"I already told you I don't have a telephone number for Patty May. She says the agency has a rule that caretakers can't receive personal calls, even if it's an emergency. This is a goodpaying job and she doesn't want to lose it. She'll call you when she has time."

I almost pointed out I'd had better luck getting lawyers to return my calls, but I smiled deferentially and said, "I understand that, Mrs. Partridge. The thing is, this is a police investigation, and Patty May could be a witness. Her agency may not be happy if I show up at the doorstep with a warrant."

"I already told you she never mentioned the name of this agency, either. I got baking to do, Chief Hanks, on account of family coming down from Springfield tomorrow. I'll remind Patty May how nigh onto hysterical you are to talk to her, and she'll give you a call."

"When do you intend to do that?" I asked, not pleased by her offhanded aspersion. I was eager, but hardly hysterical. I'd had a town full of Montanamaniacs for more than a week. I was barely breathing.

The woman ran a flour-streaked hand through her hair. "I'll be sure and tell her tomorrow evening when she--when she calls. I've got your number right by the telephone in the kitchen." She shut the door.

I headed back for MagG.o.dy. Since my regular car radio was broken, I didn't have to listen to Christmas music or a single rendition of "You're a Detour on the Highway to Heaven," which in my mind made the entire trip worthwhile. As I slowed down at the low-water bridge, I noticed the sign was back to its original position across from Estelle's driveway. I'd pretty much forgotten about its trip (now a round one), and apparently Raz and Marjorie had, too. I didn't know what he'd been doing lately--beyond peddling moonshine to the tourists out of his truck--but Marjorie'd nearly chewed the leg off one of Perkins's goats, and bitter threats had been exchanged in front of Aunt Adele's Launderette.

The MagG.o.dy-Matt-Mobile was chugging toward me as I approached the sacred site of its namesake's birth. Dahlia looked grim, her hat jammed over her ears and her mouth poking in and out like a piston, but she wasn't clutching a .38 Special. In the wagon behind her, pa.s.sengers with maps stared reverently at a white wooden cross in the ditch. The cross marked the spot where young Matt had found an ailing dog and carried it home to nurse it back to health. Everybody in town agreed Mrs. Jim Bob was showing more creativity than your regular Buchanon, even though the dog was called Ol' Yeller.

Traffic was getting into a snarl by the entrance to the parking lot, but I saved myself a headache by turning the other way and driving back to the PD. Once inside, I poured a cup of coffee and opened the yellow pages of the telephone directory. After a frustrating exercise in Southwestern Bell logic, I stumbled onto the pertinent heading, "Home Health Services," and started calling. No one recognized Patty May Partridge's name. A sympathetic woman at the last agency (WeCare, Inc.) said that private referrals were commonplace, if not approved by the state licensing board.

I certainly wasn't having any success unraveling the mystery of Adele's whereabouts. I went out to my car to see if I could do any better with the traffic.

The bus, leased for the tour and emblazoned on both sides with MATT MONTANA'S CHRISTMAS TOUR, rolled westward like a Conestoga wagon with a kitchenette. Katie sat alone near the front, studying a short but flattering interview with herself in a fanzine. She'd made it clear she wasn't feeling congenial, and even Matt had given up trying to wheedle a friendly word out of her. He was sitting at a table with three of the boys in the band, playing poker, drinking beer, and smoking cigars and pot. They were very congenial. The driver, the fourth member of the band and also the sound technician, was getting more and more congenial as they sped along the interstate toward Memphis. Out of wary respect for the state cops, he kept the wine bottle in a Burger King sack.

"Charlie came to my office," Lillian said to Ripley as she sat on the arm rest of the seat across the aisle from him. Despite the urge to grab him by his coat lapels and shriek the words into his face, she kept her voice low. "The divorce was legal, d.a.m.n it, even if it was done in Tijuana. I was broke, but I wasn't too drunk to make sure all the paperwork was filed. You had no call to track down that b.a.s.t.a.r.d and suggest otherwise to him."

