Much Ado in Maggody Read online

  “We haven’t quite gotten to that stage, Johnna Mae. I’ll fill out the complaint, release you on your own recognizance, and then go over to the bank to talk to Mr. Oliver. He may not want to appear in front of the municipal judge any more than you do, and he may agree to tear the complaint up and let things slide—if I can assure him that you’re sorry and that you won’t come back to the bank to picket.”

  “He ain’t a bad fellow,” she allowed with a drawnout sigh. “We’ve gotten along real good all the years I’ve worked at the bank. His wife always sends over a fruitcake or a plate of cookies around Christmastime, and she even dropped off a little baby present for P.J. It’s that Bernswallow guy that’s causing all the trouble.”

  “Why’d he fire you?” I asked curiously.

  Johnna Mae’s martyred expression vanished in a blink, although I didn’t know how to interpret its replacement. After a moment of studying the floor, she gave me an innocent look and said, “He just told me a bunch of stuff about how my attitude was poor and how I was all the time making errors in my drawer. He acted like a few cents off in the long-and-short was some kind of federal offense. I reckon I said some things back. He got puffed up worse than a horny bullfrog and told me to clean out my work area.”

  “Did he offer any severence pay?”

  “No, he said I’d already missed so much work I was lucky he wasn’t sending me a bill. Then he said get out and I got out.”

  “Did you try to discuss this with Mr. Oliver?”

  “Yeah, I did. I even went over to his house and tried to explain that I was upset about losing my position. Mr. Oliver got all squirmy and apologetic, but he said that Bernswallow was in charge of personnel matters. He was pretty nice about it, so I guess I shouldn’t have hit him on the head like that. What I should have done is run Bernswallow down in the truck. Over and over again, until he was flatter than a tabletop and too dead to skin. The highway department would’ve had to scrape him up with a cake spatula.”

  “Don’t say things like that, Johnna Mae,” I said, rubbing my face and wishing I were on the road to Juneau. Or the Emerald City. Or a nice padded room with bars across the window. “You’re in deep enough trouble as it is. Let’s fill out the complaint and then I’ll try to talk Mr. Oliver into ripping it up for old times’ sake. But I want you to promise me that you’ll go back to the mobile home and stay away from the bank.”

  Her lower lip went in and out for a long while. “And I get to leave on my—what’d you call it? Recognizance? How much is that?”

  “All it means is that I’m trusting you to stay in town and out of trouble. Okay?”

  “I suppose,” she muttered.

  We made it through name, address, and various tidbits. I asked her if she wanted a ride home, and she said the walk back to the Pot O’ Gold Mobile Home Park might help her cool off. I didn’t point out that the temperature was in triple digits, and after eliciting one last promise from her I let her go. I did not allow her to take her picket sign.

  I drove to the bank, thinking all the while that I was spending so much time there that I ought to open an account. Then again, Kevin Buchanon would be protecting my zillions of dollars. Not a comforting concept, to say the least. I parked next to the slinky Mercedes and went through the glass doors into the charmingly cool air.

  Miss Una stared at me from her window. “I must admit, Arly, that in my opinion you might have taken action to prevent this dreadful tragedy from happening.” Her voice was a good ten degrees cooler than the inside of the bank.

  “I’m not sure we’re up to the level of dreadful tragedy,” I said. “Johnna Mae’s sworn to stay away from the bank, and I’m hoping Mr. Oliver will agree to drop his complaint. Is he in his office?”

  “Mr. Oliver has gone home to lie down. The poor man was most disturbed about being attacked in front of half the town. What’s more, he has a lump where Johnna Mae whacked him, and I imagine he’ll have a bruise before morning. I am as fond of her as I am of my kitties, but we can’t have that sort of unseemly behavior at the bank. It’s undignified. I didn’t know what to think when I saw her smack Mr. Oliver. She could have caused a serious physical injury.”

  “Posterboard can be deadly,” I said soberly.

  At this moment Lottie Estes came out of the back office, an envelope in her hand. Brandon Bernswallow followed her. “We at the Maggody branch will clear this up,” he said in a voice oily enough to do a lube job on a tractor trailer. “We’re committed to community service.”

