The Maggody Militia Read online

  “I’m just heartbroken to hear you say those things, Arly. I’ve had a hard life, losing two husbands and having to work night shifts, but I swear I had nothing to do with any of this.”

  “Ruby Bee managed to support herself and bring up a child without resorting to murdering lonely old men. I won’t be surprised if it turns out you’ve gone through more than two husbands.” I went to the door. “Get your coat, Kayleen. I’ll have the deputy take you to the sheriff’s office.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” she said in a thin voice. “All you’ve done is make wild accusations. You can’t prove any of it. Sheriff Flatchett did a thorough investigation, and he was satisfied that I was telling the truth. Why can’t you do the same? I deserve the chance to live out my life with a loving husband and caring friends. Maggody’s a clean town without the kind of people who pollute the air just by breathing it.”

  She was damn good. Her eyes glittered with tears and her lips quivered, and she looked willing to fall to her knees and clasp her hands like a malnourished orphan. Then again, black widow spiders have a decorative red mark on their backs and no doubt find each other attractive.

  I shook my head. “I don’t have much proof yet, but I’ve sent someone to get the rifle that you hid on the ridge. The person who found it has the blowgun, too. The dart you dipped in nicotine and took out of Dylan’s neck as soon as you reached his body may never be found, since you could have put it in your pocket and disposed of it.”

  “But I didn’t,” Kayleen said as she took a three-inch needle with a plastic tip out of her pocket. “It took me a long time to soak loose tobacco and then boil it down to a sticky goo. You can see some near the tip, so I assume it’s still … serviceable, in a manner of speaking.”

  Did I mention I was in the wrong room? What’s more, it was all my stupid, semi-arrogant fault for not leaving when I first realized she was a murderer. I could have called a cheery good-bye, gone outside, and used Les’s radio to summon Harve and whomever else he could round up. Harve could have held his own press conference, impressed the electorate, and started tracking down a pair of bloodhounds.

  As it was, I was obliged to settle for the trite, “You’ll never get away with it, so put that thing down before you make it worse.”

  “Does that queer hermit I’ve heard about have the rifle?” she said, brandishing the dart.

  I pressed my back against the wall. “Maybe.”

  “That’s what I figured. I saw him on the top of the ridge, watching the maneuver. He ducked out of sight as soon as I fired the shot, but he may have lingered long enough to see me stash the rifle and blowgun. I was following what I hoped were his tracks when I ran into Ruby Bee.” She came close enough to me that I could see the dark brown residue on the dart. “Do you know where his cave is?”

  “Sure,” I said quickly. “It’s not too far from Raz’s still.”

  “Ruby Bee said you’ve been looking for the still for several years—but you haven’t found it.”

  It was odd the way my mother could interfere even when she was twenty miles away in a hospital waiting room.

  “Earlier this week Raz broke down and told me,” I said, struggling not to allow my voice to crack. I’m much better at lying when I’m not being threatened with an untimely demise. “You want me to draw you a map?”

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but your maps are kind of hard to read. You’d better take me there. I’m sure I can reason with the hermit, or give him a few dollars in exchange for the rifle. He’s one witness I won’t have to worry about, isn’t he?”

  She actually laughed, but I wasn’t in the mood to share the merriment. She kept right on smiling as she put on her coat, careful to keep the dart within jabbing distance, and then said, “We’re going to walk outside and get into your car. I’ll be behind you, and the dart will easily penetrate your clothes should it be necessary.”

  “And I’ll have five minutes to tell the deputy what happened before I lose consciousness.”

  “Which means I’ll go to prison. You’ll be dead.”

  There was that. I shrugged and opened the door, painfully aware of her breath on the back of my neck as we went out into the parking lot. I was weighing my chances of escaping somewhere on the ridge versus running toward Les’s car when the door of #5 opened.

  “Kayleen! Good news,” boomed Sterling, practically pounding on his chest like a silverback. “I’ve just spoken to the lieutenant governor, and he’s going to take care of this in the next hour. Chief Hanks, it may be time for you to start practicing the phrase, ‘Do you want fries with that?’”