Ripley put aside a slim volume of poetry. "I merely suggested he review el doc.u.mentos, Lillian. I would be quite as appalled as you if the divorce turned out to be void. That would mean that your third marriage was bigamous, which then casts doubts on the legality of the clause in Rufus Figg's will wherein you inherited the agency. It might even imply that the agency contracts are suspect. And as for your current marriage ..."

Lillian leaned forward until her face was inches from his. "Did you send him to Matt?" she hissed.

"No, of course not, and I didn't send him to Pierce, either. This is just my little way of reminding you of your promise, Lillian. None of us wants to see Country Connections go belly-up--at least not until it belongs to someone else. But as long as Pierce thinks he'll be showing a healthy profit by late spring, he'll dig his heels in and hunker down for the duration of the cold spell."

"Keep Charlie out of this, please. I just need a little more time to let Matt get over this ... pathetic infatuation, and then I'll pressure Pierce to sell."

"You know that I'm simply trying to achieve what's best for everyone in the long run--you, Pierce, Matt, Katie, even Charlie. If by pure serendipity this coincides with my simple desire to return to a more intellectual life, so be it. A year from now, you'll thank me."

"A year from now I'll be watching my lawyer argue that your death was justifiable homicide!" Lillian went into the bedroom at the back of the bus and slammed the door.

Ripley picked up his book, but was once again interrupted as Katie sat down next to him. The problem with buses, he thought as he smiled wanly at her, was that they offered so little privacy.

"What was Lillian upset about?" she asked.

"Just a bout of pretour jitters. Everybody'll lighten up when we get to MagG.o.dy. It lies somewhere between Green Acres and G.o.d's Little Acre. Did Pierce tell you about this parade they staged while I was there?"

"He said they were gettin' all geared up for our arrival, but he didn't mention a parade."

"The partic.i.p.ants gathered in the high school parking lot, and animosity flared up immediately. The owner of the local bar clutched her bosom and accused the mayor's wife of undermining the diligent efforts of some committee by opening a bed-and-breakfast establishment. The mayor's wife clutched her bosom and said she'd seen a sign outside the bar that claimed that official Matt Montana souvenirs were available inside. This was a violation of the fair trade agreement, also."

"Official Matt Montana souvenirs?" she said wonderingly. "Is this town on central substandard time?"

"You may think so when you see it." Ripley paused to take a sip of bourbon from a bottle in a brown bag, licked his lips, and leaned against the window, propping his slipper-clad feet on the far arm rest. "The two women did not lapse into hair pulling and scuffling in the gravel, to the disappointment of the observers, and eventually agreed to sit together on the back of a convertible borrowed from a used-car lot. Other committee members were obliged to ride in a station wagon driven by a woman with a hairdo that screams of repressed s.e.xual frustration."

Katie self-consciously tucked her hair behind her ear. "So what happened?"

"The high school band played such a painfully atonal version of 'Detour' that a tourist was motivated to attack them with a tire iron. They prudently scattered, but the head majorette was so incensed that she beat the man senseless with her baton. The mayor's wife and the bar mistress pa.s.sed by the fracas like twin icebergs in the Bering Strait. Then"--he paused to fortify himself from the brown bag--"we got our first glimpse of the Matt-Mobile. Following that was a flatbed truck with the one and only Matt Montana. They'd dressed up some pimply kid in white, and he was lipsyncing. The tape recorder was in plain sight by his boot, but the tourists were restless and the rumor that it really was Matt swept down the sides of the road like a canebrake afire. I heard the poor chap had to be hospitalized."

Katie regarded him with a shrewd expression. "I don't understand why we're taking this risk. If this town is as manic as you've said, then it's hardly going to provide an idyllic background for Matt's fresh-scrubbed country boy image. He could really lose it, start busting up the pool hall or staggering down the street like a three-legged calf. What is Pierce thinking?"

