Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 (11 page)

As I locked the front door of the PD, I noticed Jules and Lucy were deep in conversation with my landlord. Roy was slouched in his favorite cane-bottomed rocking chair out in front of the store, but I could tell that he was agitated and that the tabloid reporters were enthralled with what he was saying. I had a gut feeling he wasn't reciting poetry.

"What's up?" I said as I walked across the road.

Roy took a drink of something I doubted was iced tea, wiped his mouth, and waited until I'd joined them. "I meant to come over earlier and tell you about it, Arly," he said apologetically. "Then some tourists from Connecticut showed up, and I got busy with them. By the time they left with two boxes of depression glass and that repulsive faux marble cherub, I'd plum forgot the whole thing."

"What whole thing?"

"Last night about eleven I was driving back here from the picture show in Farberville. As I went past the Assembly Hall, I happened to glance down County One-oh-two. There was a funny little light that appeared to be flying all around that pasture between Estelle's and Earl Buchanon's houses. You know where I mean?"

I glanced at Jules and Lucy, who were busy scribbling notes. "Was it orange?" I asked Roy.

He took another drink, then leaned back and closed his eyes. "Nope, it was white. I decided to take a closer look, so I drove down the road a short piece, stopped, and rolled down the window. Before I could get a fix on it, that damn thing came diving straight at me. Somehow I got the window rolled up, but my hands were shaking so hard I liked to never have got my truck in reverse. It chased me all the way back to the road. It's pure luck I didn't run down Estelle's sign or end up in a ditch."

"How big was this light?" asked Lucy.

"It's hard to say. When I first saw it, it was off in the pasture. I don't reckon it was bigger than one of those little penlights, but I can't say for sure because I don't know how close it really was."

"Did it make any sound?" asked Jules.

"I might have heard a buzzing noise, but I wouldn't swear to it. It's hard to recall the particulars when you re backing up a narrow dirt road at thirty miles an hour. My neck's still kinked."

I was getting tired of allowing the reporters to conduct the investigation. "Think back, Roy," I said. "There was heavy fog down on County One-oh-two last night, and things may have looked spooky because of the distortion. Couldn't you have seen a planet or a particularly bright star and convinced yourself it was moving?"

"Sure, Arly, and then I convinced myself it was darting around the truck the whole time I was weaving up the road. I convinced myself it was coming after me like a hornet. After all, I just got off the watermelon truck and I ain't never seen fog."

I took the glass out of his hand and took a swig. "Sorry," I said as I returned it to him, then screwed up my face as the cheap whiskey caught up with me. It was not his usual brand. "It's just that I'm having a hard time with all this crazy stuff."

"I've heard it," he said. "That's all anybody was talking about at the barbershop this morning. But lemme tell you something, Arly: What I saw wasn't one of those mysterious orange lights, any more than it was a star. It was something altogether different."

Jules put his notebook in his pocket and said, "Mr. Stiver, could I talk you into letting me take some pictures of you pointing at the pasture? I can't promise they'll make the Weekly Examiner, but if they do, we'll pay you fifty dollars."

"The Probe can pay seventy-five," Lucy said valiantly.

Roy emptied the glass and stood up. "I don't think so. If you'll excuse me, I'm gonna lock up and go have a couple of beers at Ruby Bee's. Afterward I reckon I'll spend the evening in my room, listening to Beethoven and drinking the remainder of this whiskey."

I turned around and went back to the PD to write up a report. If an alien had stepped out from behind a building, I'd have shot him/her/it on the spot.

"I thought you'd be busier tonight," Estelle said as she climbed onto her stool and automatically reached for the pretzel basket. "Where is everybody?"

Ruby Bee considered pointing out the sheer stupidity of the question but instead sighed and said, "Over at Raz Buchanon's, of course. After everything that's happened there, I'm surprised the tour buses haven't started rolling in. I hear he's raised the price of admission three times today." She glumly assessed the crowd, which consisted of two young married couples in one booth, some strangers eating supper in another, and Jim Bob, Larry Joe Lambertino, and Roy Stiver working on a pitcher in the far corner. Nobody'd put a quarter in the jukebox for a long while, and the ambiance was about as exciting as a canning demonstration at a 4-H club meeting. "There were a goodly number of folks at happy hour, but when it started getting dark, they all left to go watch for flying saucers and shiny white creatures to come out of the woods."

