"I dunno. I was too cross-eyed to git any farther than this seat right here."

I left the bus, considered questioning the boys in the band, and decided to leave it as an act of total desperation. The possibility that I might arrive at that point shortly did nothing to lighten my mood as I drove out Finger Lane to our local bed and breakfast.

Ripley answered the door and led me into the living room, where Katie sat on the sofa, "Our hostess," he said, "is on the telephone, and our host is in the attic. May I offer you tea?"

Only for the very briefest second did I allow myself to imagine Jim Bob in a feather boa, prancing around the trunks. "I need to speak to you," I said to Katie.

"Speak," she said listlessly.

"In private."

Ripley leaned toward me, his fingertips under his chin. "We don't have any secrets, Arly. You just ask Miss Katie Hawk anything you want, and I'll help her answer."

It occurred to me that he was beginning to annoy me. "I need to speak to you," I repeated to Katie, who, for the record, was also beginning to annoy me. "We can go out on the porch or we can go up to your room."

Katie led the way to her room. Once we were inside, I sat down on the ruffly bedspread and said, "When is the last time you spoke to Pierce Keswick?"

"A week ago. He had some new material he wanted me to listen to. Something called 'Your Death Put a Damper on Our Love.' I wasn't real excited." She stood in front of the mirror and began to brush her waist-length hair, but she was watching me furtively.

"Pierce's secretary said you called yesterday at four o'clock. She said you called collect from a launderette."

"Well, I didn't."

"If you want to lie about it, that's up to you--but there are two or three dead bodies in town, depending on whose tales you believe, and this is a police investigation. Did I mention that the telephone company will have a record of the call?"

Katie's aloofness vanished, and she looked as if she wanted to stamp her foot or s.n.a.t.c.h up the brush and fling it at me. She seemed to be leaning toward the latter, but instead narrowed her eyes and said, "Okay, so I went to call Pierce. I wanted some privacy--"

"You wanted privacy so you went to a public phone?"

"I had to because the woman who owns this place is the type to eavesdrop in the hall or listen in on an extension. Matt's driving me crazy. He wouldn't leave me alone on the bus, and I thought Pierce ought to know."

"And what did Pierce say?"

"Nothing."

"Did anyone see you leave the house?"

"I climbed down the drainpipe outside the window. Back home there was a walnut tree that was mighty useful when my pa wouldn't let me go out at night. He never did figure out why I had scabs on my elbows and knees all the time. Ma had her suspicions, but she never said much."

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You climbed down a drainpipe and walked to the launderette to call Pierce collect and tell him that Matt's been bothering you. Pierce says nothing, but drops everything and comes dashing here within a matter of hours. What was he going to do--slap Matt on the hand?"

"I told you," she said, getting more agitated and glancing at the door with every word. "He didn't say he was coming here. He just said he'd talk to Lillian about keeping Matt away from me." She went to the window, pulled back the drape, and looked down at the yard as if terrorists were creeping up the hill through Mrs. Jim Bob's loblolly pines. "You don't know what it's like to have someone after you all the time. When I perform, he comes to the club and sits at the front table. He brings champagne backstage. He hangs around my apartment door. He calls all hours of the day and night and sends flowers two or three times a week!"

"A nightmare," I said evenly. "I mean, you have to find vases for all those flowers."

She finally cracked and stamped her itsy-bitsy foot. "And Lillian is doing everything she can to destroy my career because she's jealous. She flat out told me to either keep Matt away or go on back to West Virginia and marry a coal miner. It's so pathetic the way she thinks she can hang onto him by threatening everybody. If she'll just agree to a divorce, Matt can get a big contract and he and I can--" She chomped down on her lip.

"Can what?"

"I don't know! I didn't want to come here in the first place. I should have listened to my instincts and refused to come. At least there are places in Nashville where Matt can't find me."

"Did he find you last night?"

"No, but only because I was in here with the door locked. Ripley went off somewhere, though. I heard 'em talking about it in the hall, first when he was supposed to have supper, and later when they were arguing about whether to leave on the porch light."

I didn't doubt the argument, and I didn't doubt who won. "Why did you stay in here with the door locked?"

She stood up and gave me the terribly sincere smile of a slick little liar. "Matt might have tricked that woman into letting him in the house. When he gets to h.e.l.l, he'll start grinning and the devil will give him a desk in the reception room and a key to the executive washroom."

