"How much?"
"Gosh, I dunno. It ain't like I bought them myself. I jest saw 'em flying out the window. Here, you kin have 'em for free. I don't want 'em anymore."
"Thanks. I'll buy you a tamale and a soda pop one of these days, okay?" Kevin rolled up the magazines and stuck them in his back pocket. "See you later. I got to talk to someone."
Hammet watched Kevin go down the stairs and pedal away, wondering all the while what he wanted nasty magazines for, anyway. He then turned on the television and settled down for thirty minutes of animated mayhem, which was a helluva lot more entertaining than pictures of folks poking their puds in funny places.
Lissie and Saralee were in the Lambertinos' front yard. I told Lissie where we were going, and Saralee promised to relay the information to Joyce, who reportedly was in the den being kinda quiet and not even watching television or anything.
"Martin's coming home tomorrow," I told Lissie as we drove toward Farberville. "He's going to stay with Hammet and me."
"What about Pa?"
"He's going to be fine, but they want to keep him at the hospital for a few more days."
"That's good," she said, brightening. "Is Martin gonna play ball at the game tomorrow?"
We were passing the airport on the right, and therefore the Airport Arms Apartments on the left. Everything looked calm there; I didn't know if Plover had attempted to charm the fingernails off Crate yet, but he'd promised to report back to me when he knew something.
"Yes, we need everyone tomorrow," I said. We discussed our chances of beating the SuperSavers, which took no time at all, then rode in silence to the hospital. "Martin will be excited to see you," I said as I parked in the flat expanse of concrete. "Let me ask you something, Lissie. Does your pa ever spank you or Martin?"
She shook her head. "All he does is yell sometimes, especially if we don't get our chores done or come in late for supper. Once he made me stay in my room all afternoon 'cause the television was too loud and woke him up. I didn't know it was too loud."
"What about Gran?"
"She just talked about how hard it was on account of her heart and all that junk. She said we gave her headaches."
"But she never spanked either of you?"
"No, she just talked and talked. It was worse. Can we go see Martin and Pa now?"
"In one second," I said, watching her closely. "Martin had some bruises on his behind, and he said he fell out of a tree in the yard. Did he tell you about it?"
"When he was chasing that gimpy squirrel? It sure is hot in the car, Miss Arly. It's making me dizzy and my stomach's feeling like it's full of lumpy oatmeal."
We went into the hospital and took the elevator to Martin's floor. He was watching cartoons, which suited Lissie, so I left her there and went to the basement floor and the intensive-care ward. Buzz had fewer wires and tubes attached, and he was breathing without visible assistance. The nurse grudgingly allowed me a few minutes with our patient, as long as I promised not to tire us out.
"Hi," I said softly.
His eyes fluttered open, and when he saw me, his mouth curled into a faint smile. "Howdy," he said in a hoarse voice.
"I brought Lissie to visit Martin. He's to be released tomorrow and I'll keep him with me until you can come home."
"Thanks." He coughed in a low wheeze, then gave me an apologetic look. "Sorry, but they had these damn tubes down my throat. They told me what happened to Lillith. Did you find the person who did it?"
"Not yet," I admitted. "I'm hoping you can help. The poison seems to have been in the coconut-covered cakes. I had half a dozen reports of tampering that day, although everyone else experienced only mild reactions."
"I bought the cakes on my way out of the store. I just picked 'em up off the rack."
"And there was nothing suspicious about the cellophane wrapper?"
He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't think to examine it. I was going to give them to the kids, but I forgot I had them in my pocket until later in the day. Lillith's got a sweet tooth, and we decided to have ourselves a little treat on the sly. I took it and a beer into the living room, opened a magazine, and the next thing I know some nurse is hovering over me and I've got enough needles in me to be a voodoo doll."
He began to cough in harsh spasms that shook his shoulders and brought tears to his eyes. The nurse came to the door of the cubicle, shot me a dirty look, and said, "How are we doing, Mr. Milvin? Would we like a sip of water?"
"I'm okay," he said, waving her away. "Anything else?"
"One quick question. On Monday night, Jim Bob sent you to Starley City to make the deposit. Do you know why he did that?"
"Some woman called the store and asked to speak to him. He hunkered over the receiver and tried to keep it down, but his ears were redder'n raspberries and he was breathing pretty hard by the time he hung up. He told me to take the bags, that he wanted to stay at the store. When I got back, he was gone."
"But Kevin Buchanon was there the entire time?"
"He was supposed to be," Buzz said with a grimace. "But even when he's there, he's not quite there, if you know what I mean."
I assured him that I did indeed, told him I'd come back to visit, and left before the nurse booted me out. I went back to Martin's room, turned off the television, and stood beside the bed. "Are you sure you didn't have a bite of your pa's or your grandmother's coconut cake?" I pleaded. "One little bite?"
"Is that what poisoned them?"
"And you, too," I said with as much control as I could rally in my seriously frustrated frame of mind. He shook his head. "I don't like coconut. It gets stuck between my teeth."
I told him I'd see him in the morning, and took Lissie out to the car.
"One short errand on the way back to Maggody," I told her as we headed down the highway.
She nodded, uninterested in the foolish vagaries of adults, and was humming to herself as I parked next to the dumpster at the Airport Arms Apartments. I went upstairs and along the balcony to the last door. My knock was as officious as I could make it, and the door opened within seconds.
This time Cherri Lucinda's curly blond hair was not hidden, and I was fairly sure she was the woman who'd been sent sprawling into the van during the ceremonies outside the SuperSaver. In fact, her scowl was strikingly similar to the one she'd had that day.
"I'm sick and tired of you people," she said angrily. "I mean, I've had it up to here with cops and spies and crazy women. I'm in the middle of packing my bags, and with luck I'll be in the next state by sunset."
"Wait a minute," I said as she tried to close the door. "I need to ask you some questions."
"I don't give a damn what you need. I am sick, sick, sick of this whole stupid nonsense! Screw the gold Le Baron convertible, screw Jim Bob Buchanon, and screw you!"
The door slammed in my face.
Lissie didn't glance up as I got back in the car, started the engine, and drove out of the lot in a cloud of dust. I dropped her at Joyce's, pulled back onto the highway, and was considering the idea of driving to France when I spotted Kevin pedaling along the side of the road in front of the pool hall. I pulled in front of him and stopped.
"I want to talk to you," I said as I got out of the car. "And if you so much as sniffle, I'm going to put your head between the spokes of that bicycle and pedal like hell to the East Coast."
"Hi, Arly," he said cheerfully.
"Don't 'hi' me, Kevin Buchanon," I continued. I was aware I wasn't at my coolest, professionally speaking, but I was as sick as Crate of all the gossip and evasions of the last five days, and he was a prime evader. "What happened Monday night at the SuperSaver?"
He swallowed several times, glanced over his shoulder, then rolled his bicycle forward until the front tire went over my foot. "Dahlia came by at ten to talk to me," he said in a whisper, although there was no one in sight except for Roy Stiver sitting in front of his store and therefore a block away. "Buzz told me to git back to work, but we-Dahlia and me, not Buzz and me-had some more talking to do, so she went to the break room and waited there."