The Arly Hanks Mysteries Volume One Page 16

  “You skipped somebody,” Plover said quietly. “When a husband indulges in an illicit affair, there’s another party involved.”

  “Mrs. Jim Bob?” I said, thinking he’d lost his mind.

  Plover shifted his eyes across the table. “Or Joyce Lambertino.”

  Larry Joe began to cough and sputter protests, his jerky hands sending chips everywhere in a plastic clatter. Roy muttered something about the call of nature and hurried outside. I sat back to stare.

  Brother Verber sank to his knees outside the locked door of the men’s room. “I know you’re feeling mighty blue right now, Brother Jim Bob,” he said loudly. “You’re in there because you want to be alone while you ponder the evil things you’ve done. I’m going to let you stay there inside them four cold walls, but I want you to know I’m here with you as your spiritual coach.”

  Mrs. Jim Bob wasn’t convinced, but she didn’t want to contradict Brother Verber or do anything to spoil his tempo. Tightening her lips, she knelt behind the rump of the reverend and clasped her hands together. “I’m here, too,” she said loud enough to be heard in the laundromat next door. “You’d better be in there, Jim Bob Buchanon, on your knees and ready for redemption.”

  Brother Verber took off like a 747 aimed for Europe, his voice full of melodious, booming threats that would scare the horns off Satan, if he was listening.

  Mrs. Jim Bob relaxed as the voice washed over her. She decided she’d done the right thing, after all, although it had sorely tried her soul. The Withers woman had been a slut; Brother Verber had readily agreed when she’d first told him of Jim Bob’s sinfulness several months ago. Sluts didn’t deserve any pity or forgiveness, even if they attended church every Sunday and Wednesday and taught Sunday school as if they were righteous, God-fearing Christian housewives. Sluts deserved whatever they got. Mrs. Jim Bob figured God knew that, too. She clasped her hands a little more tightly and silently threw in a good word for herself, just in case God had missed any of the explanation.

  “Amen,” she whispered to Brother Verber’s rump.

  Roy came back in, zipping up his pants. “Your radio’s crackling like it was on fire,” he told Plover.

  He looked at me as he scrambled to his feet. “Maybe they found something in the woods. You want to come listen, too?”

  We all four hustled outside and gathered around the jeep. Larry Joe was still rattled, but I didn’t have much sympathy for him since I’d learned he was visiting Jaylee after he mopped the high school. Would have been nice if somebody had thought to tell me before. He denied having stopped by after he left home the previous night, but we weren’t buying.

  Plover did some knob-twisting and barking into the microphone. Through the static the dispatcher said that one of the posse members had stumbled onto a cabin in the woods that seemed right suspicious. Not too far from where we were, but not on their map. Something unclear about a shotgun and some resulting injury to the posse member’s backside. We all sucked in some air and waited through another blizzard of static, but the voice faded.

  I hit my fist into my hand. “Good Lord, Sergeant Plover, don’t you know how to operate a simple radio?” I took the survey map out of the jeep and hurried inside to see if I could figure out where the cabin might be located.

  The others joined me, one of them looking miffed. I traced several of the lines that zigzagged through the mountains, trying to guess which one passed a cabin I’d never heard of. At last I jabbed my finger down. “This road, maybe. But who the hell lives out in the middle of nowhere and would be likely to put a load of buckshot in a stranger’s rear end?” It took me all of two seconds to come up with the answer.

  Roy, Larry Joe, and I exchanged looks. “Robin Buchanon,” we mouthed in unison, unconsciously whispering out of some innate awe at the very name.

  “Who’s that?” Plover demanded. “Would Drake take sanctuary with her? Can we drive to her cabin without going all the way back to the highway?”

  After studying the map, I found a road that ran across the top of the ridge. We put on our coats and went to the jeep. Plover was still asking questions about Robin Buchanon, but nobody could find the precise words to describe her.