I noticed a ca.s.sette player on the bedside table next to a Bible. "Recording scripture verses?" I asked, also noticing several ca.s.settes on the floor.

"I'm a professional singer," she said, maintaining the smile. "I listen to myself so I can perfect the material."

Her tone made it clear she was no longer going to indulge in temper tantrums for my enlightenment. We started downstairs, not exactly chatting amiably, and then froze as we heard a voice in the living room.

"There's no L in our lovin' anymore," Jim Bob sang loudly, enthusiastically, and very atonally, "but Christmas ain't the season for frettin' 'bout the reason, why there's no L in our lovin' anymore."

"Interesting," murmured Ripley.

"You think it's got potential?" demanded Jim Bob, less loudly but with the same enthusiasm. "I knew it was in a notebook up in the attic. Like I told you, Mrs. Jim Bob gave away a whole G.o.dd.a.m.n box filled with songs just as good as this, but I remember most of 'em. Should I sing this for Matt before the concert or come to Nashville and have a tape made at a studio?"

"By all means, come to Nashville. We'll work things out to everyone's advantage, and I think you'll be pleased with the deal. You do remember what I said yesterday, don't you? This is between you and me."

"And Matt Montana," said Jim Bob.

"Yes, indeed."

Jim Bob began to sing his song once again. I slipped out the front door and stood on the porch, trying to make sense of what I'd heard. In one small way, it did make sense. Katie had been in the house yesterday, too, and might have overheard the conversation between Jim Bob and Ripley (an unlikely alliance, granted, but anything was possible). Whatever it was sent her to the pay phone at the launderette.

The one thing it was not was the discovery of the hottest new country lyrics since "You're a Detour on the Highway to Heaven."

Miss Vetchling approached the second house with her brolly clenched in her hand. It was a duplex, and the side on the right was the one to which she'd sent Kevin Buchanon on his Fateful Day. Both sides were equally disreputable. On one porch was a disemboweled washing machine surrounded by stacks of yellowed newspapers and magazines; on the adjoining one were several boxes filled with empty whiskey and beer bottles. The shared yard was a hodgepodge of weeds, raw earth, orange rinds, and flattened eggsh.e.l.ls. It was difficult to conceive of either tenant being worried about life-threatening germs in the carpet. The property itself was a biological warfare battlefield.

But she was a woman with a mission, Miss Vetchling told herself as she knocked on the door, and she would see it through to the bitter, or in this case malodorous, end. She knocked again, then turned and stepped carefully over the decaying remains of a pepperoni pizza that not even the neighborhood scavengers had touched. "Yo," called a voice. "You selling Girl Scout cookies? I got a hankerin' for those chocolate patties."

"A mission," she said to herself, tightened her grip on her brolly, and turned back. Her smile faded as she took in the potbellied man dressed in boxer shorts and a dingy undershirt, his mouth slack and wet, his spa.r.s.e hair greasy, his nose quite rosy enough to rouse feelings of rivalry in Rudolph. "I am," she said, "looking for a gentleman named Arnold Riggles. Are you he?"

"At your service."

She gave him her prepared spiel. He looked so blank that she came a bit closer and said, "His name was Kevin Buchanon, and he would have been carrying a--"

"Oh, h.e.l.l yes!" Arnie said, slapping his knee and cackling with such fervor that Miss Vetchling prudently retreated. "He's a great guy, that Kevin feller. He came inside and spread out so many tubes and odd-shaped brushes and mysterious gadgets that I thought he was gonna a.s.semble a Stealth bomber. I told him that'd be a waste of time 'cause we wouldn't be able to see it!"

He found this so amusing that he staggered out of view, and all Miss Vetchling could do was hope he ceased braying and emerged from his dwelling, since she had no intention of pursuing him into it. When he finally did, his shoulders still shaking and his eyes bluffed with tears, she said, "Then you found the demonstration to be interesting and effective?"

He considered this with great seriousness. "It would have been. I mean, it had potential, if you follow my drift. Kevin, he says this vacuum cleaner can suck stains right out of the rug. Any stain at all, he says. I say it can't suck up catsup, and he says it can. So I go get a bunch of those little packets you get with your fries and he and I rip 'em. open and squirt catsup all over the rug. Then we dance all over it and squish it in real good. I wish you coulda seen us!"

Miss Vetchling did not share his wish. "And was the Vacu-Pro everything that it was promised to be?"

