Much Ado in Maggody Read online

  “Which is why Johnna Mae’s salary was so important,” Truda said in a sharp voice.

  Mrs. Jim Bob overlooked it out of consideration for Truda in her humiliation. “Important so she could steal honest people’s money from the bank. What’s going to happen to her?”

  “Elsie called earlier to say she’d seen Johnna Mae in Arly’s car and that they were driving toward Farberville.”

  “To lock her up where she belongs,” Mrs. Jim Bob said smugly. “Well, we should all be pleased that this whole sordid ordeal is over. Johnna Mae most likely killed Brandon and burned up the bank to cover her theft. She’s not going to fret over her salary for a long time. That wicked outside agitator can take herself back to Little Rock, where all the women are uppity lawyers who have no idea how to conduct themselves like proper ladies. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear they run around in trousers, smoke cigars, and swear like sailors. And as for those loud-mouthed demonstrators—present company excluded, of course, since you’re one of my dearest friends—they’ve had their comeuppance and are all home in the bosom of their families where they rightly belong, fixing supper for their husbands and making sure their children are brought up to attend Sunday school and mind their manners around their elders.”

  Truda gazed at Mrs. Jim Bob, but she was mentally revising her strudel recipe to include a heaping teaspoon of rat poison. “I suppose so,” she said at last. “There will be all sorts of headaches for Sherman down the road. He said there’s been no decision about the branch. The building is destroyed. They may want to bring in a trailer, or they may just close the branch. If they do close it, we may retire down in Florida somewhere. Sherman knows some real estate folks who claim property values are real solid.”

  “How nice for you,” Mrs. Jim Bob said, thinking how the strudel needed a tad more cinnamon and a lighter touch with the dough. “If and when the time comes, do let me know and I’ll have a farewell luncheon for you. I’m sure all the members of the missionary society will have forgotten all about this incident and will be more than delighted to attend.”

  Truda wondered what a cup of rat poison might do to the strudel.

  The Closed sign was still on the door of Ruby Bee’s Bar and Grill, much to everyone’s disgust. It had been nearly a week now, and the frito pies at the Dairee Dee-Lishus were hardly any competition for a piping hot blue plate special, which included not only a roll and two vegetable choices but also dessert. Even Jim Bob was getting tired of microwaving burritos from the Kwik-Screw, and he scowled as he drove toward Starley City and the titillating promise of a romp with Cherri Lucinda, his itty bitty titty kitty, as he was fond of calling her when she consented to one of his more imaginative ideas and then didn’t cry afterward.

  Inside Ruby Bee’s, Estelle and Ruby Bee herself were slumped at the bar, both praying they’d hear the telephone ring and Dahlia’s voice announcing she’d found Kevin. Dahlia had packed a hefty bag of provisions, having decided for some reason that Kevin was apt to be lost in the national forest along Boone Creek. Hours earlier she’d put together the final bologna sandwich, slung the bag—a plastic garbage bag, to be precise—over her shoulder, and vowed to beat the bushes until she found her Kevin and snatched him from the jaws of a bear or waded out into the creek to snatch him from the jaws of a gar or whatever. She’d refused the halfhearted offers of company and thudded proudly out the door and into the waiting arms of Mother Nature.

  When the door opened, Ruby Bee turned around to bark something at being closed but stopped as she caught sight of a young blond girl carrying two suitcases and a stack of folders and holding a collection of irregularly sized envelopes between her teeth. A streak of grease ran across one cheek like a dueling scar. She dropped the suitcases, put the folders on a table, and took the envelopes from her mouth.

  “I’m Staci Ellen Quittle and I’m looking for Carolyn McCoy-Grunders,” she said in a squeaky, breathless voice. “I’m her secretary from the Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office office. I was supposed to be here earlier, but I had a flat tire.”

  The girl looked so worried that Ruby Bee couldn’t help but give her a maternal smile. “Carolyn’s in number two out back, freshening up. Why don’t you wait here and have a nice glass of iced tea?”