"Did Arly find out any more about those orange lights everybody saw last night?"

"Nobody at the National Guard or the Farberville airport had any suggestions. She called a weatherman in Little Rock and asked him if they could have been weather balloons or stars, but he didn't think so. If she's talked to anyone else, she hasn't bothered to tell me. She didn't show up for supper, even though I went to the trouble of putting aside a piece of lemon icebox pie especially for her. How's that for gratitude?"

"I watched the local news earlier," Estelle said. She paused to reposition a bobby pin, then made sure the spit curls were evenly spaced across her forehead before continuing. "Dr. Sageman said the lights were alien spaceships similar to some seen in one of those South American countries. Dr. McMasterson said they weren't anything more mysterious than clouds catching the last sunlight from the far side of the ridge. Before the interviewer could spit out a word, they were rolling on the floor like a couple of lady mud wrestlers."

"It's funny the way they act around each other, ain't it? After all, they both believe in aliens. They may disagree on where the aliens come from or how they pop up unexpectedly, but you'd think they could work out something." She was going to expound when she saw Cynthia Dodder enter the barroom. "Come join us," she called.

Cynthia took the stool beside Estelle. "Dr. Sageman has appropriated my motel room for his session. He, Rosemary, and the girl are liable to be there for several hours. I sat in the car for a while, but then it began to grow chilly and I'd left my sweater in the room."

"You poor thing," Ruby Bee said, herself having been the victim of gross ingratitude. "Let me get you some hot coffee and a piece of lemon icebox pie."

Estelle moistened her vermilion lips and tried to figure out how to broach the subject tactfully. She finally gave up and said, "What happens in these sessions, anyway? Does he put Dahlia into a trance by swinging a watch back and forth?"

"Not at all," Cynthia said as she accepted a cup of coffee from Ruby Bee. "I've operated the tape recorder in numerous sessions in the last ten years, particularly those with Rosemary and other members of UFORIA. Dr. Sageman has the subject lie down and relax, then creates a mental image of an elevator ascending within a towering skyscraper. When the subject is sufficiently attuned to the image, the elevator doors open and a scene is revealed."

"Gonna be a problem with Dahlia," Ruby Bee said, setting down the pie and a fork. "If she's ever been in an elevator, it would have been in Farberville. The tallest building ain't more than four stories. The elevator is gonna burst through the roof real quick."

"Have you ever been hypnotized?" asked Estelle.

Cynthia nodded. "I've explored a dozen of my past lives, including one as a courtesan in the court of Louis the Fourteenth and another as a Viking warrior with a bushy red beard and a propensity for pillaging. That was quite an exciting life, I must say. I was the first mate on the ship that discovered the uncharted continent that came to be known as North America."

Ruby Bee and Estelle exchanged looks, but neither of them knew how to respond to an ordinary-looking woman claiming to have had a red beard.

Fortunately Cynthia needed no prompting. "Many of my past lives have been riddled with violence. I crossed the Alps with Hannibal and battled the Spaniards alongside Montezuma. During the Civil War I was a beautiful young spy who was captured and hanged by General Grant's forces. Only recently has my karma become such that I can live in peace and heighten my awareness of cosmic truth."

"We need another pitcher!" Jim Bob shouted.

Ruby Bee was secretly relieved to abandon the conversation and take it to him. "You ever talked to that woman?" she asked as she made change from her apron pocket.

Jim Bob looked over his shoulder. "Over at the SuperSaver a couple of days back. She know anything about all these lights?"

"She hasn't said much."

Larry Joe ran his fingers through his stubbly hair. "Joyce sure had a lot to say after her and the kids saw those orange lights last night. The house was pitch-dark when I got home, and they were hunkered under the kitchen table with my shotgun. I had to put in a new dead bolt this morning."

