This was received with thunderous laughter, and the cameras were clicking like a plague of locusts. Even Dahlia was beaming at him as if he were the reincarnation of Will Rogers, which I can a.s.sure you he was not. Katie Hawk came out and joined him. Her wave was less enthusiastic, as was her smile, but the two of them were presenting exactly what the crowd wanted: Ken and Barbie in cowboy drag.

The media people came out and hurried to their vehicles. Matt held out his hand to Katie and chivalrously helped her into the back of the Matt-Mobile, then tipped his hat to his fans and bounded in beside her. I told Dahlia to follow my car, then suggested to Ripley that he ride with me.

We moved slowly out of the lot and down the road to the highway. I was embarra.s.sed by the waves of screaming fans, but all I could do was clench the steering wheel and focus on getting us there in one piece. Moving at the speed of lame turtles, we turned onto the highway and almost immediately onto County 102. The bodies were packed every inch of the way, their eyes too wide for my taste, their vocal cords suffering mightily.

"There's the house," I said with a heartfelt sigh. "The high school kids are guarding the driveway. I'll park on the gra.s.s so Dahlia can stay on the gravel and everyone will have a wonderful view of Matt as he takes his first step onto the lawn of his official Boyhood Home. The first astronaut on the moon should have gotten this amount of coverage." A roar of confusion from the crowd caught my attention, and I twisted around to stare out the back window.

The Matt-Mobile chugged past the driveway. Matt and Katie were frowning at each other, clearly bewildered at this sudden change in the itinerary. Dahlia, however, looked like she was ferrying pa.s.sengers across the river Styx as she drove on toward the low-water bridge.

Chapter Twelve.

"Is she kidnapping them in broad daylight and in front of several hundred witnesses?" Ripley asked as we watched waves of fans fall in behind the wagon. "Or is this some sort of Pied Piper routine to lure all these people to certain death in that muddy little creek?"

It was not the time to explain that Dahlia's motives were rarely discernible. "If I had the foggiest idea, you'd be the first to hear it, Ripley," I muttered.

"What on earth is going on?" Ruby Bee shouted from the porch. She was wearing her best beige dress and, for the first time since Dahlia and Kevin's wedding, a hat.

"This ain't on the schedule!" added Estelle, also gussied up and with a hairdo that could have served for a centerpiece at a luncheon. A half-dozen little kids jostled behind one of the living room windows, and an equal number of teenagers in jeans and official guide T-shirts took off across the yard. The media people were trotting down the road in pursuit of whatever melodramatic turn of events was unfolding. One woman with a microphone tersely described "the hostage situation," while her a.s.sistant stumbled backward and kept the camera aimed at her face.

"I don't know!" I said as I headed across the pasture in an attempt to cut them off by the old chicken houses before they reached the bridge. Metallic gray clouds were moving into the valley; the filtered light gave the landscape an eerie, one-dimensional appearance. All we needed was for Rod Serling to pop out from a woodchuck burrow to capture the scene in his mildly apocalyptic voice: "Picture, if you will ..."

I battled through the branches of a scruffy pine and lost my balance as I encountered a well-concealed irrigation ditch. I clambered up the far side, leapt over a perfidious tangle of barbed wire, and arrived at the charred remains of the first chicken house at the same moment Dahlia pulled into the flat expanse in front of it and cut off the engine.

The resultant silence was unsettling, to say the least. In the wagon, Matt and Katie were motionless, too alarmed to even look at their driver. The fans waited in the road, tensed to fling themselves into the ditches if gunfire broke out. After a moment, the media people looked at me for some sort of cue. I listened to my lungs heave as if I'd finished a marathon in record time. And Dahlia Buchanon sat like a statue on the seat of the tractor, her eyes shut and her mouth puckered so tightly I wasn't sure she'd ever get it open again.

Before any of us could produce the obvious question, the door of the undamaged chicken house banged open, and out marched Raz Buchanon, a shotgun cradled in his arm.

"Git off my property afore I pepper ever' one of you trespa.s.sers with buckshot," he said, then frowned as he took in the rather formidable number of trespa.s.sers (we're talking more than two hundred hundred within buckshot range), spat into the dust, and aimed his shotgun at Dahlia. "I reckon to count to ten, and if that contraption's still on my property, you kin bend over and kiss yer a.s.s good-bye!"

I was sure this situation had been covered somewhere in my police training manual, but the precise paragraph escaped me. "Now listen here, Raz," I said, "you can't--" I broke off as I heard Dahlia's voice.

