Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 03 (12 page)

Miss Una blinked at me. "Heavens, no."

"How did he seem?" I persisted. "Was he still upset by the presence of the demonstrators in the parking lot?"

"Not really," she said slowly. "I was a bit surprised by his mood. He'd been very distressed earlier, and rightly so, but by the time I was ready to go home, he was in a most jovial mood, as if he were anticipating good news or a gift."

"But he didn't give you any hint of what it might be?"

"Our relationship was strictly business," Miss Una said with a sniff. "Johnna Mae and I had worked together for so long that it seemed permissible to take a personal interest, but I would not have been so bold as to make such overtures to Mr. Bernswallow."

"Had anyone come into the bank lately and seemed upset about something Bernswallow had done?"

"Raz Buchanon has been pestering me relentlessly over the new bank statement. He is not the only customer to have difficulties with it, but I would hardly say he was upset enough to commit such a dastardly act. Johnna Mae, on the other hand, was quite furious. I happened to overhear her conversation with Mr. Bernswallow the day he fired her, and she made some terribly nasty threats." Miss Una clutched the collar of her cardigan. "You don't think Johnna Mae would do such a thing, do you?"

"Of course not," I said firmly if also mendaciously. It was getting pretty hard to ignore the fact that Johnna Mae was hefty enough to have bashed Bernswallow with a blunt instrument, and angry enough as well. Thus far we didn't have an abundance of motives, and hers was harder to miss than a Roman candle on the Fourth of July. I told Miss Una that I'd drop by later for an official statement. She got in her car and chugged back down the highway.

I decided to postpone dealing with Johnna Mae for the time being and drove to Ruby Bee's on the off chance the official period of mourning for Kevin (and where the hell was he?) was over and I could get a decent meal.

The Closed sign was still on the door, but I went on in and sat down next to Estelle. Ruby Bee came out of the kitchen. "What do you want?" she asked in an odd voice.

A great deal of what Ruby Bee says and does is said and done oddly, so I let it fly right past me. "I was hoping to ward off starvation with a blue plate special. I'm not proud; I'll settle for pork chops, meat loaf, ribs, or anything else you're in the mood to serve."

Estelle jabbed me in the arm. "I'm surprised you have time to worry about your stomach when Kevin Buchanon is missing and that Bernswallow fellow's been murdered."

"How do you know he was murdered?" I said.

Ruby Bee grabbed a dishrag and began to wipe the surface of the counter. "Everybody in town thinks it was murder, Miss Closed Mouth. You and Carolyn both said it was too much of a coincidence that an accidental fire started the very same time we were in the lot. And when the body was found, well, that made it perfectly clear."

"I wish it were perfectly clear to me," I said, "but I'm too weak from hunger to think straight."

The dishrag stopped. "If I'm willing to slave over a hot stove just so you can satisfy your stomach, will you tell us what-all the sheriff and those investigators had to say?"

I seriously considered stalking out the door, my nose high enough to brush the cobwebs off the ceiling, but acknowledged to myself that the results of the investigation would be common knowledge within a day or two, thanks to the mach-seven grapevine. "How hard are you intending to slave?"

"I think I have a slab of leftover meat loaf with tomato sauce and a little dish of creamed potatoes."

"No cobbler?" I said in a wounded voice.

Estelle jabbed me again. "It is unseemly to listen to you blackmailing your own mother."

"She started it."

Ruby Bee marched over to face me across the counter and folded her arms. "I reckon there may be a piece of cherry cobbler in the ice box. I was planning on serving it to Carolyn when she finished making phone calls, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her."

"Where is she?" I asked curiously. "And for that matter, where's Dahlia?"

"Carolyn went to her unit to call her office and make arrangements to stay in Maggody until this awful tragedy is resolved," Estelle said. "Although I told her until my face turned blue that none of this was her fault, she insisted that she was in some way responsible because of the demonstration and everything."

"So she thinks the demonstration was the catalyst for the murder?"

