Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 03 (2 page)

"It might be a violation of the Civil Rights Act, but it's still not a criminal matter, Johnna Mae. I agree that you've been treated shabbily. I wish I could do something to help, but I can't. You need to find a lawyer who specializes in this kind of discrimination."

"Now, how am I supposed to find some lawyer, much less pay him, when I can't feed my family meat more than once a week?"

I didn't have a good answer for that one. We talked a while longer, then I gently shooed her out the door and walked down the highway to Ruby Bee's, where at least it would be dark and cool. To my delight, it was also deserted, except for one comatose character in a far booth. Several empty pitchers both explained and attested to the depth of the coma, but I didn't even raise an eyebrow. Too hot for facial aerobics.

I perched on a barstool and allowed the lovely breeze to wash over me. I was still evaporating when the proprietor came through the kitchen door and shot me a beady look.

"I suppose you want something to eat," Ruby Bee said in a most unfriendly voice.

"I was hoping."

"And you didn't stop to think for one minute about how I'd have to stand over a hot stove to fix it for you, did you? Didn't think about how the vents in the kitchen don't work and it's hotter than a fire in a pepper mill, did you? All you think about is your innards, missy. If you paid half as much attention to other folks, you'd think twice before insisting on someone having to slave and perspire so's you could gulp it down and prance away without so much as a thank you kindly." Did I mention that Ruby Bee is my mother?

I pondered my options for a moment. "I am always most grateful when you make such sacrifices for your only child," I said meekly, sucking in my cheeks and widening my eyes in true Oliver Twist fashion. "I'd have gone over to the Dairee Dee-Lishus for a cheeseburger, but your cooking is the best in the county. However, I cringe to think of all that slavery going on over a hot stove, so I'll just head back down the road."

"Haven't I taught you anything about eating well-balanced meals?" she snapped, looking pissed enough to come across the bar and turn me over her knee. It would make an amusing scene, to say the least. To begin with, I'm five foot ten and she's five foot period. She has brassy blond hair, courtesy of her friend Estelle Oppers, owner and sole operator of Estelle's Hair Fantasies. Despite the waves of pink eye shadow and the inch or so of powder, Ruby Bee resembles everyone's granny, from her angelic smile to her clean white apron and support stockings. If the woman knocked on your door, you'd invite her in to make cookies in your kitchen. You'd beg her to watch the kids while you ran out for a package of chocolate morsels. Truth. Then again, there are a lot of smirky, smart-ass rednecks who've learned the wisdom of backing off when Ruby Bee gets a certain tightness to her mouth.

So had I, and I was backing off fast, although in a metaphorical sense. "I'll do whatever you want, Ruby Bee. I'll eat here. I'll eat at the Dairee Dee-Lishus. I'll trot home and eat a can of chicken soup. I won't eat anything at all."

"You already look as scrawny as a heifer what's caught the eye of the resident bull. There's no way you're ever going to find yourself a man if you don't put on a little weight."

"And it wouldn't hurt none to do something with your hair," Estelle contributed as she came across the tiny dance floor and sat down beside me. "Wearing it in a bun like that isn't exactly the fashion rage these days. I keep thinking that a delicate auburn rinse might bring out some highlights, Arly. Then, with a perm and a few wisps to frame your face, you'd look just like a June bride." This from a woman with a foot-high beehive of fire-engine-red hair, which gave her an overall upright dimension of six feet plus.

Ruby Bee clasped her hands to her bosom and gave me a misty look. "Why, I can just see you in a lacy veil, all trembly with excitement, waiting at the top of the aisle while some sweet little girl scatters rose petals in your path."

"Ruby Bee right there in the first pew, wearing her blue silk dress," Estelle added in a husky voice. "I'd be sitting beside her in my aquamarine suit with the seed pearl buttons, just dabbing like crazy with a hankie while the tears streamed down my cheeks."

"Your aquamarine?" Ruby Bee chewed off a quarter inch of lipstick. "I do believe it might clash with my blue silk. How about that pale pink suit of yours? It's dressy enough."

"The aquamarine enhances my complexion. Why don't you wear that beige linen if you're so all-fired worried about clashing?" Estelle countered.

"Because it's my flesh and blood getting married, that's why."

"And I'm supposed to look all sallow? Is that what you want, Miss Selfish Mother of the Bride?"

I reminded myself that the PD was about as warm as an August day in Manhattan. I listened to my stomach rumbling. I envisioned a heaping plate of pork chops and creamed potatoes. And a square of peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream oozing over the edges. All washed down with a big glass of icy cold sweet milk, the droplets condensing on the outside of the glass like seed pearl buttons.