  13

  Ruby Bee stared at the radio, too frightened to touch it but wishing it would do something again, if only to give her a false sense of security. She went so far as to lift her hand, but a growl from the backseat stopped her.

  “Who you want to talk to, old lady?” Carl grunted.

  “I was aiming to scratch my nose,” she said haughtily. “But if it makes you nervous, I’ll just let it itch.”

  “Right jumpy, ain’t you?” Estelle added.

  “Maybe you two broads would like to find out how itchy my trigger finger is,” Carl said. He waved the gun under the redhead’s nose, but he didn’t have much heart in it. The car bounced along like a drop of water on a hot skillet, and his ankle hurt real bad. He hadn’t decided what he was going to do with his hostages once they got to Robin’s cabin or what he was going to do with himself, either. Robin was good for a jar of hooch, a mess of chitterlings, and an imaginative screw, but what then?

  “There’s a road up ahead,” Paulie said through clenched teeth. “Am I supposed to turn?”

  Carl scratched his crotch with the gun while he tried to remember. It seemed to help. “Yeah, asshole, turn there. It’s about two, three miles that way, I think.”

  “I demand to know where you’re taking us.”

  The redhead, of course. God, his ears was tired of her bitching and complaining. If he had to snuff a hostage, she was going to get the first bullet, about an inch above her ear. He gave her a warning growl and draped over the top of the front seat to make sure the asshole turned the right way.

  “Switch on the radio again,” he ordered the other broad. “See if we can hear what the sheriff’s got in mind. I think I’m going to get myself one of these things so I can listen to the fuzz-boys when they talk to each other. Come in right handy when you’ve a mind to avoid them.”

  Ruby Bee peeked at Paulie, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. A nerve jumped on his jaw, the only sign of life on his otherwise icy face. He didn’t look like he was going to show her which button to twist anytime soon. The last time she’d fiddled with the knobs in response to the terse demands coming out of the box, she’d felt the shadow of death breathing over her shoulder. Sighing, she chose the closest one.

  “Officer Buchanon, are you there? Can you hear me?”

  “That’s Arly!” Ruby Bee shrieked. “Did you hear that, Estelle? Arly’s on the radio trying to find Paulie! Hey, Paulie, why don’t you answer her and tell her what’s happening?”

  A gun barrel tapped her on the cheek. “I ain’t sure that’s a smart idea,” Carl said, swearing under his breath. Amateurs! “This Arly might decide to tell the sheriff where we was, and I wouldn’t be real pleased if’n that happened. I know you broads don’t understand right well, but I am what’s called an escaped convict.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have broken the law in the first place,” Estelle said. “Law-abiding citizens don’t go to prison, and they therefore don’t find theirselves obliged to escape from it.”

  Carl toyed with the idea of shooting off the tip of her nose, but he doubted that would shut her up. He settled for a backhand across her face, which produced a muffled snort of outrage. “You don’t know the half of it, lady. I didn’t do nothing to get the rap—except make a little deal with a shit-faced wimp too scared to piss in his pants.”

  “You got drunk, stole a car, ran down a child, and subsequently totaled the vehicle,” Paulie muttered. “I remember the case, even though I wasn’t a deputy at the time. You pleaded guilty and tried to bargain yourself out of it, but it was your third DWI in less than a year.”

  The radio crackled once more. “Officer Buchanon, are you there?”

  Car
l ground the barrel into Paulie’s neck, smiling at the red circle it left. “You count real good, Deputy Dawg. Turn off that goddamn radio before I let you count your brains on the windshield, and you other two just shut your traps and give a man some peace and quiet.” He twisted the barrel once more for good measure.

  The radio was turned off. The car bounced along the rutted road toward the cabin.

  Hobert turned on the poor excuse for a road, wondering where the hell they were going. Cotton’s Ridge lay a mile or so to the west, but there wasn’t anything in the direction they went, unless you liked to look at scrub oaks and stunted fir trees. He slowed down to a crawl and frowned at the woods that closed in on both sides like tattered curtains. It was getting late in the afternoon, and a mite dark. Colder, too, and the heater didn’t do more than grumble.

