Mischief In Maggody Page 22

  Light bulbs and gasoline. "Don't turn on the light!" I screeched, grabbing at her arm.

  "I must." She shoved me so hard, I tumbled backward and sprawled into the mud, breathless. Then she felt the wall again. I heard a click. Beyond her the room lit up, and the marijuana plants were spotlighted. A male voice yelled something in alarm.

  And then the building exploded with a blinding flash and a wave of searing heat. Celeste was knocked back on top of me. Flames shot toward the sky. Boards cracked as the heat intensified, then seemed to shatter into red splinters. Brilliant sparks streamed like roman candles. The noise was worse than a train in a tunnel.

  I managed to roll Celeste off me, then grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the fire as best I could, in that my body was screaming, my eyes tearing, my legs wobbling so wildly I was surprised they held me. Celeste seemed to weigh several tons, and the mud was treacherously slick. I pulled and slipped and fell and struggled up and pulled again for what felt like hours, all the while cursing at the top of my lungs. To this day I have no idea what I said; I have only a vague memory of the scene, as if it were from a movie watched in childhood.

  At last we reached the weedy edge of the pasture. I dropped her arm and collapsed beside her. The chicken house continued to burn; the noise was deafening, the light painfully bright. More explosions sent fireballs rolling upward. The smoke was black. I numbly noticed my hands and arms were black and wondered if the flesh had been burned.

  I got to my knees and bent over Celeste's body. Shards of wood protruded from her chest and abdomen. Her eyes were open but unfocused. Blood had already began to clot around her nostrils, perhaps from the furious heat. Her mouth was slightly open, her lips cut and bloodied. As I stared, a fly spiraled down and lit on the lower lip. I shooed it away, then fell back in the weeds, and that was all.

  15

  Ruby Bee came into my bedroom, a tray in her hands. "I brought you some supper, and I want you to finish every bite of it."

  The first two days of being waited on hand and foot had not disturbed me. I'd meekly allowed myself to be bullied, due to lack of any desires more complicated than sleep and liquids to wash down pills. By now it was paling. I felt awful, but not so awful that I wanted this regressive state to become permanent. My burns had been diagnosed as a good assortment of first degree, second degree superficial, and second degree deep. The last would leave scars, mostly on the palms of my hands, since it seems I'd instinctively thrown up my hands to protect my face. For the most part. I wouldn't need mascara or an eyebrow pencil for a long time, nor would I need blusher. A paper bag with eyeholes would suffice.

  "What's in the vase?" I said.

  "Dried weeds from your little admirer-sorrel and wild marigolds, he said when he brought them." Ruby Bee fluffed my pillows, noted the cover of the book I was reading with a snort of disapproval (escapist stuff, which was exactly what I needed), then put the tray in my lap. "He's been coming over every morning and afternoon to see you, but I told him you were too sick for company. I didn't think you'd want anyone to see you while you look like this. As much as I hate to say it, I've seen stewed tomatoes that looked better than you."

  "Thank you for that heartening assessment, Ruby Bee Nightingale. I think I'm up to managing my social calendar from now on. Has the sheriff called?"

  "He did earlier this afternoon. I told him you were asleep. The doctor said for you to stay in bed for several days, and I intend to see that you do it. You may have my good looks, but you've always had your father's streak of mulishness. Now are you going to eat your supper or shall I feed you?"

  This inspired me to put the tray on the end of the bed, throw back the covers, and struggle to my feet. While Ruby Bee squawked and waggled her finger and predicted all sorts of fatal relapses, I went into the living room and called the sheriff's office.

  "Why, Arly," LaBelle said in a noticeably frigid voice. "How are you getting along?"

  "Not too badly for a stewed tomato. Is Harve there?"

  He came on the line and said he had received the lab reports from the boys in Little Rock at the state crime lab. The explosions had been started by gasoline-filled light bulbs, as I'd guessed. A devilishly clever booby trap designed to destroy the evidence should someone unwittingly flip the light switch. The fact that it destroyed the flippee made it all the more clever. Nate's only mistake was being in the back of the chicken house at an inauspicious moment. I was glad I hadn't been at his autopsy. I get squeamish at wienie roasts.

