Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 13 (12 page)

"The schedule says you're closing tonight. Besides, I need to wash my hair and do my nails. I even bought an outfit 'specially for tonight."

"Maybe you ought to save it for going on job interviews next week, 'cause that's what you'll be doing after I fire you. If I was you, I'd start at the poultry plant in Starley City. I hear they're always looking for workers to yank the guts out of chickens. Kinda messy, but you get to go to the company picnic on the Fourth of July. Oh, and you get a fruitcake at Christmas."

Idalupino stared at him. "You're a real sumbitch, Jim Bob."

"So they say." He went back through the store and out the loading dock door to his truck. He ran a comb through his stubby hair and splashed on some cologne from the bottle he kept in the glove compartment.

The Dew Drop Inn was twenty minutes away. He wasn't sure if she'd even show up, but if she did, he figured he was in for one helluva night.

When Larry Joe and I made it back to the road, I piled up a few rocks as a marker, then walked back to the lodge, oblivious to his demands for an explanation. As we reached the porch, I turned around. "There is a telephone, isn't there?"

"Yeah, back in the little office, but it doesn't work. While you were upstairs with Darla Jean, I tried to call Joyce to make sure she was okay. Lightning must have hit a transformer somewhere."

This was not good, but I was encouraged to see the lights were back on inside.

"Wait here," I said to Larry Joe, then went over to Estelle's station wagon. As I'd hoped, the key was in the ignition, which was standard behavior in Maggody. "I'm going into Dunkicker to tell the deputy what we found. Let's hope he can get some backup from the sheriff's department. What I need you to do is go inside and see if Heather's there. If not, go down to the girls' cabin and tell her that we found Darla Jean."

"Wouldn't it be better if one of the other girls went?"

"I don't want any of them setting foot out of the lodge until we know for sure that ... " I dribbled off, unable to think of a tactful way to finish the sentence.

Larry Joe grunted. "That there's not a crazy killer hiding in the woods, spying on us and waiting to attack somebody else? Is that what you mean?" I shrugged. "What am I supposed to tell Mrs. Jim Bob this time? You decided to do some night fishin' and stole Estelle's station wagon to go into Dunkicker and buy bait?"

"As good as anything else," I said. "Just make sure everybody stays inside until I get back. It's liable to be several hours."

I left him standing on the porch and drove away, desperately hoping I wouldn't go through a puddle deep enough to stall out the engine. There I'd be, sitting in the station wagon, lightning and thunder all around me, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for the guy in the hockey mask (or, in this case, perhaps a catcher's mask).

I kept a death grip on the steering wheel and my mind on the road until I arrived on pavement. Letting out the breath I'd held for at least five minutes, I turned toward Dunkicker. Surely someone at the Welcome Y'all Cafe could help me find Corporal Robarts.

Parking places were not at a premium, in that one lone pickup dominated the gravel expanse. Cold bullets of rain chased me inside the building. I pulled off the poncho and left it by the door, then brushed ineffectually at the mud caked on my pants. "Some storm," I murmured inanely.

"I'd say. Want a cup of coffee?"

I looked up and saw Rachael behind the counter, somewhat friendlier than she'd been earlier and clearly alive and kicking. "That'd be great." I sat down on a stool and wrapped my hands around the ceramic mug she put down on the counter. "I'll have to pay you tomorrow."

"You look like you might ought to be drinking it right now. Something to eat?"

"No, thank you," I said, obediently sipping. I glanced around. All the tables were vacant, with the exception of the three toothless wonders to be found at every cafe in the South, cackling, drooling, and arguing about their dawgs. Now that I had seen Rachael, I was even more bewildered. It did not, however, seem appropriate to discuss it. "I'm looking for Corporal Robarts."

"Anthony usually has his supper at home on Saturday night." Rachael refilled my mug. "You sure you don't want another eighteen cheeseburgers? Scrawny girl like you needs her calories."