"Well," Arnie said, coming to the edge of the porch and shaking his head, "there was a problem. I been so busy for the last few months that I haven't had time to pay the electric bill. Kevin said to be sure and call when I get the electricity turned on and he'll come back to show me how those stains are sucked up in a flash. He's also gonna scale some catfish I got in the freezer. Maybe you can come with him and we'll have us a fish fry. You like hush puppies?"

Miss Vetchling thanked him for the invitation and went to her car as briskly as she dared without offending him. With a gay wave, she drove around the corner, then stopped and drew a line through Mr. Riggles's name. After further consideration, she erased his address.

Two names remained. Miss Vetchling decided to go by her apartment and feed p.u.s.s.y Toes, have a cup of soup, and then resume her investigation with replenished zeal.

The driver of the car lurking at the corner was equally zealous.

"No, you stay in the house"' Joyce Lambertino snapped at her little niece Saralee. "Do you want to get your leg chewed off?"

Saralee didn't bother to answer, that being the stupid kind of question adults asked. Yesterday morning Aunt Joyce had asked if she was the only one in the house who could carry dirty dishes to the kitchen (it sure looked like it), and an hour earlier she'd asked Saralee why she'd smacked her cousin on the head with a flashlight (because the ax was out in the carport).

"It's just a pig," said Saralee.

Joyce stood on her toes so she could see better out the kitchen window. "It's that sow of Raz's, that's what it is. Did you see how she attacked poor Poochie?"

Another dumb question, since they'd both been looking out the window. "I can go out and scare it away."

"I'm going to call your uncle Larry Joe. That sow's acting mighty strange, don't you think?"

Like either of them were experts in sow behavior. Saralee went off to find the flashlight and her cousin, in that order.

Chapter Sixteen.

I found Hammet sitting on the landing outside my apartment, his investigation unsuccessful and his mood no more jovial than my own. He agreed that drowning his sorrow in Ruby Bee's cream gravy would be acceptable, and we were walking down the road when Les pulled up.

"McBeen wants to talk to you before he leaves," he said. "He's waiting at the a.s.sembly Hall. And Sheriff Dorfer said to tell you that we found Pierce Keswick's rental car parked behind the old Esso station."

I sent Hammet on to the bar and grill, then got in Les's car so he could drive me back to this unantic.i.p.ated a.s.signation with the coroner. "What'd you find in the car?"

"His airplane ticket was stuck under the visor. He flew into Farberville last night on Northwest, arrived around ten o'clock, and got directions to MagG.o.dy from the girl at the car rental desk. According to her, he was real curt and in a hurry."

"Anything else in the car?" I asked optimistically.

"A couple of music magazines and a newspaper. No luggage and no indication that he rented a motel room."

"Was it a round-trip ticket?"

"Yeah, back through Memphis to Nashville first thing this morning. Kinda queer that he wouldn't stick around for the concert, ain't it?"

"Nothing these people do strikes me as queer. If they don't go home, I'll go crazy," I said as he let me out.

McBeen was sitting in his truck. "You were going to call me," he said as I got in the pa.s.senger's side.

"I'm waiting for Santa to bring me a cellular phone. Did you bring me back here to give me yours? If so, I'm going to feel guilty because I didn't get you anything."

"There'd better be a bottle of brandy on my desk by Christmas Eve. I took a look at the body before I sent it to Little Rock. Couple things might interest you. The cause of death is liable to be a combination of injuries that resulted from a fall. The impact left material embedded in the back of his head and his shoulders. The state lab will give you a detailed list, but I spotted gravel, mud, and a lot of fragments of gla.s.s." He held up his hand before I could get out a word. "No, I don't know how far he fell. It doesn't take much, but the material was embedded d.a.m.n deep."

"A couple of things, you said."

"The only hemorrhaging came from the head injury, so you don't need to go searching for extensive blood stains. He hit hard and died fast." McBeen paused for dramatic effect, or, more likely, to allow his dyspepsia to ease. "But his body remained supine long enough for lividity to develop. You can operate under the a.s.sumption he laid there for a couple of hours, but was moved before rigor became a factor--say, three to four hours. He was in the chair for at least six hours."

"McBeen, I'll send you a case of brandy," I said. "What about the man who was floating in the creek?"