  "So I guess you solved your case," Harve concluded. "The evidence went up in smoke, but your perp did, too. Damn shame about that woman."

  "Damn shame," I said dispiritedly. I agreed to come in to write up all the paperwork in a day or two, replaced the receiver, and then gingerly sat down on the sofa and wiggled around until nothing hurt too much. I didn't much feel like crowing over the resolution of the case, however. It didn't feel resolved. It felt frayed, and the little ends were tickling me.

  Ruby Bee came into the living room and put the tray in my lap. "You know what the doctor said," she began, her hands on her hips. It is one of her least flattering poses. "You'd better-"

  "What police investigation didn't you interfere in?" I asked abruptly.

  "Well, yours, of course. I didn't want you to think Estelle and I were involved in Robin Buchanon's murder. We were working on the identities of the fathers. Producing an illegitimate child isn't a crime."

  "Did you know where I was most of the weekend?"

  "I can't keep track of you when you're all the time running off on these so-called vacations. That darn LaBelle wouldn't tell me, either."

  "Did she tell you that Robin had been murdered?"

  "She wouldn't give me the time of day," Ruby Bee said with a snort. "All I can say about that is she'd better not enter any counterfeit corn relish in the county fair next year. Not if she values her reputation. Why, do you know she won a blue ribbon this September for-"

  "Who told you?" I interrupted.

  "One of the judges. He said he recognized the handwriting on the label, even though she'd written over it in ink. He said-"

  "Who told you that Robin Buchanon was murdered?"

  Don't think for a moment that she didn't know what she was doing. The woman was a pro in the fine art of driving me up the wall, and every once in a while she felt a compulsion to remind me of it. She looked at the tray and said, "Will you eat your supper?"

  "Yes, I will eat as much of it as I can. Now will you tell me who told you about the murder?" I shoved a spoonful of chicken soup into my mouth and glared up at her.

  "I'll have to think about it, but I'm sure I'll recollect before too long. I don't see what difference it makes. That dark-haired hippie is the one who set the booby traps, isn't he? You practically caught him red-handed in the chicken house. Why does it matter who mentioned the murder to Estelle and me?"

  I realized I would have to tell her if I wanted to jar her conveniently muddied memory. "There were two sets of footprints at the pot patch. Nate was psychotic enough to rig the booby traps, but he had a partner. Besides, he was waiting for a telephone call late Saturday afternoon, presumably a tipoff that the patch was no longer under surveillance. When he received the call, he and his partner drove to the ridge, chopped the plants, and were heading for the chicken house by the time I drove back to the Emporium. When I got back to the ridge, I didn't go check to make sure the plants were there; I just crawled into bed and spent a blissful night with the bugs and my beeper for company."

  "The sheriff's men found your beeper buried in the mud near the chicken house. A deputy brought it by a day or so ago, and I put it in a drawer somewhere. It was all burned and twisted, and it's not going to beep anymore." I tried to jiggle the conversation back to the point. "I won't mourn its demise. I would like to discover the identity of Nate's partner, though. Two innocent people died because of someone's greed. Neither Robin nor Celeste had anything to do with it."

  "Madam Celes
te saw her own face, didn't she? Are you still so sure you know everything, Miss Skeptical?"

  "The only thing I'm sure of is that I'm going to start screaming all sorts of terrible things if you continue this petty ploy," I said through a rigid smile. By this time I had a pretty good idea whose name she would finally say. There had been no astonishment from someone when there should have been.

  "I don't understand why you're so all fired up, Arly. I was just trying to discuss the case with you in an adult fashion, like they do on television. But if you're determined to be snippety, you might as well know it was only David Allen who told us. He heard it from Mrs. Jim Bob, who said something to Hammet while they were on the porch. So you got all riled up over nothing, didn't you?"

