Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 06 (6 page)

As befitting his officer’s commission in the Lord’s army, he pounded on the door and yelled, “Open up, Raz Buchanon! Open this door or prepare to spend all eternity stoking the fires of perdition beneath the devil’s own moonshine still.”

The door opened to a slit. “What’re ye howlin’ about, preacherman?” said a surly, suspicious voice.

Brother Verber sucked in his gut and stuck out his chin. “I’m here to save your filthy, perverted, motheaten soul. You’ve gone many a mile down that wicked road, but it’s my Christian duty to bring you back, even if it means hanging onto your trim ankle to stop you from taking that last step.”

“Say what?” said Raz, puzzled. “I ain’t gonna have the likes of you or any other feller hangin’ on my ankle. I hear tell there’s boys like that over at the truck stop in Hasty. You kin go over there and find yerself a real pretty one.”

“How dare you!” Brother Verber thundered, mostly to cover his embarrassment. “The Good Lord says that’s an abomination, just as wicked as fornication, drunkenness, lust—and making field whiskey! I’m here for your own good, Raz Buchanon. This is a mission of mercy, and I’d appreciate it if you’d open the door and step aside so that I can bring salvation into your home and your heart.”

“Suit yourself, preacherman, but you’ll have to wait until Marjorie’s show is over. It’s one of those damn fool soap operas, and she’s stucked on it tighter ‘n a seedtick on a mule’s ass.”

To Brother Verber’s dismay, the door opened all the way and he was ushered inside, warned again to stay real quiet, and nudged across the room to be plopped on a lumpy sofa. On a recliner lay a bristly white sow with moist pink eyes and a drooly snout, and damned if she wasn’t staring attentively at a television set. He was so bewildered that he mutely accepted a jar filled with a clear liquid and went so far as to automatically raise it to his lips. The first sip nearly jolted him out of his daze, but it didn’t. The second sip went down more smoothly, Before too long, the jar was in need of a refill.

Brother Verber wasn’t off and running down the road he’d described to Raz, but he was well on his way at a brisk clip.

I scrunched as far as I could against the window and stared down at the endless expanse of flat, gray clouds, trying to convince myself I was traveling in an airplane rather than a time machine. We were moving forward in space, not backward along a continuum that ended in an elegant apartment (fv rms, ter, all mod con, full sec). I was going to Manhattan to rescue my mother from whatever disaster she’d brought upon herself, I was not going home. I’d done that when I walked out of the courthouse and hailed a cab for the airport.

I strained to believe the lecture I was giving myself but my ex’s face kept popping up and breaking my concentration. For the record, he wasn’t bad-looking if you like lounge lizards only one generation removed from pastel polyester pantsuits, family outings to discount stores, and forced joviality around the gas grill in a New Jersey backyard. The facade had begun to erode early in the game (we’re talking months, not years), but I’d persevered until I could dredge up the courage to confront myself with my lack of judgment, lack of perspicuity, and lack of anything remotely akin to common sense. Admitting it to Ruby Bee had been even more painful, although for once in her life, she didn’t point out that she’d told me so. Estelle did it for her, and at length.

I took out my checkbook and glumly noted the damage I’d done with the airline ticket. The pathetic figure, coupled with the possibility I’d be unemployed when I returned to Maggody, distracted me but did not enhance my spirits. Nor did the three-hundred-pound salesman from Toledo, who in theory was sitting in the aisle seat but in truth had oozed over into the adjoining one, and was now frowning as he read the bottom line in my checkbook.

“You got a place to stay tonight, sweetie?” he asked wheezily. “I’d hate to see a pretty little thing like you stay in a dirty hotel with a bunch of pimps and whores. I’m staying at the Hilton, myself, and I sure could stand to squeeze you in with me.”

“That’s real nice of you, but I’m hoping to get my mother out on bail. Either way, I can stay in her room.”

“Get your mother out on bail?”

“Murder,” I said levelly. “I’m not sure if I have enough money. If she just hadn’t gone hog wild and tried to blast her way through all those cops, she might have gotten off cheaply. But she’s a real card, my mama, especially when she’s off her medication. Say, maybe you could loan me a few hundred bucks, and come along down to the jail to meet her? Then we all could go back to your room at the Hilton and get to know each other better. Mama’s scrawny, but she’s feisty. You can ask anybody in town, ‘cause she’s taken on most of ‘em and left ‘em for dead by daybreak.”

