The Arly Hanks Mysteries Volume One Read online

  “What did he say?”

  “He said to stay out of the storeroom,” she answered, snickering at Kevin.

  “What else did he say?” I said it with forbearance, but my supply was getting depleted as fast as Kevin was turning red.

  “He said he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow or the next day, because they were going to their deer camp. He took a couple of cases of beer, two bags of ice, and some bologna with him.”

  “On his shoulders?”

  “No, the beer was real heavy. He put the boxes in Roy’s pickup.”

  “Did he take any money out of the cash register?”

  “Not that I chanced to see.”

  Conversation with reticent molasses tries my patience, if not my soul. I steadied myself with a deep breath. “Then Roy was here, too? I am tired of asking questions, Dahlia. I want the whole story—and I want it now!”

  “Sure, Arly,” Dahlia said goodnaturedly. “Jim Bob met the others—meaning Roy, Larry Joe, and Ho—here about ten. They filled up both vehicles at the self-service, loaded up with food and beer, and left about fifteen minutes later.”

  “Do you have any idea where the deer camp is?”

  “Sorry, Arly.” She looked at Kevin, who scuffled his foot on the linoleum floor and shrugged. “Kevin doesn’t know either,” she added by way of explanation, in case I’d missed the eloquent denial.

  “Was there anyone else with those four?”

  “Yeah.” She reached for a candy bar, but I caught her wrist and gave her a cold stare. After a pained look at the forbidden wares, she pulled back her hand and said, “There was a man in the back of Jim Bob’s jeep. I couldn’t tell who it was on account of the blindfold.”

  Robert Drake opened his eyes to the dusty light filtering through the filthy slit of a window. It took a minute to remember where he was, and why. And how much money he’d lost over the night, although those shitheels would get a surprise when they tried to cash his checks. Everybody always did.

  He listened to the erratic drone of snores and snuffles from the front room. It sounded like a kennel, he thought as he rolled over to escape a spring that had gouged him for the better part of three hours. A kennel of asthmatic bloodhounds. Outside a bird screeched in anger, then flapped away. A fly circled the light-bulb dangling from the ceiling, buzzing as it considered the victim on the bed below. Snort, snort, snuffle. Caw. Buzz. Snort, snort. Not a kennel—a goddamn symphony orchestra like the one Dawn Alice was all the time dragging him to so they could look society.

  Robert put on his shoes, grabbed his coat, and went into the front room, where he stopped to stare disgustedly at the four men asleep on army surplus cots that looked like rejects from the Civil War or the Revolution. The table was covered with the leftovers of the poker game: beer cans, an empty bourbon bottle, ashes, chips, limp rings of red plastic from bologna, smears of mustard, and bread crusts. And a gold key ring with two keys.

  Larry Joe opened one eye. “Where you going?” he mumbled.

  Sliding the glittering key ring into one hand, Robert pointed at the door. “A telegram from my bladder,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Be back in a few minutes—unless you want to watch me piss under the table or get dressed so you can come along to guard me.”

  “Go ahead,” Larry Joe said, pulling a drab green blanket over his head. “Don’t go too far, you hear? Bears’ll get you.”

  “Right.” He eased open the door and stepped outside. There were two vehicles parked on the poor excuse for a road. The keys didn’t fit the ignitions of either of them. Snarling under his breath, he went around to the far side of the pickup and pissed on the door for sheer malice of it.

  It was the middle of nowhere; he was surprised there weren’t dragons and sea monsters in the thorny underbrush and scrubby-looking trees. The sky was gray, as ugly and scratchy as the blanket under which Larry Joe snoozed blissfully.

  The door of the trailer opened. Robert ducked behind the jeep, his shoes sucking mud in the puddle he’d made earlier, and watched Roy take a whiz from the doorway. The door closed. Before he could think, Robert found himself hurrying down the road in a slow lope, his fists brushing the rocks as he made for the shelter of a twisted fir tree. He felt sort of like the wolfman in the middle of transition, but he wasn’t about to be spotted from the trailer— not now.