  "I guess so," I said, sighing. I couldn't imagine David Allen being involved with Nate, nor could I fathom a way he-or anyone else-could have tracked my movements so perfectly. I tried to lead myself through a scenario that was decidedly mazy. Okay, I told myself, David Allen certainly could use the money, since his child's medical bills were apt to rival the trade deficit. He'd hooked up with Nate, and the two had planted the dope in Robin Buchanon's ginseng patch. One or both had rigged the booby traps as a line of defense. Then two things happened Friday. David Allen learned that Robin Buchanon had been killed by a booby trap; it wouldn't have required a leap of the imagination to realize where it had happened. And I left on a mysterious trip-mysterious because I should have been in town to deal with Robin's children, reports, and investigative things. But I'd said that I was trotting away for the weekend, see you later. Again, no quantum leap. Surely no one thought I was that irresponsible.

  "Where's Hammet?" I said suddenly.

  "I believe he said he was going back to David Allen's house. He's been sleeping over in #2 next to me, but he's right enchanted with some macaroni dish David Allen seems to serve him."

  I picked up the receiver and slowly dialed the number of the sheriff's department. Harve and I talked for a while, then he transferred me to some young whiz kid who was very patient with my lack of knowledge in his field of expertise. It didn't bruise my ego too badly. The kid probably couldn't handle the subway system in New York, much less the crosstown buses or Pakistani cab drivers.

  Hammet answered the telephone at David Allen's house. I thanked him for the dried arrangement and invited him over for cookies and milk. When he asked if David Allen could come along, I said most certainly, then said good-bye before my voice betrayed me. Ruby Bee reminded me that I was wearing an army surplus T-shirt and that my face was shinier than a red billiard ball.

  I changed clothes, but I couldn't figure out how to change faces. Ruby Bee left to see how Estelle was doing behind the bar, pausing only to make a comment about the quantity of soup left in the bowl and the way some people went back on their word, even with their own flesh and blood. I shooed her out, then settled on the sofa. When I heard a tap on the door, I yelled for them to come in.

  "Hi, Arly," Hammet said. He took a handful of weeds from behind his back and held them out. "More sorrel and some starworts that ain't too buggy."

  David Allen came in behind him and offered me a box of candy. "This is from both of us. We figured if you had some aversion to chocolate-covered cherries, we could eat them for you."

  "Thank you," I said as I accepted my presents. "You'll have to forgive my appearance. Ruby Bee can't decide if I'm a billiard ball or a stewed tomato. I'm not real thrilled to be either, but only time will help."

  "I think you look prettier than a skillet of red-eye gravy," Hammet said, always the gentleman.

  I rewarded his effort with the box of candy and told him to sit next to me. As David Allen perched on a nearby chair, I heard a car pull up next to the store. "Hey, Hammet," I said, "let me ask you something. You and your siblings came back here Saturday afternoon, right? You hung around and watched television until it was so late the channels stopped, then you went over to David Allen's and stayed there. All that right?"

  He nodded mutely, since his mouth was full of candy.

  David Allen gave me a quizzical smile. "I didn't want to call Mrs. Jim Bob so late, and I doubted she'd care where the children were, anyway. She washed her hands of them in the grand style of Pontius Pilate. Should I have bolted my door and left them out in the rain or something?"

  "Of course not," I said soothingly. "Once you got home, all you could do was let them in for the night. It was admirable, considering how exhausted you must have been."

  "Drinking a beer doesn't require much exertion," he said.

  "At Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill?"

  "Why're are you asking me all this? I thought we were friends, Arly, so if you've got something to say, just go ahead and say it."

  I leaned back and tried to look pained, which wasn't all that hard. "The sheriff ordered me to ask where everybody was that night. It seems there was a holdup in a convenience store just this side of Starley City. Man in his thirties or early forties, blond hair. I know perfectly well it wasn't you, but Harve made me swear I'd get everybody's whereabouts." I was already hating myself before I asked the next question. "Were you at Ruby Bee's having a beer?"

  He wasn't convinced by my fanciful story of collecting alibis, but I suppose he thought it was due to my injuries. "That's right, but I don't know if I can prove it. It's always so darn crowded and noisy on Saturday nights that you can't talk to anyone, and the only lights are those dreadful pink things over the dance floor. I don't know that many of the regular customers."

