She resumed her assault on the typewriter. I went down the hall to Harve's office and knocked on the door.
"I tol' you to leave me alone, LaBelle!" he boomed. "I don't want to hear any more complaints about the dirty coffee cups in the break room. And stop calling it a 'war room,' fer chrissake?"
I identified myself and assured him I was alone in the hall. He unlocked the door, dragged me inside, and relocked it.
"LaBelle's getting on my nerves," he said, running his fingers through what hair he had as he sat down behind his desk. "She's so crazy these days that she thinks I put a bath tub in here. Now you tell me-why in blazes would I have gone and done a fool thing like that?"
"Shall I assume the task force is still in operation?" I asked.
"Does a bear shit in the woods? Yeah, there are about a dozen of 'em on loan from various agencies in the county. They report to the prosecutor, so half the time I don't even know what they're doing-besides eating doughnuts and pizza." He took a cigar butt out of his pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. "One of the fellows that was on the critical list died last night. The other one is on a respirator in the intensive care unit. A DEA agent's staying by his bedside, but I don't think we're going to be hearing a confession anytime soon."
"Why's this such a big deal, Harve? It's not exactly a secret that illegal drugs are cheap and plentiful in Stump County. Marijuana's more common than cocaine, but everything's available in the bars on Thurber Street."
"It seems we're smack in the middle of a new route from Mexico to Chicago. The DEA's been onto it for several months, but they've been waiting for a good-sized shipment so they can get publicity. They sure would like to know what happened at the Dew Drop Inn. The owner and bartender are in custody, but they seem to have been struck deaf and dumb. We're trying to find out who else might have been hanging around after the club closed." He took the cigar out of his mouth, studied it for a moment, and jammed it back in. He used a couple of matches to get it lit to his satisfaction, then leaned back and entwined his fingers on his belly. "Ain't your headache, though. You get anywhere in Scurgeton?"
"The only problem out there is a preacher with an overcharged imagination and too much free time," I said, trying not to squint as acrid smoke drifted across the desk. "There's nothing going on in Maggody, so I can keep driving over there to gaze wonderingly at whatever doohickey Reverend Hitebred finds under a chair. I may get bored with it sooner or later, however."
"Just keep him happy," Harve said with a chuckle that disintegrated into a spasm of coughing. When he regained control, he brushed ashes off his chest and said, "Or out of my hair, anyway."
"Sure," I said, waited a few seconds in case he had any more questions (or was going into respiratory failure), and then unlocked the door and went out to the hallway. Before I'd reached the reception area, I heard the lock click behind me, and from somewhere in the back of the building, brays of laughter and a phrase that sounded suspiciously like, "straight flush." LaBelle ignored me as I went by her desk.
I stopped at the edge of Farberville and picked up a hamburger and fries for dinner. When I arrived in Maggody, I parked behind the antiques store and climbed the steps to my apartment. No interior decorating elves had been there in my absence; the linoleum was still buckled and the walls looked, if anything, dingier than when I'd left that morning. If I didn't do laundry before too long, my sheets would be able to crawl over to the Suds O' Fun on their own.
While I ate, I watched the local news, curious to see if the county prosecutor had held a press conference. The news anchor, a woman whose hair must have been highly flammable, briefly mentioned the second death and then moved on to a freight-train derailment in the next county. Drug traffickers could not compete with toxic spills, especially steamy green ones.
I was reduced to watching sitcoms, when the phone rang. Hoping I wasn't about to be recruited to go undercover at a topless/bottomless club, I picked up the receiver.
"Arly? Thank God, I found you?" shrieked Estelle. "The most awful thing has happened?"
"You found proof that Elvis was abducted by aliens?"
"This is serious. Ruby Bee is in the hospital. I kept after the doctor and the nurses, but none of 'em would say what's wrong with her. They've got her stuck with needles and wearing this tube in her nose?"
I put down my coffee cup and rubbed my forehead. "What are you talking about, Estelle?"
"I just told you, for pity's sake? Ruby Bee's in the hospital. Since I ain't kin, they won't let me in to see her. I don't know what to do? Here I am, not-"
"Calm down," I said, "and tell me what happened."
She gulped several times, then said in a voice slightly less likely to shatter crystal, "Not more than ten minutes after we got to the hotel with the casino-"
"I thought you were supposed to be in Tupelo tonight."
"Will you hush up and listen? We're here on account of a change in the plans. While I was talking to Taylor about her wedding in the van-"
"Someone got married in the van?" I said, increasingly bewildered.
"Are you gonna hear me out?"
"Go on," I said meekly.
"Like I said, while I was talking to Taylor, Ruby Bee went on inside the hotel with these two women in our group and went to the ladies room. I was on my way to find her when she came out, made a remark I won't bother to repeat, and then collapsed like a rag doll. Somebody called for an ambulance and they took her to the hospital."
"Are you there now?"
"I'm back at the hotel. The nurse made it clear that I couldn't even set foot inside the room where poor Ruby Bee's all trussed up. I'm supposed to call over there in the morning, but I'm afraid they won't tell me anything."
I was really glad I was sitting down. "And you have no idea what's wrong with her? Could it have been a heart attack?"
"I don't know what to tell you, Arly. She wasn't up to snuff these last two days, but she made it clear she didn't want to talk about it."
"She didn't mention any pain in her chest or shoulder?"
"I already told you what I know. Maybe I should have waited until the morning to call. It could be nothing more than a bad case of gas. She gets that when she's been eating cabbage, you know."
"Had she been eating cabbage?" I asked.
"No, but something else could have caused it. Chocolate, for instance, or that sandwich she ate last night at the motel. The bread looked a mite moldy."
"Give me the name of the hospital," I said. "I'll call and see what I can find out. If I don't get a decent answer, I can be there when Ruby Bee wakes up in the morning. Are you at the hotel on the brochure?"
I wrote down the information, told Estelle to try to get some rest, and hung up the receiver. This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen. Ruby Bee was strong, if not invincible. When my father had walked out on her, she'd knuckled down to earn a living and never once referred to him. She'd steered me through school, starched my underwear and sent me off to the police academy in Camden, and, for the most part, held her peace when I moved to New York City with the hairball formerly known as my husband.
It took me several tries to dial the number of the hospital, and my throat was decidedly tight as I asked for the intensive care unit. By the time someone there answered, I sounded like a laryngitic rooster.
"Ruby Bee Hanks?" the nurse said. "Yes, she's in the cubicle right across from me."
I told her who I was and demanded details.
I may have been a bit brusque, because her voice turned chilly. "Hold your horses while I look at her chart. She was brought to the emergency room two hours ago, and transferred here almost immediately." She paused, humming to herself. "It says she was complaining of sharp pains in the abdomen region. She vomited in the ambulance. Skin clammy, blood pressure elevated, feverish, and hostile when asked for a history. We have to take a history, you know. It's standard procedure, even though we're not a big, bustling hospital like the ones on TV. Our care is every bit as good as you'd get there. What's more, we have-"