Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 04 (26 page)

-- ==+== --

"Fingerprints all over the room, naturally," Plover said. We'd availed ourselves of the key to the bar and grill and were sitting in a booth, untouched coffee cooling on the tabletop between us. I'd switched on a light above the bar, but the overall dimness seemed more suitable to my mood.

"But they were in the room for that meeting, so it doesn't mean anything. Any of them could have killed Kitty Kaye, for that matter." I toyed with the cup, sloshing the coffee until it splashed on my hand. "Any of them except Frederick Marland, who was in a motel room in Farberville with one of the local girls. He's damn lucky she's above the age of consent; I'd like nothing more than to bust him for statutory rape."

"Contributing to the delinquency?"

"I suppose so, but I doubt Darla Jean wants to testify in a case that's liable to attract the national media. It may take some time for her to heal, but she will." I put my finger in the coffee and on the Formica drew the antithesis of a happy face. I wasn't sure if it was Darla Jean's or my own. "No one has an alibi for the time of Hal's death, and if it was an accident or suicide, then I'm Meredith in drag and you're having a B-grade nightmare. Carlotta, Frederick, and Anderson were in their rooms, and Gwenneth was known to have been in Hal's room. The vigilant trooper, who might have been able to tell us about suspicious movements in the parking lot, was at the Dairee Dee-Lishus picking up cheeseburgers. I don't know if we should be concerned with past crimes, present crimes, or even future crimes."

"Past as in the unsolved murder of Anderson St. James's wife?" Plover said, although with an admirable absence of malice. I'd told him what I discovered about the members of the Glittertown family. I hadn't elaborated on my personal reaction, but he was being nicer than usual, for which I had to give him his due. His lack of expression was easier to handle than sympathy -- or pity.

"Even if he did drive to L.A. that night, he still doesn't have a motive for the murders here," I said.

Harve came into the bar, located us in the shadows, and came to the table. "We can't find hide nor hair of Gwenneth D'Amourre, or any of the missing persons," he said. Sighing, he slid into my side of the booth. "Arly's gonna be chief of a ghost town the way things are going. We've got nine missing at last count. They must have chartered a damn bus."

Plover gave me a perplexed look. "Nine?"

"I forgot to mention some of it," I said, "because it's unlikely to be relevant. You'll agree when you hear the names." I rattled them off, and for those who've lost track, we were searching for (with varying amounts of dedication): Buddy Meredith; Fuzzy Indigo; Kevin Buchanon; Dahlia O'Neil; Billy Dick MacNamara; Willard Yarrow; Ruby Bee Hanks; Estelle Oppers; and the latest addition to the list, Gwenneth D'Amourre.

"Wow," Plover murmured.

"We can't hide this from the media much longer," Harve said. "I already had a call from some television station. Somebody must have noticed the activity out back and alerted 'em. I said we'd hold a press conference in the morning."

"We're not going to look good," I said as I sank into the plastic upholstery. "I guess there's no reason why we should look good. A production company comes to Maggody, and before anyone yells 'Action!' one's been brutally murdered and another's disappeared. Now we've got another corpse and lost two more of them and a handful of locals to boot. If I were a reporter, I'd be salivating at the possibility of a Pulitzer ... for absurdity."

"Sheriff Dorfer!" said a deputy as he banged open the door. "I reckon you ought to see this!"

"See what?" Harve said with a growl.

"It's kinda like a parade." The deputy ducked back through the door.

"Vans from the television stations," I said hollowly. "Buses filled with reporters, and a limo with lunatics from the tabloids."

"I suppose we'd better have ourselves a look." Harve slid out of the booth, and Plover and I followed him outside.

Estelle's station wagon was creeping down the middle of the road. She was at the wheel, her face slathered with fury. Ruby Bee, jammed in the middle of the front seat, looked no happier. On the far side, Trudi Yarrow looked downright murderous, as did Billy Dick in the backseat. In that he was scrunched between Kevin and Dahlia (who spread across half the available space), his expression was understandable.

