Maggody And The Moonbeams

16

Corporal Robarts appeared from between the cabins. He wasn't panting, but his shirt was sticking to his body and his deodorant was less than effective at fifteen feet. At three feet, I wanted to cover my nose and mouth, but, as Ruby Bee was fond of reminding me, I wasn't raised in a barn. I didn't know anybody who had been, for that matter.

"Glad you're finally here, Chief Hanks," he said between gasps. "I called the PD and Bonita said you were on your way. I just came back from the lodge. Les is gonna check along the road that leads to the lake, and some teacher fellow agreed to search the cabins where your group's been staying. You think I ought to call Sheriff Dorfer? I got my cellphone right here. We might could call the state police as well."

"Let's calm down. Naomi, pull yourself together and tell me how old your children are and how long they've been gone."

She dried her face on her sleeve, leaving a smear the color of dried blood. "Adam's eight and Lizzie is five, and I don't know for sure how long. After Mrs. Coldwater left, I dismissed all of them until suppertime. Judith's girls agreed to watch the little ones in the schoolhouse."

"What about Damon?" demanded Rachael. "Is he at the schoolhouse, too?"

"He's in the children's cabin, reading, as are the rest of them. My children are the only ones we can't find."

I looked at Judith. "You implied that the children were permitted to play in the woods."

"Usually they are, but after what happened yesterday, they were all told to stay within sight."

"We left about two hours ago," I said. "No one's seen them since then? Are you sure they're not sitting in the kitchen of the lodge, having pizza and cherry cobbler?"

Corporal Robarts jerked around. "You don't think I made sure of that? I looked in every room and closet, under beds, and in the shed out in the garden. I went down to the basement, even though the steps were covered with an inch of dust and spiderwebs were getting in my hair. I'm not stupid, you know."

Naomi collapsed into Judith's arms. "How are we gonna find them? It's so dark, and there are paths all over the place. What if they went down to the lake and-"

Judith gave her a shake. "They're safe," she said firmly. "You stay here while the rest of us fan out. Your children are old enough to realize they might be taken away by Mrs. Coldwater. The obvious explanation is that they ran away and are hiding in one of the uninhabited cabins." She shot me a dirty look. "I told you that they were fragile. If you weren't so enamored of your role as an egotistical, authoritarian-"

"Stop it!" wailed Naomi. "Just find my kids. They're liable to be terrified. I used to make them sleep in my bed. I walked them to school and waited in the playground until they were let out. One time I agreed to have them sleep over at my sister Letitia's house, but I knew they'd start crying so I went and picked them up. I thought I'd protected them by bringing them here, but now-"

The wails were getting progressively louder and downright eerie; if Brother Verber could have heard them, he would have been scurrying down the road toward the gate, a handkerchief in one hand and a bottle of sacramental wine in the other. "Take her inside before she frightens all the children," I said to Judith. "Rachael, get Sarah and stay with the other children. Corporal Robarts and I will find these other cabins. If the children aren't there, I'll call in backup."

"Not dogs!" Naomi screeched as though she was being dive-bombed by bats instead of a scattering of moths. "If they hear dogs, I don't know what they'll do. I've always taught them that dogs are filthy and dangerous. When I caught Adam and Lizzie petting a puppy in the yard, I took a belt to them. The slobber was disgusting! Who knows what kind of diseases they were exposed to?"

Judith looked past me at Rachael. "Her medication's in a plastic bag in the flour canister."

"I'll get it and meet you in the cabin."

Sarah, who'd been hovering in the shadows, stepped forward. "I'll be with the children."

Corporal Robarts looked as if he thought he ought to whip out his weapon and shoot whatever slobbery, diseased puppy strayed into view to wag its satanic tail. "Maybe I should wait here."

"Sorry," I said, "but you're more familiar with these woods than I am. Do you still have the flashlight?"

"In the car."