  He stopped to catch his breath for a minute while he listened for the sounds of an alarm being raised when his absence was discovered. Nothing happened. He realized that they were unconcerned because they knew they could find him on the road. They’d probably let him walk a long way, to the very limit of the leash, before getting in one of the vehicles to fetch him. The keys had been left on the table as some sort of perverted joke, he figured, flinging them into the woods with a snort of anger.

  He straightened up, buttoned his coat, and pushed through the bushes. Downhill, he figured, would get him somewhere. It had to go somewhere; he’d learned that much from movies.

  I went back to the PD, grateful that the crowd had thinned out while I was gone. Someone had fetched the table and chairs; Sergeant Plover was seated in the back room next to the coffeepot, while Paulie minded my desk for me. I checked for messages, then coerced my lips into a smile and went to report to Plover.

  His table was littered with county survey maps and Styrofoam cups. An ashtray was piled high with butts and gum wrappers, and the whole room stank of male sweat and stale air, neither of which I was particularly fond of. I opened the back door, then turned around to let him enjoy my smile while it lasted.

  “Chief,” he murmured, pretending he didn’t know my name (old Stealthy Plover), “I hope you’ll find this arrangement adequate until we wrap up the investigation. I’ll try to stay out of your way.”

  “I hope so. By the way, the missing council men are at their deer camp in the woods somewhere. The EPA man is most likely with them, although I don’t know that for sure. He was blindfolded and in Jim Bob’s four-wheeler just before they left town, so it’s logical assumption they didn’t drop him off at the picture show in Starley City. They took enough food for a week. Nobody mentioned weapons, but there’s probably an arsenal up there in a closet.” I folded my arms and waited for a gasp.

  “Where’s the deer camp?” he demanded, gasplessly.

  “I don’t know, and no one would tell me.”

  He squished his lips together and closed his eyes. “We found the weapon. It had been tossed over the fence behind the motel. It’s a cast-aluminum crossbow, brass slides, automatic safety catch, one-seventy-five draw weight, about twelve pounds, and with an accuracy of thirty to thirty-five feet. No prints we could pick up. I sent it on to the lab to confirm that it was used. The shaft was embedded in the back wall of the bathroom; it has an expandable broadhead, which accounts for the size of the wound. You know anyone who might own one?”

  “Three-quarters of the male population of Maggody, Sergeant, including the town council, Kevin Buchanon, and my deputy. The crossbow season runs longer, so they can spend more time off work, drinking beer and playing poker with their buddies.”

  “I don’t hunt, myself,” he said, sounding apologetic.

  “Neither do I,” I said.

  “Every time I imagine a deer’s gentle brown eyes, I realize I couldn’t kill it. I like to watch squirrels and coons, and I can’t stand the idea of ripping feathers off a dead bird. I’m the only trooper at the regional headquarters who doesn’t bitch about not getting to hunt every day of the gun season.”

  I looked at him, unable to figure out what his little speech really meant. His gentle brown eyes didn’t blink, and I would have had a hard time putting a bullet between them. Honestly. I finally cleared my throat and said, “Have we heard anything from the crime lab in Little Rock?”

  “Some preliminary stuff, but they haven’t gotten to the autopsy yet. They’re guessing she was killed b
etween ten and midnight, although they lean toward the early end of the range, based on body temperature. That would have given her time to make her exit from the party, go home to pack, and start out of town. That’s also about the time the councilmen and Drake disappeared. We need to find them in order to ask some pointed questions before we book them for kidnapping.”

  The four Mafiosi, a beautician, and my mother—what a swell gang of criminals. “Could be somebody in town knows where this deer camp is. Officer Buchanon and I can ask around, see if anybody will talk.”

  “Is it some kind of secret?”

  I was getting too much of the gentle brown for comfort, or maybe the air was too thick with smoke. I squeezed around the table and went to the doorway that led to the front room. “Men are real funny about their territory. They figure there’s only so many deer in the area, and they don’t want strangers getting there first. Sort of like little boys, don’t you think?”