  If the car in front turned around for some reason and came back, he was up shit creek without a paddle. If he came to a fork, there wasn’t any way of telling which way to go in order to follow them; he’d just as well flip a coin or spit in the wind. If he inadvertently caught up with them, he might as well kill himself and save Carl the bother. The whole thing was downright stupid. Here he was, the most respected car dealer in the county (Ho, Ho, Ho Middleton for a crackerjack deal on new or used), hot on the trail of an escaped convict, two old ladies, and a cop with a mail-order badge.

  He didn’t even know why.

  He was pondering his stupidity when he hit the rock in the middle of the road. The thump was loud enough to raise the dead and more than adequate to do something godawful to the tire and axle. The car lurched into a tree. After a moment of hesitation, the tree shivered like a virgin in a nightgown and slowly toppled down across the hood of the car with a tremendous boom that seemed to echo on and on.

  Ho knew enough cuss words to avoid repeating himself for the next five minutes. The trees were empty of squirrels and birds when he finally settled down and got out of the car to study the damage. There wasn’t any way he could move the tree, he decided morosely, or even back out from under it. Damn axle was bent anyway, so he sure couldn’t drive home for a slug of bourbon and a handful of tranquilizers. Brother Verber wasn’t likely to step out from behind a rock to pray for a mechanical miracle.

  After a final spray of sunlight, the sun ducked behind the mountaintop, throwing a blanket of gloom across the valley. It was right quiet; not even a jay shrilled displeasure at him from a nearby branch. Ho realized his breathing was the only sound, and it was on the unruly side. He took a few deep breaths to steady himself, then strained to hear the sound of a car in the distance. At last he heard a low moan, sporadic and whiny, way down the side of the mountain.

  He looked at the way he’d come. It was a hell of a long way back to the pavement, and a good ten miles more back to Maggody. In the dark nobody was going to stop for a hitchhiker, not with an escaped convict making the television news every night. He buttoned up his coat, muttered a last unpleasantry at the car, and set off down the road in the direction he’d been going. What the hell.

  As he disappeared around a bend, a child crept out of the brush. Its gender was lost under a filthy mop of shoulder-length black hair and a face lined with dirt, and it wore denim overalls that creaked with each quick movement. The feet were bare, but callused heavily enough to walk across a blackberry patch without taking any notice. Sober yellow eyes peered out from under a distorted brow. There was a sly grin on its face, since this was the first time the plan had ever worked. The others were all the time jeering, saying there was no point in putting a rock in the middle of a road nobody ever came on. They’d said it had commeal mush instead of brains. Five of the total of ten years had been trying to prove otherwise.

  Grunting like a sow in heat, the child rolled the rock back to its rightful position, then turned to smile triumphantly at its first trophy. As it idly scratched its head, the child felt a tremor of indecision about what to do next, since the plan had never been worked out far enough to deal with success. At last the child opened the door and got into the car, prepared to remove anything that came off without too much work. The bag on the seat was impossible to miss. A waterfall of money was dumped on the seat.

  “Hot goddamn motherfuckin’ shit,” the hunter hissed through a gap in its teeth. “The others are gonna be piss-sorry they ever laughed at me, the fuckin’ bastards.”

  But what to do with it? Was it enough to run away and join a gang of murdering pirates? It looked like enough to buy a goddamn pirate ship like in the book (the only one ever seen), but the child had no way of counting it. Money was good to have, she always said, necessary to buy jars or bags of flour and rice. Nobody ever suggested learning to count it. She’d have offered a wallop across the side of the head or a session with a willow switch at the suggestion.

  The money was crammed back in the bag, and the bag stuffed down the front of the overalls until a decision about pirates was reached. The child then climbed onto the top of the car. Opening its mouth, it let out a bloodcurdling screech of victory as two feet smashed down on the roof. There, the others could see the footprints in the deep dent, proving the story was right true.