"As do ten teenagers," I said, and told her about the group. "We have a situation at Camp Pearly Gates, and the telephone's out because of the storm. Can you tell me how to find Corporal Robarts?"

"You want I should call him and tell him to get over here?"

"Please."

Rachael went around the corner to a short hallway and fed a coin into a pay phone. I sat on the stool, drinking coffee and doing my best not to listen to the conversation from the booth, which was now centered on professional wrasslin' and the remote possibility that it might just be rigged. I tuned it out as best I could. The ghastliness of what Larry Joe and I had found came flooding over me as both my body and brain began to thaw. The body had not been who I had assumed her to be. But a second woman with a shaved head and magenta lipstick, dressed in a white robe? And the child? Had there been one, or had Darla Jean conjured up the spectral presence of Cousin Emory for some reason?

Rachael came back and told me that Corporal Robarts was on his way, then went to the corner table to top off coffee and ask if anyone wanted another piece of pecan pie.

I simply sat, trying to assimilate what I'd seen, what I'd done, what I should have done, what I needed to do. Back at the ranch, so to speak, I was short one teenager. Both Brother Verber and Ruby Bee claimed to have seen something disturbing, although it seemed possible that they had seen the now deceased woman hiding in the woods. The woman with Rachael's sense of style. That woman, yeah.

A few minutes later Corporal Robarts came in and sat down on the stool beside me. "Heard you're looking for me," he said. "Just as well you came into town, saving me from driving all the way out to the camp in weather like this. I got one of yours locked up at the police department. I was gonna hunt you up soon as I had my supper. Ma always has pork chops and gravy on Saturday. Warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert. It just doesn't get any better than that."

I hated to break it to Corporal Robarts, but his evening was destined to go downhill.

Like a bobsled.

7

"One of mine?" I said, surprised. I would have argued that I wasn't missing one, but I was. However, Heather had shown no inclination to hoof it into Dunkicker, much less get herself arrested.

Corporal Robarts grinned, allowing me a view of clumps of pork stuck between his teeth. "A good ol' boy, name of Duluth Buchanon -- funny yellow eyes, forehead like somebody'd squashed his head. I picked him up about an hour ago and left him to sleep it off over at the police department."

I damn near rocked off the stool. "Duluth Buchanon, here? What was he doing?"

"Crawling alongside the road and braying like a Jackass. I would have let him be, but it was rainin' and I figured he'd be better off in a cell than facedown in a ditch. I couldn't find his vehicle, but he must have left it somewhere. The municipal judge'll be here Tuesday, fine him fifty dollars for public drunkenness, and let him go."

"Duluth Buchanon?"

"That's what it said on the driver's license in his pocket. I reckon that's not why you was looking for me."

"No," I said, smiling gratefully at Rachael as she refilled my mug and left a couple of cookies on the edge of the saucer. I waited until she had moved away, then said, "I found a dead body in the woods at Camp Pearly Gates. A woman. She had the same shaved head and makeup as Rachael, but she was dressed in some sort of white robe."

"You sure she was dead?"

Rachael made a small noise. It was impossible to determine if she'd turned white, considering that she already had the complexion of someone who'd been chipped out of a glacier after a few thousand years.

I turned back to Corporal Robarts. "Real sure. I went to take a look after one of the girls in our group claimed to have stumbled over the body a few minutes after the storm came in."

"What was the girl doing out there by herself?"

"It's pretty complicated. Why don't you call the sheriff's department and request backup? While we're waiting, I'll tell you what I know."

"I ain't about to call the sheriff's department or anybody else on account of what you think you may have seen. For all I know, you brought a dozen bottles of field whiskey in the back of that blue bus of yours. Was Duluth Buchanon your driver? That might explain why he's drunker'n a skunk." He shook his head resolutely. "I'll call Chief Panknine in the morning and see what he sez."