"You might as well," she said. "Dying now ain't no worse than wasting away in prison. I murdered a man in cold blood, and I deserve to be punished."

"Ye did what?" demanded Raz. The barrel of the shotgun wavered and tobacco juice dribbled out of the comer of his mouth as he studied her with a dumbfounded expression. "Ye murdered some feller?"

She held out her arms in preparation to be executed, if not crucified. "You heard me the first time, Raz Buchanon. I wra.s.seled with my conscience all night, but there's no getting around the truth. He's deader 'n a doornail--and I did it."

"Wait just a minute," I said, surely as perplexed as Raz, if not more so. Tobacco juice did not dribble out of the comer of my mouth, however, and the only thing I aimed at her was my trembling finger. "Who's deader 'n a doornail, Dahlia?"

The self-proclaimed murderess covered her face with her hands and began to sob. The fans moved in closer and the media people surrept.i.tiously raised their cameras and positioned their microphones in hopes of a real bang-up of a segment for the six o'clock news. Matt grabbed Katie's hand, and the two hopped out of the wagon and took refuge behind a stout couple in matching plaid slacks and windbreakers. Raz lowered his gun and gestured for Marjorie, who'd been hovering in the doorway, to come out. She glowered from the shadows. At least one camera shifted in her direction, thus ensuring our absolute and total humiliation at the hands of smirky, narcissistic newscasters.

"Dahlia," I said, "are you sure about this?"

Tears dribbled down her cheeks and her voice was so ragged that I could barely understand her. "I took a skillet and murdered him. I did it in my bedroom, but I was too scared to leave the body lying there on the braided rug, so I brought him down here. I don't know why I did that, except I was thinking n.o.body'd find him for a while and that'd give me a chance to figure out what to do."

"When did this take place?" I asked ... and on what planet?

"Long about nine last night. I sat for mebbe an hour, but his eyes kept looking at me and I finally just zipped him up in Kevvie's sleeping bag, put him in the wagon, and drove out here. I stuck him in there so"--she gulped and grimaced--"the animals wouldn't bother him."

I turned to Raz. "Is there a body in a sleeping bag in there?"

"Ain't nuthin' in there," he muttered. "And don't you go poking yer nose in there, neither. I bought this piece off Adele Wockermann two years back and I got a deed to prove it. You jest tell ever'body to get their b.u.t.ts off 'n my private property."

I tried to ignore the hum of the cameras. "Raz, if you don't shut up, I'm going to take that shotgun out of your sorry hands and tie it around your neck."

Raz looked back at Marjorie for help, but she lumbered away. "G'wan," he said grudgingly.

I heard a patter of applause as I stomped past him to the door, shoved it opened, and stepped over the threshold. I was sneezing when I reappeared. "There's nothing in there," I announced, "except petrified chickens.h.i.t and the rotted remains of a red flannel shirt."

"No body?" yelled one of the reporters.

I shrugged eloquently for the camera's benefit (and for Harve's amus.e.m.e.nt when he caught the news). "No body that I saw, no bloodstains, and no fresh graves. As Raz said earlier, this is private property, so we all need to go back up the road to the Wockermann house and let Matt pose for the photographers." I looked at Dahlia and lowered my voice to a snarl. "Drive this d.a.m.n thing back and park it where you were supposed to park it twenty minutes ago. After you do that, I'd like to have a word with you in private."

Raz's renewed threats helped hurry everybody along. The celebrities came out of hiding, hopped back on the wagon, and after a moment, I decided to sit on the end of it in order to fend off the overly enthusiastic members of the infantry. The woman who'd been describing the "hostage situation" made a face at me as if I'd personally destroyed her chances for a slot on the network news team, but most of the fans seemed more interested in getting back to the business of idolization. We chugged up the road and into the driveway. Ripley swooped in to escort Matt and Katie onto the porch, then stationed himself as a buffer on the bottom step as the crowd surged forward to take photographs and beg for autographs.

I waited in the side yard until Dahlia joined me. "Okay," I said angrily, "what was all that?"

"I thought about it on the way back here, and now it's clear. I beaned Mr. Dentha hard enough to knock him out for a long spell, but I must not have killed him. He woke up in the chicken house, wiggled out of the sleeping bag, and staggered to his car and drove home. I ain't saying he didn't look and act like he was dead, but the only dead person I ever saw was a ninety-seven-year-old cousin who had such rubbery skin that she didn't look any worse in her coffin than she did in her bed. Granny thought she looked a sight better."

"Exactly how dead did he look?"