He grabbed the plastic card from the seat pocket and began to memorize the location of all the emergency exits. I resumed my study of the blanket of clouds, wishing I were in my bed with a more substantial blanket pulled over my head.

Kevin stared resolutely through the windshield, determined not to let his eyes drift to the rearview mirror. “Would you like to stop for something to eat, my honeybuns, or stretch your legs in a rest stop?”

“No.”

It wasn’t so much her terseness as her tone that caused him to clutch the steering wheel more tightly and gulp several times. He considered offering to pull over and fetch her a soda from the cooler in the trunk, then decided he’d better just keep quiet as a little ol’ mouse and let her say if and when she wanted anything. His bride wasn’t the shy type, even in her current condition. His job was to keep on driving northward, aimed at their goal, the spanking new roadmap folded and set on the seat where he could reach it.

They were back on pavement again, and this was good. Like a cowhand who’d had to venture into some canyons to round up strayed calves, he’d taken them off the route for a while. But now they were back on track, or at least going in the right direction.

“Lotion,” Dahlia growled from the backseat.

“Yes, my precious,” Kevin said, scrabbling on the seat for the pink bottle. He twisted his arm around and thrust the bottle over the back of his seat. “Calamine lotion for my beloved bride. I sure am sorry about not seeing that poison ivy around the tree. Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

“I doubt it, especially since you’re pouring out the lotion on the floor of the car. It ain’t the picnic basket that’s covered with oozy red welts that itch worse than crabs in a fiddler’s privates.”

She groaned, although the noise hinted as much of simmering rage as it did of discomfort, and it occurred to Kevin that he was kinda glad she was lying in the backseat, her legs spread apart and her feet poked out the window.

He jerked his arm back, splattering the dashboard and windshield with pink spots. “I’ll stop at the next store,” he said as he hunkered over the steering wheel on the off chance she could reach him if she tried. “You know, this road’s a lot prettier than a boring old interstate. There’s some real nice flowers in the ditch, and that last house had a plastic duck and little yeller babies in a row. I wish you could have seen them, my adorable bride.”

“You dumped lotion on the potato chips. You’d better be darn glad I ain’t sitting up there beside you, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon. Iff’n I was, we’d find out if you’d be any smarter with soggy pink potato chips stuffed up your nose!”

“It’s gonna be just fine,” he said soothingly. “This is our honeymoon, my sweetness, and we’ve got our whole lives in front of us. You and me, a cottage with a vegetable garden out back, maybe the pitter-patter of little feet afore too long.”

“I suppose so, Kevvie.” She didn’t sound nearly as enchanted with his vision as he did, but he blamed it on her unfortunate condition. “Even though it’s all your fault this rash is making me wish I was dead, I still love you,” she added gently. “I never looked twice at Ira on account of his warts. He ain’t half the man you are.”

Kevin accepted the praise with a cocky chuckle, although farther down the road he started wondering if she’d made the observation based on personal research. Twice?

“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked the cabbie as I studied the scaffolding. “There must be another Chadwick Hotel somewhere. This is closed for remodeling.”

“We’re at the only one I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve been driving for eighteen years. But it makes no difference to me if you want me to cruise around for a while. East side, west side, anywhere you want to go. Suum cuique, as I always say.”

“No, this must be it,” I said without conviction. I paid him and carried my bag into the lobby, where it was cool and dim, if not elegant. The furniture was shabby and arranged rather oddly, the plastic plants coated with dust, the floor missing half its linoleum. Wondering what Ruby Bee and Estelle had made of it, I went to the reception counter and tapped a silver bell.

When nothing happened, I repeated the action several times, and then dropped my bag and sat down on the arm of a sofa to decide what to do next. I might have been mistaken about the hotel. There was no sense of occupancy, and certainly no hint of a national contest in progress. Outside, there was life, albeit screaming, snarling, honking, exploding life. Inside, there was something very wrong.

