Madness In Maggody (19 page)

Plover's car was
parked beside the PD, and I found him inside telling whimsically gory tales to Hammet about bandits and bank robbers. I sat down behind my desk and made a few desultory notes about my interviews with Ivy and Mandozes. They didn't amount to a hill of beans (organic or refried), and I was mostly just sitting when Plover finished his lurid story, sent Hammet to the back room to play with the radar gun, and sat down across from me.

"Have you heard from the lab?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yeah, but you're not going to leap into my lap and smother me with kisses when you hear what they reported."

"I'm not?"

"Only in my fantasies, I fear. The lab analyzed the contents of Lillith Sinew's stomach and blood and found traces of a toxic compound. Same for the other two victims. To the pathologists' regret, it's not nice, straightforward arsenic or potassium cyanide, or even something charmingly exotic like curare, but some incredibly complicated mess of polysyllabic chemicals. They think it might take several weeks to pin it down."

"Several weeks? What are we supposed to do while they piddle around with their tests? How am I going to identify a poisoner if I don't have any idea where to look? What kind of a lab is it, anyway?" I rattled desk drawers and slammed around pencils and notebooks until I calmed down. "They have no idea what the toxic compound is?"

"Unofficially, my friend said he suspects it'll turn out to be a common industrial pesticide."

"As in ant powder or rat poison or insecticide?" I told him what I'd learned in the last day. "So Ruby Bee, Mandozes, and Ivy Sattering all have access to lethal substances. But so does everyone else in town. Every kitchen has a box of something or other in the cabinet under the sink where curious toddlers can get to it." I sat back and sighed. "I don't know why I'm bothering to conduct an investigation. All I need to do is wait quietly until Eula and Lottie and all the other tongue-flapping magpies figure it out and pass along the solution. Considering the tempo thus far, I ought to have it by baseball practice this afternoon."

Hammet came to the doorway. "The game's tomorrow, you know. I went over to the field at the high school and watched that other team play. I think we got a shitload of trouble, Arly. They kin throw and catch and one of 'em liked to knock the darn hide off the ball."

"All we can do is try. Team effort and that sort of thing. Ruby Bee's serving supper afterward, so at least we'll eat well."

"Where is she?" Plover asked. "I was going to suggest a late lunch, but the bar and grill is closed." I shrugged again. "I am not my mother's keeper, for which I am currently and shall remain eternally grateful. She's off running errands or having her hair colored at Estelle's, I would imagine.

"What color?" Hammet demanded, clearly enchanted with the brightly hued images in his mind.

I shooed him out the door, tilted back in my chair, and propped my feet on the corner of the desk. "This whole thing is a polysyllabic mess. Someone managed to lace the tamale sauce with ipecac, perhaps in front of a dozen people, but nobody saw anything. The store was locked from Saturday at three o'clock until Monday afternoon, and that evening someone left the tampered cake packages on the display rack. All but one had pins or ipecac, which resulted in unpleasantness but not serious injury. One package contained a lethal poison. Why?"

"Beats the hell out of me," Plover said affably. "Why did Lamont Petrel disappear at the grand opening? Why did Jim Bob lie about his whereabouts Monday night? Why did Martin Milvin have the same symptoms as his father and grandmother? Why do fools fall in love?"

"Beats the hell out of me," I said, although not affably. I flipped through my notebook, scowling at the question marks sprinkled here and there as if they'd drifted down from the ceiling, and replaying bits of conversations. I looked up abruptly. "Jim Bob made an odd comment when I went back to tell him what Cherri Lucinda said. He sputtered something about having a hundred witnesses to prove she lied."

"Exhibitionism to an extreme?"

"I don't think so," I said, trying not to visualize Hizzoner and the blonde engaging in sexual antics on the runway. "When's the last time there was a gathering of that many people in Maggody? At the grand opening, of course. And Jim Bob had a really funny expression for a moment—as if he'd spotted a familiar face in the crowd."

"Is this leading somewhere, Chief? What difference does it make if Jim Bob's girlfriend came to the grand opening?"