"He's confident Matt will pick up on this nostalgia business and get real mellow. The great-aunt was away when I was there, but she'll be swaddled in a shawl and ready to reminisce when the time comes. The old house has been cleaned up and festooned with Christmas decorations. We may do a candlelight thing at the church, dress him up in a choir robe and a halo. The school auditorium can handle five, maybe six hundred people for the concert."

"Have they chosen a recipient?" she asked. If the locals were as Ripley described, she didn't want to imagine what the proceeds of the concert would go for.

"We don't have to worry about a thing," Ripley said, patting her arm rea.s.suringly. "The preacher was scouting around for a photogenic tyke for the concert and said he'd find one shortly. We're all set, as far as I can tell." He picked up the book and opened it, and Katie drifted away to a seat to try to sleep.

"I've got the MagG.o.dy blues," Matt howled from the back room, hiccuping so that each word had lots and lots of syllables. "The raggedy, jaggedy, MagG.o.dy blues ...!"

Mrs. Jim Bob banged down the receiver and came storming into the living room. "That Arly Hanks is driving me crazy! She's had the best part of three weeks to find Adele and bring her back before the bus arrives. Is that too much to ask?"

" 'Course it ain't." Jim Bob pressed the clicker to raise the volume volume, caught his wife's icy look, and lowered it real quick. "So how's business at the shoppe?"

She took the clicker from him and turned off the television set. "Not as brisk as I'd hoped, but of course Ruby Bee went sneaking over to Farberville as soon as she heard what I was planning to do and ordered the same things. Now she won't let her customers out of the bar until they load up on T-shirts and beer mugs with Matt's face on the bottom. She put shelves all the way across the back of the room, loaded them with all kinds of tasteless, overpriced trash, and hired Joyce Lambertino to sit at a card table with a money box. I hope she's set aside some time to pray for her immortal soul."

Jim Bob gazed longingly at the clicker, but he wasn't foolish enough to so much as mention that the game was down to less than two minutes and the Razorbacks were trailing by a basket. "Me, too," he said lamely.

"You can just stop vegetating on the sofa and commence to doing something useful for a change. The Mayor's Mansion needs a cozy fire for the Nashville folks, so go buy a rick of wood and stack it outside the kitchen door. After that, fix up your cot in the utility room."

"Utility room? Jesus, Mrs. Jim Bob, it's colder than a well digger's a.s.s out there, and so cramped I'll have to put my head in the washer and my feet in the dryer."

"I will not tolerate blasphemy in this house! Mr. Keswick'll have your room, and Katie Hawk will sleep in the guest room. I'm hardly the one to sleep out there, am I?" He hung his head. "I reckon not."

"I'm going back to the store to make sure Darla Jean locked up properly, then fetch Ruby Bee and Estelle so we can see to a small ch.o.r.e." She took her coat from the hall closet, but came back into the living room in time to see Jim Bob reach for the clicker. "By the way, I was thinking about that girl who works at the SuperSaver, the one with dingy teeth."

His hand stopped in midair. "What about her?"

"Once business picks up, I might just see if she wants to work for me. Selling souvenirs is a lot more interesting than checking groceries, wouldn't you say?"

He couldn't so much as twitch a finger, much less get his hand to cooperate. "Malva seems to enjoy getting to gossip with everybody," he said in a strangled voice.

"Gossip? Is that what you call it these days?" Mrs. Jim Bob left through the front door.

Jim Bob wasn't sure if the cold wind filling the room came from outside the house or not. He finally got hold of the clicker, but he was trembling so badly he couldn't press the right b.u.t.ton and the television screen stayed as blank as his mind.

I banged down the receiver and said to no one at all, "Mizzoner is driving me crazy!" I went to the back room to pour a cup of viscous coffee, resumed my seat behind the desk, and gave serious consideration to the idea of catching the next Matt-Mobile to Missoula. "Everybody thought she was at her cousin's house," I said in Mrs. Jim Bob's selfrighteous simper, "but you should have made sure of it two weeks ago. Now stop playing with your radar gun and go find her!"