  Without waiting for an answer, I told Paulie to see what he could learn about the location of the deer camp. He gave me a half-grin and vacated my desk for the streets of Maggody. I touched up my lipstick, ran a comb through my hair, and followed Paulie out, hoping Plover wouldn’t think I was chicken to stay at the PD— with him. Cluck, cluck.

  Paulie went south, so I went north to Ruby Bee’s. There was not a single pickup parked out front, and the building was locked tight, shades drawn, lights off. The motel sign was off, too. I went around back to Number One, where Ruby Bee lived. She and Estelle were sitting on the couch, tissues clutched in their fists, noses red from being wiped nonstop for several hours.

  “Have you been to Jaylee’s mobile home?” Ruby Bee whispered.

  “Why?” I said it nice and loud.

  Estelle gave me a shocked look, as if I’d just hooted “Bingo!” in a funeral parlor. “We’ve been thinking,” she explained softly, so I could appreciate the somberness of the situation and behave with proper decorum.

  “I’m impressed. Imagine sitting and thinking at the same time.”

  “We’ve been thinking about Jaylee,” Estelle continued in the same sepulchral voice, “and her source of income. Ruby Bee paid her handsomely, but a barmaid can only make so much, even including tips. Jaylee wasn’t the tiniest bit concerned about the tuition for the Purley Institute, but I am personally aware of the fact it cost seven hundred dollars to earn a certificate. She couldn’t work more than part time while she was studying, so she must have been putting some money aside.”

  “Good point,” I admitted, sighing. “I’ll call Higgerson at the bank branch and find out if she had a savings account.”

  Ruby Bee sniffled into her tissue. “Mr. Higgerson said she had less than fifty dollars in savings, and her checking account usually hovered around two hundred dollars. She cleared both of them out yesterday afternoon; the total came to two hundred eleven dollars and eighty-seven cents.”

  “Mr. Higgerson told you all that? He’d insist I get a warrant, and I’d still have to drag every bit of it out of him.” I gave her a bewildered frown, a shade petulant for good measure.

  “Buell Higgerson is a client of mine,” Estelle explained grandly. “He thinks the patches of gray make him look more dignified, and he’s hoping to become the branch manager soon. He was real pleased to answer my questions when I called to remind him of his next appointment.”

  “It is a puzzle,” Ruby Bee murmured. “Yesterday evening I delicately asked Jaylee if I could loan her a small sum until she got settled, but she laughed and said she would be just fine, that she’d have plenty of money by the time she left town. Estelle and I have been pondering that all morning.”

  “The state police will be eternally grateful, I’m sure.”

  “Are you still mad, Ariel?” Ruby Bee grabbed a tissue, prepared for a drawn-out siege.

  “Me mad? How utterly absurd! Simply because you made a total fool of me and made me the laughingstock of the county? Now, why would I mind that?” I chuckled at the very idea.

  Ruby Bee opted for the offense. “You seem to have forgotten that we did what we did so’s we could save Bone Creek from all sorts of pollution and toilet water. We were being ecology-minded, concerned about the environment just like those Green Speech people or the Sierra Madre club. If you’d shown a little more interest in saving the creek, we wouldn’t have had to hide Mr. Drake in Number Three.”

  “I can’t argue with that,” I said truthfully. “Tell me about Mr. Drake.”

  Estelle leaned over to touch my knee, a pinched look on her face. “He wasn’t nice.” She breathed for a few seconds, then added, “He drank too much and used unacceptable language right smack in front of ladies. I went in one time with some paperbacks and a bowl of my cherry cobbler, and he didn’t even bother to zip his zipper.”

  “Dreadful,” I breathed right back.

  “He was exactly that,” Ruby Bee said, equally scandalized by the unsavory memories of the man in Number Three. “He wouldn’t eat my biscuits because he said they were made out of ore rock. Now you know perfectly well that my biscuits are as light as a feather, and—”

  “Did he have much luggage?” I said before we digressed into swapping recipes or analyzing the volatile baking powder issue.

  “He had one suitcase and a briefcase,” Estelle said. “He used the briefcase as a portable bar; it had a lemon peel cutter, a tiny jar of olives, a jigger, and a miniature corkscrew. It was right cute and handy.”