"Why did I think you'd be so overwhelmed with grat.i.tude that you wouldn't start pestering me about that one? Discoloration and a lump on his head, but more than likely the cause of death will turn out to be water in the lungs with some hypothermia thrown in. The water's so d.a.m.n cold it's hard to say when. Could be as much as twenty-four hours." He gestured impatiently for me to get out of his truck. "No more corpses today, okay?"

"I hope not," I said, sighing.

Les had driven off, so I walked down the road toward Ruby Bee's. The tourists had thinned out considerably since the discovery of the body. When news of the second one spread, the merchants and ticket scalpers would find out how much of a damper death could put on their profits.

Unless Pierce Keswick had fallen out of a tree, he'd gone out of a second- or third-story window or off a roof and had landed on a surface less accommodating than a shrub. No one had implied he'd been inordinately clumsy or deeply depressed and suicidal, but defenestration is a risky way to murder someone, messy and very unreliable. If he'd been pushed, why had he been left there for so long, then taken to the souvenir shoppe?

He could have arrived in town as early as ten-thirty. If he'd gone to the bus to talk to Lillian or Matt, they'd lied about it. It didn't didn't seem likely that he'd stopped by The Mayor's Mansion for a cup of tea. He certainly hadn't come to my apartment and politely asked if he could fling himself out the living room window.

There was one place in town that met two criteria: it had a third floor and it was uninhabited after dark. It was also the birthplace and boyhood home of one Matt Montana (in theory, anyway). Ripley Keswick had gone to his attic to dress himself in tea gowns. Jim Bob had gone to his attic to find a notebook filled with lyrics. An unknown person had gone to the attic of the Wockermann house and dropped a handkerchief. Now it seemed possible that Pierce Keswick had gone there, too.

I'd been there a couple of weeks ago, and Les and I had opened the wardrobes and trunks, pulled back the flaps of boxes of dusty books and hymnals, made sure the hatboxes held hats and the rafters nothing more portentous than cobwebs and bat guano. Billy d.i.c.k had found the door unlocked when he arrived less than twelve hours ago.

Earlier in the afternoon it hadn't occurred to me that the house was the scene of a crime, so I had simply walked and a.s.sumed Ruby Bee and Estelle would lock up when they left. I needed a key. Luckily, I knew where to find one.

Hammet was perched on a stool, regaling Ruby Bee with the details of his search for the missing mannequin. From what I could overhear, he'd grilled Bernie Allen with such dedication that he'd been obliged to flee from the wrath of the suspect's parents. "But if that f.u.c.ker ain't guilty," he concluded, "then bears don't s.h.i.t in the woods."

"He's finished with his supper," Ruby Bee said to me. "Feel free to take him out of here as soon as possible. He's already run off half a dozen customers."

I sat next to Hammet. "Did you know Ruby Bee is at least partially responsible for you being here? She's on the committee that had to find someone to go up on the stage with Matt Montana during the concert. You ought to thank her, Hammet."

"You ain't funny," Ruby Bee said as she s.n.a.t.c.hed up the empty plate from in front of Hammet and started for the kitchen. "I told you that was Brother Verber's idea."

Hammet frowned thoughtfully. "Maybe he ain't such an ol' fart after all."

When Ruby Bee returned, I asked her for her key to the Wockermann house. She wanted to know why, of course, and so did Hammet and most of the customers at that end of the bar. Estelle came out of the rest room in time to throw in her two cents. The detective in the movie Hammet and I had seen the previous evening did not have to present his proposal and get a show of hands before he continued his investigation. He simply drove up and down steep city streets at a hundred miles an hour, splattered crates of produce, averted collisions with buses, and ultimately watched his pursuers drive through a barrier and sail into the bay. He had it easy. After all this, she admitted that they kept a key on the ledge above the front door.

"What's in the attic?" demanded Hammet once we were outside and I'd quit grumbling. "Ghosts? Skeletons?"

"I'm not sure," I said, "but at least two people have been up there looking for something. I wonder if maybe we ought to get the owner's permission before we go there."

"How we gonna do that?"

I told him.

After a detour by the PD to make a call, we drove into Farberville and parked in front of the lobby of the motel where Patty May Partridge had vanished. This time I told Hammet he might as well come along, since I was going to disrupt the ambiance in any case and he might as well have the opportunity to observe a professional in action.

The manager was as peevish as McBeen. "We're even busier tonight," she said. "There are four private parties, including the county bar a.s.sociation in the Razorback Room, and the club is always packed on Sat.u.r.day nights. If you'll excuse me, Chief Hanks, I must attend to business."