"Then go get it," I said with admirable patience, having spent the last several years dealing with Kevin Buchanon and his kinfolk. "We'll spend an hour searching for the children. If we don't find them, I'll have to call Harve."

"It's awful dark."

"That's pretty much the way it is after sundown."

He licked his lips. "But what if we come across, you know, something-like, you know-"

I helped him out. "Snakes? Bears? Polecats? A tribe of cannibals living in a cave?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of the person who murdered Ruth," he said.

"The flashlight," I repeated. While he was rooting through his trunk, I told Judith that it might be best for the children and adults to stay together until we returned. She nodded, then grasped Naomi and headed her toward the cabin.

Corporal Robarts and I went around the garden and started down what had once been a road. Weeds sprouted in the middle like a bad Mohawk haircut.

"What can you tell me about Naomi? " I asked.

"I haven't had much to do with her. I brought them here and introduced the other Beamers. I don't recollect her being in town since then."

"You said you brought them here. Does that mean you told her where to leave her car when she arrived in Dunkicker?"

"That's not what I said. They showed up at the PD one afternoon and said Deborah had told them that I would drive them to Camp Pearly Gates. I didn't ask any questions."

"Bonita found their cars earlier this afternoon. The sheriff's department put enough pressure on the DMV to open its files on a Sunday. Four cars, four names, and four home addresses. Sarah's the one who came from Muskogee. Norella, or Ruth, if you prefer, had a car registered in her own name. I'd bet that Naomi's from Springfield. You know who that leaves, Corporal Robarts?"

"Hold on," he said. "There's a cabin behind those trees. We'd better stay quiet."

We might not have gone undetected by cannibals, but we reached the cabin without much ado. He eased open the door and swung the beam of light around. "Kids?" he whispered. "You hiding in here?"

I took the flashlight out of his hand and went around him. A minute later, I returned. "They're not here, and it doesn't look as if anyone else has been in here for the better part of a decade. Where's the next cabin?"

"Over that way," he said, pointing. "The ones away from the lodge tend to be clustered in groups of two or three, sometimes four." He retrieved the flashlight. "You want me to show you?"

I fell into step behind him, wishing he'd slow down so I could see the path. "I think the remaining car belonged to Ester."

"Why do you think that?"

I tripped over a stump and had to grab a vine to steady myself. Catching a whiff of him was more effective than sticking my nose over a bottle of smelling salts. "Well, Judith told me that she and Rachael didn't get here by car, that Deborah made arrangements. She wouldn't elaborate, but now they're panicky. Even if we find Naomi's children and return them safely, the others are going to talk to me. A missing child is every mother's worst fear. I hope Naomi's medication, whatever it is, is industrial strength and not some herbal concoction."

"Two hours is a long time." He stopped and shined the light at yet another cabin. "You want me to look this time, or are you too high and mighty to trust a good of country boy like me?"

"Whatever," I said, restraining myself from suggesting he soak his head while he was at it-or even take a quick shower. Two children, aged eight and five, were somewhere in the wooded acres. Corporal Robarts's unexpected outburst of petulance wasn't helping. "I'll sit out here and wait."

He looked back at me. "You don't want to give me detailed instructions on how to search a cabin? Didn't you have a course at the police academy on proper procedure?"

"I'm sure you can handle it," I said mildly. I bit my tongue before I could add that he needed to open the stalls in the bathroom.

A minute later, he came outside. "All clear. Ready for the next one?"

"Let's rest for a minute. What I was going to say earlier was that I'm pretty sure Ester's car is parked behind the body shop. You said you took her to the bus station in Starley City, though."

He leaned against the side of the cabin. "And that's what I did. She told me she'd tried to start her car that morning, but it was dead. Lester even came out and tried to jump the battery. Mind if I smoke?"

"Why, Anthony," I said inadvertently using his given name, "I didn't realize you have secret vices. Do you keep a bottle of whiskey under your pillow?"