She put her hands behind her back and gazed guilelessly over my head. "Well, come to think of it, not more than half-dead, and he might well have been playing possum the whole time. He was probably so mad on account of the way I beaned him with the skillet that he wanted to teach me a lesson by letting me think I'd killed him." She gave me a blessedly terse version of her previous night's thought processes (they would not play in Peoria) and subsequent actions (ibidem), culminating with her drive down moonlit County 102 and the deposition of the contents of the sleeping bag/shroud. I regret to say it all made perfectly good sense, which was a grim reminder that I'd been in MagG.o.dy way too long. "Jesus H, Dahlia," I said, shaking my head, "I don't know what to do. If you're positive this prowler was Mr. Dentha from the Vacu-Pro office, maybe you'd better wait here until I call and make sure he got back safely to Farberville." Or if he ever left, I added to myself as I went to find Ripley and take a shot at explaining the incomprehensible before I found a telephone.

He was on the porch. He ostentatiously consulted his watch, slapped Matt on the back, and said, "Sorry, folks, but Matt's great-aunt is inside waiting to see him after all these years. He sure does love letting y'all take his picture, but he doesn't want to keep that sweet old lady waiting any longer."

Matt grinned apologetically and went inside, and after a moment, Katie Hawk rose from the porch swing, waved at the fans, and followed him. I was burning with curiosity to find out how the committee had handled the Adele Predicament, but I did as dictated in memo number seven thousand or so and spent the next ten minutes shooing fans off the lawn and arguing with the press. Photographers from two magazines had been selected to immortalize the cozy family reunion, which did not sit well with their compet.i.tors. I was nearly hoa.r.s.e when I finally got everybody on the road and went into the Boyhood Home, noting for the first time a bra.s.s plaque beside the door that proclaimed as much.

Ruby Bee and Estelle were in the hallway, their hands clasped as if they were praying (and I could think of reasons why they should be). The children had been hushed, and stood in formation at the edge of the living room. Ripley noticed me and touched a fingertip to his lips. The photographers were not visible from my perspective, but I could hear shutters clicking and film advancing in a soft bombilation. I tiptoed to the doorway and peered over the local cherubim's heads.

Matt Montana knelt beside the rocking chair, his hat in his hand and face tilted toward the white-haired woman in a shawl. "And do you recollect when I picked all those huckleberries and you made me a pie?" he asked with a dimply grin.

" 'Course I do, Matt. But when you were down by the creek, you got into a -patch of them little seed ticks. Lord a-mercy, I must have used a whole bar of lye soap tryin' to scrub 'em off your hide."

"How about when Uncle Jesse took out that old banjo that his pa had given him, and by suppertime I could play all the way through 'Wabash Cannonball'? He got his fiddle, and we sat on the porch and played up a storm till you made us go to bed. Remember that, Auntie Adele?"

"How could I forget? The whole time I sat in this room, in this very same chair if I recollect rightly, tapping my foot and thinking about when Mr. Wockermann came a-courtin' with that same banjo."

Matt smiled at her, but he adjusted his profile for the benefit of the photographers. "I brought that old banjo with me, and I may just see if I can wheedle it into tune at the concert tomorrow night and play 'Wabash Cannonball' specially for you, Auntie Adele."

"Why, Matt, I cain't think of a single thing that'd make me happier."

Vaguely nauseous, I headed for the front door, mutely snagging Ruby Bee by the arm on my way. Once we were on the porch, I whispered, "Who the h.e.l.l is that?"

"Why, Miss Detective, I'd think you might recognize Matt Montana. He's wearing his signature white--"

"In the rocking chair."

She had the grace to look just a bit uncomfortable, although I doubted anything I said would do away completely with her air of complacency. "Matt's great-aunt. Isn't it touching how they're able to share all those--"

"In the rocking chair!" This time I admit I snarled the words at my own mother. "Who is it?"

"Since you were unable to find one feeble old lady, we had to ask another resident at the county home to fill in for a day or two. We were all opposed to the deception, but Mrs. Jim Bob kept saying that we'd given our solemn promise that Adele would be here and we had no right to disappoint folks and ruin their visit to MagG.o.dy." In response to my glare, she sat down on the edge of the porch swing. "It's Dahlia's granny, if you must know. I'm a little surprised that you didn't recognize her, since--"

"There you are," said Estelle as she came out the door and sat down next to Ruby Bee. After they'd hissed at each other, Estelle rose and deigned to notice me. "You should have put on a fresh shirt this morning, Arly. That one's all stained with sweat and I do believe it's missing a b.u.t.ton. I'm too busy to fix it now, but you bring it by next week and I'll see if I have a spare b.u.t.ton in my sewing box." She hurried down the steps before I could concoct a scathing comeback.

