The Maggody Militia Read online

  “Oh, I can take you,” he said hastily. “I was just thinking how much gas I have in my car.”

  “Why, we’ll take my car, and you can give me directions. You’re generous to a fault, Brother Verber. I do believe I’ll say a special little prayer for you tonight before I go to bed.”

  Trying not to allow his gaze to wander toward the bed, he picked up her coat and held it open for her. “It’s my Christian duty,” he said. “Maybe while we’re driving around, I can convince you to become a permanent member of our congregation.”

  “Aren’t you the sly dog,” she said with a grin.

  “Did you ever think about how the federal government sends money to other countries but won’t take care of its own citizens?” Earl Buchanon asked his wife as she wrestled with the balky ironing board.

  “Can’t say I have,” said Eileen, more concerned with not getting her finger pinched. “Did you oil this like I asked you to last week?”

  Earl took a cookie off the plate and dunked it in his buttermilk. “What’s more, income tax is voluntary, and none of us can be forced to volunteer. There’s not a thing in the world those IRS leeches can do if I up and refuse to hand over my money so that the government can send it to countries that’d like to take us over.”

  “Ow!” She dropped the ironing board and stuck her finger in her mouth. “That blasted thing! If you want your shirts and trousers ironed, you’d better get busy with the oil. Otherwise, you can walk around town looking like a hobo for all I care.”

  “Do you know how much I paid in taxes last year? Close to two thousand dollars, that’s how much. If I had that money now, I could make a down payment on a decent tractor that I don’t have to spend half my time tinkering with.”

  “Or buy me a one-way ticket.”

  Earl was so surprised that he dropped the cookie. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking out the window at the pasture dotted with withered clumps of weeds. “Nowhere, I guess—or at least no time soon. The baby’ll be here in a matter of weeks, and Dahlia is gonna need help with housework and the cooking. I’ll most likely stay there all day, so you’ll have to fend for yourself at lunchtime.”

  “She doing okay?”

  Eileen picked up the ironing board and headed for the hall closet. “If she’s having a problem with her blood sugar, she didn’t tell me.”

  “I guess Kevin’s all excited,” Earl said when she came back into the kitchen.

  “That’s real insightful of you, Earl, since they come over for supper two or three times a week and that’s all Kevin talks about.”

  He put on his coat and jammed a John Deere cap on his head. “I think I’ll go over to the co-op and pick up a bag of layer grit. When I get back, I’ll take a look at the ironing board.”

  “Sure you will,” she said as he went out the back door.

  Jeremiah McIlhaney came into the dining room, where his wife was chewing on a pencil as she decided who would be honored with Christmas cards and who wouldn’t, based mostly on what they’d sent last year. Cousin Queenie had sent a long, rambling, photocopied letter telling how her daughter was a cheerleader and her son won a full scholarship to college and she herself was elected president of the garden club. Millicent drew a line through that name. Eula Lemoy had recycled a card she’d received from somebody else by covering the name with a sticker. Eula was gone with a slash. Aunt Bertha had sent nothing, as usual, but she didn’t have any children and was rumored to have a sizable savings account.

  Jeremiah hesitated, aware how seriously she took the master list every year. “I was thinking about a sandwich for lunch,” he said apologetically, “and a piece of that apple pie we had for supper last night.”

  Millicent moved to the next name on her list. This was a mite trickier. Cousin Beau’s wife had sent a real nice embossed card two years ago, then tried to weasel by this past year with a cheap one. What would she do this year?

  Jeremiah licked his lips. “I can see you ain’t got time to fix my lunch, so maybe I’ll swing by the Dairee Dee-Lishus and get something there. Are you planning to use the truck Saturday morning?”

  She banged down the pencil. “I am trying to concentrate on the list, and every time you interrupt me, I forget what I was thinking. Am I planning to use the truck—when?”

  “Saturday morning.”