"Yeah, and I pilfer pennies from the collection plate on Sundays."

"Your mother must be very proud of you."

I could see his smile as he flicked a lighter and took a draw on the cigarette between his lips. "She's not, though," he said. "My father was a banker. He invested in the stock market, bought up repossessed properties, and had a couple of car dealerships. I barely got through high school. If I'd had a different last name, I never would have graduated. Hell, I'd probably still be repeating the eighth grade."

I waited until he'd finished the cigarette and ground it under his heel. "I guess we'd better keep searching. Did you think to look in the dugout at the softball field?"

"The only place I went was the lodge. I can see that they might have gone over to the field, but why would they stay in the dugout?"

"They might have seen the teenagers working on the bleachers and found it entertaining-or they might have been there later when Jarvis went to meet Norella."

"I know Norella was Ruth's real name, but who's Jarvis? Shouldn't you have brought him in for questioning if he was at the field?"

"Jarvis is one of the boys," I said. "Norella called him a few days ago and asked him to bring her enough money to get away from the Daughters of the Moon. I talked to him about it. He could have been lying through his teeth, but I couldn't discern any reason why he might have attacked Norella. He agreed to give her what he could, but if he didn't want to, all he had to do was stay away."

"Maybe they had something going. A boy's brain is located between his legs. Could she have threatened him with blackmail?"

I stood up. "Let's get going. And slow down, okay? I'm partial to my knees, skin and all."

"Sorry," he muttered. We retraced our way to the road. "I still say you should have taken this Jarvis into custody."

"Even if she had been sleeping with him back in Maggody, nobody would care. Mrs. Jim Bob might have turned sanctimonious and fanned the gossip, and Brother Verber might have rumbled from the pulpit for a few weeks. I don't know what all goes on in Dunkicker, but we've seen worse in Maggody." I stopped to brush a bug out of my face. "Did you ever find out who Ester called in Florida?"

He stopped. "I told you I threw away the bill because I didn't see why it mattered. It was probably a relative. Now that I think about it, some man called for her after she'd left for the day. A cousin, he said. I told him not to call back."

"But you didn't take Rachael's advice and contact your long-distance company?"

"I didn't care what her cousin's name was."

"Well, I do," I said as I nudged him into motion, then allowed him a few steps. "First thing tomorrow, I'll get a locksmith so we can examine the interior of Ester's car. She may have left an address book or some letters. It'll help us track her down in Florida, if that's where she went."

He wheeled around. "Why are you so obsessed with Ester? The only crime she committed was making long-distance calls from our house, and that's hardly worth bothering with. You want to look in the cabin over there?"

"You do it," I said. "I'll wait here." There was no convenient picnic bench this time, so I settled for an unpleasantly damp log. Ester had not been a happy camper, although she had come of her own free will. Could she really have fathomed what she was getting into when Deborah invited her to join the cult? The Daughters of the Moon had provided her with an austere existence and the opportunity to clean bathrooms and fry chicken in someone else's house. She'd implied that she knew how to come into serious money, and it wouldn't be from pawning Willetta Robarts's odd bits of jewelry. Had her cousin found her a job at Disney World? Did Snow White have a dwarf named Baldy?

"All clear," Corporal Robarts said as he pushed his way past a scrub oak. "On to the softball field?"

"Good idea." I brushed off my butt and followed him. "I think I'll check on those numbers Ester called, just in case we don't find anything in her car. You may have tossed the bill, but the long-distance company will have records. Aren't you surprised that Norella made calls, too?"

"They go about their business, and I go about mine."

"But you came out of the men's room while she was using the pay telephone at the café. That must have startled her."

"I don't think she even saw me."

I slowed down, hoping to remain upwind from him. "She was talking to Jarvis. Did you hear her arrange to meet him?"

"I didn't pay any attention. You gonna stand there all night?"

