Joan Hess - Mischief In Maggody

He lit a cigarette. "Probably taking a crap. Listen, I need the truck in the morning. Got to talk to a man in Farberville about some personal business. I'll drop you off at the store on my way out of town. I should be back by the middle of the afternoon."

"That's impossible," Rainbow said gently. "Poppy has an appointment with the midwife just before noon. I'm going to drive her over and wait."

"Change it. I need the truck. I'll bet you enjoy hassling me all the time, don't you? Gives you a real kick."

Rainbow's smile trembled as she struggled for sympathy, cooperation, and lovingness. "But Nate, the midwife is an old granny woman who lives in a shack on the county road. She doesn't have a telephone, so we can't call to change the appointment. But let's vote on it, shall we? That way we'll follow the communal spirit and strengthen our harmony. Who feels Poppy's need is greater than Nate's?"

Nate threw down his cigarette and stalked into the house. A few minutes later the truck's engine rumbled to life. A cloud of dust blew over the fence, eventually settling like cocoa powder on the three naked occupants of the backyard meditation garden.

"Like, wow," Zachery said, using his finger to draw a happy face on Poppy's belly. Kevin would have loved it.

I had a pleasant evening and a reasonable night's sleep, although I had to remind myself a couple of times that the Buchanon brood was in good hands. Granted they were pious, self-righteous hands, but at least not gnarled and hirsute talons. Mizzoner, the mayor's wife, had good intentions. The Buchanons were tough enough to deal with her.

The next morning I dawdled at the PD for a couple hours. I was about to get in the jeep when David Allen drove up in his four-wheel wagon. "Aren't you supposed to be counseling the youth of Maggody High?" I asked. "Don't they need scholarship applications for welding schools and the mudwrestling academy?"

"I've taken a break. Do you have time to do the same and join me for a cup of coffee?"

We went into the PD, and he looked around while I started a pot of coffee. "This isn't exactly Scotland Yard," he said, grinning at me. "You could put two of these in the auto-repair shop at the high school and still have room for a Trans Am with a bent axle."

"Did you run away from school to tell me that?"

"No, I ran away from school for two unrelated yet intensely compelling reasons. One is that a terribly sincere girl named Heather Riley has made her seventy-third appointment with me, and I felt a sudden urge to leave. She cries so much, I wear an inner tube while I listen to her. I have no idea what her problems are, either, beyond muddled references to harelips and imperiled virginity. I'm not sure if she wants to lose or acquire either or both."

I handed him a cup of coffee and sat down behind my desk. "And the second compelling reason?"

"You were right about the psychic, and I wanted to drink a toast to your keen grasp of the sociological interactions of the town." He took a sip of coffee and made a face. "At a later time and with champagne. Your waterbed or mine?"

I let it go over my head, which wasn't hard since I was sitting down and he was standing up. The Macaroni law of physics. "So the psychic is no longer upsetting the fragile psyches of the senior class?"

"Carol Alice Plummer is not going to commit suicide. She is sporting an eighteenth-of-a-carat diamond ring, and checking out bridal magazines from the school library. As far as I know, she's not even pregnant; it may be the first wedding ceremony in Maggody in which the groomsmen are not armed. Her fiancé, one Bo Swiggins, who has no neck but does have a sly sense of humor, has sworn to win the homecoming game in her honor. For the gripper, as he is reputed to have said in the locker room."

"Then I can see your professional life is under control, David Allen. I wish I could say the same about mine, but I never lie before noon. In fact, I'd better get back to business."

"Issuing tickets at the stoplight?"

"No," I sighed. I told him about the disappearance of Robin Buchanon and the subsequent problem, collectively known as Bubba, Sissie, Hammet, Sukie, and Baby. "I'm going to drive back up to the cabin and see if she, like a distaff General MacArthur, has returned. I'm not taking any bets on it, though. At the same time, it's hard to envision her deciding to head off across the mountains to points unknown. Her sideline's portable, but her major occupation isn't."

"Turning tricks and making moonshine," he said, nodding. "I'd been in town less than twenty minutes when one of the good ole boys in the subdivision dropped by with a mason jar of the vilest field whiskey I'd ever tasted. Not to say we didn't drink it, of course, but it left scars all the way down my throat. As for her sideline, the ole boy got all choked up when he tried to describe her talents in that arena. Only a couple of the boys have had the nerve to actually go through with it. One of them has never been seen again."

"I see you have no compunctions regarding prelunch fabrications. Actually, I'm worried about her. I'll hunt around for her still, but I doubt I can find it any more than I'll stumble across her family ginseng patch. And why would she be lurking for almost a week at either of those places, anyway?" I leaned back in the chair and propped my feet on my desk. "I can't come up with any theories to explain her disappearance. I wouldn't dream of trying to delve into her possible motives to pull this stunt; she's unlike anything I've ever met. All I know is that she left the cabin with a hoe and a gunnysack, and the children expected her back before dark. Nearly a week ago. She's a mountain woman, not the sort to twist an ankle or grab the wrong end of a copperhead. She probably fries up a mess of copperhead for Sunday brunch."

"I have an idea," David Allen said, perching on the corner of my desk and giving me an impish grin. "Why don't you consult Madam Celeste?"

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard all morning," I replied with an impish grin of my own.

Mrs. Jim Bob perched on the corner of her bed so as not to wrinkle the bedspread. She'd been there most of the night. Her best linen skirt was crumpled so badly, it looked as if an army tank had run across her lap. One of her nylons had come unclipped and hung around her ankle like dead skin. Her hair was uncombed. Her best blouse was splattered with something; she couldn't remember what. Her own blood, maybe, unless it was ketchup or mud or something even worse. She didn't care what it was.

The bedroom door was locked. She was pretty sure it was, but she continued to get up every fifteen minutes or so just to check. It came to about fifty times she'd checked thus far, but she didn't care. There was water in the master bathroom, and a grayish candy bar in Jim Bob's night-table drawer. It wasn't like she was going to die. On the contrary, she could barricade herself in the room for a long time, and those despicable creatures couldn't get their filthy hands on her no matter how hard they tried.

Downstairs, somewhere, she couldn't tell exactly, came the sound of shattering glass. For a while she'd tried to envision what each explosion was-the pseudo-Ming vase on the dining-room table, a window, the screen on the television. She hadn't thought to keep a list, and by now she couldn't recollect what all might still be intact. Not much, though.

She went over to the window and stared down at the driveway. Brother Verber hadn't come by for a piece of pie, but it was just as well, since the bastards had chanced upon the pie within a few minutes of storming the house. That was when she was still clinging to the premise that she was in control. Oh, she'd tried to be nice about it and not scold the little one too sharply about the smudge on the new beige carpet. A slap on the hand had stopped the whining. And, she'd told herself at the time, it was important to establish that they were there only out of the goodness of her heart, for which they should be deeply and eternally grateful.