  “Thanks,” Staci Ellen said gratefully. “I never changed a flat tire by myself before. I must’ve read the manual ten times before I figured out how the jack worked, and I like to never get those bolts loose.”

  Estelle raised a well-drawn eyebrow. “But you’re such a delicate little thing. I’m surprised a truck driver didn’t stop to change the tire for you.”

  “A whole bunch of them stopped and offered to do it, but I told them I could do it all by myself, thank you.” Staci Ellen scratched at the greasy smear on her cheek, then stared at her finger. “Wow, I must look awful. I don’t know what my boyfriend would say if he saw me now.”

  Ruby Bee eyed the stack of folders threatening to slide off the table. “Carolyn must be planning to do some work.”

  “Oh, yes, she said there was a problem up here that might require her and me to stay for several days. She didn’t tell me what exactly, so I grabbed all the folders on her desk and brought them along, just in case. The one involving the Maggody resident is on top.”

  The three women looked back in time to see the folders slither to the floor. Staci Ellen gasped. She jumped off the barstool and ran across the room to start gathering them up. “Ms. McCoy-Grunders is going to be furious with me. I just know it. She doesn’t think I’ve got a brain in my head. Now all the folders are mixed up and she’ll start yelling at me.”

  Estelle and Ruby Bee went to the rescue. Pretty soon they had the folders fanned across the table and were putting all the loose papers in the appropriate places.

  Ruby Bee nudged Estelle. “Look at this. This is Johnna Mae’s letter to the WAACO office, stating how she was discriminated against for taking maternity leave.”

  “That’s supposed to be confidential,” Staci Ellen said with a nervous gulp. “No one is allowed to read the contents of the folder.”

  “We can’t sort them if we don’t look at them,” Ruby Bee said. She placed her finger midway down the page and said, “Right here where it says how Johnna Mae was demoted and then fired, someone underlined Brandon Bernswallow’s name in red ink. What do you think that means?”

  Estelle made a clucking noise as she peered at the page. “It’s on the peculiar side. There aren’t any other names underlined on any of the other papers. I don’t see why Johnna Mae would have done it. She probably doesn’t even have a pen that writes red ink.”

  “This is confidential,” Staci Ellen said, shooting increasingly frantic glances at the door. “Ms. McCoy-Grunders will flat out fire me if she catches you reading that. She’ll say it was all my fault.”

  “It’s not a bit your fault,” Ruby Bee said as she put the page inside its folder. She and Estelle kept exchanging looks the whole time it took to sort through the remaining papers and get the folders all nice and tidy.

  When they’d finished and Staci Ellen had returned to her iced tea, Ruby Bee pulled Estelle into the kitchen and closed the door. “I think we’ve got something here, but I ain’t real sure what. I’d hazard a guess that Carolyn knows something about that Bernswallow fellow.”

  “She didn’t mention anything.”

  “I realize that. That’s what’s making me suspicious.”

  “What do you aim to do about it?” Estelle asked, screwing up her face like something itched that she couldn’t reach. “Are you gonna tell Arly?”

  “I guess I ought to, but then she’ll say something to Carolyn and Carolyn will bawl out that sweet little Staci Ellen and fire her. I’d feel terrible if I was responsible for that.” Ruby Bee considered how terrible she’d feel if that would be the case and decided she couldn’t do such a thing just yet. “We can’t say anything to Arly until we find a way to do so without getting the girl fired. Maybe we could sort
of hint around with Carolyn and see if she’ll drop something we can repeat to Arly.”

  “Like how she knew him from before and just forgot?”

  “It’d be real handy if she did,” Ruby Bee said, sighing. Arly could turn real petulant when she got the fool notion in her head that certain people weren’t candid with her, that certain people might just take a civic interest in assisting in minor elements of the investigation to make sure justice was done. Arly didn’t even care if the certain people provided valuable information in the end. Her voice still got icier than a widow woman’s bed in December. Ruby Bee knew this much from personal experience.