She was not alone in the conspiracy to drive me crazy. Included in fine print on the list were the Homecoming Committee, the sheriff's department, Matt Montana's Special Secret Sauce, the broken dryers at the launderette, and the rowdy crowd at Matt Montana's Hometown Bar & Grill, where a person could no longer nurse a beer and ponder philosophical issues regarding meat loaf versus pot roast. Tomorrow, when the tour arrived, all h.e.l.l was scheduled to break loose, and I was going to be in the middle of it, directing traffic with a pitchfork. Harve had promised me Les and Tinker part of the time, but he'd been known to promise me the moon and the stars, and then start hedging until I ended up as empty-handed as a beggar outside a Baptist church.

I dialed the number of the county home and asked for Mrs. Twayblade. "I'll keep it short," I said before she started sputtering.

"That's not been my experience thus far, Chief Hanks, but I'll try to be charitable." She sighed, then said in a guilty voice, "I don't suppose you've heard anything from Adele, have you? We have a box of her clothes, and I'm reluctant to dispose of them. Frankly, I'd feel better if I knew she was safe. Not back here, mind you, but safe."

"I haven't given up," I said. "I'm still waiting to get in touch with Patty May. By the way, was she in the kitchen every minute of the dishwasher crisis?"

"The residents were in their rooms and I'd just sat down at the desk in the front hall when Patty May came galloping out to tell me how water was gushing all over the floor. I instructed her to call the plumber and hurried to the kitchen to see how extensive the water was. Patty May stayed out in the hall for a good fifteen minutes."

"Did you ask her what took her so long?"

"She claimed the plumber's number was busy. Are you implying she was up to no good?"

"I'm not implying anything whatsoever, Mrs. Twayblade. I just wanted an idea of what happened during the critical period when Adele slipped away." I didn't bother to add that I had the beginnings of a pretty good one. Sherlock Holmes had commented astutely on the dog that did not bark in the night. There had been no strange cars in the lot. Patty May Partridge had not struck me as capable of conspiracy, much less kidnapping, but now I wasn't sure. Adele was Matt Montana's great-aunt. The utterance of his name could drive some of us crazy, and others of us right over the brink of madness.

I drove out past the Wockermann house, but I saw no mysterious hint of light in the attic window. I turned around on the far side of the low-water bridge and drove back. No one was home at Matt's Hair Fantasies. The souvenir shoppe at the intersection was dark, and the lot beside the remains of the bank was empty. A dog began to bark, setting off a chain reaction that eventually would stretch across half the county. I wished I could put out a message to Adele so easily. All h.e.l.l tomorrow, I reminded myself as I parked at the PD, walked across the road and up the steps to my apartment, then froze as I saw a ghostly light on the living room window. Wishing I had my gun and at least one of my bullets, I flung open the door and, in a deep and menacing voice, shouted, "What's going on?"

The small figure hunkered down in front of the portable television set turned around and gave me a beguiling grin that stretched from ear to shining ear. "Howdy, Arly, how the f.u.c.k are ya? I dint think you'd mind if I watched this ball game till you got here."

My prediction was wrong: all h.e.l.l had already broken loose. Hammet Buchanon was back in MagG.o.dy.

It was getting close to midnight. Ruby Bee felt like she was part of a coven as the executive members of the Homecoming Committee silently filed into the a.s.sembly Hall and sat down in the front pews. Beside her, Estelle was picking at a puffy blister on the palm of her hand. Eula Lemoy and Elsie McMay sat down together, and Jimson Pickerell took a seat behind them. Eilene Buchanon came in and sat at the far end of the pew, her face duller than a widow woman's ax.