  “It sounds lovely,” I said. “Tell me about Jaylee’s visits.”

  Ruby Bee mopped her nose while she studied the chintz under the plastic cover on the couch. I could tell she knew she was on quicksand now, and needed to judge every word so she’d end up righteous instead of hypocritical. The hypocrisy didn’t bother her—just my being aware of it.

  “I asked Jaylee to take a tray to Mr. Drake Friday night,” she finally said. “She didn’t come back for a long time, and when she showed up, her hair was mussed and she was pink and puffing like one of them suburban joggers. She admitted that Mr. Drake had gotten fresh with her, and that to stop him she’d been obliged to slap his face. I offered to warn him off, but she said he was real nice under his pretense and she had promised to return to his room later so he could apologize.”

  “And he apologized several times over the next few days?”

  Ruby Bee nodded a la Queen Elizabeth. “That’s what she told me, Ariel. She was missing some work, but not enough to cause a problem, so I allowed her to visit whenever she wanted. She was real smitten with him. She said he was educated and had more money than he knew what to do with.”

  I said that true love was sweet and that I thought I’d better report back to the PD. Everybody seemed to think that was a wonderful idea. The sunshine girls exchanged a few secretive looks (I didn’t even wince) and told me to have a nice day. In unison.

  Jim Bob slammed the door as he came back into the trailer. “He’s gone. I looked around and walked down the road a couple hundred yards, but I didn’t see any sign of him.”

  Ho spun around, his jowls slathered with shaving cream. “Now what, Mr. Mayor? What if he made it to the highway and flagged down a state police car?”

  “He didn’t make it to the highway. Hell, it’s eleven miles as the crow flies and at least sixteen on the road. Our Mr. Drake ain’t exactly a boy scout, you know; he’s probably sitting on a stump somewhere in the woods wishing he was back here.” Jim Bob sat down at the dinette and shoved the trash over the edge. “Listen, boys, today’s when Fiff is supposed to get back from his trip, so I’d better go into town and try to get through to him. You all see if you can find Drake and get him back here.”

  Roy and Larry Joe nodded, but Ho wiped his face and said, “I got an automobile dealership to run, Jim Bob. If I’m not there, those assholes I employ as salesmen will hide out in the body-shop lounge, drinking coffee and swapping lies about the bu
cks they saw and the fish they threw back. Lots of customers want me to sell in person, on account of having seen me on the television commercials. They all want me to do the ‘Ho, Ho, Ho’s for your best damn deal in the county’ bit and get my autograph like I was a celebrity or something. I ain’t about to miss sales over your damn fool scheme.”

  “My damn fool scheme?”

  “Come on, Ho,” Roy said form his cot, “we’re all in this together, like Jim Bob said last night. We’ve all got things we need to attend to in town, but we have to find Drake first and keep him until Jim Bob talks to Fiff and gets us off the hook. Drake’s stupid enough to walk off a bluff or crawl into a cave full of bears. We’d better find him before he gets himself killed and we get blamed for it.”

  “I’m going into town,” Ho said mulishly, thinking again about his terrible trouble that had to stay a secret—at any price—if there was going to be any more ho, ho, hoing in Stump County.

  Larry Joe came to the dinette and slumped down beside Jim Bob. “What do they do to kidnappers?”

  “We didn’t kidnap him,” Jim Bob said in a pained voice. “We delayed him, and you’d better get that straight. It’s not like we killed somebody, for God’s sake.”

  The four men looked at each other, silent.

  9

  Raz Buchanon was in the middle of the front room when I returned to the PD to check in. I decided it would be prudent to leave the door ajar for the next few minutes. He was just standing there, his hands in his pockets and his face crinkled up like a bloodhound that had lost the scent.

  “I found my bitch,” he said.

  “Congratulations.” I took a quick peek in the back room, but Sergeant Plover was not at the table. I concluded he might have found the need to exit when Raz’s aroma drifted through the doorway. He could have left a note. Common courtesy to keep certain people informed about the investigation. I sat down behind my desk and vowed not to breathe. “That’s great news about your dog, Raz. You must be feeling easier now that she’s back.”