  Lottie beamed at him. “You have been most helpful, young man. It’s such a relief to have this taken care of by someone with nice manners. As I told you earlier, it has preyed on my mind since the moment it came in the mail. I have never before been accused of such a ridiculous thing, and I was floored. As if I would borrow five hundred dollars! I have always paid cash for my purchases. My father used to say that credit was the work of Satan hisself.”

  Brandon gave me a quick look as he placed his hand on Lottie’s shoulder. “Your attitude is what makes banks like ours work for the community. You just keep building up that savings account, and I’ll deal with this mistake.”

  He turned and retreated into his office. Lottie came to Miss Una’s window, nodded vaguely at me, and said, “He is such a nice young man, Una. He’d be a perfect catch for some Maggody girl, who could see that his shirts stay ironed and his shoes polished.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Is it true what I heard in the teachers’ lounge about Johnna Mae Nookim chasing Sherman Oliver down the middle of the highway with a broom? It’s not the least bit difficult to believe. I had her in several of my classes fifteen years ago, and I always suspected she cheated on the small appliance final. One of my better students swore Johnna Mae had the blender manual taped to her thigh.”

  Miss Una bobbled her head. “She attacked poor Mr. Oliver right out there in front of the building. She was frothing like a rabid dog and calling him all kinds of terrible names.”

  I departed before I heard further escalations. The Olivers lived in the Maggody version of a subdivision, which meant there were twenty-odd houses jammed together in the middle of a flat, treeless cow pasture. I drove past the high school and the Dairee Dee-Lishus, turned across from the football stadium, and found their house at the end of an honest to goodness cul-desac (we used to call ’em dead ends, but the developer wasn’t having any of that). Their house was larger than those surrounding it, but hardly imposing enough to qualify for “mansion” or “palace.”

  Clutching the complaint in my sweaty little hand, I parked in the driveway and walked up the sidewalk to the front door. Before I could knock, ring, or holler, the door opened. Mrs. Sherman Oliver seemed startled momentarily, but she regained her composure. “Arly Hanks, isn’t it? Ruby Bee’s girl?” she said.

  Anonymity, not to mention life itself, is tough in Maggody. “Yes,” I said. “I’d like to speak to Mr. Oliver if it’s convenient.”

  She came out onto the porch, carefully closing the door behind her. She was an attractive middle-aged woman with tidy hair, soft brown eyes, and fluttery hands. She fluttered them for a moment, then said, “I’m afraid Mr. Oliver isn’t feeling well. He is deeply distressed by what happened earlier. He came home, took two aspirins, and told me he would prefer to be left alone in the den until supper time. Perhaps you might come back tomorrow?”

  “I’d like to get this settled as quickly as possible. Johnna Mae is rather distressed herself, especially by the possibility of being sent to jail for a year over this silly little incident.”

  Truda smiled sadly. “It is silly, isn’t it? I told Sherman as much, and I think by tomorrow he’ll be willing to forget about it. Brandon can be a bit of a hothead, but Sherman really prefers to avoid any kind of conflict. He says it throws off his golf game.”

  “I can see how it might,” I said, trying to maintain a sympathetic tone. “When would be a good time for me to return?”

  “Sherman goes to th
e main branch every morning. He’s still in charge of the portfolio purchases, even though he requested the transfer out here in order to enjoy the tranquillity of country life. He’ll leave at nine or so. He usually plays golf in the afternoons, but he ought to be home by supper time.”

  “I’ll try to catch him before he leaves,” I said. We exchanged pleasantries and then I drove back to the highway, feeling enormously relieved. I certainly had no desire to see Johnna Mae behind bars, even for a few days. In my professional capacity, I wasn’t supposed to enjoy watching one citizen batter another. At a more personal level, however, I’d found the incident most amusing. Cheap thrills. More exciting than when Hiram Buchanon’s barn burned.

  There I was, smirking and grinning and having a right good time as I pulled into the gravel lot of Ruby Bee’s Bar and Grill. I parked next to an unfamiliar subcompact, but you never know when some unwary tourist is going to make a serious mistake and stop by for cold beer and sparkling conversation with the locals. It only takes one time to learn better.