Plover went into the back room and started the coffeepot, allowing me time to try to come up with an answer to his obnoxiously smug questions. When he returned, I said, "Because she lied. I doubt either of them will admit she was there, but if we're lucky, there is a way to prove it." I told him about the freewheeling cheerleader and the subsequent disaster in the crowd. "The cameraman caught every last squeal and curse. I don't know if it was deemed worthy of the six o'clock news, but he still might have the film. I noticed a blond woman—and I'll bet all three of my bullets it was Cherri Lucinda Crate."

"And?"

"If Jim Bob didn't invite her, maybe someone else did. Lamont's car is parked at the motel, so he didn't drive away. He had a ride."

"So you're theorizing that he left voluntarily with the Crate woman? Any ideas why he'd do that?"

"No," I admitted.

"You could ask her."

"We didn't hit it off real well," I said glumly. I found the telephone book in a bottom drawer under my beloved travel guide, looked up the number of the television station, and persuaded the gumsnapping receptionist to put me through to the cameraman who'd covered the grand opening. He told me the film had been played several times for the amusement of the staff, who'd particularly enjoyed the expletives and one exceptional flash of thigh. The film had then been taped over at a Cub Scouts awards banquet. I hung up and regarded Plover. "Crate might talk to you, especially if you crinkle your nose and produce the boyish grin while staring in awe at her body. "

"You're convinced she knows where Petrel is, then?" Plover said, crinkling his nose and producing the boyish grin but not staring in awe at my body, which was adequate but hardly awesome.

"No, but it's a lead, and we're not exactly swimming in them. We're not even wading in them. All we've got is unsubstantiated gossip and harebrained rumors. Even Hammet is keeping secrets—and from me, his very own coach."

Plover agreed to question Cherri Lucinda Crate and left. I decided to indulge myself with a quick trip to Amsterdam, but not even the flower market and canals could take my mind off the madness in Maggody. I put the book back in the drawer, dealt with a rebellious bobby pin, and went out into the humorless heat of my car.

The Milvin house had the dispirited look of an empty house. The grass looked a little shaggier than I had remembered, and the porch furniture shabbier and less inviting. The seals on both doors were intact, but I had no qualms about ripping one off in order to go inside. The key was under a flowerpot; the only other place it might have been was under the mat. We're not obsessed with security in Maggody. Otherwise, how would your neighbors get in to water your African violets, feed your cats, and snoop through your bedside drawers while you're on vacation?

The house had been bottling up the heat, and the odor was almost enough to send me back outside. I left the door open, yanked open the nearest window, and forced myself to breathe slowly until the odor seemed less oppressive. The recliner was still extended. A magazine lay beside it, offering a glimpse of a football player poised to fling himself at an enemy.

I hurried past Lillith Smew's bedroom and went into the children's room. It was more orderly than many I'd seen (and one I'd inhabited), and I wondered which of the house's inhabitants was responsible for this unchildlike tidiness.

Interesting, but not useful, I told myself as I packed some of Martin's clothes in a bag, then continued to wander through the house, trying to imagine the sounds of a family going about its daily grind.

The children had had breakfast at the kitchen table. Buzz had come home, had a conversation with Lillith, scolded Martin about the mess in the toolshed, and then gone to bed. Martin had climbed a tree to chase a gimpy squirrel, and Lissie had watched television until her father sent her outside. No one had stopped by for a visit. At some point, Lillith and Buzz had shared the package of coconut cakes laced with a polysyllabic pesticide. Martin had not, but had ended up with the same poison in his system.

"Root beer and crackers," I snapped at a cockroach on the counter. I grabbed a fly swatter off a hook, but the little bugger had vanished by the time I turned around. I slapped the swatter down anyway to hear the crack of plastic on plastic, replaced it, and looked at the artwork taped on the front of the refrigerator, along with coupons and an unpaid electric bill. The last item reminded me of what Buzz had said about needing his mother-in-law, which made me feel even worse. There would be no more Social Security checks.

I let myself out, locked the door, and put the key back under the flowerpot. I then remembered the open window, but decided to leave it so the house would be slightly more bearable when Buzz and his children returned home.

None of this had accomplished anything, and I figured I wasn't going to get anywhere until I talked to Buzz. There were a couple of hours until practice, so I decided to pick up Lissie and drive once again to the hospital.