Ruby Bee stood up and attempted to sidle around me. "I got to get back inside now. Ripley said he might want me to be a cousin when it comes time to trim the tree."

I cut her off in front of the door. "Why'd Estelle rush off like that?"

"She has to get some snow," Ruby Bee said over her shoulder as she went inside.

I stood there and battled against the omnipresent forces of terminal insanity. The corpse in the chicken house had come to life and driven home. Dahlia's granny was Adele Wockermann. Estelle Oppers had gone to get snow. Was she getting it out of her freezer, or did she have to drive to the handiest outlet of Flakes 'R Us?

I remembered that Dahlia was waiting for me to call the VacuPro office. The nearest available telephone was at The Official Matt Montana Souvenir Shoppe, and I needed to go there in any case to deal with the alleged break-in. It was challenging to imagine someone so desperate for a Matt Map that he would commit a felony, but I was clearly in the early stages of non compos mentis.

Dahlia was in the middle of the road, being interviewed by the press. She appeared to be enjoying the attention, and I had no way to intervene short of dragging her behind the house to lock her in a shed. Wondering how Eilene and Earl would react when they heard about their son's infidelity on the evening news, I turned my car around in the side yard, nudged gawkers out of the way, and drove up to the main road.

Free parking was at a premium these days, but I figured I probably wouldn't give myself a ticket for blocking the lot behind what had been a run-of-the-mill New Age hardware store back in the good ol' days. The lock on the back door was broken, and the wood around it splintered from repeated a.s.saults with a crowbar or similar tool. I went through a storeroom piled high with unopened cartons of Matt memorabilia, pushed aside the curtain that had replaced strands of beads, and came into the main room. It no longer smelled of incense and exotic herbal concoctions; now the primary redolence was of cold, hard cash, and based on the size of the browsing crowd and the shoving at the cash register, plenty of it.

Mrs. Jim Bob rang up a sale, stuffed T-shirts and a receipt in a bag, and expressed her grat.i.tude with a tight smile. "There you are," she said as she noticed me. "I was beginning to wonder when you'd find time to investigate a crime committed under your very nose."

"Not my nose," I said more loudly than necessary to be heard over the taped Montana music. "My nose was asleep last night. It's exhausted from sniffing at the trail left by Adele Wockermann when she disappeared three weeks ago."

She told Darla Jean to take over the cash register, then hustled me into the back room as if I'd asked the price--or the flavors--of official Matt Montana condoms. "If you'd conducted a proper investigation and found her, we wouldn't be in this pickle," she whispered. "You're hardly the one to get all high and mighty about a simple subst.i.tution. I should have brought in the state police in the first place, instead of listening to the likes of Ruby Bee and Estelle. Right from the start I told Jim Bob you couldn't find a flea on a dog, and--"

"Did you pay her or what?"

Mrs. Jim Bob's tirade had been perfunctory, and she let it drop. "A certain sum was mentioned. Then that nosy Twayblade woman started carping about how it interfered with the schedule and how she might have to complain to the health department, so we ended up obliged to pay her off, too. It smells of blackmail, if you ask me."

"I'll be happy to file charges. Let me consult the county prosecutor and get back to you as soon as possible. Elections are coming up in a year, and he'd love the chance for all the publicity. I'll bet he can arrange for television cameras right there in the courtroom, and you and all the other Homecoming Committee members who will have to testify can--"

"Never mind," she said. "I am a good Christian and I see no need to cause the woman to lose her job. Now, what are you gonna do about this disgraceful break-in?"

"You've already disposed of any footprints, but I can take fingerprints on the doork.n.o.b, presuming no one has touched it."

"How was I supposed to open the door without touching the doork.n.o.b? I am not a magician, missy." She realized I was not impressed with her reasoning and waggled a finger at me. "And don't be giving me that supercilious look because Darla Jean mopped the floor. Today's likely to be our busiest to date, what with Matt in town and the concert tomorrow."

I muttered something about tracking down possible witnesses, then asked to use the telephone. We had an argument, in that I needed to make a long-distance call, but I made it clear I was going to persist until she relented. The lure of the cash register was too much for her, and after a starchy comment to keep it short, she went through the curtain.

I called information for the number of the Vacu-Pro office, then dialed the number. When a female voice answered, I asked to speak to Mr. Dentha.

