He hitched up his jeans and strode toward her, lost in a vision in which he knelt beside her, woke her with a gentle yet demanding kiss, and was welcomed into her arms for the consummation of their vows (which had been consummated a lot in the past, but not since they'd become betrothed one long, cold, celibate year ago).
"My dreamer of desire," he practiced to himself, rather impressed with the alliterative ring of it. "How about we find passion in the wildflowers? Shall we give way to youthful lust and make mindless love here on the silky grass dotted with gay yellow buttercups, tiny violets, and…"
There was no mistaking the red, waxy, three-leafed stems on which his sleeping beauty slumbered. Even Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon, who had trouble remembering which end of the fork to use to scratch his head, could recognize poison ivy.
Chapter Three
I was daydreaming about the automat on 42nd Street, the last one in town-Manhattan, not Maggody-and the only place where I'd felt like a perpetual winner at the slot machines. There were no maitre d's, no waiters to introduce themselves and rattle off the specials, no haute cuisine or haute anything else. All it took was a pocketful of change to win the sort of food that sustained my soul, like macaroni and cheese, limp broccoli in watery sauce, and soggy egg salad sandwiches. Even after ten years of life in Manhattan, a little bit of Maggody had still flowed within me like a secondary infection in my bloodstream. Maybe there was no cure for it, and never would be. A chilling thought.
But the automat was what I was daydreaming about when the telephone rang, and I was doing so because I hadn't had a decent meal since I'd driven Ruby Bee and Estelle to the airport in Farberville the day before and watched them disappear into the great blue yonder, feeling as if I were a mechanic watching a heavily laden bomber head for enemy lines.
It was likely to be Mrs. Jim Bob making sure I'd bought proper Christian cookies, I decided as I went to the back room to get my radar gun. It was still ringing when I returned, armed to the teeth with said weapon and a magazine. I chewed on my lip, which tasted no better than the canned soup I'd been subsisting on for more than twenty-four hours. It could be the Stump County Sheriff, good ol' Harve Dorfer, wanting me to do something I'd probably prefer not to do, such as untangle bloodied drunks from a wrecked car or help scoop a bloated body out of the lake south of town. Or it could be the man of my dreams. Him, or the Pope; the odds were about equal.
I picked up the receiver. "Yes?"
"Oh, Arly, thank the Lord I got hold of you! The awfullest thing has happened, and I don't know what to do! I keep rubbing my face and trying to tell myself it's all nothing but a nasty nightmare and there ain't no cause to go bellowing like an orphaned calf in a blizzard, but-"
"Estelle?" I said sharply. The background cacophony nearly drowned her out, and I caught myself wondering if she was calling from the concrete island in the middle of Times Square.
"Well, it ain't the mayor of Noow Yark City! Didn't you hear a word of what I just-"
"Calm down. I heard very little of what you just said, mostly because you weren't making any sense." I sat down behind the desk and took a breath, hoping she was doing the same. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, if you don't count your own mother being locked up in jail for murder."
After a pause fraught with frowns and grimaces, I said, "I suppose I do count that, Estelle. Could you please explain what you said in a little more detail? Who, and what, and when, and where, not to mention the ever-popular why?"
"It happened last night, and if you ask me, it was her own darn fault for firing the gun at the police when they broke down the hotel room door. After that, they weren't in the mood to listen to her explain why a bucknaked man was bleeding like a stuck pig right there in her bed. She kept tryin' to talk to them in a right nice fashion, but you'd have thought she was visiting some country where they ride around on camels. I've never seen a bunch of grown men get themselves so riled up over one itsy-bitsy bullet that didn't even hit any of 'em."
Don't think for an instant that I was taking notes or formulating questions designed to elicit further information. I wasn't so much as blinking, and I wouldn't have flinched if I'd been stung by a hornet, or a whole swarm of them.
"Would you repeat that?" I managed to say.
"I said the bullet didn't hit any of 'em, but all the same they put handcuffs on Ruby Bee and took her away, just like she had been holding up a liquor store or a bank. She wasn't nearly as mad as I would have been, although I must say she was acting downright crumpy about the whole thing."
"Why on earth…?" I began, but words abandoned me and I shrugged as if Estelle were across the desk from me.
"You would be too, if a smart-mouthed cop tackled you and nearly made you hit your head on the dresser. They wouldn't even let me talk to her, much less go along to find out where they were taking her. Instead, they made all of us wait downstairs most of the night, then questioned us one at a time in that snooty manager's office. I don't want to say anything unkind about those policemen, but there wasn't a one of them much brighter than Kevin on one of his better days. The one I talked to had a face uglier than a mud fence stuck with tadpoles and an accent I couldn't hardly understand. He hadn't ever heard of Arkansas, if you can believe that!"
"Estelle," I said, getting a little crumpy myself, "you still haven't told me what happened to Ruby Bee. Is she all right?"
"How would I know, Miss Hard of Hearing? I already told you how the police dragged her away in handcuffs and couldn't be bothered to tell me where they were taking her." She gasped. "Oh, dear, there's that crazy whiskery man who's been following me since we got here. I got to go, Arly. He's licking his lips something fierce, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a knife in his pocket or an axe down his britches. Talk to you later."
"Wait!" I screeched. "Don't you dare hang up!"
She hung up.
I sat for a very long while, staring at the telephone and trying to pluck tidbits of factual information out of the bizarre conversation. A naked man bleeding in Ruby Bee's bed. When the police broke down the door, she'd fired a gun at them. Humorless chaps that they were, they'd tackled her to the floor, handcuffed her, and taken her away to be booked for murder. As of the moment, she'd not returned. Estelle had been questioned. She was now being knifed/hacked by a wet-lipped man who'd been following her since their arrival.
"And that's all we know," I said just to hear my voice and reassure myself I hadn't been beamed aboard any hovering alien spacecraft. The PD looked the same-dusty, hot, seedy if not squalid, in need of a sweeping that wasn't on my agenda any time soon. Outside, pickup trucks grumbled down the highway, along with an occasional car filled with tourists searching for bucolic quaintness and finding a lot of tacky poverty. Car doors slammed as folks came and went at the supermarket across the road. Neighborly greetings were exchanged. A child wailed, a dog barked.
The telephone rang, and this time I did not dally. I lunged for the receiver, slapped it against my ear, and said, "Estelle?"
"Hardly. This is Mrs. Jim Bob, Arly. We'll need seating for six tonight, and I seemed to recall there are only two or three chairs. You need to arrange to borrow some from the Sunday school room at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall and set them-"
"You got it," I said and hung up. That was a link with reality, I told myself. Ruby Bee might be jailed for murder nearly two thousand miles away, but it was business as usual in Maggody. When the telephone once again rang, I was a little more cautious. "Arly Hanks here," I said.