to the PD to mollify the chief, who had a reputation for being mulish. Estelle had probably thumbed through the glossies and selected the perfect candidate. I didn't have to read their minds to know all this; I'd read their smirks when they'd kept a furtive surveillance on the two of us all evening.

"We're here," I said two minutes later, the delay the result of a ponderous chicken truck. "I live above the antiques store."

Anderson had the decency to appear disappointed, although I was aware of his profession. "But I'd envisioned a leisurely stroll along the river. Are you sure you don't live in a charming cottage amid the rustling pines and the babbling brook?"

"I'm sure I live in a cramped apartment at the top of the stairs, where the rats rustle and my mother calls in the middle of the night to babble." I disengaged my hand, which had found itself in his, and murmured something inane about having to break up bank robberies in the morning.

He murmured something inane in response, but somehow or other I wasn't going up the stairs; on the contrary, I was in the process of being nuzzled very efficiently and enjoying it very much when Kevin Buchanon shouted, "Fire!"

I spun out of the embrace and located Kevin, who was straddling his bicycle across the road. He was pointing at my window. I jerked my head around. The flickering light made the panes look as if they were made of stained glass.

"Holy shit!" I started for the stairs.

Anderson grabbed my arm. "You can't go up there! Call the fire department!"

"Nobody messes with me," I growled. I yanked my arm loose and went storming up the stairs, my face as hot as the flames inside my apartment -- the flames burning up my paltry treasures and trespassing in my sole sanctuary from the omnipresent madness that was Maggody. I banged open the door. Smoke washed over me, stinging my eyes and gagging me, but once I'd wiped away the tears and stopped coughing more hoarsely than an entire TB ward, I realized the fire was limited to a pile of rags on the linoleum floor.

I grabbed a glass and splashed water from the tap onto the mini-inferno until the flames gave way to noxious gray smoke. I then stumbled to the window, opened it, and went back to the landing outside the living room to suck in some fresh air and do my best to stop shaking.

Roy Stivers, my landlord, lumbered around the corner and squinted up at me. "You okay, Arly? One of those Hollywood fellows rapped on my door and told me to call the fire department. Caught Wade on his way out the door, thank God. He said they'll be here as soon as they can."

Anderson bounded up to the landing, his mouth tight and his perfect hair a tiny bit ruffled. "That was a crazy thing to do."

"I suppose so, but I wasn't about to twist my hands and imagine everything I own being reduced to barbeque while the volunteer fire fighters were pulling on their pants." I rubbed my face, as much to erase the anger as the soot. "It charred the linoleum, which wasn't all that attractive, anyway. I was thinking about replacing it." I tried to laugh, but it sounded wheezy.

"How'd it start?" Roy called up, no doubt thinking of the store below that was crammed with antiques. They weren't Louis XIV's but they were valuable enough to allow him the luxury of expensive whiskey, first-edition volumes of poetry, and periodic sojourns to unknown destinations.

"Did you leave a cigarette in an ashtray?" Anderson asked.

"Hell, no," I said, aware the anger had not been erased. "For starters, I don't smoke, and I don't have any ashtrays. I didn't flip a match into a pile of rags before I left, either. This was set intentionally."

He put his hands on my shoulders as if to keep me from flying off the landing in a rage, which was not impossible to imagine. "Who would do such a thing?"

I looked down at the flock of vultures (Falconiformes incendiaristes) that had surged out of Ruby Bee's to check the action. The locals were jostling for position, pointing, squawking, and hoping for a real live melodrama in the making. Ruby Bee broke through the line and came across the road, her hands wrestling each other in the folds of her apron. The Hollywood people were in a huddle under the Flamingo sign, their faces garish in the pink light.

Other lights came down the street as the volunteer fire department arrived in three pickup trucks. As I stood in the rectangle of light from the living room, I felt as though I were on a stage, exposed and vulnerable -- and missing my copy of the script. "Would you please tell the man in the first truck that the fire is out?" I said to Anderson.