Ruby Bee counted heads and determined they were all there, with the exception of Brother Verber, who was fussing around in the storage room behind the pulpit, and Mrs. Jim Bob, who'd called the emergency meeting and should have had the common decency to be on time.

They appeared from opposite directions. Brother Verber moved instinctively toward the pulpit, eliciting groans from those in the pews who'd sat through his interminable sermons, but he realized his error and plopped down on the pew next to Estelle. She was so relieved that she patted his knee.

Mrs. Jim Bob went right up next to the pulpit, clapped her hands like they were an unruly Sunday school cla.s.s, and said, "We have a crisis, and it ain't gonna do any good to pretend we don't. Our chief of police has failed to locate Adele Wockermann, and we're running out of time. The Nashville folks arrive tomorrow."

"What time?" Jimson asked, trying to ingratiate himself into the group by acting all businesslike. In reality, he was kinda slow when it came to telling time, never having gotten his "tills" straight on account of a personality conflict with his first-grade teacher.

"I don't know what time, Jimson! You just make sure your parking lot attendants are dressed in their T-shirts and are keeping an eye out for cars trying to sneak into the lot from the back." She clapped her hands once again, although n.o.body else'd said a word. "I promised Mr. Keswick that Adele would be in her rocking chair next to the Christmas tree and eager to greet her famous great-nephew as soon as the cameras were ready. I don't think an empty rocking chair will have the same effect."

Ruby Bee stood up and cleared her throat. "It ain't Arly's fault that Adele turned out to be slick as a peeled onion when it came to disappearing." She sat down and reminded herself to tell Arly about her spirited defense.

"That remains to be seen," Mrs. Jim Bob retorted, unimpressed. "After some painful negotiating, I've come up with a contingency plan."

"And I've come up with a li'l orphan for the benefit concert," said Brother Verber, who was so proud of himself that he didn't notice he was interrupting. "He doesn't need a liver, but he's living in a foster home where money's tight and he needs a warm winter coat and mittens and maybe a shiny red bicycle. I went and fetched him this evening. He was tickled pink when I told him we'd get him a cowboy suit and hat just like Matt Montana's. It liked to bring tears of joy to my eyes to see this orphan's beaming face."

"Where is he?" asked Mrs. Jim Bob.

Brother Verber swelled up so much one of the snaps on his shirt popped open. "I dropped Hammett off at Arly's apartment. By now, they've had a warm reunion and are sharing stories over steamy cups of cocoa and toasted cheese samwiches."

He was surprised when the committee members stiffened and stayed mute, particularly at a time when he was expecting a few words of congratulations. They didn't have to go all out and break into applause, he thought, but they could stop sitting there like they'd been dunked in ice water. He'd sacrificed most of the afternoon and a full tank of gas. Couldn't saintly Sister Barbara say anything?

"He's a real cute little fellow," he added as he took his handkerchief to blot his forehead, "The man from Nashville made it plain that he wanted a child that could pluck at the heartstrings of the audience--and this orphan's one fine plucker." He wiped the back of his neck, stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket, and waited for one single word of admiration for his n.o.ble sacrifice.

"Meeting adjourned," said Mrs. Jim Bob.

Chapter Nine.

The bus pulled to the side of the road in front of Matt Montana's Hometown Bar & Grill. I'd seen it go by the PD and was walking toward it at an admirable clip when the doors hissed open. A good-sized crowd had already gathered, and the stores were spewing out tourists right and left. Cars and pickup trucks from both directions stopped in the road. We had the makings of a crackerjack traffic jam.

I arrived at the lot as Ripley Keswick peered out the doors of the bus, no doubt a.s.sessing their chances of slipping into town without being noticed. They'd have a better chance of hearing a MagG.o.dian mallard quack, "Bienvenu!" He gestured for me to come to the door, offered his hand to help me up the steps, and then told the driver to close the doors.

