Madness In Maggody (22 page)

The boys in
the cab of the truck tumbled out like circus clowns, slapping each other on the back and whooping at the stunned crowd. With all the animation of zombies, those in the bleachers came out to the field and encircled the truck to get a better look at the very unhappy Lamont Petrel.

He was clad only in boxer shorts. The tar had been slathered on by a generous hand, as had the curly white chicken feathers.

I presumed the tar had been warmed only to the point of spreadability, in that it was lumpy and Lamont was not only alive but also not screaming about second- and third-degree burns. All in all, it was a rather impressive piece of work.

He spotted me. "I demand to file charges. This is quite intolerable and painful, not to mention humiliating. I want all of these vicious animals arrested at once."

"He's the one oughta be arrested," one of the boys jeered. "Rapist skunks deserve what they get."

"Yeah, that'll teach him to leave our women alone," said another.

I recognized the group from the Dairee Dee-Lishus—short the mutant Buchanon, who was suited up for the game and keeping a wary distance from me. "Glad to see you found Mr. Petrel at the Airport Arms Apartments," I said pleasantly. I know Hizzoner told you where to find the crazed rapist. I'm curious to know if he suggested the...costume, too."

"Hell, no," Jim Bob said, shaking his head in disbelief as he shoved through the crowd. "I didn't tell the shitheads to do this. All of you shitheads are fired! Don't even bother to come by for your paychecks. What'll they say at the closing in an hour? Jesus H. Christ, Lamont, you look about as stupid as a pig in a pinafore."

"Then get me out of here," Lamont said through clenched teeth. He scraped a lump of black goo off his cheek and flipped it off his finger. The stripe of white feathers down his back fluttered each time he moved; it fascinated the crowd, all of whom were rumbling and grumbling at each other.

"Not until we've cleared up a few things," I said. "As chief of police, I have an obligation to find out exactly what happened to our guest—and why." I looked at the boys and said, "The gentleman has been at the apartment since the grand opening almost a week ago. Precisely whom did he rape and when did he do it?"

"Heather Riley," the boys chimed in in unison, although not in the melodious style of the Vienna Boys Choir.

"Did he?" I said smoothly. "Why, look, here's Heather hiding behind Darla Jean McIlhaney. Why don't you come confront your attacker and give me enough information to arrest him? Come on, don't be shy, Heather. There's no point in not repeating what every last person in town already knows." Lamont watched as the blond girl came forward. "I've never seen her in my life! I sure as hell didn't attack her. How can I have raped her if I've never even seen her?"

Heather approached me with a pleading look. "Maybe I was confused," she whispered. "Maybe I was so traumatized that I didn't remember exactly what all happened."

"But, Heather," Darla Jean said, running up to put her arm around her friend's trembling shoulder, "you did remember his name and face. You told me all about it in your bedroom. You told me how he held you down and ripped your clothes off and hurt you real bad, and then how you ran screaming into the street and barely escaped being run down by a truck. It couldn't have been more than a couple of days ago when you told me how you cried out for Beau to save you from this here monster."

"What the hell is she talking about?" Lamont demanded, the whites of his eyes in sharp contrast with the smeary blackness of his face.

The most verbal of the boys hitched up his jeans and gave the crowd a self-satisfied grin. "When I heard it, I decided to teach this no-good sumbitch not to mess with my woman. Us boys dragged him out of the whore's apartment and kept him busy all night long, dint we? He ain't gonna bother anyone for a long while."

"They're maniacs," the purported sumbitch howled. "Arrest them."

"If'n he raped the girl, he oughta be shot," someone from the crowd muttered. This proved to be a popular sentiment, and I had to shout to make myself heard.

"Shut up! This is a farce. If all of you weren't so ready not only to believe what you hear but also to expand upon it for your own amusement, this sort of thing wouldn't get out of hand. Heather, what happened when you interviewed to be a SuperSaver cheerleader?"

"Jim Bob put his hand on my knee."

"Anything else?" I said, turning on all my wattage.

She looked at her feet. "No, nothing else. It just bothered me, so I told Miss Estes. The next thing I hear is this big story of how I was raped. I...I, uh, got confused."

We all turned to Jim Bob, who was as miserable as the girl and kicking up a decent-sized cloud of dust. "I was showing her how long the miniskirt was. I distinctly remember saying that the skirt would come to her knee."