"You knew she was meeting him yesterday afternoon. No one else, including her ex-husband, had any reason to think she'd be by the creek. Not Rachael, or Sarah, or Naomi, or Judith, or even Deborah-unless I need to take a closer look at Merle. It'd be a stretch, but odder things have happened in dear old Dunkicker in the last thirty-six hours."

"What is this shit?"

"Later in the day, did you go home to have supper with your mother, or to shower and dispose of your bloody clothes?"

"The way you're carrying on, the next thing you'll be accusing me of is putting on lipstick and prancing in the woods. I didn't especially like Ruth, or Ester, for that matter. Then again, I don't like Crank Nickle and I'm not overly fond of Chief Panknine's wife. You want to use my cellphone to make sure I didn't sneak away this morning to suffocate them in their beds?"

"Ester's not in Florida, is she?"

"How the hell would I know?"

I was beginning to feel like a lame-brained heroine who'd gone up to the attic to investigate. "I think Norella figured out what had happened. She was probably suspicious when she saw Ester's car behind the body shop. Quite the ironic place to stash a body, don't you agree? New and used parts, all of that."

"You want to explain?"

I wanted to grab his gun, but I demurely put my hands into my pockets. "The trunk will be opened tomorrow, Anthony," I said, this time using his given name deliberately. "You're the one who's going to have to explain why you lied about taking her to the bus station, why she did something so threatening that you killed her."

"Go on." He would have sounded more menacing if his voice hadn't cracked.

"There is something about Florida that not everybody knows. Most people think of the theme parks, the beaches, even the hurricanes. I think of all that, but I also think of tabloids. Most of them are located in Lantana. Was Ester planning to sell her Beamer story to one of them? They'd eat it up. These women didn't come here for religious sanctuary; they came to get away from abusive ex-husbands. Norella must have heard about it when she was turned away from the battered women's shelter and went to the community outreach program, desperate for money to buy gas and feed her children. Most towns in the area have similar agencies. That's where Deborah recruited them, didn't she? She must have convinced a few good-hearted volunteers that this was the last refuge for women and their children, perhaps even arranged for transportation. The rules didn't sound so awful. Their shaved heads convinced the locals that they were members of a wacky cult, not fugitives. What they didn't realize was that they'd never put aside enough cash to leave. Not exactly slave labor, but close to it. First, mandatory community service, and then a lowpaying job and an obligation to contribute most of their earnings to the grocery demands."

"They can leave whenever they want," he said sullenly. "Deborah never told them otherwise."

"Leave and go where? They wouldn't have come in the first place if they'd felt they had options. They sincerely believe they're protecting their children and themselves by going underground. Most of them, anyway. Norella's motivation seems to have been pure spite."

Corporal Robarts's hands were trembling as he lit another cigarette. "So your story is that I killed Ester to stop her from selling her story to a tabloid, and then killed Norella because of-what? Boredom?"

"Ester told Norella. When Norella figured out what had happened, she decided that there was nothing stopping her from doing the same thing. All she needed was enough money for a tank of gas and a cheap motel with a telephone, then stay low and wait for the tabloid boys to arrive. It would have made quite a cover story."

"So the Beamers are exposed and Norella makes out like a bandit. What if I said that Ester begged me to say I took her to the bus station?"

"Why would she do that?"

The cigarette bobbled as he worked on it. "She was afraid to get her car before it was dark. Rachael and Sarah might have seen her leaving and done something to stop her. They wouldn't have wanted their faces in a tabloid if they were hiding from ex-husbands."

"Not bad, Anthony," I said, "but we'll be comparing fingerprints in the morning. We may find some on both the outside and the inside of the trunk."

He flicked the cigarette into the brush. "You may not be doing anything in the morning, Chief Hanks. The whole town may think Duluth came to kill his wife, but they might just change their minds if your body's found out here. What's more, he isn't the only crazy coot roaming the woods these days. We've got druggies, war veterans, and most of Crank Nickle's kinfolk, who took off to wait for a Second Coming. Last I heard, they was perched in trees up in Greasy Valley, pestering the hippies, but you never know."