  The Closed sign was still hanging from a thumbtack, but I ignored it and was reaching for the door when it flew open. Jim Bob Buchanon would have stomped right over me if I hadn’t jumped back at the last second.

  “About time you did something,” he growled at me. He seems to growl at me a lot, but it’s appropriate in that he reminds me of a bulldog. He’s got the infamous clan features, along with a stubby gray crew cut and a soft belly cantilevered over his belt. As far as I can tell, his upper lip stays glued in a perpetual sneer.

  “About time I ate lunch,” I said. “And what’s better than Mom’s home cooking? Ruby Bee fixes the best fried okra in the county.”

  “That is not what I meant, Chief of Police Hanks. I heard what happened earlier at the bank. It seems to me there was a clear case of dereliction of duty. You should have been down there in the first place, and you should have put a stop to that crazy Nookim broad’s ‘protest’ before things got out of hand.”

  “Is that what I should have done? Gee, Jim Bob, I guess I was confused. I thought I was supposed to protect the constitutional rights of the citizenry. Silly me.”

  “Mrs. Jim Bob gave me a damn earful about how you refused to do anything to prevent the incident from getting way out of hand. This is something that will be discussed at the next town council meeting. You may find yourself out of a job, Arly. Then you can sit around all day thinking up smart remarks. You and Ruby Bee can have yourselves a fine time.”

  “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me. Ruby Bee said something that didn’t go down real well with you. That woman is crazier than the Nookim broad. Maybe we can figure out how to have the both of them shipped off to the state prison farm, or even better, to a penal colony off the coast of South America. That’s what we ought to do, Jim Bob—unless you’d prefer I just shoot ’em dead in the street?”

  “What I’d prefer is none of your damn business.” He stalked across the parking lot toward the Kwik-Stoppe-Shoppe, a.k.a. Kwik-Screw, muttering all kinds of things under his breath. I noted for the first time that he was slightly bowlegged, unless his jeans were a shade too tight. Poor baby.

  I went on into the bar, which was dim and noticeably unpopulated except for a woman perched on a stool at the end of the bar. Ruby Bee is an excellent cook and usually has a mob at every meal. The current situation was downright eerie, I decided as I picked a stool and climbed onto it. The unfamiliar woman glanced up incuriously, then returned to a file spread out in front of her.

  I’d pretty well decided she was a sales rep when Ruby Bee came out of the kitchen, snorted in my direction, and joined the woman at the end for a whispered conversation. They were both shooting veiled looks at yours truly, who was merely mystified and hungry.

  “Is it possible to get a grilled cheese sandwich?” I asked.

  “We’re closed,” Ruby Bee said. “Didn’t you read the sign on the door? Closed means not open, as in come by later if you want something.”

  My mother gives me hives. I would have stalked away in a huff, but my stomach was pleading for me to stick it out and find out what was going on. “But you’ve got a customer,” I pointed out nicely, “and I ran into Jim Bob leaving a few minutes ago. What’s going on—selective service? Do I have the wrong-colored hair or what?”

  The woman, who appeared to be in her late twenties and way too well-dressed for this neck of the woods, gave me a cool smile. “I am not a customer. I stopped here to ask directions and am simply eliciting some further information before I continue.”

  Ruby Bee gestured at the woman to hush and said, “And Jim Bob Buchanon was told that the bar and grill is closed, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. He got testy, but I made it clear I wasn’t about to serve the likes of him for a month of Sundays and then some. Now this person and I got things to discuss, so why don’t you slide off that stool and wander away to pester other folks?”

  “Why are you closed?” I persisted.

  “Because I put the Closed sign on the door, Miss Have to Know Everything. You most likely remember what curiosity did to the cat, but if you need a refresher course, I may be willing to oblige you.”

  “I’m not curious. I’m hungry,” I said, wondering what on earth was wrong with Ruby Bee. She’d pulled this conspiracy nonsense once before, and it had ended with a murder, a couple of kidnappings—Ruby Bee being among those snatched—and a great deal of Maggody’s dirty laundry being waved around for the entertainment of the masses. I thought about reminding her as much but decided there wasn’t much point in it. Ruby Bee is not known for profitting from experience.