  Estelle seemed to read her mind like it was the yellow pages. “You know perfectly well that Arly ain’t going to like it.”

  “Arly ain’t going to find out about it. This is going to be strictly between you, me, and the kitchen sink. Staci Ellen sure isn’t going to say anything and lose her job. For once Arly’s not going to get all hot and bothered because we didn’t pass along a minor little doodad that most likely doesn’t mean a thing. If and when we decide we need to tell her, we’ll think of a way.”

  “I think,” Estelle said pensively, “that this is what they mean on television when they talk about being in the fast lane, where you risk life and limb every inch of the way. And you, Rubella Belinda Hanks, don’t even have a driver’s license.”

  “I know that.” With a snort, Ruby Bee went back to the bar to see if Staci Ellen wanted a fresh piece of lemon in her tea.

  After I’d done the paperwork and abandoned Johnna Mae to the care of the county jail, I drove to the main bank on the square. A security guard directed me to the basement, where I found all sorts of harried people bent over old-fashioned ledgers and new-fangled computers. The head bookkeeper, Mrs. Gadwall, seemed on the greenish side as she admitted they’d uncovered well over two thousand dollars of bogus loans thus far and still had seven months’ worth of records to go. A full-scale internal audit would begin over the weekend, and the federal bank examiners would descend thereafter. She sounded as if she planned to report to work Monday morning in battle fatigues and a helmet.

  Sherman Oliver came out of an office and joined us. “This is a sorry mess, Chief Hanks. I trusted Johnna Mae Nookim to handle the day-to-day operations at the branch. I never thought for a moment that she would embezzle money from the very institution that considered her part of the family. Why, if she’d come to me and explained how desperate she was, I would have done everything in my power to help her. Now she’s got herself in a deep well and there’s not a ladder long enough to rescue her.”

  “I’ve booked her at the county jail. The county prosecutor will call you in a day or so for a formal statement. Our investigation will continue, of course, until we find out who murdered Bernswallow and set the fire.”

  “Then there’s no way the death and the fire could have been accidental?”

  “It doesn’t look that way,” I said. “The evidence has been sent to the state crime lab, and the body to the same place for an autopsy. Until we learn otherwise, we’re operating under the assumption it was murder.”

  He closed his eyes and groaned softly. “But you’re not sure?”

  “No, we’re not sure. But as long as I’m here, I’d like to ask you a few questions about yesterday evening and last night. Is there someplace we can speak?”

  “My office is there.” He led the way to a unadorned box with cracks in the walls and a mildewed blotch on the ceiling above his desk. “When I was a veep, I had walnut paneling and potted plants. Now that I do nothing but portfolio work, they’ve assigned me to the bowels of the building. No need to present any amenities to the public, you see.”

  I nodded and asked him when he’d left the branch the previous evening. He said he’d departed first, which confirmed what Miss Una had told me. I then asked him if he’d spoken to Brandon on his way out.

  “Yes,” he admitted, “we discussed which of us ought to call Bernswallow Senior and other board members to warn them of what would appear on the six o’clock news. Brandon said he felt he could convey the situation more delicately, and I concurred with the alacrity of a yellow-bellied coward. Despite the impending unpleasantness, he seemed quite chipper when I left.”

  That fit into my theory that Brandon was planning to blackmail Johnna Mae at some later hour. I was about to ask him if he’d had any hint that Brandon knew of the bogus loans when the telephone rang.

  Oliver flinched as if it had tried to bite him. “Sorry about this. I told the receptionist upstairs to hold all my calls, but she rarely pays attention to my orders.” The telephone continued to ring. He finally picked up the receiver, gave me an apologetic shrug, and said, “Yes?”

  While he listened, I glanced around at the unattractive decor, which consisted of clippings and reprints of financial charts, a worn map of Arkansas, and a faded diploma that informed all perusers that Sherman Oliver was a graduate in good standing of a private college in Conway.