*****

"Isn't this just
amazing?" Estelle gushed. "Here I am to ask a few questions about your telephone service, and it turns out you drive one of those monster trucks all the way to California! That sounds so romantic I can hardly stand to think about it."

Arnie smiled modestly. "I like to think of myself as a lone rider, like a cowboy running a herd up the canyon. And lemme tell ya, It ain't easy making the long haul. I drive twenty or thirty hours at a time, listening to my tape player or talking on my CB with the other boys."

"Just amazing," she said, crossing her legs so he could appreciate her ankles, which she secretly felt were every bit as good as a lot of Hollywood starlets'. "I do believe I'll accept your kindly offer of a beer. Being a telephone company pollster can make you dry as the desert."

As soon as he went into the kitchen, she hurried to the window and looked down at the dumpster. The lid covered the half nearest the building and obscured the view of most of the interior. She thought she caught a flicker of motion, but at that moment, Arnie came padding back into the living room.

"Watching the planes come in?" he said as he gallantly opened her beer and handed it to her.

"Nothing to see at the moment." She moved away from the window and perched on the edge of the sofa. "I do wish you'd sit right there across from me and tell me more about truck driving. Those ol' things are so big, I don't see how you can steer them."

He flexed his muscles. "It ain't a job for a weakling. Now the rig's got a hydraulic system, of course, but it boils down to man against machine.

"Really?"

He went into a long rigmarole about the philosophical implications of changing gears, but Estelle was having a hard time trying to look fascinated while fretting about poor Ruby Bee in the dumpster with the rats. There was an increasingly loud rumble from outside, as if Arnie's truck was pulling in, and she finally realized it wasn't an airplane landing.

"Excuse me for interrupting," she said, "but what in tarnation is that racket outside?"

"Sanitation truck. What I was saying was that life's like that black ribbon of asphalt that disappears into the distance. You think you can see where it's going, but then you come—"

"Sanitation truck?" Estelle put down her beer and ran to the window. An enormous white truck was approaching the dumpster. Two metal arms reached out to embrace it on either side, and a rectangular section in the back of the truck slid open.

It was all she could do to keep from shrieking as she dashed out to the balcony. "Stop that!" she shouted sternly. "You in the truck! I said stop that, and I mean it!"

"Are you okay?" Arnie asked from the doorway.

The driver looked up, puzzled, and said, "You talking to me, lady?"

"Who else do you think I'm talking to?"

"I dunno, but I've got to finish my route earlier 'cause of my bowling league having a tournament." He turned back to the controls, and again the metal arms reached for the dumpster.

"Stop!" Estelle screeched as she stumbled down the stairs. Her eyes felt as though they were going to pop right out of their sockets, and the blood pounding in her veins was hotter than chili con carne. "Stop!" she repeated in the same voice. "You're about to commit murder!"

"You're the one who needs to be committed," the driver said. The metal arms slid into their allotted slots. The truck let out a groan as the dumpster began to rise on its trip over the front of the truck to be emptied into its belly.

Estelle was jumping up and down and squawking her head off, but the driver refused to acknowledge her, and Arnie, who was watching from the balcony above, somberly resolved never again to invite women from the telephone company in for a beer. Other residents wandered out of their apartments to gawk at the crazy redheaded lady and offer opinions to each other.

The dumpster had passed its zenith and was beginning to be tilted as a state police car pulled into the lot. Estelle ran to the driver's side and pounded on the window. "Thank God it's you! Make him stop! He's gonna kill her and it's all my fault!"

Plover dutifully ordered the driver to stop. He later admitted, but only in private, that the ensuing scene was the weirdest damn thing that had ever happened to him in his entire career, and if he lived to be as old as Methuselah, he'd just as soon not go through it again.

*****

"Where'd you say
you found these?" Kevin demanded, feeling a mite faint as he gaped and gulped at the grainy photographs. He was terrified he would hear footsteps on the stairs outside, but he couldn't stop gaping and gulping. "On the dirt," Hammet said. "I was hightailin' it past the trailer when they came out the window and liked to flap me in the face and make me fall. I jest grabbed 'em and scuttled under the trailer to have a look-see, 'cause it dint make no sense for someone to be throwing things out the window."