Joan Hess - Madness In Maggody

Jim Bob stared at him from under a much-lowered brow. "Just what happens if I can't meet my spelled-out commitments?"

"I'm afraid your interest reverts to me."

"Wait just a goddamn minute! You're telling me I'm fixing to lose my half of the SuperSaver? What about the Kwik-Stoppe-Shoppe that was demolished? What about my rights there?"

Lamont took a sip of the cheap whiskey, which tasted more like dog piss than bourbon. "I wish you'd gone over all this with your lawyer, Jim Bob. I really do. You owned that property and I owned the adjoining vacant acreage. The titles were merged in order to satisfy the loan people. Your original holding is now an indivisible part of our joint holding."

Jim Bob took a gulp of the whiskey, which he thought was an improvement over that dog piss Lamont usually had in the motel room. "So unless I come up with forty grand, I've lost the Kwik-Stoppe-Shoppe and stand to lose the SuperSaver?"

"This upsets me as much as it does you. We've been in this together since I picked up that piece of property, and I'd like to think we're friends as well as partners." Lamont sighed as he refilled Jim Bob's glass. "If I had enough cash to cover your share, I would, but I'm not in a whole lot better shape than you are. There is one other option that we might consider. I've heard tell of an outfit in Texas with several supermarket chains, and I could try to get hold of them. They might be interested in taking this one off our hands, although I doubt we can get any more out of it than our investment. But breaking even's better than nothing, isn't it?"

"Sell Jim Bob's SuperSaver before it opens?" Jim Bob said, appalled. "But we're going to cut our prices until we run all the competition out of business, and then hike 'em up and have ourselves a little gold mine here in Maggody. I don't want to sell it to a bunch of Texas cowboys. My name's up there on the sign."

"It's up to you," Lamont said diplomatically. "If you can come up with your share of the money by Thursday, then we'll be in fine shape. However, only a minute ago you were saying how strapped you are for cash."

Jim Bob tugged on his chin while he racked his brain. "I think I can get the money. I know a couple of guys down in Little Rock that'll come through for me. Them, and a little I've got tucked away in a safe-deposit box, and maybe I can borrow some from Mrs. Jim Bob's cousin what moved to Peoria. It'll be tight, Lamont, and it would have been a damn sight easier if you'd told me before now. But I can come through and we can keep the SuperSaver."

Lamont drank the last of the whiskey and held out his hand. "Then we're partners, Jim Bob, and that's the best damn news I've heard all day. The grand opening's in a couple of hours. I want you to cut the ribbon, and I want you to be grinning when you do it. You go get yourself all slicked up. I got a few calls to make just now."

Adele Wockermann smiled as best she could, considering that Millicent McIlhaney had dragged her rocking chair so close that she was almost spittin' in Adele's face. "What's that you're sayin'?" she said as she wiped her chin with a tissue.

"Turn up your hearing aid," Millicent commanded. She was beginning to question why she came all the way out to the county nursing home every Saturday morning to sit on the porch with a senile old widow woman who didn't even attempt to show any appreciation. Millicent was keenly aware of her Christian duty, but some weeks it was like pulling ticks off a hound to get through. "Now this is in the strictest confidence, Adele, so don't go repeating it to every Tom, Dick, and Harry."

"Harry who? I don't know nobody named Harry. Are you talking about Horace Wockermann, my grandnephew? He don't visit since he married that cheap tramp from Starley City. She's too good to visit the likes of me. She probably thinks old age is contagious."

"Just don't repeat this. It seems that Jim Bob Buchanon liked to have molested the Riley girl in his office last week. She was in there for the longest time, then came running out, howling and sobbing, with the buttons ripped right off her shirt. It's amazing she didn't get hit by a truck, she was so upset. Elsie McMay said Lottie Estes got madder'n a coon in a poke when she was telling the story over tea and pound cake the other morning. Isn't it the most awful thing you've ever heard in all your born days?"

"I've ever heard or I've never heard?" Adele began to rock more vigorously as she picked up a titillating broadcast from her wee friends on the back side of the moon.

Millicent ground her dentures and reminded herself of her Christian duty, although she thought the amount of tribulation might entitle her to cut back to every other week. "You recall when Hiram Buchanon's barn burned a ways back and that little cheerleader came running out with smoking panties in her hand?"

"I reckon I do," Adele said serenely. She did, too.

"Well, this is a sight worse, if you ask me. Now nobody knows much of anything about this Lamont Petrel fellow what's come to town, and that means nobody knows if he's been bothering the girls hisself. With a name like Lamont Petrel, anything's possible, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to hear that he was the one that did it. But Jim Bob Buchanon's the mayor, so he ought to act respectable. I shiver to think what Mrs. Jim Bob'll say if she ever catches wind of this."

"She passes more wind than she catches. She used to come out here and read Bible verses at me like I didn't attend the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall twice on Sundays and every Wednesday night for prayer meeting right up to the day Mr. Wockermann passed away, may he rest in peace. I finally told her that her face reminded me of tadpoles on a mud fence, and after that she stopped a-comin'."

Millicent figured she'd evinced enough Christian duty for the week. "I'm going to run along now, Adele, she said real nicely. "I got to fix my hair and decide what to wear to the grand opening of the supermarket. Maybe I can get a good look at that Lamont Petrel from Farberville. I'll tell you all about him next week, and I'll bring you a box of my chocolate-chip cookies."

"No pecans. You know I can't pass pecans anymore."

Millicent patted Adele's shoulder, then nodded at the nurse's aide who was hovering near the doorway and sailed away, content in the knowledge that she'd kept poor Adele Wockermann apprised of local goings-on. It was real important for the old soul to have outside interests.

Ruby Bee hadcalled a secret meeting of the Flamingos, which gave me a breather. Hammet wanted to do nothing else except discuss the first practice, held the previous afternoon in the redolent cow pasture out behind the motel. I wanted to forget it. I wanted to go back to the hotel patio and search for the bedimpled count, but I hadn't had fifteen seconds of peace since my houseguest had been thrust upon me.

I sent him down the road with an admonishment to avoid debating Georgie McMay's prejudices, then went across the street to the PD and shuffled through the mail for an errant one-way ticket to the South of France.

Before I could toss the envelopes in the wastebasket, the telephone rang. I conducted a mental debate, lost, and picked up the receiver.

It was Harvey Dorfer, the county sheriff, who's a pretty nice guy in his rednecked fashion and a true gentleman in election years. Luckily, he is smarter than he looks.

"How ya doing, Arly?" he began affably.

"Fine, Harve."

"I called to see if you wanted a deputy to help you this afternoon. We're real short, but I can scrounge up somebody for an hour. Or two."

"To do what-answer the telephone?"

Harve exhaled what I knew was a foul stream of cigar smoke. "Traffic control."

"Our regular Saturday-night drunks won't start crashing their trucks until dark, Harve. Till then I think I can handle the traffic by myself."