The leader of the pack didn't look much happier, but he managed a cocky voice. "Oh, well, the sumbitch probably raped somebody else. Most likely that whore. That's why the FBI's after him."

"No," I said, "the FBI's not after him, and he and the woman were friends. Cherri Lucinda Crate was nice enough to pick him up outside the supermarket and take him back to unit number twelve of the Airport Arms. Lamont wanted to make Jim Bob sweat, and he was doing a fine job of it until the supermarket reopened Monday afternoon. That was most annoying, because it meant all that wonderful ill will he'd stirred up with the tamale-sauce episode might be assuaged and Jim Bob might be less inclined to sell to an outfit in Texas."

I had everybody's attention except for Mrs. Jim Bob, who looked as if she might attack her husband—but not with amorous intent. She sidled over to Brother Verber and began to hiss at him.

Jim Bob was breathing so loudly we could hear it, and he clenched his fist as he glared at the cartoonish skunk in the bed of the pickup truck. "Then he dumped stuff in the tamale sauce? Is that what I just heard?"

I nodded. "He had a key, so it wasn't much of a challenge to return to the deli Friday night and dump several ounces of ipecac in the quart of sauce. He'd even jotted down the quantity in his notebook so he could calculate how many bottles of ipecac to use. Monday night was more of a challenge, because Buzz Milvin and Kevin were supposed to be there all night and Lamont didn't want to surface quite yet. He was obliged to watch the store from the shadows of the bar and grill until he saw Jim Bob arrive to pick up the receipts. He went into his room at the Flamingo Motel and called Cherri Lucinda, who then called Jim Bob and invited him over for a...visit."

Everybody swung around to see how Mrs. Jim Bob was going to field this one, but she was so intent on her conversation with Brother Verber that it was hard to tell if she'd heard any of it. Disappointed, they looked back at me.

I was tempted to get on the bed of the truck so no one would miss a word. However, I opted for decorum, and merely raised my voice in hopes Mrs. Jim Bob would catch on. "The invitation was so vividly couched that Jim Bob told Buzz to take the deposits to the bank, then hopped in his car and drove to her apartment, not the least bit worried about leaving Kevin in charge of the supermarket."

"It was an interview," Jim Bob croaked. This created so much tittering and snickering that I had to wait a full minute before my audience settled down again.

"Whatever you say," I said graciously. "In any case, when Lamont saw Kevin go to the break room, he slipped into the store, using his key, to place the tampered packages on the display rack in hopes the store would be closed down again. It worked well."

Dahlia rumbled like the onset of an earthquake. "He put that stuff in the sponge cakes that made me sick? Him, the fellow in the tar and feathers? I don't care if he raped some girl or not—he deserves to be tarred and feathered and strung up from a tree."

Again, a popular sentiment. Lamont was crouched down so low that we could barely see him, but we could hear his sputters of protest and piteous avowals of innocence.

"You mean," Jim Bob said, rather sputtery himself, "that Lamont did all this shit to make me sell the Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less? He put me through a week of nightmares and cold sweats so I'd belly-up like a trout in a sewage ditch?"

"And murdered Lillith Smew?" Ruby Bee said from behind me. "Just to make Jim Bob sell his share? Don't that seem kinda going overboard?"

"No, he didn't lace the package with a lethal pesticide," I said. "That, indeed, would have been going overboard. He just wanted to keep the pressure on Jim Bob right up to the time of the loan closing. Jim Bob would have been so frantic by then that he'd have been grateful for whatever offer he received for his share of the supermarket. I would imagine Lamont anticipated a fat finder's fee, along with his share, and—"

With a primitive howl born of generations of inbreeding, Jim Bob leapt onto the truck bed and swung wildly at Lamont. His fist stuck in a glob of tar, and he was frowning at it as Lamont shoved him over backward, jumped out of the truck, and ran with surprising agility through the parked cars and around the corner of the high school.

Jim Bob got to his feet, rubbed his tarred fist on his pants, and took off after Lamont. "What about the goddamn loan, you goddamn sumbitch?"

Heather's boyfriend started to follow, but I grabbed his arm and said, "Let him go. The sheriff's got half a dozen deputies waiting out front for him. He'll be charged with felonious assault on various folks' gastrointestinal systems, and we may be able to work out an interstate conspiracy charge that really will attract the attention of the FBI."