  Kayleen hesitated. In that I really, really didn’t want to go back to Cotter’s Ridge, I spun around and punched her in the nose hard enough to put her on the gravel. I picked up the dart by its plastic tip and started yelling at Les to get his boss on the radio. Doors opened and the entire militia came stumbling out, drunk, sober, half-dressed, clad in camouflage—the whole gamut. The only thing they seemed to have in common was outrage, but for once their paranoia had a basis in fact: cops can be brutal.

  Chapter 18

  Once Kayleen had been safely stashed in the back of Les’s car, I went into the kitchen of the bar and found an empty jar with a lid for the dart. It was more than mildly tempting to pour myself a beer and sit in solitude, contemplating my near-death experience, but the neon Coors sign wasn’t the light I was supposed to have seen.

  Sterling was shouting at Les as I came back out. He was pretty much incoherent, although the word “amendment” was coming through on a regular basis, along with the tried-and-true “constitutional rights.”

  I poked Sterling in the back. “Look, buddy, you may not have pulled any triggers, but you conspired with Kayleen to murder Maurice Smeltner—and it stinks of premeditation.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “A mere technicality. When the insurance company that paid out half a million dollars to the grieving widow takes a harder look at the application, I suspect they’ll find a whole slew of forged signatures, like Mo’s and that of a physician who purportedly did a physical examination.”

  That stopped him cold. “What do you know about that?”

  “And even if Kayleen takes the rap for that,” I continued, “the IRS is going to want to have a long talk about unreported income, tax evasion, and fraud.”

  “I had to fund our group,” he said, looking imploringly at Barry, Reed, and Jake. “No one but dedicated patriots such as ourselves will be prepared to defend the country in the face of the invasion that will lead to Armageddon. You know it’s coming, don’t you? Women and the inferior races have the vote, the despots in Washington burdened us with an illegal tax levy to fuel the international conspiracy, and the banks are controlled by the Federal Reserve.” He swung around and gripped Les’s shoulder. “Haven’t you seen the secret codes on the backs of highway signs? They exist to aid the enemy’s armies when they arrive to round up able-bodied men and execute them like dogs. Any of us who’s been in the armed services or even in a hospital has a device in his buttocks that can be monitored via satellite.”

  Les stepped back. “Don’t go talking about my buttocks unless you want to ride to Farberville in the trunk.”

  Reed scowled at Sterling. “Did Kayleen really kill Mo? He wasn’t what I’d call a party animal, but he wasn’t hurting anybody. I mean, we all got to get old some day, don’t we? Doesn’t mean we ought to be shot in the gut.”

  “Sacrifices had to be made,” Sterling whimpered.

  I told Les to put the general in the backseat with Kayleen. When they were gone, I faced the remaining members of the militia. “Get on home. You’ll be hearing from the sheriff’s department, and possibly the FBI. I don’t think you’ll have much free time to play in the woods, since there’ll be lots and lots of interrogations. Grand juries can be demanding.”

  Reed was whining to Barry as they went into #6. Jake spat on the ground and went into #2. They’d be gone by mid-af
ternoon, and the sheriff would have the Hummer and the Mercedes impounded by morning. The Flamingo Motel would regain its ghost town ambiance, and only Ruby Bee would be criss-crossing the parking lot to dust or squirt air freshener in the bathrooms.

  “I cain’t believe it,” Raz said, nearly choking on his chaw as he surveyed the ruins of his still. “I reckon I’m gonna take this rifle back to Diesel’s cave, and when he comes in, I’m gonna nail him between the eyes like the sorry sumbitch deserves. Why would he go and do this, Marjorie? I know fer a fact he takes a jar of hooch ever now and then.”

  Marjorie blinked, then went back to chewing on a plastic case she’d found. A strip of thin black cellophane tape dangled out of her mouth, ticklin’ her chin.

  “Wait jest a dadburn minute! There’s something in the bushes over yonder! Iff’n it’s Diesel, he’s dead meat.”