She hesitated, then said, "Who is this?"

"Someone who'd like to speak to Mr. Dentha. Is he there?"

"It's against company policy to put through callers who refuse to identify themselves."

"This is"--I cast around for a name that captured the surreality of the morning--"Ms. Hieronymous Bosch, and I own a house on Beaver Lake with over seven thousand square feet of wall-to-wall carpet. I was told to deal directly with Dentha if I decide to purchase the deluxe Vacu-Pro system, but if you're not--"

"He's out of town, Ms. Bosch," she cut in smoothly, "but he will be delighted to demonstrate the system and all its attachments in person when he returns. If I could have your telephone number ...?"

Ms. Bosch was not in the mood to dillydally. "Where did he go and when will he be back?"

"He went to Little Rock yesterday for a sales meeting. He wasn't sure when he'll be back in Farberville, but I fully expect him in the office bright and early Monday morning. Now, if I could just have your home address and telephone number, Ms. Bosch?"

"Do you have a number for him in Little Rock?"

"I cannot give out that information, but I can pa.s.s along a message when he checks in with me."

I was making very little progress, but it didn't seem tactful to inquire if Mr. Dentha's sales conference included a short service at a cemetery. "Has he called in for messages since he left?"

"Let me think," she said, breathing more heavily than one normally a.s.sociated with cerebration. "Yes, he did, about an hour ago. He said he had seminars the rest of the day and the awards banquet tonight, so I don't expect to hear from him again until tomorrow morning."

"How did he sound?" I asked, despite the sheer inanity of the question. Did I expect her to say he sounded quite chipper for a corpse?

"Mr. Dentha sounded as though he and the other district managers enjoyed themselves at the bar until quite late last night. Could you explain your concern for his wellbeing?"

"Not at the moment. I'll call Monday and talk to him in person." I hung up and was examining the broken lock when loud voices erupted from the front room.

"He stinks!" squealed an unfamiliar child. "He stinks like a p.o.o.py diaper and I ain't gonna stand by him."

"h.e.l.l, lady, he kin pose next to me for a dollar," said a more familiar one. Hammet Buchanon, to be precise.

I pushed aside the curtain. Hammet, dressed in a dazzlingly white cowboy outfit, was leaning ever so casually against a table piled high with coffee mugs and plastic figurines. His hat was tilted rakishly, and he was doing his best to imitate Matt Montana's laid-back grin. He was doing such a disturbingly good job of it that a woman with a camera appeared to be considering his offer. Her child, a pudgy creature who been stuffed into a pale green cowboy suit, was holding his nose and pointing at the mannequin.

Mrs. Jim Bob stepped in front of Hammet, shot the child a withering look, then smiled at his mother. "Our regular price for posing with Matt is five dollars, but I'll make an exception this one time and charge you half-price. We don't want any of Matt's little fans to be unhappy, and I can see he wants to hurry down to the Boyhood Home and see Matt in person."

Hammet stood on his toes and peeked over Mrs. Jim Bob's shoulder. "Only one dollar," he reminded the mother, "and I'll throw in my autograph for nuthin'. I'm going to be on the stage at the concert tomorrow night, so I reckon I should be charging two dollars, mebbe three."

"He stinks, too!" said the brat. "I can smell him across the room."

Hammet's affable grin faded. "And I'll kick his baby green a.s.s for free, all the way to the edge of town and back. How'd you like that, you lil' p.e.c.k.e.rwood?"

Mrs. Jim Bob raised her hand, saw me, and lowered it real quick. "I will not tolerate that kind of language, Hammet Buchanon. Brother Verber may have told you to meet him here, but you can just go outside and wait there for him to pick you up. While you do that, ponder the sins of profanity and disrespect to your elders."

"Tell that lil' p.e.c.k.e.rwood to ponder his p.r.i.c.k afore I feed it to the turkey buzzards," Hammet countered crossly.

The woman with the camera was stuffing it in her purse with one hand and clutching her son's shoulder with the other. "I am not accustomed to this kind of language, and I'm of a mind to tell my husband about this and let him teach that--that foulmouthed creature a thing or two."

It seemed like time to intervene, alas. I zigzagged through the tables and racks, caught the foulmouthed creature in the middle of a lunge, and squeezed his arm until I had his attention. "Hammet, I think you need to go out back and sit in my car. I'll be there in a minute."

"He don't stink as bad as the dummy," the brat said, now suffused with charity toward his would-be a.s.sailant. " 'Sides, if you take my picture with him, there's enough money for another ice cream sundae."