  “I told you to cancel the order!” he snapped, regaining my attention. He caught my look and lowered his voice. “The damn examiners will be here by the first of the week. The one thing I don’t need is this flimsy thing in the portfolio. Cancel it, and keep trying to unload what we talked about earlier. Call me at home.”

  He replaced the receiver. “Just one of those pesky bond peddlers. I deal with them all the time, but they’re still annoying. They lose all perspective when they’re on commission.”

  “Tell me about a bank’s portfolio,” I said. “I’ve never understood what a bank does with all that lovely money.”

  “It’s very, very complex, and not especially intriguing. The banks keeps a reserve to cover all activities in all accounts, then utilizes any additional assets to invest in a variety of bonds in order to earn a profit for its stockholders. I select the bonds on the basis of maintaining a diverse yet conservatively profitable portfolio. I’m sure you find this tedious and confusing, my dear. Do you have any further questions about last night?”

  “What did you do after you said good-bye and left the building?”

  “I stopped at the edge of the parking lot to have a word with my wife. I was very upset about her decision to participate in the demonstration, and told her as much. We have been married for thirty years, however, and have always had the greatest respect for each other. When I realized I could not dissuade her from her chosen course of action, I wished her a comfortable night on her army cot and went home.”

  “Did you go out after that, or have any telephone calls?”

  “I closed the draperies, took the telephone off the hook, locked the den door, and poured myself the first of what was to be a series of very stiff drinks. If someone came by and rang the doorbell, I was unaware of it. I was deeply upset by the events of the afternoon and evening, and I was hardly in the mood for company. I was sound asleep when Truda came home to tell me about the fire.”

  “You had no inkling until today that Johnna Mae was embezzling small sums from the branch?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “And you have no idea whether Bernswallow or Miss Una might have suspected as much?”

  “No.” He made a production of checking his watch, then stood up. “I have a meeting with the board of directors in five minutes. They are as interested as you in what has transpired at the branch. I’m sure they would appreciate promptness on my part.”

  Despite his pomposity, I felt a twinge of sympathy for him. I thanked him and went to the main room to find Mrs. Gadwall. She agreed to send all the final reports to the sheriff’s office, as well as the findings of the auditors and federal bank examiners.

  I thanked her, then left the bank and went to the state police barracks for something. Congratulations, sympathy, praise, a beer. Anything.

  “Kevvvin,” Dahlia bleated as she put her foot right on a cow patty, and a moist one at that. Sweat was more than streaming down her back; it was bouncing and cascading like that Niagara Fall
s place where honeymooners went. If’n she didn’t find Kevin, she wasn’t ever gonna have a honeymoon, she thought while she scraped her shoe on a rotten log. The bag was getting mighty uncomfortable, and the plastic against her back was making her even hotter.

  She lowered herself gingerly onto the far end of the log. It creaked, but it didn’t break, so she wiggled around until the bark stopped poking her rear too much, opened the bag, and took out a bologna sandwich. Ever mindful of her mission, she bleated Kevin’s name one more time before stuffing half the sandwich into her cavernous mouth.

  As she ruminated, she tried to think why Kevin wasn’t answering her. She was pretty sure he was in the woods somewhere in these parts, because she had a real firm vision of him stumbling out the back of the bank, blinded by the smoke, and stumbling across the road into the woods behind the old feed store. Originally she’d envisioned that he’d stumbled across the highway to the national forest, but after some pondering, realized that someone would have seen him stumbling thataway and therefore he’d been obliged to stumble thisaway, across the county road alongside the bank.

  Besides, everybody knew the national forest was about a thousand acres of thorns, scrub brush, prickly pines, snakes, chiggers, ticks, and who knows whatall. This side was more like twenty acres and backed on the pasture that eventually sloped to the subdivision with the cute cul-de-sacs. While she worked on a second sandwich, Dahlia assured herself that Kevin would have preferred to stumble around in twenty acres.

  It seemed more sensible to sit and bleat than to get scraped by branches and risk twisting an ankle on a root. If both of them kept moving, why, they could miss each other for days and not even know it.