The Arly Hanks Mysteries Volume One Page 14

  A door slammed open. A woman came into the room, but it wasn’t Dawn Alice. Not by a long shot. This woman was about the same age but also the bustiest thing he’d ever seen, her jugs braless and poking out through a ragged plaid shirt that was about three sizes too small and minus several pertinent buttons. Big ripe nipples looked back at him through the paper-thin fabric. She wore dirty, khaki trousers tied up with a piece of rope, and her feet were bare despite the cold. Her face was round, set in an expression that came straight from the primeval jungle. From underneath a simian brow unblinking yellow eyes judged him. Black, oily hair hung down her back to her waist in a bizarre waterfall of leaves, twigs, and fist-sized snarls that looked like they were made of barbed wire. Everything about her was filthy, and he could actually smell her sourness over his own prominent aroma.

  All in all, she was the wildest apparition he’d ever seen.

  She curled a lip at him, showing two rows of sparse brown fangs. “I be Robin Buchanon,” she said in a low voice that was somewhere between a growl and a purr.

  Whichever it was, it scared the shit out of Robert Drake.

  Hobert drove into the Pot O’Gold, a canvas hat pulled down over his ears and sunglasses settled firmly on his nose so no one would recognize him. He’d almost taken the Caddie, but he realized it was too visible, too well-known all over Stump County. He’d settled for a nondescript used car. The sunglasses were sheer inspiration, borrowed at the last minute from his secretary. They had turquoise frames with embedded rhinestones, but Ho figured they were better than nothing. Hazelette had been less than delighted to loan them out and made him swear to bring them back.

  The money was in a brown paper bag on the seat next to him. Seven hundred dollars—all the cash he could put together without raising suspicion. Not enough, but maybe green and lovely enough to get the animal off his back and away from Maggody. Permanently. If it wasn’t enough, he’d have to think of something else.

  The Pot O’Gold was quiet, populated only by a group of children at play in a drainage ditch and a few mangy dogs sniffing around the rows of garbage cans. Despite the crisp autumn air, Ho was sweating copiously, forced to use his handkerchief every few seconds to blot his forehead or wipe the back of his neck. He thought he’d have a little more sympathy for the Christians the next time the preacher started harping on the Romans and their recreations. Carl shared a common ancestry with slabbering lions.

  There was a police car parked in front of the mobile home next to the back fence. Ho braked at a cautious distance and stared, unable to understand the unexpected wrinkle. Had Carl been nabbed in the hideout? Would he subsequently blab everything just to stir up trouble? Was there anything to do about it, to save the damp skin of the best-known car dealer in the county?

  The children skipped up to the car window and asked for money to buy candy. Ho snarled at them to beat it, and then sank back in the plastic upholstery to come up with an idea. The children waited on the far side of the ditch, enchanted by the visitor whose face had more colors than a watercolor set.

  Dawn Alice put the pitcher of martinis on the glass-and-chrome coffee table, which was centered on a plush white rug in front of a massive white sofa with dozens of brightly striped cushions arranged for the most festive look. She tugged at the strap of her negligee, pretending her shoulder had an itch that couldn’t be resisted. It wasn’t her shoulder that was itching, however, she told herself with a lazy smile.

  Her hair looked immaculate, all soft and golden from a session at the beauty salon. Her toenails were pink, her fingernails scarlet and shiny, as if they were permanently wet. The negligee was her favorite color, a deep coral that gave her complexion a touch of blushing pink, and her slippers straight from Cinderella’s closet, although they’d cost her quite a bit more. All in all, she matched the decor of the bedroom, which was the whole idea.

  She moved the pitcher an inch to the left and stepped back to assess the scene. Tiny quiches and darling little cheese biscuits topped with pecan halves, because men liked something substantial to eat. A bowl of fruit, the grapes artfully arranged to look the most tempting (Dawn Alice had wet dreams about peeled grapes). Two chilled glasses. Candles all around the room, prepared to be lit at the perfect moment. It all looked quite nice, casual yet elegant. Exactly how she saw herself, even when she was galloping around the tennis court or doing the obligatory stint in the sauna to open her pores.