I continued to study my audience as he went down the stairs. On the other side of the street, sunk in the shadows beside the PD, stood a figure. He melted away, but I was pretty sure I'd caught a glimpse of the pale, round face of Billy Dick MacNamara.

Once it was clear that the show was over, the others melted away, too, although in a rowdy babble. I went inside to see if the smoke had dissipated, and I was flapping a towel and cursing steadily when Anderson joined me.

"It's not quite as classy as a Beverly Hills mansion," I said, "and you'll have to excuse the smell. I'm fresh out of room deodorizer and incense." I flung the towel in a corner.

"You're quite as classy as the women who live in the mansions," he said as he moved around the room, gazing at my choices of literature (lurid), cheap prints (French Impressionism), and the stacks of paperwork (tedious) that trailed me home from the PD. "And you're real." I kicked the sodden rags out of the way, then squatted down to examine the charred depression in the floor. It was a good two inches deep; if I filled it with fresh water, the cockroaches could spend their nights at the pool. Blackened matches were scattered around it; the firebug had left his signature for me, just in case I missed the connection. "Real what?" I said as I stood up. "Real foolhardy?"

"Possibly. You certainly didn't consider the danger when you charged upstairs as if it were San Juan Hill." Anderson sat down on the sofa and gave me an inviting look.

I decided to ignore it and began to collect the rags in a tidy pile. "As I said, no one messes with me. What's maddening is that I know who set this fire, but I don't have any proof. I can confront him with a lie, but it's not a crime, to lie unless it impedes an investigation. A first-year law student would have him out in ten seconds flat. The worst thing is that the damn kid was in here -- in my apartment."

My head jerked around as I searched for other signs of his vile intrusion. Nothing seemed to be missing, but his pudgy white hands could have touched my things, twisted and turned them, moved them a centimeter or two, all the while leaving a trace of oil mingled with sweat on everything I owned. If he chose to return when I was asleep, he could do so. My skin began to itch, and the beer in my stomach turned sour.

"You'll get him eventually," Anderson said soothingly. "Why don't you sit over here and let me wipe all the black streaks off your face? You look as if you applied blackface in a most inept fashion, and we don't want any accusations of racism."

I sat down, albeit warily, and allowed him to clean me up to his own satisfaction. Before I realized what was happening, several strategic bobby pins had been removed, and my hair tumbled down my back. He disengaged the remaining ones, arranged my hair over my shoulders, and sat back with a bemused smile.

"Sometimes it doesn't work," he said. "Some women need their hair tightly restrained, their glasses on their noses, their collars buttoned. It works every time in the movies, but in the real world there's not always a seductress waiting to be unshackled."

I opened my mouth to point out I was no seductress, shackled or unshackled, when he leaned forward and kissed me. It was right out of the last chapter of my more lurid novels, and I heard myself remembering snippets of purple prose that could curdle milk.

"Why is it no one messes with you?" he said as he nibbled my ear. "Because you won't let them?"

I let him mess with me for a moment longer, then retreated and said, "That's right, Anderson -- I won't let 'em. You'd better go now. I'm going to borrow a fan from Roy and try to get rid of the stench."

"What about your testy trooper?" he asked. "Do you keep him at arm's length?"

The mention of my testy trooper chilled me. I could almost see him sitting across from us, his feet flat on the floor, his arms crossed, and his face radiating disapproval from behind mirrored sunglasses.

"I don't keep him anywhere," I said coldly. "Furthermore, it's none of your damn business. I don't know if you make a practice of trying to find yourself a local bed and breakfast when you shoot a -- "

"Back down, Arty. I don't make a practice of anything. I was attracted to you because I found you a cryptic combination of sophistication and ... naïveté. No, that's not the word. I have no idea what you are, but I'd like to find out. Even though I live in La-La Land and associate with some remarkably shallow people, I hope I'm something more than a stereotype." He stood up and walked to the door. "You know, I've never stayed in one of those bed and breakfast places."

"Neither have I," I said with a small smile.