All that kept me occupied until the two stop squawking long enough for me to hop in. "But I'm not getting married," I said brightly. "I tried it once and I didn't much like it."

Ruby Bee rolled her eyes. "That's because you married that awful man and went to live in Noo Yark City. If you'd married some nice young fellow from these parts, you wouldn't be wearing a gun or hiding behind a billboard to arrest speeders. You'd be home where you belonged, raising my grandchildren and keeping house and cooking well-balanced meals for your husband so he could have supper when he came home from work every afternoon at five o'clock, regular as clockwork."

"Like Johnna Mae Nookim?" I said with a sweet smile.

Ruby Bee was blinking in confusion, but Estelle intercepted the ball and ran with it. "Isn't that the most awful thing you ever heard of? I can't imagine what came over Sherman Oliver to do such a thing to that nice girl what has to support her husband and three children. Putter can barely get around these days, much less go back to roofing. Elsie McMay says she saw him going into the Emporium just the other day, and he was moving so slowly she couldn't help but think of Ike Wiggins after his hemorrhoid surgery."

"Johnna Mae came by to discuss it with me," I said, trying not to stare at a wedge of cherry pie under a glass dome. "It sounds like a pretty nasty business, but I can't do anything to help her. I hope she can find a lawyer."

Ruby Bee snorted. "Lawyers ain't good for a blessed thing, except spouting jibbensh at each other so they can run up a big fat bill. Someone ought to round 'em up and put 'em on a desert island where they can sue each other till the cows come home." She let rip another snort, then calmed down enough to push a glass of sherry across the bar to Estelle. "Do you recollect how big Johnna Mae's baby was, Estelle? It seems to me it was on the scrawny side. I hope this awful heat's not too much for the little thing."

"Seven pounds, twelve ounces," Estelle answered promptly. "According to Joyce, who heard it from Earl's wife, who has a cousin who works at the hospital in the records department, when the doctor started grabbing around inside Johnna Mae's privates, Putter turned greener than a bowl of spinach and they had to hold his head between his knees the whole time."

I slid off the barstool and wandered off to make myself a can of chicken soup, thus saving my mother from all the slavery over a hot stove, Estelle from all those wild notions about my hair, and yours truly from what was likely to be a marathon of medical misinformation.

-- ==+== --

Carolyn McCoy-Grunders dug her fingernails into her thighs and ordered herself to count to ten. Long about three, however, she heard herself say, "Did it occur to you to mention this four and a half months ago, Monty? Perhaps before you came by to drop off a legal brief and ended up dropping your designer briefs on my bedroom floor?"

It came out calmly, with a satisfying hint of iciness that rather surprised her. She picked up her martini and took a long drink, then set it down without so much as a tiny clink.

"Now, Carolyn," Monty murmured, reaching across the table to pat her hand as if she were some mindless dog in heat, "we're both adults. We both consented to the seduction, which was delightful, and you were fully aware of my delicate situation at home. I never promised or even implied that, at some time in the future, I might divorce Elizabeth. Although I care very deeply about you, I must consider the consequences. What would happen to the poor woman should I ever leave her?"

Carolyn downed the martini and curled a finger at the waiter, who was hovering nearby on the off chance he might overhear one of those incredibly amusing conversations. "Another of these, Roberto, and screw the vermouth." Once Roberto had moved away, she propped her elbows on the table and gave Monty a sultry smile. "Oh, yes, I'd almost forgotten how responsible you feel for the poor woman, whose father, coincidentally, is a senior partner at your law firm. Why, you were so considerate that you called her every night from our hotel room in Acapulco, didn't you? And all those nights you were supposedly slaving away at the office while in fact you were indulging your carnal desires in my bed, you never once forgot to call and let her know you'd be late. You are a prince, Monty."

"Carolyn, Carolyn, don't work yourself up into such a lather. We both knew this was to be a brief encounter, as if we were but ships passing in the night. Two souls inexplicably drawn together for a moment of ectasy."

Roberto swooped in with a martini glass on a silver tray. "Here you are, darling. And how about your friend? Would he care for another drink? I would be simply thrilled to bring it to him tout de suite."

"Perhaps a towel," Carolyn replied. "I do believe he's drowning in bullshit, and we don't want him to have to go to court looking untidy."

Monty's smile slipped. "Stop it, Carolyn. This is between you and me. Neither one of us wants to have our reputations maligned in the kitchen by a swishy waiter and a hairy dishwasher."

Roberto stalked away to find Carlton and repeat every last word of the conversation between the two lawyers. Carolyn folded her napkin and put it beside her plate. She stood up, tucked her briefcase under her arm, and went around the table to stand next to Monty.