  Raz crept closer, his mouth screwed up, and carefully pulled back a branch. “Well, look at these critters,” he said. “I ain’t never seen nuthin like this in all my born days—and I can smell my hooch on ’em. You know what I think, Marjorie? These giant chickens are drunk as Cooter Brown.”

  It took him a long time to get the thievin’ birds in the back of his truck, and he was sweating something awful. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, then got turned around and headed home. He wasn’t real sure what to do with the birds, but he figgered they could stay out in his barn till he came up with something.

  He was gonna ask Marjorie what she thought, but she was lookin’ kind of green, so he fiddled with the radio until he found one of her favorite songs.

  I swung by Raz’s, but his truck was gone. I went on to the PD to make a pot of coffee before I headed for Harve’s office. On a whim, I took out Agent Tonnato’s business card, called the office and got the answering machine, then called the home number.

  “Tonnato,” he said.

  I identified myself, then said, “Did you overhear the conversation in Kayleen Smeltner’s motel room half an hour ago?”

  “The only thing I’ve overheard today was my wife telling her sister what a sloppy paint job I’m doing on the deck. Why don’t you go home and check under your bed for communists, Chief Hanks?”

  He banged down the receiver, so I did, too. I poured a cup of coffee, settled my feet on the corner of the desk, and mentally reviewed my spontaneous construction of my case against Kayleen. It seemed to make as much sense as most of the things that took place in and around Maggody, and I was gathering up my notes when the telephone rang.

  “Arly,” chirped LaBelle, “I know you’re on the way, but this couldn’t wait. Are you missing any of your local residents?”

  I thought for a minute. “Not as many as I was a couple of hours ago. What are you—the census taker?”

  “Well, we just got a call from the Pulaski County sheriff’s office. Three days ago they raided a place outside the Little Rock city limits and found one of yours. Ruby Bee’s not gonna have any trouble writing her column this week, lemme tell you.”

  “So tell me.”

  “There are certain words I don’t use, but the place is called Madam Caressa’s Social Club. The employees are all women, and the customers are men, if you get my drift. Most of the men were allowed to put up bail and leave, but yours was so inebriated and incoherent that they took him to the hospital for a seventy-two-hour psychiatric evaluation.”

  I sat down and rested my forehead on my fist. “Brother Verber, right? Hey, LaBelle, why don’t you call Mrs. Jim Bob and tell her the news? She’s been worried sick, so this will make her feel a whole lot better. It’s real possible that she’ll want to drive down there to pick him up herself.”

  LaBelle happily agreed, and I made it out the door before she realized what she was getting herself into and called me back.

  I could tell from the look she gave me when I arrived at the sheriff’s department that Mrs. Jim Bob hadn’t gurgled in gratitude and thanked LaBelle for sharing the information. I hurried by her desk and into Harve’s office, where he and the county prosecutor were waiting.

  It took me most of an hour to cover everything. I was unable to explain how the Ingram MAC 10 had ended up in Missouri, but suggested that an argument could be made that taking a stolen weapon across state lines for use in a felony might be racketeering, and thus a way to involve the FBI. The prosecutor was ambivalent, but Harve was so delighted at passing the buck that he offered to send a deputy back to Raz’s shack for the rifle.

  He also volunteered to walk me out to my car. “Good work, Arly. I’m so distracted these days that I’d probably have let it go as a hunting accident.”

  “Another burglary?” I asked.

  “No, but the newspapers are carrying on like there’s a serial killer systematically exterminating the population. Now that this militia business is done, think you’ll have time to get back on the burglaries?”

  “I’ll reread the files,” I said, then left for the hospital.

  I went to the maternity waiting room. Ruby Bee and Estelle were reading magazines, while Earl snored in a corner and Eileen stood by the door, twisting a tissue into shreds.

  “No progress?” I asked.

  “No,” Eileen said glumly. “They let me go to her room for a minute, but she was bawling because the nurse wanted to put on a fetal monitor. I don’t know where she got this crazy idea that any kind of test is going to hurt the baby.”

  “Oh, I know where she got it,” Estelle said as she opened her two-gallon handbag and pulled out a folded newspaper. “There’s an ad almost every week in The Starley City Star Shopper that says all the tests are potentially harmful to the baby. If you send nineteen ninety-five to the address in the ad, they send you a kit to determine the sex of your baby.”