  “I told Darla Jean I’d take her shopping in Farberville on Saturday, but we didn’t set a time. I suppose we can go after lunch. I wish you’d figure out what’s wrong with my car and get it fixed. It was bad enough with Darla Jean borrowing it all the time to get to basketball practice or go riding with Heather. Now that all three of us are dependent on the truck, I just want to scream.”

  “I told you I’m waiting on a part,” he said, retreating toward the living room.

  Millicent picked up the pencil and resumed gnawing on it. Cousin Beau’s wife was wily enough to send another embossed card this year, which would put her in a position to say something catty at the family reunion if she received a cheap card. Then again …

  “I cain’t work Saturday morning,” Kevin said as he stood in the middle of Jim Bob’s office. He put a piece of paper on the desk and pointed at it with a trembling finger. “It sez on this schedule that I ain’t supposed to come in till three in the afternoon to work the second shift.”

  Jim Bob ripped the schedule into small pieces and let them flutter to the floor. “What schedule?”

  “The schedule you posted in the employees’ lounge on Monday,” he said, gulping. “That one right there on the floor.”

  “All I see on the floor are scraps of paper, boy. Next time you’re allowed a break, have a look at the schedule in the lounge. See for yourself if you’re not supposed to be here at seven o’clock Saturday morning to turn up the thermostat, switch on the lights, and clean the toilets in the restrooms. I’ll find out if you’re late and take pleasure in firing your skinny ass.”

  Kevin felt his eyes begin to sting, but he squared his shoulders as best he could and said, “I got something else to do Saturday morning. Besides, it’s not fair for you to change the schedule any time you want. Employees got rights, too.”

  “You got the right to get a job someplace else.” Jim Bob lit a fat cigar, then entwined his fingers over his belly and regarded Kevin through a cloud of blue smoke. “I was planning to get in some hunting last weekend, but Mrs. Jim Bob changed my mind. Larry Joe’s gonna call in sick first thing Friday morning, then him, Roy, and me are leaving for our camp. But I tell you what, asshole—since you’ll be acting assistant manager, I’ll pay you an extra dollar an hour till I get back.”

  Kevin opened and closed his mouth several times, then gave up and left the office. “It ain’t fair,” he said to a woman studying canned tomatoes. She was still staring at him as he went around the end of the aisle.

  Chapter 6

  By late Friday morning I was more stumped than a beauty pageant contestant asked to explain the ramifications of global warming. I’d talked to the victims of four of the burglaries (Elsie wasn’t back) and come up without a clue. The houses were in different parts of the county and had different post offices, electric cooperatives, and sanitation services. Two of the retired couples frequented the same square dancing club, but one of the couples swore they’d never discussed their vacation plans with anyone there. Only one couple had left pets at a kennel. None of them went to the same church. Three of them had fancy new houses once filled with expensive electronic toys and heirloom silver. The fourth house was similar to Elsie’s, modest but clean.

  I hadn’t talked to Kayleen about the pamphlets, either, since Ruby Bee had informed me that her sole tenant had gone to Malthus for a few days to deal with some legal matters. I could have tracked down Kevin to ask him who’d given the pamphlet to him, but I wasn’t masochistic enough to deliberately initiate a conversation with him.

  The burglary reports were fanned out in front of me and I was scrutinizin
g them for some obscure connection when the telephone rang. Hoping that one of the perps was calling to own up, I answered it.

  “We got another one,” Harve said brusquely, not bothering with pleasantries, “and it’s bad.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “About as bad as it gets. This woman and her daughter over in Mayfly went to visit kin for a week. They’d heard of the rash of burglaries, so they asked one of the daughter’s friends to stay in their house while they were gone. They got worried when the house sitter didn’t answer the phone for a few days, and called here first thing this morning to request that someone go out to the house and make sure she was okay. The deputy found the girl’s body on the living room floor, her head crushed by a blow from a piece of firewood. She was wearing pajamas, so it looks like she heard a noise and got out of bed to see about it.”

  “Was there a broken window in the back of the house?”

