"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."
"And then?"
His eyes darted like minnows and he began to play with a pimple on his chin. "Well, Jim Bob came in and went to the office. I was shelving boxes of dried potatoes when I heard Jim Bob tell Buzz to go to Starley City. Then Jim Bob ups and leaves, too, so I went back to the break room to talk to my betrothed. You do know Dahlia and I are betrothed, don't you?"
"Yes, Kevin, I do know that. Then what happened?"
"Golly, Arly, that's kind of personal," he stammered, his Adam's apple bouncing.
"I do not-repeat, do not-want to hear what transpired between you and Dahlia. Did the two of you remain in the break room until Buzz returned?"
"It's kind of funny," he said, reattacking the pimple, "but just as Dahlia was gitting ready to slip out the door, we heard Jim Bob come back for a minute. I guess he forgot his notebook or something. We stayed in the break room till he left again, then I hustled Dahlia out and went back to the dried potatoes. There's a new kind with cheddar cheese that-"
"Did you see Jim Bob?" I inserted.
"No, but it wasn't Buzz 'cause he was gone for more than an hour and stayed once he came back. We figured it was Jim Bob."
"And how did you reach that conclusion, Sherlock?"
"He had a key. Otherwise, how would he get back inside the Store?"
I stared at him. "I wish you'd mentioned this earlier, Kevin. Did you and your betrothed work out your problems?"
"Oh, yeah, everything's gonna be just swell. I got something to show her that'll make her brighten up like the Christmas lights on the square in Farberville." He stopped abruptly, then finished off the pimple and said, "Mebbe I'll just tell her about it, rather than show it to her. Dahlia's got a real delicate constitution."
And so do Sherman tanks, I thought. I left Kevin sitting on his bicycle and in imminent peril of being run down by a chicken truck (one of the more imminent perils in Maggody). A few of the threads were beginning to come together. As tedious as it sounded, I needed to hear all the gossip floating around town, so I drove briskly to headquarters, aka Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill.
It was still closed.
I turned around in the parking lot and drove back to the PD just as Plover pulled up. He had a peculiar look on his face, so peculiar it was impossible to define or even take a stab at. But thirty minutes later, after hearing his story, I had the same expression on my own face.
14
The next morning I ambled down to Ruby Bee's, found my favorite bar stool, and warned myself to tread very carefully if I ever again wanted to savor a square of lemon icebox pie. "Anybody home?" I called to the kitchen.
Ruby Bee came out to the bar. Her expression reeked of danger, although I'm relieved to report she no longer reeked of more tangible things. "What do you want?"
"I came to talk to you."
"What about? I got to get lunch started. The potatoes need to be peeled and the pies are awaitin' to go in the oven. If you want to talk, why don't you call somebody long distance?"
"I heard you did some of that yourself," I murmured, keeping one foot on the floor just in case.
"Did you?" she said, then wheeled around and started shifting glasses on the back counter. "Where'd you hear that?"
"From Sergeant Plover. He told me the whole story, from the calls to the…unpleasant situation in the apartment parking lot yesterday afternoon." My chin started twitching, and I realized I was, as Hammet would say, in a shitload of trouble. I covered the lower part of my face with my hands and feigned a coughing fit, all the while watching her back. It was rigid enough to withstand a bullet.
When she turned around, her stare was enough to stop said bullet in midair. "You getting a summer cold?" she said challengingly. "Is that your problem, missy?"
I nodded helplessly and coughed until I could trust myself as much as I ever would be able to. "But at least we learned where Petrel has been hiding out," I said. "It's unfortunate that he slipped away during the…ah, the situation. Plover's confident the state police will be able to run him down today. He couldn't have gone too far on foot."
"The airport's not too far. It's across the street."
"I don't think he'll make a run for Brazil. He didn't commit a crime; he simply chose to hole up in a crummy apartment for the best part of a week."
"With that woman," Ruby Bee said with a growl that would have intimidated a grizzly bear. "I could use another word if I were a mind to, but I won't. She was right uppity when I politely asked to use her bathroom to freshen up. You'd have thought I asked to use her toothbrush or prance around in her black lace underwear."
I was overcome with another fit of coughing. I finally wiped my eyes and said, "According to what I heard, you had a noticeable aroma about you that may have put her off."