  “Let me see that,” I said.

  “The ad’s right under my column,” said Ruby Bee. “I must say I’m getting a lot of compliments these days from folks that enjoy knowing about their neighbors. The folks that write the Emmett and Hasty columns must be as dull as June Bug Buchanon. She’d talk your ear off, and afterwards you couldn’t recall a thing she’d said.”

  I read the ad. “This should have been in a tabloid between stories about coconut trees at the South Pole and man-eating rabbits.” Aware that Ruby Bee was watching me, I scanned her column. “Glad to know that Petrol hasn’t lost his zest. I don’t remember asking you to remind anybody about hunter orange, but that’s okay.” I thought about telling them that Kayleen wouldn’t be opening her pawnshop anytime in the foreseeable future, but it could wait.

  “Here’s the first column,” said Ruby Bee, handing me a carefully folded piece of newsprint.

  I obediently read her maiden foray into journalism. “Wow, I didn’t know the Four-H club was doing so well … and a baby shower for Dahlia with punch and cake. Maggody was certainly on the go that week, what with Edwina in Branson, the Bidens planning their trip, and Elsie …”

  “What?” said Ruby Bee, poised to snatch back the column if I snickered.

  “I need to make a call from the lobby,” I said. I rode the elevator back down, found a dime, and called Harve. “Do you ever look at those small town weekly newspapers?”

  “Not in an election year,” he said. “I’d like to talk, but we’re kinda busy over here. Both of the suspects have lawyers falling all over themselves, and for some fool reason, LaBelle said she was going home to get drunk. Les keeps trying to tell me about a goddamn grenade launcher we can use to blow up marijuana patches, and—”

  “This has to do with the burglaries, Harve, although I can’t deny that I’d find ways to enjoy a grenade launcher. The newspaper I’m looking at is packed with columns written by amateur correspondents. Most of what’s in them is tedious, but there seems to be a common trend—and that’s to announce who’s away visiting relatives or planning a trip. The burglars had all the time in the world to empty the suitable residences.”

  “Can we catch ’em?”

  I may have been a bit
cocky, but it felt good. “Have someone round up all these papers and we’ll see about staking out the most likely candidates. It may take a week or two, but—”

  “A week would be better, on account of the election, but just the same, nailing those bastards would make a lot of people sleep better at night.”

  “If you wanted to sell stolen property, Harve, where would you start?”

  “Pawn store,” he said promptly, “but nothing’s turned up. We’ve got some of the serial numbers and fairly good descriptions of jewelry and that sort of thing.”

  “What if,” I said, regretting my failure to keep track of who was where and when, “you were a fence, and had connections with fences in other states? You wouldn’t have to risk selling stolen goods that were on the hot sheet, would you? You could put the stolen property in a storage facility and wait until you could move it out of state. No rush, especially if you had reciprocal agreements across the country.”

  Harve wasn’t puffing on a cigar anymore. “What are you getting at, Arly?”

  “Malthus,” I said. “It’s in Chowden County. You might ask Sheriff Flatchett about rental storage space. He may know all sorts of things.”

  “You know,” Harve said, sighing, “sometimes I think about dropping out of the race and retiring to someplace like Florida.”

  “Hurricanes and theme parks.”

  “Then maybe southern California.”

  “Mudslides, floods, earthquakes, sinkholes, brush fires, and theme parks.”

  Harve harrumphed. “I’m sure as hell not retiring to Maggody. You may not have any of those things you listed, but you not only attract the strangest bunch of folks I ever met, you grow them out that way, too.”

  I hung up the phone.

  When Jake and Judy got back to Emmet, Jake announced he was going to find LaRue. He dumped all the camping gear in the yard, told her to put it away, and drove off.

  Judy went inside and called Janine to make sure the baby was fine. Afterwards, she crammed as much of her clothes as she could in a suitcase, put the money she’d been setting aside into her purse, and walked down the road to the café where the Greyhound buses stopped.