Ruby Bee snapped the dishrag under Estelle's nose. "See, I told you it was murder, didn't I? Arly just said so."

"I didn't argue with you," Estelle said, sounding deeply offended. "If I recollect, I was the one who said the fire was set to cover the murder."

"Then you disrecollect," Ruby Bee huffed.

To my utter relief, they took their squabble with them into the kitchen, leaving me in dim, cool, quiet bliss. I was almost dozing when the door opened and footsteps clicked across the dance floor. Carolyn climbed onto the stool next to me. "I heard you're planning to stay around until the investigation is completed," I said.

"I feel bad. Had I not accepted Johnna Mae's case, none of this would have happened." She stared at her reflection in the spotted mirror behind the bar. "Maybe it would have anyway. Johnna Mae was deeply upset by the blatantly sexist, illegal actions taken against her."

"Everybody seems rather eager to cast Johnna Mae as the villain in the piece," I said mildly. "Bernswallow wasn't especially popular with a lot of people. Perhaps your rhetoric stirred another of the women to violence, or even a closet sympathizer from the far side of the road."

"I incited someone to kill Bernswallow and burn the building? I'm good, but I'm not that good. I will say I was surprised by the cooperativeness of the local women when I first arrived to organize the demonstration. On the campuses, I'm usually lucky to find a handful of women who'll stand beside me in the name of equality and justice. Too many sorority girls would rather worry about dates to fraternity parties than worry about the injustices that they'll face in the workplace after graduation." She stopped with a rueful laugh. "Sorry, the rhetoric sneaks out when I'm not alert."

"Can you describe what went on in the parking lot before the fire caught everyone's attention?"

"It was chaotic, but not dreadfully so. There was a lengthy discussion about the quality of the army cots, and several of the demonstrators were making barbed remarks about dedication and sacrifice. I believe there was a canasta game going on. There was another group exchanging recipes. It was fairly dark, and I'd be hard-pressed to say where anyone was at any given moment. When that ghastly man began shrieking about the fire, I was standing with Ruby Bee, Estelle, and Ms. McMay. Five minutes before that, I really couldn't say."

"Did you leave at any time between five o'clock and ten o'clock?"

"At one point I became rather overwhelmed by the intensity of the group and walked back to the motel to pick up a package of pamphlets we were planning to distribute today. I'd estimate that I was gone for half an hour."

"Did anyone else leave for a time?"

"I have no idea. Each of us certainly could have been away for a few minutes to use the washroom facilities at the Emporium or to make a phone call. Our sentries were watching for intruders, not escapees."

I thought for a minute. "I understand that it was dark and that everyone was wandering around chatting or griping or using the facilities. Was there anyone you couldn't find at a particular time?"

"When I went to congratulate Truda Oliver on her courageous stand, it took me quite a while to locate her." Carolyn slapped her forehead, although carefully enough not to jar loose any powder. "And Johnna Mae did say she was going home for a few minutes to make sure her husband had the children tucked in bed."

"What time was that?"

"I have no idea, Arly. You'll have to ask her."

Ruby Bee and Estelle came out of the kitchen, the former with a heaping plate of meat loaf et al and the latter with a glass of milk and a bowl of cobbler. The lovely above-mentioneds were placed in front of me, and I had my fork poised when the pay telephone rang in the corner.

"Maybe it's Dahlia," Estelle said as she hurried to answer it.

I looked at Ruby Bee, who was doing her best not to notice me. "Just where is Dahlia?"

Estelle saved her by covering the receiver and calling, "It's for you, Arly. Some deputy calling from Farberville. Says it's real important."

I put down the fork and glumly went to the telephone. "Arly Hanks," I said. "What's up?"

I learned what was up in no time flat. Estelle was hovering at a discreet distance, her earlobes aquiver, so I turned my back on her and hunched over the receiver while I asked questions and listened to answers that got grimmer by the minute. At last I hung up and started for the door.