"You're so right, dear," she said, noting with malicious pleasure that they had the attention of almost every diner in the restaurant. She accordingly raised her voice so as not to disappoint anyone under the ferns. "How naïve of me to assume you were any different than all the other sleazy, bullshitting, cocksure married men in this city. Lies spring to your lips the instant your pitiful little pricks spring to life. The pricks shrivel and die, but the lies just keep getting bigger and bigger. Too bad the inverse isn't true."

She took his glass of water and poured it into his lap. As she walked through the room, she threw a kiss to Roberto and a hirsute sort in the kitchen doorway. She made it all the way to her office at Woman Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office before she burst into tears. Her mood did not improve when she found an invitation to her ex-husband's wedding. And by the time her secretary, one Staci Ellen Quittle, came into the room with a stack of telephone messages, Carolyn McCoy-Grunders was sorely pissed at approximately fifty percent of the world's population.

2

A few days later I decided to drop by the branch bank and see how Johnna Mae was doing. I wasn't feeling especially altruistic, but the damn window unit at the PD was feeling downright hostile. The air conditioner in the police car was a work of art -- minimalist art, that is. The fan in my apartment had given up the ghost in a miasma of burnt rubber and acrid smoke. There was no refuge to be taken at Ruby Bee's until the kitchen vents were fixed and certain people's good nature restored, and the repairman was holding the whole damn county hostage. I'd had to stop Ruby Bee more than once from offering to cater a lynch party.

I parked in the bank's gravel lot and went inside, praying that all that money could produce coolness. The branch wasn't up there with Chase Manhattan. It had a small lobby, a pseudomarble counter with two windows for tellers, a few plastic plants, and a wonderfully frigid air about it that won my heart and soul in a New York minute.

Miss Una Corners glanced up to make sure I wasn't a drug-crazed lunatic in a ski mask, then returned her attention to Raz Buchanon, who was scratching his head and grumbling like a chicken truck going up a steep hill. Miss Una was a frail little thing with wispy gray hair, half-moon glasses, and a pinched frown that was getting more pinched by the second. Raz, on the other hand, was a smelly, stubbly, beer-bellied, tobacco-chawin' pain in the neck. And that's a charitable description.

"That is not your balance," Miss Una said patiently. "That is your account number. Surely you don't think your balance runs to eight figures, Raz. That would mean you have in excess of eleven million dollars on deposit with us."

"But it sez right there that -- "

"That's the date of the first transaction," Miss Una continued, tapping the crumpled paper with a pencil. "This is the deposit. This is the balance for the end of the reporting period, less the minor charges you're supposed to tally yourself. This is your account number. You do not have eleven million dollars."

Raz peered over his shoulder at me, no doubt worrying that I'd leap on him with a marriage proposal if I found out the extent of his family fortune. Ruby Bee's face might match her blue silk if she saw that apparition waiting at the attar for her flesh and blood. "How much does I have then, Miss Una?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"This is your balance," she hissed. The pencil was now tapping like a woodpecker going for a juicy bug in a rotten log. "This number less customary charges."

Johnna Mae came out of the back room before I could scrounge up a poptop ring and spring the question. She climbed up on a stool, pushed a pencil to one side, and attempted a smile. "Hey, Arly, how's it going? Can I help you?"

"I came by to see how you were," I murmured as I moved in front of her window.

"Peachy keen. The dentist over in Starley City says Earl Boy needs braces afore too long, P.J.'s got the colic something awful, and Putter's back started acting up so bad last night I had to drive into Farberville long about midnight to get his prescription refilled. It costs forty-seven dollars, and sometimes he just has to gobble them pain pills down like they was the world's most expensive M&M's."

"Sounds tough," I said. "I wish I could do something."

"Ain't nothing anybody can do, I guess. I called this lawyer fellow in Farberville, and he wanted fifty dollars just to hear me out. He wasn't about to make any promises that he could help, although he was as itchy as a patch of poison ivy to take my fifty dollars."

The door to the office opened and a youngish man in a shirt and tie strode out. "Mrs. Nookim," he began, stopping to appraise me as if I were a particularly questionable piece of real estate. "Excuse me, miss. Please continue your transaction. Mrs. Nookim, I'd like to have a word with you when you're free." He turned and went back into the office. The door closed with a click.

"Is that the newcomer?" I asked.

Johnna Mae stared at me for a long time, no doubt under-awed by my deductive prowess. "Yeah, that's the hotshot head teller. Lord, I'd give anything if just one time he'd sweat. He takes off his jacket every morning when he comes in, but he keeps that tie around his neck like it was the only thing holding his head on. He never rolls up his sleeves. Mr. Oliver never wears a tie, and one time he even came by in Bermuda shorts on his way to the golf course in Farberville. Miss Una like to have had a stroke when her eyes lit on his bony knees."