"But you got to admit," Jim Bob said as he deftly refilled his glass, "that this is bringing in the tourists with their fat wallets and their healthy appetites. I saw all those cars in your parking lot this afternoon, Ruby Bee. Even Roy here agrees that business has picked up in the last three days."

Roy nodded, but he didn't seem nearly as enthusiastic as Jim Bob. "I suppose it has."

Ruby Bee shrugged, then went back behind the bar and listened halfheartedly as Cynthia described her life as an Apache chief. Mostly she was wondering why every last one of Cynthia's socalled past lives was more exciting than a Technicolor movie. Hadn't one ever taken place in a dumpy little town like Maggody?

Estelle was eating it up, though, and Ruby Bee was too gracious to risk offending a customer. Cynthia was in the midst of describing how she'd scalped General Custer when a teenaged boy walked across the dance floor.

He held up an envelope. "I'm supposed to give this to some guy that's staying at the Flamingo, but I don't know what room he's in. His name's Sageman."

Cynthia plucked the envelope out of his hand. "Dr. Sageman is busy at the moment and cannot be disturbed. I'll personally deliver it to him."

"I'm supposed to get a tip," the boy said with a sly grin.

Ruby Bee took a quarter from the cash register and handed it to him. "Now be about your business, Reggie Pellitory. You know as well as I do that it's against the law for minors to be in here. I got my license with the ABC to think of." She watched him till he was out the door, her eyes narrowed as she recalled the time his no-good brother had busted the jukebox because his girlfriend was dancing with somebody else. None of the Pellitorys had turned out well; before too long they'd be holding their family reunions behind bars.

Cynthia studied the envelope. "What if it's a communiqué from Brian that he's in the throes of a significant encounter with an alien? Dr. Sageman would wish to be informed immediately. Then again, I can't risk interrupting him if it's nothing more than a note of apology from boorish Dr. McMasterson."

Estelle craned her neck to look at the crude printing. It didn't look like any secretary had written it, but she was as intrigued as Cynthia. "I can't see you have any choice but to open it," she said helpfully. "Dr. Sageman would want you to, wouldn't he?"

"Well, then," Cynthia murmured as she slid her fingernail under the flap, took out a piece of paper, and read it to herself. "Oh, my goodness ... "

"Good news?" asked Estelle, who was doing everything she could to read the letter over Cynthia's shoulder. "Has the alien shown up again at Raz's cornfield?"

Cynthia rubbed her eyes, reread the letter, and stuffed it back in the envelope. "No, it has nothing to do with the crop circles. I'd better -- well, take action. Thank you for the coffee and pie, Ruby Bee. I do hope I'll see both of you in the morning. I really must go now. Good-bye!" She hurried across the dance floor and out the door.

Ruby Bee put the plate, fork, and coffee cup in the sink. "What'd you think about that?" she asked Estelle.

"I think," Estelle said, "that we'd be damn fools to sit here and ask each other questions."

"You got a point." Ruby Bee switched off the neon lights on the wall above the bar, snatched the pitcher out of Larry Joe's hand, and explained that she was closed for the night. After some arguing, the married couples staggered away, and the strangers left submissively. Jim Bob was grumbling, but he, Roy, and Larry Joe went off to conduct the town's business elsewhere. Minutes later she and Estelle were out in the parking lot of the Flamingo Motel. The car that'd been parked in front of No. 2 was gone, but the lights were on.

They were on in No. 5, too, and peeking out from beneath the door was the very envelope Cynthia had read in the barroom. It took no time at all to inch it out and open it.

"Oh, my gawd," gasped Estelle.

Ruby Bee was made of sterner stuff. "There's no time to waste," she said. "Your car or mine?"

CHAPTER SEVEN

At a quarter till ten I was putting the final flourishes on the report when a car squealed to a stop in what must have been a fine display of roiling dust and smoking rubber. A door slammed. Nanoseconds later Ruby Bee stumbled into my office.