  “Yeah,” Harve growled, “and the house was set off by itself on a hillside. After killing the girl, the damned clowns went ahead and hauled off two TV sets and a VCR.”

  “No witnesses spotted a truck or van?” I asked, although it was a perfunctory question at best.

  “Hell, no. All we’ve got is that the coroner estimates she was killed three or four days ago. That fits in with when she stopped answering the phone and showing up for classes at the business college. The mailman noticed the mail was piling up in the box, but he didn’t have any reason to go around to the back of the house.”

  “Did you check him out?”

  “He’s sixty-three years old and has a heart condition.” Harve rumbled for a moment, then added, “I know Mayfly’s nowhere near Maggody, but I’m even more short-handed than I was a week ago and the only available deputy started working here two weeks ago. Can you go over and have a look?”

  I regretted having offered to tackle the burglaries in the first place, but I’d voluntarily climbed out on that particular limb and I was stuck until it broke—or I fell off it. “Yes, I can leave right now.”

  “The woman and her daughter should arrive home early this afternoon. I suppose you ought to hang around while they figure out what else is missing and see if they have serial numbers. I don’t like the way this is pickin’ up so fast, Arly. Folks have homeowner’s insurance to replace what’s stolen, but that girl wasn’t more than twenty years old. Life insurance won’t offer much comfort to her family.”

  I wrote down directions to the house, then calculated my time of arrival and told Harve to warn the deputy at the crime scene. The last thing I needed was to surprise a nervous neophyte with a .38 special in his hand.

  Ruby Bee was taking off her apron when Estelle came into the barroom. “I’ll be ready to go as soon as I cover the sweet potato pie with aluminum foil,” she said. “And remind me to put the ‘closed’ sign on the door when we leave. Did you hear from that lawyer fellow?”

  “No,” Estelle said gloomily, “and it’s getting harder and harder not to fret about this inheritance. Last night I dreamed I bought a car twice as big and gaudy as Mrs. Jim Bob’s convertible. She let on like she didn’t care, but everybody knew she was hoppin’ mad.”

  “I saw her coming out of the supermarket this morning, and she looked like she was fit to be tied. It may have been on account of Jim Bob; early this morning I saw him, Roy, and Larry Joe loading up Jim Bob’s truck with cases of beer in front of the supermarket. They probably made it all the way to their deer camp before Mrs. Jim Bob found out their plan. Jim Bob might be wise to stay up there till she thaws out in the spring.”

  She picked up the pie pan and they went out to the parking lot. As they started to get into Estelle’s station wagon, a peculiar-looking vehicle almost as wide as a semi drove up. It had a mean-lookin’ grill across the front, like it wanted nothing more than to push over a building.

  Sterling Pitts rolled down the window. “Good afternoon, ladies. I went out to the property that Kayleen bought, but she’s not there. Do you know if she’s in her motel room, Mrs. Hanks?”

  “Her car wasn’t parked out back a few minutes ago when I set out some trash. She told me she was going to Malthus and return sometime today. She’s staying in number three, if you want to leave her a note.”

  Estelle gave him a sugary smile. “Or you can give us a message and we’ll be sure and tell her when she gets back. That way you won’t have to hunt for paper and pencil, or worry about the note blowing away in the wind.”

  “It’s awful windy,” added Ruby Bee. “What’s this thing you’re driving?”

  Pitts caressed the dashboard. “It’s more than three tons of America’s toughest vehicle. It has one hundred and ninety horsepower and three hundred pounds of torque. With this baby, I can drive through two feet of water, climb sixty-percent grades, and plow through three-foot snowbanks.”

  “Why would you want to do all that?” asked Estelle.

  He rolled up the window and drove out of the lot in the direction from which he’d come. Estelle drove out of the lot in the same direction, although they had a different destination. “I wonder if we should alert Arly that he’s in town,” she said.

  “I don’t know where she is. She didn’t show up for lunch, and her car’s not at the PD or over behind Roy’s store. Of course she couldn’t go to the trouble of telling her own mother where she was going or when she’d be back. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was raised in a barn.”

