The earlier conversation had put Brother Verber off balance, but this was enough to slam him into the nearest wall, metaphorically speaking. He snatched his handkerchief out of his pocket and tried to stanch the rivulets of sweat on his face and neck. "Why, I don't think we should waste any time destroying these…proofs of perfidy, Sister Barbara. We can just use my barbecue grill out back. I think I have most of a can of lighter fluid, but I can always get more at the Emporium. We can be done in no time flat."
Mrs. Jim Bob was not about to risk being seen at the grill, doing something odd enough to rouse speculation and provoke pointed questions. "No, the Almighty won't mind waiting while we drive to the still. You told me that you knew exactly where it was, Brother Verber, and I would never doubt so much as a single word from your lips, what with you being a man of the cloth."
"Thank you, Sister Barbara," he said, although he was a ways from being overcome with gratitude. He thudded to his knees and started praying that the Almighty, who seemed real generous with His suggestions, might feel inclined to share some with him. The location of the still, for starters.
Ruby Bee and Estelle were waiting for the policeman to come knocking on the door of 219. They were doing it with about as much enthusiasm as a couple of coons treed by a pack of hounds.
"I think you're better off with the warm milk story," Estelle said from within the bathroom, where she was trying to stabilize her hair without bruising her elbows every time she moved her arms.
"You've said that about a million times already," Ruby Bee said, sighing. "I jest don't know what all Arly and Durmond told the policeman. If you hadn't gone and said something about visiting a porn shop, then Arly wouldn't have figured out what I was doing in the first place. She'll be smirking the rest of her born days, at you for shopping at such a place and at me for doing what needed to be done to win ten thousand dollars. It won't matter one bit to her that I planned to use part of my winnings to buy her some decent clothes." She wiggled around on the bed, trying to find a comfortable spot. She might as well have been lying on a corncob mattress. "Now that I think about it, what all did you buy at that place?"
There was a moment of silence in the bathroom, followed by a muttered response.
"You'll have to speak up. I didn't hear you," Ruby Bee said real nicely.
"I said there's not enough room in here to turn around. My poor knees are gonna be black and blue, and I still can't get the bobby pins in at the right angle."
Ruby Bee got to her feet and crept over to Estelle's suitcase. "I'll bet that outhouse behind Robin Buchanon's cabin is a sight bigger," she called as she squatted down and began to rummage through the dirty laundry that had accumulated over the last few days. "I can't imagine how Dahlia and Kevin managed to spend all those hours locked in there the night they thought a killer was after 'em. They must have felt like the stuffing in a Thanksgiving turkey, don't you think?"
"I'll thank you not to go pawing through my personal belongings," Estelle said from the doorway. She waited until an abashed Ruby Bee scuttled back to the bed, then added, "I was thinking about something more important than a couple of silly souvenirs, Miss Snoopy Britches. I was recollecting about how Durmond came to be bucknaked in your bed and you had to go and shoot at the police."
"All I did was pick up the gun," the accused said sullenly. "I came into the room, and there he was, all bloody and indecent. Then out of the blue there's footsteps and pounding on the door and yelling like a bunch of drunks in my parking lot. The gun was right there on the floor. I picked it up and was going to answer the door when it liked to explode in my hand. Things took a downward turn after that."
"I'll say they did," Estelle muttered as she sat down on her bed and took out an emery board. "The thing is, I myself heard the shot as I stepped off the elevator. I was right there in the hall when the policemen took to butting the door until they broke the lock, which is why I was there to see them tackle you like they did. You ought to get yourself a lawyer and sue 'em for it, if you ask me."
"What's your point?"
"Didn't you hear what I just said? I swear, Adele Wockerman listens better than you do, when she ain't got her hearing aid tuned to her favorite Martian station." With an aura of smugness she knew would irk Ruby Bee, Estelle began to file her nails.
"You were yammering worse than a schoolmarm who's found a frog in her drawer. I heard everything you said. I just didn't find it all that earth-shattering." Ruby Bee picked up the travel guide and made a production of flipping through it. "This says there are some real quaint stores in Greenwich Village. If the contest is canceled like Arly says it'll be, maybe we ought to shop there tomorrow."
"I said I was coming out of the elevator when I heard the shot. Not one day later, Durmond's telling everybody he had to take the stairs on account of the elevator was broken. If it was so all-fired broken, how come I could sail right up to the second floor in it?"
"Maybe it was temporarily broken," Ruby Bee offered.
"And that snooty manager grabbed his tool kit at ten o'clock at night and climbed the cables like a darn monkey to fix it? " Estelle put down the emery board and frowned something fierce. "There's something real fishy about Durmond's story, if you ask me."
As reluctant as she was to do so, Ruby Bee said, "You may be right. If the elevator was working, he must have gone up the stairs for another reason. He doesn't strike me as one of those fitness freaks who think it's fun to dress up in pastel underwear and run alongside the road, or ride a bicycle in the living room. It wasn't like he had to wait more than a few seconds for the elevator to come; there's no one else staying here but us, and we're all on the second floor."
"Are we?" Estelle said, rolling her eyes toward the ceiling.
All Ruby Bee could see were cobwebs and some patches of bare plaster, but like Estelle, her eyes were aimed at a higher target.
Chapter Thirteen
Staring at the ceiling produced nothing more illuminating than an awareness that it needed new sheetrock. Oh, I'd posed some fascinating questions to myself, but unlike "Jeopardy!" contestants, I was shy on answers. I decided to forego this beginning business and focus on the corpse.
Jerome had been killed in the kitchen. In theory, the kitchen was locked and Kyle Simmons had the only key. It had been in his possession from the moment the four cases of Krazy KoKo-Nut arrived until, I assumed, the police took it away from him in order to secure the scene.
I forced myself to replay the hour or so we'd spent preparing for the contest. The key had been in the lock when I entered the kitchen, and when we left…it had been left as well. Kyle had returned several hours later, at which time Geri had berated him for not having left the key at the hotel. But he had-and in a rather obvious place for it.
Clutching my pillow, I muddled for a while and came up with a tenuous idea. Someone had chanced upon the key in the lock, removed it for a period of time, and then replaced it before Kyle arrived with the bags of utensils. And unless Kyle had unlocked the door for Jerome in the middle of the night, there was now another key floating around in someone's pocket.
Who had borrowed the key long enough to have a duplicate made? Ruby Bee, Estelle, Durmond, and I had been busy making total asses of ourselves in various locales along Fifth Avenue. Catherine and Frannie had departed for a beauty salon; later in the afternoon, however, Frannie had returned laden with shopping bags and mentioned that Catherine was napping. Implying she'd been in her room, Brenda had come looking for Jerome-implying he hadn't.
He was a candidate, although no stronger a one than a boyish Democrat confronting a rich Republican incumbent. Geri had been in the hotel, but she needn't have bothered to go through convolutions to get a duplicate key; all she had to do was keep the original. Excluding the workmen, the only other people within spittin' distance were Rick and the enigmatic doorman, Mr. Cambria.