  “Well?” she said, watching me through narrowed eyes.

  I was working on a snappy retort when Estelle came through the kitchen door. “I called over there, but Putter said she wasn’t—” She stopped with a gulp as she spotted me.

  “Arly’s leaving right this minute,” Ruby Bee informed her, although I suspect the information was aimed at other ears.

  “Are you hunting Johnna Mae Nookim?” I asked.

  Ruby Bee and Estelle started fidgeting like a pair of toad frogs. The woman glanced at them for a moment, then turned to me and said, “Do you have information concerning her whereabouts at this time?”

  “Yep,” I said.

  There was a long silence. Ruby Bee leaned across the bar to whisper to the woman. After a great deal of hissing, she straightened up and said, “This is Carolyn McCoy-Grunders. She’s from WAACO.”

  “Wacko?” I echoed blankly. “Did you mean to say Waco, as in Texas, or wacko, as in crazy?”

  Carolyn gave me a frigid look. “WAACO is the acronym for Women Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office. We’re committed to fighting sexual discrimination and injustice through education, self-awareness, and legal support. Ms. Nookim sent in a letter concerning her treatment by the bank, and I feel there is merit to her accusation.”

  “I’m impressed you came so quickly,” I said, still fighting back a grin.

  “The legal system grinds exceedingly slow in these matters. I will assist Ms. Nookim in the preparation of a formal complaint for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but it takes as long as four months to get any response from them. They are overworked and understaffed, or so they claim. We of WAACO are dedicated to immediate action. We demand the injustice be rectified, and we’re willing to do whatever is necessary until our demands are met.”

  “I hope you’re willing to baby-sit,” I said. “I still haven’t had a chance to talk to Sherman Oliver about dropping the battery charge. If you get Johnna Mae riled up again, she may end up in the county jail. Someone will have to pick up her husband’s prescription and drive the baby to the shoestore.”

  “Sacrifices must be made for the betterment of society,” Carolyn said smoothly. “We cannot allow personal inconvenience to cloud our purpose.”

  “Right,” Ruby Bee said, although she didn’t sound real happy. “So where is Johnna Mae, Arly? You didn’t lock her up, did you?”
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  “She left the PD a couple of hours ago to walk back to the mobile home park. She’s had time to get to Hasty and back by now. In any case, now that I’m no longer a pariah, how about that sandwich?”

  Estelle put her hands on her hips. “I swear, all you ever think about is food. If you don’t watch out, you’re going to end up like Dahlia O’Neill, and then you’ll be sorry.”

  On that bright note, I slid off the stool and went on my merry way, leaving the three of them to fight chauvinism, battle injustice, and make all the personal sacrifices they could think of. I was more interested in chicken noodle soup.

  Brandon Bernswallow sat at his desk at the bank, his hands clasped behind his neck as he gazed at the ceiling. It was obvious that the embezzlement scheme had been going on for years, and with great success. In truth, he rather admired the way it was operated—very quietly, very discreetly. No large sums that might attract a bank examiner’s attention or alert the IRS. Just lots of small sums juggled like shiny silver balls.

  However, he thought with a smug smile, the juggler was having a problem keeping the balls in the air. Nothing had crashed yet, but the possibility was very real, now that he had uncovered the scheme. What to do, what to do. He could, of course, expose the embezzlement and demand the perpetrator be prosecuted unmercifully. Betraying the trust of the community. Depriving honest citizens of their hard-earned money. All that crap. He spent a few pleasant minutes imagining himself being interviewed on television, his expression a delicate combination of outrage at the heinous crime and pain at the idea that a bank employee could betray the institution. His father might be impressed enough to transfer Brandon back to the main bank, where he would have a tastefully decorated office, a new desk, martinis for lunch, and a secretary with enormous tits.

  Then again, his father was an asshole who spouted off at every opportunity about working one’s way up through the system, honest labor, earning one’s position, etc. Which was why Brandon was stuck in this miserable little town in this vile branch with dim-witted coworkers and a piddling salary that wasn’t going to cover the damn car payment much longer. His father was more than capable of leaving him to rot for years.