  “Maybe it was an emergency, like chasing down a bank robber or an escaped convict.”

  “Even so, she should have had the decency to call me so I wouldn’t worry,” Ruby Bee said irritably, if irrationally. However, she reminded herself of the importance of their current mission and did her best to simmer down.

  Minutes later they were at the door of the rectory. Estelle knocked, then stepped back and said, “Brother Verber must have gone somewhere. His car’s not out in front.”

  “Knock again, Estelle, and do it real hard in case he’s in the bathroom and didn’t hear you the first time. This pie’s fresh from the oven.”

  Estelle did as ordered, but nobody opened the door or even hollered that he was coming as fast as he could. “I guess we’ll have to try later.”

  “He’s not here?” said Mrs. Jim Bob as she approached them. She was carrying a covered casserole dish, but her expression was not that of an angel on an errand of mercy. “Where is he? How long’s he been gone?”

  “We don’t know,” said Ruby Bee. “We just got here ourselves.” There wasn’t any way to put her pie behind her back, so she forced herself to smile. “I reckon we’re here for the same reason, Mrs. Jim Bob. I heard something about Brother Verber having a touch of the flu and I thought it’d be nice to bring him a special treat.”

  Mrs. Jim Bob pinched her lips together and stared suspiciously at them. “Did you?” she said at last. “Who would have thought you’d worry about Brother Verber, especially since you’re not a member of the congregation. Maybe that has something to do with you selling alcohol.”

  “To folks like your husband,” shot back Ruby Bee.

  “My husband has been known to stray at times, but whenever he does, I do my best to get him back on the path of righteousness. I presume you do the same with your daughter, even though it doesn’t seem to do a smidgen of good.” Ignoring Ruby Bee’s gasp, she took a key from under the door mat, unlocked the door, and went inside.

  “Well, I never!” said Ruby Bee as the door slammed in her face. “The nerve of her!”

  Estelle snorted. “One of these days Mrs. High and Mighty’ll get what’s coming to her, and I hope I’m there to see it. Come on, Ruby Bee, we might as well go have some sweet potato pie.”

  Ruby Bee was more in the mood to stomp into the rectory and tell Mrs. Jim Bob what she thought of her, but she followed Estelle back to the station wagon.

  Jake saw the Hummer parked at the far edge of the pasture and drove toward it, cursing as his tires spun in the mud. “I hope to hell
it don’t take a tow truck to get out of here on Monday.”

  Judy pulled her coat more tightly around her. “Then Sterling can pay for it, since he selected the spot. At least over at Bradley’s place, there was a gravel road. This is ridiculous. I never should have agreed to put up with this another year.”

  He glared at her, then concentrated on getting through the shriveled corn stalks that slapped at the front of the truck. As he parked alongside the Hummer, Pitts came out of the woods and called, “You’re early. I wasn’t expecting to see you all till six or seven.”

  Jake climbed out of the truck and pulled down the tailgate. “I took off early so we could get here before dark. My boss thinks I’m over in Farberville having a look at junkers at the auto auction lot. How long you been here, Pitts?”

  “We’re supposed to use code names on retreats! Unless you wish to risk the possibility of a court martial, Blitzer, address me as Silver Fox.”

  Jake dragged a canvas tent bag out of the bed, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and said, “Where are we making camp—Silver Fox?”

  “I’ve reconnoitered the area and chosen a clearing with adequate drainage. It’s just on the other side of that gully and up about fifty feet. No one can see you from here, but you should be able to see anyone who approaches. I’ll show you the way.”

  Jake looked back at Judy, who was sitting in the cab like she was planted there for all eternity. “Get the sleeping bags and whatever else you can carry,” he shouted at her, then slithered down the side of the gully and made his way up the far side.

  Sterling waited until Jake reached the top, then turned and continued between thickets of brambles and thin, stunted trees. They arrived at a rocky clearing encircled by scrub pines and more brambles.

  Jake dropped the tent. “Where’s your crap?”