"What about your supper?" Ruby Bee squawked.

"Let Carolyn have it. I've got some official business, and I can't put it off any longer."

Estelle put her hands on her hips and gave me an indignant look. "But you said you would tell us what-all the investigation turned up. I thought we had ourselves a deal."

I turned back and gazed at Ruby Bee and Estelle, who were on the militant side, and Carolyn, who was on the bewildered side. "I'm afraid there's some new evidence that implicates Johnna Mae. I'm going to talk to her now. On an empty stomach." There was a comment about Miss Liar Pants on Fire, but I didn't stop to argue the issue.

9

The same Nookim child was throwing the same tennis ball against the side of the mobile home, and it was making the same infuriating thwack with each encounter. I told him to stop. He looked at me sullenly, then hurled the ball again. I told him that it might take him all day to extract the ball from his mouth, which was what he was going to have to do if he continued. I then went to the door and knocked, although my shoulders were tensed in preparation for the thwack beside (or more probably, in the back of) my head.

Johnna Mae opened the door and gazed through the screen at me. She wore a tired, wrinkled housedress; her hair was limp and her makeup unable to disguise her yellowish pallor. "Hi, Arly," she murmured. "That was pretty awful about Bernswallow, wasn't it?"

"It certainly was, and what's worse is that we're almost sure he was murdered," I said evenly.

"I can't believe that. I mean, that's downright impossible to believe that someone would do something like that." She produced the proper expression of horror and incredulousness, but her voice had a funny edge to it and her eyes were darting every which way except at me.

"I need to talk to you, Johnna Mae, and I think" -- thwack -- "that we'd have more privacy at the PD."

"Stop that right this minute, Earl Boy, or I'll whip your rear end with a willow branch so hard you won't sit down for a solid year!" She shrugged at me, then called over her shoulder that she'd be gone for a few minutes. As we walked past Earl Boy, she slapped at him without much enthusiasm. There were three more thwacks before we made it to the car.

I thought about making chitchat while we drove to the PD, but I didn't have the heart for it and Johnna Mae didn't look all that receptive. She kept her face lowered, and every once in a while muttered something unintelligible under her breath. When we arrived I asked her to sit down and settled myself in my chair behind the desk.

"I'm afraid this will have to be official," I told her, and recited the Miranda warning. When I'd made sure she understood it, I continued. "The problem is that the sheriff had someone go over to the main bank and dig through the Maggody branch records. He was baffled by the number of small loans made to locals over the last few years. When he saw his brother-in-law's name, he called and asked why the hell he was borrowing money. His brother-in-law said it was the first he'd heard of it, and why would anyone think a bank would loan money to an unemployed backhoe operator with a cast on his ankle and monthly disability checks as income."

"Oh," Johnna Mae said so quietly I almost missed it. "That would be Clarence Pipit. I'm sorry to hear about his misfortune."

"This is more serious than a broken ankle, because the ankle will heal sooner or later. The deputy made several more calls. The upshot was that the bank got its bookkeepers in there, and they started shifting through all the files. A vast percentage of the loans originating from the Maggody branch were bogus. A bank employee had filled in the applications for small, inconsequential amounts that wouldn't raise an examiner's eyebrow, approved the loans, and pocketed the proceeds. When a loan came up for renewal, another bogus application was approved and a portion of it used to make an Interest payment and reduce the capital on the previous loan. It was a widening spiral, but one that didn't stir up much dust. Then, about two months ago, the payments on the loans stopped. The computer spewed out letters to the loanees, reminding them they needed to make payments."

"I didn't know I was going to need the C section," Johnna Mae said dully. "I thought I'd be out for a few days, not a whole six weeks. " She ran her hand through her hair and sighed. "And when I got back, Bernswallow was the head teller. I didn't have the money to make payments on the loans, and I sure couldn't run any new loan approvals past him without him catching wind of it. There wasn't a thing I could do but just wait until the shit hit the fan."