  He also didn't know Ruby Bee's had been closed because the proprietress and her sister in crime were climbing the hill to Robin Buchanon's cabin. He'd seen the two earlier in the day, so he had no reason to think they had disappeared shortly thereafter. His lie made me feel a little better.

  "I'll assure Harve that you're not a holdup man," I said. "If he insists, we can always dig up some of the regulars; somebody must have seen you. I'm sorry I had to ask."

  "No problem," he said, visibly relieved.

  I touched Hammet's arm. "So how's it working out with your siblings? Is everybody making friends with his newly found father?"

  "That preacher man sent Bubba and Sissie to his cousin's house in the next county, but they were right pleased. The lady has a big house and cooks good. He's just an old fart. Who'd want to live with him?"

  "Not I," I said, grinning at him. "How about Sukie and Baby?"

  "They're at the holyfied lady's house. Sukie said the lady's been locked in her bedroom since they first got there, and her pa stands at the door and talks to hisself. They got some other woman what cleans and cooks. It din't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me, but Sukie don't mind, and Baby don't know better."

  "And your pa?"

  Hammet gave me a long-suffering look. "This social worker woman says she's a-gonna find him if she has to look under every rock between Emmet and the state line. She's likely as not to find him under one."

  I glanced at David Allen. "I feel really badly about all this. The worst thing is that we may never learn who Nate's partner was. It had to be someone local, you know. Whoever it was telephoned Nate the minute I was out of the way. They were up and back in less than three hours."

  "If we didn't know it was impossible, I'd say they had you under surveillance," he murmured.

  Hammet swallowed the gooey mess in his mouth. "How'd they know you was up there to begin with, and how'd they know when you left?"

  "A very good question," I said. I limped across the room and poured him a glass of milk. When David Allen declined a beer, I limped back and sat down, hoping I wasn't trembling so hard he could see it. "The first problem, Hammet, is that no one should have known about the murder. But the dispatcher blabbed to Mrs. Jim Bob, who blabbed to you and to David Allen, who blabbed to Ruby Bee and Estelle. I doubt it went any farther than that." I looked across the coffee table. "You didn't tell anyone else, did you?"

  "No, I only told those two because of Baby. I didn't realize it was a sec
ret, but I spent the rest of the day fooling around in my garage."

  "And then went to the bar?" I said, inviting a repetition of the lie to remind myself not to feel so damn guilty. When he nodded, I continued. "Well, let's presume this partner found out some way and realized that I was staking out the marijuana patch. The next problem is that he seemed to know the minute I started to drive back down the road." Hammet wrinkled his forehead. "How'd the sumbitch know that?"

  "That is the zillion-dollar question. At one point I asked myself if I was an airplane being tracked on a radar screen. But I'm not an airplane, am I?" Hammet shook his head, eyeing me warily in case I really did think I was one. "But," I added, "I did have something sort of like an airplane. Earlier I told my mother I spent the night with bugs and my beeper, but I was wrong. I spent the night with a bugged beeper."

  "What's that?" Hammet gasped.

  I kept my eyes on him. "Well, a beeper has all these circuits inside it. One of them is called an oscillator circuit, and it can be modified with one little chip. Not a corn chip, mind you. A computer chip."

  "Why'd someone be fool enough to modify this oscillator chip?"

  "Because then the beeper would emit a special radio frequency that could be tracked just like it was a tiny airplane-or a model rocket. You'd need a radio directional finder, but some people with expensive hobbies have them so they won't lose their toys. Since the beeper was always on my belt, I could be tracked, too."

  Hammet's eyes narrowed. "But it weren't always on your belt."

  "I know." I forced myself to look at David Allen, who'd turned pale during my electronics lesson. "You took it while we were at the drive-in, and kept it until the next afternoon."

  "Yeah," Hammet growled, scooting next to me in a show of strength.

  "That doesn't prove anything," David Allen said. "It stayed in the glove compartment right up until I remembered to return it to you."

  "That's good to know. That means there's no way your fingerprints might be found inside my beeper, doesn't it) They won't be on the chip or on the inside of the case. It means my theory is the product of shell shock from the explosion."