  The child scuttled back into the brush.

  Ho heard the screech drifting through the darkness behind him. The idea of a twisted ankle didn’t seem so bad, and he quickened his pace.

  “I think we need to turn here,” I said, pointing at a narrow, weedy road that vanished into the woods. I had the map spread out in my lap, but it was getting harder to read in the dusky light, and I sure as hell didn’t want to get us lost.

  Sergeant Plover braked. “Let me see the map, Chief, and see if you can find a flashlight in the glove compartment. I sure as hell don’t want to get us lost.” Maybe his first name was Harry, as in Houdini.

  Larry Joe cleared his throat. “This doesn’t look like it goes anywheres, Arly. Maybe we ought to go back to the deer camp and wait for some information from the sheriff’s office.”

  “Robin doesn’t take kindly to visitors,” Roy added unhappily. “If she’s already shot up one poor fool, she’s liable to shoot the rest of us without even thinking about it, presuming she thinks about anything.”

  “Would you two like to get out right here and walk back?” I said as I dug through the glove compartment. “It’s not more than five miles back, and you ought to be a third of the way there before it gets completely dark and the bears come out. They’re hungry in the fall, but that shouldn’t scare you brave old boys.”

  I found a light. Plover and I studied the map, me pointing to the narrow line. “That’s it,” I said in a voice that sounded a whale of a lot more confident than I felt. “It appears to be less than three miles, as long as we don’t belly out on a log and get caught.”

  “This Buchanon woman actually lives there?” he said. He didn’t sound as if my attempt at confidence had been real successful. “How does she get into town?”

  “She doesn’t,” Roy said from the backseat.

  “What does she do for staples that she can’t grow? And didn’t you say earlier she has children? How do they get to school every day?”

  “Robin Buchanon’s bastards don’t go to school,” Roy said. “They’re as wild a bunch of untamed animals as you’d ever imagine, and the school would prefer not to have them. The school board passed a special resolution saying Robin’s children didn’t have to ever come to school, that she could teach them herself.”

  “She’s educated?” Plover said, bewildered.

  “Depends on what you mean by educated,” Roy snickered. “If you want to know the exact ingredients for white lightning or how to distill it until it’s bad enough to scald a goat, Robin can tell you. She’s also got some knowledge in areas I wouldn’t be comfortable describing in front of a lady.”

  Plover cocked a thumb in my direction. “Her?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m Eliza Dolittle and you’re tha
t professor. Are we going to sing ‘The Rain in Spain’ or are we going to get down this road before it gets darker than the inside of a cistern?”

  Humming to himself, Plover turned on the mean road and we crept down the mountainside in what I dearly hoped was the direction of Robin Buchanon’s cabin. There were several large rocks in the middle of the road, but our vigilant driver managed to avoid them.

  “How about a hymn of rejoicing?” Brother Verber boomed. “I think your husband might find great spiritual comfort in it, and maybe even find the courage to come out of there and look you straight in the eye, fall to his knees, and beg your everlasting forgiveness.”

  Mrs. Jim Bob’s lips were so tight they ached worse than her knees. It took an act of willpower to loosen them enough to speak. “If you think so, Brother Verber. But I’m worried about him being in there so long, without a peep or anything. Do you think he might have gone to sleep?”

  “Wrestling with the devil has taken away his voice,” Brother Verber explained genially. “I seen it before, although not with this great quantity of perseverance. Let’s ask the others to join along with us, so we can send our hymn right through the door to Brother Jim Bob’s heart. He’ll be so gladdened he’ll come out and thank us.”

  Mrs. Jim Bob called for Dahlia and Kevin, who’d been hovering nearby to watch the show. Dahlia thought about telling Brother Verber that Jim Bob had driven away more than fifteen minutes before, but she remembered what the preacher had said to her granny a year ago about certain events in the basement of the church during the Wednesday-night prayer meeting. The old fart.