  The only thing missing was a crackling fire in the gray stone fireplace. Dawn Alice lifted her demure chin and gazed through the doorway that led to the kitchen.

  “Roseanna!” she roared. “Get off your butt and make a fire in here!”

  An elderly Mexican woman scurried into the living room, a dish towel clutched in her reddened hands. “Yes, Miss Dawn Alice.”

  Dawn Alice draped herself on one end of the sofa as she watched the servant put several logs in the fireplace. There was something about a fire that heated things up, she thought smugly, imagining the fire she intended to ignite later that night.

  “Is there any word on Mr. Drake?” Roseanna asked timidly, on her knees in front of the fireplace.

  Dawn Alice chewed on her lower lip as she tried to remember. “Yeah, somebody or other called earlier today. A cop from Little Rock called Mr. Drake’s office, and they called me. They’re still looking, and they have an idea where my husband is being held captive. I swear, this kidnapping is giving me migraines day and night, and I’m so sick of all those fucking telephone calls that I’m about to curl up and die. I can’t believe the son of a bitch is putting me through this ordeal.”

  “Very sad, Miss Dawn Alice. Will there be anything else?”

  “Put some of the canapes on a tray in the kitchen, then you and the other girls can take the night off. Go see one of those Mexican-speaking movies or eat some tamales with your amigos. Get yourselves laid by a Chicano stud, as long as you don’t bring any lice or diseases back with you.”

  “Thank you, Miss Dawn Alice.”

  Feeling regally munificent, Dawn Alice dismissed the maid with a flip of her wrist and snuggled down among the pillows to wait. Maybe they’d work on the forearm grip tonight, although she still had trouble with her backhand grip. Ricco did seem to enjoy helping her perfect the placement of her fingers.

  “Jacks to open, trips to win,” Larry Joe announced. He pushed a chip to the middle of the table. “Progressive ante.”

  “How many jacks to open what?” I asked, maybe sounding a tad irritable. It wasn’t going exactly as I’d planned. My stacks of chips (yes, I’d bought some more) were dwindling at an alarming rate, and I hadn’t won a pot in a long time.

  The intricacies of the new game were explained, although it seemed silly to me. We pushed chips into the pot, drew cards, pushed in some more chips, got more cards, and basically continued in that vein for about five minutes. Eventually we watched Roy take all the chips. He had a lot more chips in front of him, most of them mine. Plover was doing all right, and looking pleased with himself. Larry Joe wasn’t bitching either.

  It was my deal. I anted a chip, then shuffled the cards and beamed. “We’re going to play my favorite game. Basically, it’s a seven-card stud game, but with a few additions to make it more fun. That okay with everyone?” After a moment of silence, I continued. “Now threes are wild, and so are fours—but only if you pay a nickel. If the queen of spades shows up, everyone passes two cards to the left, and nines cost a dime. Well, let’s make nines cost a quarter.” I noticed they were looking a bit confused as I listed the rest of the rules, but hell—I’d been playing their stupid games.

  Plover gave me a grin. “This one of the dorm games?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  He tipped back his chair and half-closed his eyes as the grin spread. “Just a wild guess, Chief.”

  “As long as we’re not on duty you can call me Arly,” I said sweetly, wondering if
he would return the favor.

  “My pleasure,” murmured the Nameless Wonder. “Want another beer—Arly?”

  Roy flapped his hand at me. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight. If I pay a quarter, then my nines are wild? Are my fours still wild, too?”

  “If I get the queen of spades, do I choose which cards to pass?” Larry Joe asked, visibly bewildered.

  “You’ll catch on,” I said with a sigh.

  Carl yanked the curtain back so roughly that it ripped. Behind him on the sofa, one of the women gasped, but he kept his eyes on the road. No Cadillac coming between the mobile homes, no delivery boy trotting up the walk with a package for Carl Withers.

  “I’m a going to rip that turkey’s tail feathers off,” he said in a low growl.