The entire scene lapsed into chaotic babbling, which was okay with me. As much as I enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame, I still had business to attend to, and I dreaded it worse than anything I'd faced before. "What about the ball game?" Hammet said, tugging on the hem of my gawdy pink Flamingo shirt. "Kin we play now?"

I glanced over his head at Ruby Bee, who hadn't moved and was watching me with an unfathomable expression. "I wish you'd volunteered the gossip when you first heard it," I said to her. "If you had, I could have tried to do something."

"There are some things folk don't like to talk about," she said quietly. "I reckon it was awhile back when I heard something vague, but it was so nasty that I put it out of my mind. No one likes to think that sort of thing goes on next door or down the road. I just figured it wasn't true and that I wasn't going to repeat it, not even to you and Estelle."

"Nobody wanted to talk about it, not even Hammet." I gently shook his shoulder and said, "But sometimes it needs to be talked about, to be brought out like all the other dirty laundry."

"I promised," he said. "I wanted to tell ya, but I promised. Lissie made me swear to keep it a secret. She said she tried to tell her teacher, but the dumb sow didn't believe her and she had to miss recess for lying."

We were on an island in the middle of the noisy crowd. I could hear my heart beating, and I thought I heard Hammet's, too. His eyes filled with tears and he flung his arms around me, his body convulsed with painful sobs. Once he'd calmed down, I told him where I was going and why, then told Ruby Bee that the game was postponed. Indefinitely.

*****

"Guess we showed
him," Kevin cackled as he and his honey bun sat on the porch swing, enjoying the breeze. "Did you see how he fell on his knees? He was so red, he looked like a fire hydrant, didn't he? I'm just sorry a dog didn't wander by and lift a hind leg."

"Don't you go talking like that again, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon," Dahlia said. She polished off the last crumbs of chocolate cake, put the plate down in the respectable area between them, and gazed at him until he started to squirm, which didn't take long. "Now if'n I agree to rebetroth with you, you got to swear you ain't gonna act all crazy ever again until we're married and have our own cozy little house."

She may have said house, but Kevin would have sworn on his great-granny's urn on the mantel that she said bed. It was unfortunate. Not only had he been deprived of his darling dumpling's soft, warm body all these long months, recently he'd been obliged to listen to all sorts of gossip and look at photographs that had left some real vivid images in his head.

He glanced over his shoulder. In the living room, his pa was watching television and his ma was clipping coupons out of a magazine. He gave the swing a little push, then said, "Do you happen to be wearing something other than your best blue blouse, my sweetness?"

He was astonished when she slapped the living daylights out of him. He was so plum astonished that he couldn't for the life of him think of anything to say, which was probably for the best.

*****

Mrs. Jim Bob
made one list after another. Groceries; chores Perkins's eldest had best do next week—if she intended to keep her job, that is. Refreshments at the next missionary society meeting. Pieces of furniture to have re-covered. Bible verses that could be used as weapons. The Ten Commandments, all of which Jim Bob had violated in the last week. Well, maybe not failing to honor his father and mother, since they were buried side by side in the old cemetery down by Boone Creek. She scratched that one out and wrote, "Thou shall not humiliate thy wife in front of everybody in town."

She put the other lists aside. This was the one to work on, she decided with a grim smile. When Jim Bob came back, she intended to sit him down on the newly re-covered divan for a long while and go over each and every commandment as many times as it took. By the time she finished with him, he was going to wish he'd been tarred and feathered like that disgusting Lamont. It would seem a minor inconvenience compared to what she had in store for him.

Then, she told herself, she would have to do her Christian duty and march right down to the trailer next to the Voice of the Almighty, because she had some questions and was going to get some answers. Her lips tightened as she recalled the bright pink doll, and she grabbed for another piece of paper.

The telephone rang, and she was feeling brightened enough to answer with a brisk "What is it?" She listened for a minute, then said, "No, neither of them's coming in to the bank today. Last seen, my husband was chasing a giant skunk toward Cotter's Ridge. The man at the other end seemed to want to discuss it further, but she didn't, so she replaced the receiver and went back to Jim Bob's list. She had him on adultery, taking the Lord's name in vain, coveting, and at least partially on some of the others.

Mrs. Jim Bob fixed herself a nice cup of tea and went to work.