Other things were not. I shaded my eyes and let out a whistle when I saw Marjorie in the back of the wagon, her snout pressed against Dahlia's neck. Willard Yarrow was plastered against the tailgate.

Only a few feet behind the bumper, Raz Buchanon was in his truck, leaning out the window with a shotgun in his left hand. Fuzzy Indigo sat beside him. He was the only one of the participants who seemed cheerful.

"Now you jest pull over right there!" Raz shouted, aiming the shotgun at the station wagon.

Estelle pulled into the parking lot and cut off the engine. Nobody so much as twitched. Raz parked behind her, slid out of his truck, and waved at us. "Got you another dead 'un here in my truck," he said genially. "I don't know what all these folks have to do with it, but they was all sneaking around up on Cotter's Ridge. One of 'em was hiding in the outhouse, if you can imagine. I rounded them up and brung 'em down."

"Oh," said one of us, or perhaps all of us.

Chapter 17

Harve finally shook himself into action and ordered the deputy to escort Raz's dubious crew into the bar and grill, separate them as he saw fit, and keep them from assaulting each other until we could try to sort out the latest development, which was a real doozy. A trooper was dispatched to retrieve the remaining members of Glittertown -- Carlotta from the state police barracks, and Anderson and Frederick from their respective rooms. Of the original eight, we were down to four, with three murdered and one currently missing. It was beginning to look as if Maggody was not the perfect location for the filming of Wild Cherry Wine.

Plover went to his car to set the homicide team in motion for the third time. I stayed by the truck. Even though we'd covered the body with a canvas tarp, it was difficult not to hear the flies that had already converged on Buddy Meredith's remains, and equally difficult not to react to the miasma that made it clear he'd been dead for several days.

After an interminable delay, the coroner arrived from Farberville, took a quick look, and sonorously pronounced Meredith deceased. He was willing to speculate that death was the result of the knife that protruded from the corpse's throat. I went around the corner, threw up on a spike of weeds, and returned in time to hear the coroner peevishly add that it was clear to anyone with more than formaldehyde for brains that the corpse had been dead for a long time -- and in a warm place.

The team arrived. Plover issued orders, then took my arm and guided me into the barroom. We had quite a crowd (including a soporific sow) scattered around the room. I consulted with Harve and Plover, then took center stage and started with the firebug and his apprentice.

"Why were you on Cotter's Ridge?" I asked.

Billy Dick gazed defiantly at me. "We fixed some sandwiches and went for a picnic. I thought we might all go skinny-dippin' at that spring."

Willard's giggle held the same foul edge I'd heard the night of the gas station fire. "It was Trudi's idea," he simpered in the voice of a playground tattletale. "She wanted to tease Billy Dick."

Trudi was scrunched down in the seat, but at the mention of her name, she flinched and said, "You little worm, I didn't want to do anything. You and your creepy friend came up with this scheme all by yourselves. I just went along for the hell of it."

"Scheme?" I repeated.

She shoved her hair out of her eyes and glowered at them. "Yeah, they were gonna steal some jars of moonshine and sell 'em to the kids at the Dee-Lishus. That's what they said, anyway. Then it turns out they don't even know where the still is, and he gets this bright idea we ought to go to some old shack and burn it down, just for kicks."

"Which one of them had the bright idea?" I asked. "Billy Dick MacNamara?"

Billy Dick's eyes began their now familiar retreat. "Not me. I might steal some hooch, but I don't start fires."

I shook my head. "Then why did you lie to me and make threats?"

"I d-dunno." His voice thickened as he struggled with the words. "For once, s-somebody thought I was important. Somebody noticed me, didn't dare laugh at me. So maybe I lied, acted g-guilty, said things to keep you curious." He gulped noisily. "I don't start fires."

Willard giggled again. "Sure you do, Billy Dick. Remember in the tunnel below Balthazar, when the dragon belched and I was burned to a crisp?"

"I was the one who was burned," Billy Dick said, frowning. "You were the d-dungeonmaster. You ordered the dragon to attack."