  “You’re expecting a turkey?” Estelle said in a voice damn snippy for someone in a rather awkward situation. “Why don’t we call Boullerangelo’s Wholesale Poultry Parts over in Starley City and see if they have any extras.” She dabbed her forehead with a tissue she’d discovered earlier between the cushions. It was a treasure, since there weren’t any boxes of tissue in the bathroom or bedroom. “Paulie will be right pleased to pick it up for you.”

  The deputy nodded disjointedly. “Sure, Carl, glad to do an errand for you. I could be back in, say, thirty minutes—”

  “Shut up afore I cut out your tongue and make you eat it.” God, they kept babbling at him so much he couldn’t keep a thought in his head. And it was real critical to figure out what to do. He couldn’t hang around the Pot O’Gold much longer, not with the state police and the sheriff’s boys all beating the bushes for him. He was going to have to hole up somewhere else, he decided as he jerked off the rest of the tattered curtain and dropped it on the floor to grind under his heel.

  But what to do with Wynken, Blynken, and Nod? He could snuff them, and if he used the knife, real quietly, but he realized that would only get everybody more riled up and eager to get him. It might be smart to have a hostage, maybe even three, so that he could dispose of them along the way to underline his demands.

  A haven came to mind, a place so remote no one would ever think to search for him there. Hell, the government men had never found the place after six years of searching for it. Only the old Maggody boys knew how to find it on Saturday night when it was too late to buy beer at the Kwik-Screw or make a run to the county line, or when they were so ornery and drunk none of the sluts in the pool hall would take them. And the Maggody boys didn’t talk to the revenuers, except with broken beer bottles and upraised pool cues. Splitting heads and kicking ass.

  Carl smiled, remembering the good old days before he’d taken the rap. He then turned around and showed his teeth to his hostages. “We’re going to take a ride, assholes. I accidentally went and left my limousine at the prison, so I guess we’d better take the police car. If’n you’re real good, maybe we can turn on the siren and bubble, and all play policeman once we get out of town. Won’t that be fun?” He twirled a finger and made a whining noise, but somehow it didn’t sound like all that much fun to the three on the sofa.

  “Royal flush,” Plover said, spreading his cards.

  “Read ’em and weep,” I said, doing the same. “I’ve got seven aces.” I scooped up the mountain of chips and started putting them in neat little stacks of red, white, and blue, just like the American flag. Poker was turning out to be fun, once we played games that required imagination. I’d have to suffer through the dull ones until it was my deal again, but I was sure I could remember some of the other games from the late-night sessions in the dorm. There was one that required the first person to get a jack to yell out something; I was sure it’d come to me in the next few minutes …

  Plover opened his mouth. Then, sighing faintly, he closed it.

  “Adultery is wicked,” Mrs. Jim Bob said for the hundredth time, or so it seemed to Jim Bob as he woodenly listened to the inspired words of the saintly Reverend Willard Verber, as quoted by his wife. “The Good Book doesn’t mince words on it—it says, ‘Thou shall not commit adultery.’ Brother Verber said last Sunday morning, from the pulpit, that adulterers were going to hell on an express train with no stops along the track of eternal damnation. I thought you were listening, Jim Bob Buchanon, listening and feeling righteous when you joined in the hymns of praise and the prayers.”

  She kept on gabbing, but he closed her off and tried to decide what to do about the godawful mess he and the town council were in, about waist level and rising. Fiff, the traitorous bastard, would have a reservation on Verber’s express train right up front in the locomotive, if Jim Bob had any influence in that matter.

  Not that he figured he did.

  He wondered if Larry Joe and Roy had found Drake and put him in the back room of the trailer. Drake would probably be grateful to be rescued from the woods, and maybe, if they could jolly him up with a jar or two of hooch and a little pussy, he might agree to say he hadn’t been kidnapped at all, that he’d decided of his own free will to stay at the Flamingo and later go to the deer camp for a couple of nights of poker. If they got him real drunk, he might even sign something to that effect. Jim Bob brightened, then caught his wife’s glare, and resumed a penitent expression.