I'll admit I was curious to learn how the rich and famous traveled. The front section of the bus was fairly standard, with rows of seats facing forward and some turned to provide optimum seating at two tables. The last third of the bus was hidden by a part.i.tion with a door. The rich and famous traveled amidst a horrendous collection of aluminum cans, paper cups and plates, overflowing ashtrays, and crumpled sacks from fast-food joints. It reminded me of the back seat of my car.

"Arly, my dear," Ripley said, still holding my hand as if we were newlyweds, "let me introduce you. Bart here is our driver and ba.s.s player."

Bart looked neither rich nor famous, and, in fact, looked mostly drunk. We nodded at each other.

Ripley gestured at three men seated around a table.

"The other boys in the band--Beau and Brad are brothers, and Buck is their cousin, as is Bart."

They were clones from the same laboratory that had produced a couple of patchwork movie monsters. They had frizzy, carrot-colored hair pulled back in ponytails, muttonchop sideburns, and droopy mustaches. They wore black hats and black vests over dingy T-shirts, and on their upper arms were tattoos of snakes and eagles intertwined in improbable procreative activity. I nodded. Brad blinked. Or maybe Beau ... or Buck. I wasn't sure they could tell themselves apart, if they'd ever tried.

My ersatz groom continued, "And there in the back is Miss Katie Hawk, one of our hottest young talents."

"Nice to meet you," I said as she smiled unenthusiastically at me.

"Well, then," said Ripley, "I'm not sure how best to proceed, what with the crowd around the bus and the problem with traffic."

I wasn't ready to proceed, period. "Where's the hometown boy? You've got close to two hundred people out there who're going to tump the bus if Matt's not on it."

I may have underestimated the size of the crowd, but MagG.o.dy doesn't present many opportunities to practice the art. The parking lot was packed. Faces were pressed against the tinted windows of the bus as if it were a shrine. A chant was in its infancy, but it was gaining momentum like a Baghdad political rally.

Ripley arched one eyebrow, a particularly eloquent movement that I've not mastered after countless hours at the bathroom mirror "Matt and Lillian are in the back. How do you suggest we handle the logistics, Arly?"

"What logistics do you have in mind?"

"Arly!" shrieked Ruby Bee, who'd wormed her way to the door and was pounding on it with her fist. "You got to let me in! They're gonna rip me limb from limb!"

Ripley told the bus driver to open the doors wide enough to admit her. As she squeezed through the opening, we got a sound bite from the frantic fans. It wasn't anything innovative, but the message was hard to miss.

"It ain't the most civilized crowd," she said between gasps, proving herself the master of the understatement. Once she'd caught her breath, she added, "Welcome to MagG.o.dy! We're so thrilled to have you all--" She stopped and poked me in the rib cage. "Where in tarnation is he?"

"f.u.c.kin'," contributed one of the boys.

"Or fightin'," said another.

The third inhaled deeply from a joint and shrugged.

Ripley put his hand on Ruby Bee's arm. "Matt was so excited to be coming home to MagG.o.dy that he hardly slept last night. He and his wife are in the suite at the back of the bus. But, look, there's Miss Katie Hawk in person. You can say h.e.l.lo to her."

"h.e.l.lo," said Ruby Bee, albeit sullenly.

Katie smiled for a nanosecond. "H'lo."

I was going to repeat my question regarding logistics when I realized the bus was beginning to rock back and forth. The faces squashed against the window looked more like snarling gargoyles than adoring fans, and there was a lot of scuffling in the crowd. We were liable to have fistfights and b.u.t.ts flying through the air before too long. The boys in the band were thumping on the table with each lurch of the bus and hooting obscenities at the faces on the other side of the gla.s.s. Katie screamed as a gorilla-sized hand replete with black hair flattened on the window next to her face. Ruby Bee hung onto my arm for dear life. Trash scooted across the floor. We were no longer in a bus, but in the fun house at a carnival. I'd always considered the name a misnomer.

"How do you handle a mob like this?" I shouted at Ripley.