At the next window, the alleged witness stiffened. "I would never presume to look at Mr. Oliver's knees, Johnna Mae, and you know it." She shoved the grimy paper into Raz's hand and firmly sent him on his way. Then, after a nervous glance at the office door, she joined us. "Mr. Bernswallow is simply doing his best to familiarize himself with his family's banking business. I realize that he can be difficult to deal with, but we must make allowances. He is inexperienced. I've learned after sixty-three years that it will accomplish nothing to yearn for the good old days. We must adapt to change, not whine and complain."

Johnna Mae's eyebrows lowered. "Miss Una doesn't think I ought to report Mr. Oliver for doing this terrible thing to me. She says I should just turn belly-up and accept a demotion and a cut in pay. Of course, Miss Una's going to retire in two years, and she doesn't have a family to feed and clothe and put braces on."

"But I have my hungry little kitties," Miss Una said, tittering. She settled her glasses halfway up her nose and studied me. "Aren't you Ruby Bee's girl? How is she doing these days? We go to different churches, so I hardly ever have the good fortune to run into her. I'd drop by for a nice visit, but I'm afraid I just wouldn't be comfortable in an establishment that serves alcohol. My mother was most adamant in making me swear on the Bible while I was still in pigtails that I'd never set foot in that sort of place."

It was not a major loss for the clientele of Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill. I told Miss Una that my mother was fine, thank you, and that I'd be delighted to pass on a small greeting. Once Miss Una trotted back to her window and opened a black ledger, I looked at Johnna Mae. "Why didn't she get promoted ahead of you?"

"She refused the promotion, saying she was happy doing what she's been doing for twenty years and didn't want to have to take on added responsibilities at her age. She enjoys visiting with the customers, and she has the patience of job when someone like Raz or Hiram starts pestering her. I didn't mind one bit, since we needed the money. She has three cats to feed. I have a family."

The office door opened and Bernswallow again appraised me. This time the door closed clicklessly.

Johnna Mae picked up the pencil and snapped it into two pieces. "I don't reckon I can stand this much longer, Arly. He's all the time spying on us like he thinks we're taking people's money and stuffing it down our blouses like call girls. For three nights running he's made us work late to make the over-and-long account balance to the penny. When I was head teller, we didn't worry about a few extra pennies in somebody's cash drawer; I just figured it'd even out over the duration."

"What does Mr. Oliver think?" I asked.

"The good Lord gave him a brain, but he may have forgotten to plug it in. Mr. Oliver comes in every morning to see how we're doing, then says he has to go into the main bank to work there. He used to be an officer before he became the branch manager out here in Maggody. He still does something about the portfolio, which conveniently keeps him from bothering us. He doesn't care a rat's ass about what goes on here."

Johnna Mae took a tissue from her cash drawer and noisily blew her nose under Miss Una's disapproving scrutiny. I was fresh out of anything to say and had reluctantly decided to face the outside world, when Bernswallow again came through what seemed to be a revolving door.

"May I trust that the service was satisfactory?" he said. His tone managed to imply that he would be more than amazed if it had been.

"I use a different bank, in Farberville. It gives me an opportunity to travel."

While he digested that, I did some appraising of my own. He was still young enough to have a plum-colored pimple or two on his chin. His hair was styled rather than cut, and his expression conveyed muted arrogance, from his clear blue eyes to the slight tilt of his jaw. I'd seen millions like him on Madison Avenue, all striding along while visions of power lunches danced in their heads. I would have wagered a year's ration of cherry pie that he owned the dark green Mercedes I'd noticed in a shady corner of the parking lot outside. Okay, so maybe I'd recognized Miss Una's ancient Crosley and Raz's pickup truck. All those months at the police academy honing my powers of observation had not been in vain.

"I'm sure your bank in Farberville provides good service," Bernswallow said with a condescending smile, "but we'd like to think that a local branch can provide more personal service to the citizens of Maggody. I hope that you'll consider us should there ever be anything we can do to help you, Miss ... ?"

"Hanks," Johanna Mae muttered. "Arly Hanks, chief of police."

Bernswallow's eyes lit up as though I'd introduced myself as the sole heiress of Howard Hughes. He came around the edge of the counter and extended his hand. "How nice to meet you, Miss Hanks. I'm sure your diligence is what's kept our little branch safe all these years."

I shook his hand. "I would imagine it's the lock on the door. None of the locals are clever enough to figure out how to get past it."

"Ah, certainly. In any case, please feel free to call on me if there's ever anything at all we can do for you. The First National Bank of Farberville will be delighted to serve you. Now, if you'll excuse us, Mrs. Nookim and I have a small situation to discuss in my office."