“I had to report your salary,” said a male voice from the corridor beyond the desk. “I couldn’t help it, Rick. Those fuckin’ buzzards at the IRS will demand an audit this year, just like they did last year and the year before. So act like a good citizen and pay your income taxes like everybody else. Maybe you’ll get a medal one of these days.”

“Maybe I’ll shove it up your ass,” said a second voice.

“I’m an accountant, not a magician. I’ve got enough problems with the invoices and the cash flow and our arrangement with the union bosses. I don’t need you whining at me. You got problems with me, you call Mr. Gabardi and tell him all about them.”

A door slammed, ending what I could hear of the conversation. At least there were people within the hotel, which was marginally encouraging. If I sat long enough, perhaps I would get to see one of them, or even find out what the hell was going on with Ruby Bee.

The front door opened and an elderly man in a white jacket, a lime green shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and plaid pants entered the lobby. The top of his head was shiny and dotted with freckles, but there were tufts of white hair above his ears, and a few more shooting out of same. His skin was dark and deeply wrinkled, his nose reminiscent of a plum. He carried a small suitcase and a newspaper.

“How ya doing?” he said to me, then went to the desk, banged the bell, and shouted, “Rickie, my boy, show yourself! I am in need of a hot shower and a cold drink. Airplanes make me nervous in the stomach and sweaty in the palms, and now I want to relax.” His accent was a mixture of Brooklynese and Italian, his attire strictly Floridian retiree. All he needed to complete the ensemble was a pair of golf shoes.

An exceedingly ashen young man came through a door behind the desk, doing his best to smile. Even from my perch across the lobby, I could see the tic at the corner of his mouth and the unnatural bulge of his eyes. “Why, Mr. Cambria, how nice to see you again. No one told me you—” He spotted me, and his attempted geniality dried up. “Who are you? Another coconut from Kansas?”

The man glanced back at me with an uneasy frown. “Rick, you’re supposed to have this under control. Although Mr. Gabardi decided to have me stay here for the next few days, he still has faith that you know what you’re doing.”

The one addressed as Rick (and the one who’d been expressing his unhappiness about his taxes) took the other’s arm and tried to urge him around the end of the counter. “Please, wait in my office while I deal with this. There’s a bottle of very soothing scotch in the bottom right drawer of the desk. I will be honored if you will sample it, Mr. Cambria.”

Cambria refused to be urged one inch. “I would rather go to my room and make a call. A long distance call.”

“Of course you would.” He opened a drawer and took out a key. “You must stay in the penthouse. I’ll be up shortly to remove my things from your way, and I’ll bring the scotch and some ice. I’m afraid we don’t have maid service, but I myself will change the sheets and—”

“First, the call,” the older man said as he took the key, winked at me, and went to the elevator. Rick hurried after him in time to push the button, then stepped back and maintained a pained smile until the doors slid open.

Once Cambria had been whisked upward, Rick returned to the desk and scratched his chin with a well-manicured fingertip while we assessed each other. I waited silently, and he finally sighed and said, “Are you like a judge for this screwy contest or something?”

“Something,” I said, nodding. “Is there anything I can do or say that will induce you to go away?”

“I don’t think so.”

He smoothed down his narrow mustache with yet another well-manicured fingertip, glanced over his shoulder at the closed door behind him, and shook his head. “This has been some coupla days. Only a week ago did anyone bother to inform me of this contest, and nobody seemed to remember that I am up to my ass in remodeling. When you’re dealing with union guys, you can’t tell them to take a short hike, unless you plan to make like a submarine in the bottom of the Hudson River. After last night, that has begun to appeal.” He noted my wince. “You got something to do with this shooting thing, right? Are you the dame’s lawyer?”

“Her daughter,” I admitted. “I flew in about an hour ago, and I’d like very much to find someone who’ll explain what’s going on.”

“So would I, but I got problems with the accountant and Mr. Cambria in the penthouse and I think I’d better make some calls myself. The pistol-packing maniac—pardon me, your mother—was in 217. The police sealed it off, so I moved that woman who was with her to 219. It’s possible she is up there now, presuming she didn’t get her hair caught in a ceiling fan and her head was jerked off.” He twitched a third well-manicured fingertip in the direction of an elevator, gave me a smirky look, and disappeared through the door.