"I couldn't help it, Billy Dick. The dragon can't be stopped, you know; he can only be controlled by a wizard. I'm not a wizard. I can't be Willard the Wizard until somebody's been sacrificed. I thought about you, but the dragon demanded a female sacrifice."

"Sacrifice?" Trudi gasped. The blemishes on her face were bright red against her sudden pallor. "Is that why you wanted me to go inside that shack? Damn it, Willard, you're a sight spookier than I ever dreamed. I thought that lacy red slip in your closet was Billy Dick's, but now I'm not so sure it doesn't belong to Willard the Wizard!" She raised her hand as if to slap him, then lowered it and looked at me. "It won't do much good, will it? I reckon you'd better get hold of my parents. They're at my great-aunt's hospital room. I'll give you the telephone number."

"Thanks," I said. "You'll all have to wait at the barracks until we can notify them, and Billy Dick's mother."

The only sound in the barroom was a wheezy sigh from the sow as a trooper escorted the three away to locate their parents. Once the door closed, I forced myself to move along to the next pair of miscreants, Ruby Bee and Estelle. "And you two? Why were you on Cotter's Ridge?"

Ruby Bee looked almost as defiant as Billy Dick had. "We did it to save you the bother, so there's no need to squawk at us like we were interfering in your official investigation. We went up there to save Fuzzy's backside."

Fuzzy smiled benignly at her. "Always nice to have your backside saved, isn't it?"

Estelle snorted. "Ruby Bee happened to notice he was stewed to the gills when he came back from Raz's on the morning they were making the movie there. We discussed it, and realized he'd most likely been drinking moonshine and might have gone up on the ridge to look for more. Raz got mighty perturbed when we delicately inquired about it."

I looked at Raz. "How very curious that the kids, and now Fuzzy, would anticipate finding something as illegal as a moonshine still on Cotter's Ridge. Why would they all entertain such a possibility?"

"How would I know?" Raz said. He started to spit, heard Ruby Bee's hiss, and thought better of it. "I jest took Marjorie up there on account of her fondness for snufflin' for acorns. Ol' Fuzzy came lunging out of the bushes and liked to scare the britches clean off me, and Marjorie nearly run up a tree. I may have took a shot at him, and then got all worried he might be a-bleedin' and tracked him down to the shack." He went ahead and spat on the floor. "Marjorie still ain't up to snuff. She was too upset to ride in the back of the truck with a dead man, and she's always had a hankerin' to ride in a station wagon."

"Are you claiming there's not a still somewhere up the mountain mountain past Robin's shack?" I persisted.

"No, there ain't, and iff'n there was, I wouldn't have told that feller anything except mebbe the general area, and I wouldn't have dun that iff'n he hadn't come by one evening and started admiring the quality."

"Took me hours to find it," the feller contributed with a hiccup. "It's dynamite hooch. Blow your head off -- kaboom!"

Raz and Marjorie were sent away. I was going to get rid of Fuzzy, but he fell across the seat and began to snore. I moved along to Kevin and Dahlia.

"And you two?"

Dahlia's tongue was on the trigger, so to speak. "It's all Kevin's fault. He kidnapped me and almost got me killed, and I want you to arrest him and lock him up in a filthy jail cell for the rest of his born days."

"My beloved ... "

"Well, it was your fault, and you know it." She proceeded to relate a farfetched tale of a wild ride up the mountainside, a wire thrown in the bushes, a body in the shack, and a miserable night in the car. "He didn't even bring anything to eat or drink," she concluded in condemnation. "I could have died of starvation up there."

"Kin you ever find it in your heart to forgive me? Kevin said, clasping his hands together."

"Not unless I get to be in the movie."

Carlotta winced. "I think we'll close down production of Wild Cherry Wine. It's not feasible now that we've lost three of our five principles and the director."

Dahlia was berating Kevin as they left. The room seemed larger and much more manageable. Ruby Bee offered to make fresh coffee, and although I wanted to throttle her, I gestured curtly at her to get on with it.

"I can't believe Buddy's dead, too," Carlotta was saying to Anderson and Frederick. The three were huddled in one booth. Anderson had his arm around her, but she was shivering and nervously ruffling her hair.