  “Just thinking of the wisdom the good Brother Verber shares with us,” he murmured, wiggling down in the chair and shaking his head to show he was beginning to feel the depth of his sinful ways.

  Mrs. Jim Bob took a breath and went on, while he returned to his plan. Not an especially good one, he admitted to himself, but better than anything the other conspirators could come up with. He’d have to remind them a lot that they were in it with him, that all four of them would share the blame if they were arrested.

  He knew where to get hooch strong enough to flatten a mountain cat. It wasn’t cheap, but it had a mighty fine way of burning holes in your gullet all the way down and landing like a lump of napalm. It hadn’t killed anybody in more than a year, that he’d heard about. As for the pussy, it went with the hooch. It was cheap, due to the filth and stink you had to fight with all the way. You had to do some other fighting, too, which Jim Bob usually enjoyed, although afterward he tried not to dwell on too much. There was something strange about Robin Buchanon. It wasn’t anything he could put his thumb on, but whatever it was kind of scared him.

  “And with a common barmaid!” Mrs. Jim Bob sputtered. “That makes it all the worse. Jaylee Withers was married, too, as you full well know, and should have stayed loyal even while her cur of a husband was in prison. The Good Book says women ought to wait for their men, and follow them just like Ruth did. Brother Verber doesn’t take any truck in women that want to get married but then refuse to say the vows where it makes them promise to love, honor, and obey. What you did with her was triple adultery, Jim Bob Buchanon!” She shook a finger at him (three times, he noted), sucked in another lungful of pious air, and started in again.

  He considered Jaylee’s untimely death. She deserved it, the scheming little bitch that she was. He’d been enjoying her favors for a long time, giving her bits of costume jewelry or candy when he felt like it or even taking her into Farberville to eat in fancy restaurants where they brought the food to the table and left the bill on a damn fool little tray. She’d adored it, and he’d appreciated her gratitude afterward, sometimes while they drove back to Maggody. It sure had shortened the drive.

  But the dumb bitch had gotten herself knocked up, as if she were some junior high school girl who believed in divine intervention. Imagine telling him that birth control pills were dangerous, and dropping the information after it was a damn sight too late. She didn’t want an abortion, she’d simpered while she was packing. Brother Verber said abortion was a sin, and she wasn’t about to incur the everlasting fires of hell when she didn’t have to. All Jim Bob had to do was give her enough money to have the baby, pay a sitter while she went to the cosmetology school, and pay child support for t
he next eighteen years. That was all. No sweat for the rich owner of the Kwik-Screw.

  He was getting angrier the more he thought about it. He hadn’t paid, of course, and had laughed real loud as he left her mobile home, making sure she realized he wouldn’t fall for her blackmail scheme. He’d told her to tell it all—hell, put it on the front page of the weekly newspaper right next to the obits. He’d also threatened to kill her, but she deserved it and he didn’t think anybody could have heard him. Might be uncomfortable if they did, considering what happened that same night. His face was heating up when the door opened.

  Mrs. Jim Bob stopped in midword and smiled at the visitor. “Thank you so much for coming, Brother Verber. As I suspected, Jim Bob’s soul is in peril from the wicked path he’s been on, and I wanted you to help us in our hour of need.” She turned beady eyes on Jim Bob, who had slid a good six inches further down in his chair. “Aren’t we lucky Brother Verber has come to pray with us?” It wasn’t exactly a question.

  Jim Bob managed a nod. “Real lucky. I could feel my soul on the edge of the pit, Brother Verber.”

  “Then let us kneel together right here on the floor and pray for guidance,” Brother Verber intoned through his nose, smiling benevolently at the sinner. He could see that Satan was present, hovering in the dark corners of the room and licking his chops at the poor soul on the edge of the pit. They were going to have to roll up their sleeves and wrestle with the devil. Brother Verber was inspired by the possibilities, and he felt a good, old-fashioned, knee-breaking prayer coming on.