I resisted the impulse to fling coffee in his smug face. "I saw the body, dammit! Somebody shattered the back of her head with a softball bat. You are not equipped to handle this investigation on your own. We need a forensics team from the sheriff's department, and" -- I forced myself to add -- "a couple of dogs. There may be a lost child."

"Anything else? How about a stinky, nine-foot-tall hulk with an excess of body hair and real big feet?"

All eyes were on me as I went to the pay phone in the hallway, punched buttons, and made a collect call to the sheriff's department. When LaBelle answered, I told her to accept the call or spend the remainder of her life being stalked by whatever sexual deviants I could recruit from the state prison. Having sent a few there myself, I was sincere in my threat.

"I am not permitted to accept collect calls," she said as soon as the operator had reluctantly exited the connection, which was undoubtedly the highlight of her shift. "The quorum court recently hired an auditor to make sure -- "

"Let me speak to Harve."

"He's over at his sister's house, it being her twentieth wedding anniversary. You could have slapped me silly with a pom-pom when he told me they'd been married that long. I was in school with Jerrilynda, you know, and I always figured she'd take off with some roustabout from a carnival. She had a thing about tattoos and what she referred to as manly odors."

"Listen carefully, LaBelle," I said. "I'm going to give you a telephone number. Track down Harve and tell him to call me back immediately. Understand?"

"His budget's -- "

"Remember Siffalus Buchanon, the guy with the glass eye and fondness for barbed wire? He should be getting out on parole any day now."

She spat back the number after I gave it to her, then slammed down the receiver. I sat down on the end stool and waited for the pay phone to ring, refusing to look at the trio of troglodytes, Rachael, or Corporal Robarts.

Corporal Robarts finally found the courage to approach me. "You called Sheriff Dorfer, right?"

"This cannot wait until you speak to your chief in the morning. There is a corpse in the woods, and quite possibly a child cowering underneath a ledge."

"This ain't your jurisdiction."

"No, it's not," I said. "It is, however, Sheriff Dorfer's, especially with your police chief out of commission. He's not going to like it, but he'll send some backup to retrieve the body and start the investigation. So why don't you run along back to your mama's and have your apple pie and ice cream?"

"Chief Panknine's gonna be real pissed."

"So's Sheriff Dorfer when he's obliged to leave the festivities and call me. You have three options here: tuck your tail and run, take the call and behave like the acting law enforcement agent, or sit down on that stool and allow me to take charge. I really don't care."

Sweat dotted his forehead as it must have done a very few years ago when he'd faced an exam in high-school algebra. "Are you sure you saw this body?"

"Tell you what," I said, "let's drive out to the campground and you can see for yourself. I can't draw you a map, but I can point you in the right direction."

"What about the child?"

"I don't know, but if we're still here when the phone rings, I'm going to tell Sheriff Dorfer about your blatant ineptitude and request that his department take charge of the investigation. You won't even get your name in the local newspaper -- if there is one."

"Go on," said Rachael from behind the counter. "I'll make your excuses when the sheriff calls."

He gave me a mulish look. "I can't just go off on your say-so. I got a prisoner over at the police department."

I glanced at the pay phone. "LaBelle's talking to Sheriff Dorfer as we speak. He'll harrumph for a few minutes, then get rid of her and call me back. When he does, he'll be about as happy as a boar with ticks on its balls. You're going to have to deal with him sooner or later, but you'd better have your act together when you do. He's got a temper, and he doesn't suffer fools."

"You saying I'm a fool?"

I would have felt sorry for him if I hadn't been so frustrated, as well as wet, hungry, covered with scratches, and splattered with mud. "It's up to you."

"All right," he said with the bravado of John Wayne eying the Apache warriors on the crest of the mountain. "We can drive out and take a look. Rach, if Sheriff Dorfer calls, get his number and tell him I'll report when I know more. If there's a body like she says, I most likely will need assistance. If there's not, he can call her over at the police department, 'cause she's gonna be in the cell with her neighbor from back home in Maggody."