Lame-brained heroines always survived, I told myself. "You don't think the Beamers might have a problem with that? They saw us leave together."

"I'll just say you sent me to check the cabins on the other side of the lodge. More efficient, you'd said. No reason to stay together when the killer's already locked up. I wasn't real comfortable, but you were in charge of the investigation, as you kept telling everybody."

"At least let me have a cigarette," I countered, listening intently for the Mounties to come thundering up the creekbed.

"Yeah, I suppose so."

He handed me one and held out his lighter. As soon as the flame licked up, I jammed it in his face and took off on the sorry excuse for a road. He had the flashlight, but I had the adrenaline advantage. I leaped over logs like a damn gazelle, not always with success. Down would lead to the road that ran between the gate and the lodge. He couldn't risk shooting me: Bullets, like fingerprints, were too easily traced.

He seemed to have something in mind, though, and I was not eager to find out what it might be. I could hear him behind me, thudding along, heaving, and taking the occasional sprawl. His mother would be appalled at his language, if I lived to tattle on him. It seemed like a good idea to me.

I finally had to duck under a cedar and catch my breath. He stopped, too, although I had no sense of how far behind me he was. Not far, alas, and he'd finally remembered that he had the flashlight in his hand.

The beam began sweeping across the ruts and coming closer. If I stayed where I was, he would find me, and if I scrambled into the woods, he would hear me. I found a rock and threw it across the road, waited until he took a few steps in that direction, and took off running again.

"Hey!" he shouted.

It did not seem like the time to stop and inquire if I could do anything for him. The ground was getting steeper, which I dearly hoped meant I was getting closer to the road. I caught my foot on a root, but somehow managed to keep my balance as I slithered down the bank into a puddle of water.

As I climbed out of it, I was startled to see a car coming toward me, its headlights off. I stood in the middle of the road and waved my arms as if I were directing a jet to its gate. It stopped with inches to spare.

"Need a lift?" Jacko asked softly.

"What I need is a little help. He has a gun, and by now he may be crazy enough to use it. When I yell, turn on your headlights and I'll take it from there."

"Shouldn't I get out and punch him in the nose or something gallant like that? Of course I don't know who he is, but I'm sure he's a villain."

"Stay in the car and"-I glanced at his backseat-"protect your children."

I stepped back into the middle of the road as I heard Corporal Robarts coming. As he reached the bank, I yelled, "Here I am, asshole!"

As he jumped over the ditch and landed on the road, the headlights caught him in the face. I took the opportunity to grab the gun out of his hand and send him sprawling backward. He went down with a splash.

"Very impressive," Jacko commented. "I didn't realize you were quite so aggressive. Is this typical of your behavior?"

"I need another favor. Will you go back to the lodge and tell the deputy that I need his assistance?"

He paused. "That may complicate things for me."

"Such as being charged with kidnapping?"

He shushed the children and got out of the car. "I have full custody. My ex-wife was given only supervised visitation, but she took the children while they were playing in the yard. It's taken me two months to find them."

"Then you didn't kidnap them," I said as I went over to Robarts and planted my foot on his back. He said something I hoped the children could not hear.

"I'm concerned that they might be taken into protective custody while this is sorted out. She'll start up again with how I was neglecting and abusing them. Her lawyers and mine will be back to having lunch at the country club and haggling on the back nine."

"I can't stand here all night, Jacko."

"You have his gun."

"He's not going to let that bother him, and I'm reluctant to shoot him. There's already been enough suffering at Camp Pearly Gates."

"I'll go find this deputy for you. Would you mind if I called you in a few weeks?"

"Try the Maggody PD. I don't keep tidy office hours, but I'm usually around. I appreciate this."

"And you ought to," he said as he got into the car and began to back down the road toward the lodge.