Mischief In Maggody

7

I took a bath that lasted as long as I'd vowed it would. I put on jeans and a shirt, stuck a few bobby pins in the bun on my neck, took it down and did it again, applied some makeup, and remembered that I hadn't called Mrs. Jim Bob. I was debating whether to call or drive over there when I heard a timid tap on my front door.

Hammet stood on the landing. "Howdy, Arly," he said, giving me a smile meant to disarm me via candor and charm. "I thought to come by and see how you was doin'."

I took him inside and put him on the couch. "That's neighborly of you, but I suspect there's more to it than a sudden urge to pay a social call. Does Mrs. Jim Bob know you're here?"

"Her? Course she does. She done telled me to visit you as long as I wanted to. She said I could stay here all night iffen I wanted to."

"What's going on over there, anyway? Are your brothers and sisters raising hell?"

"My siblings happens to be behavin' like they's supposed to," he said indignantly. "Last night ever'body took baths and had some grub. Today we jest hanged around, mostly a-playin' and things like that. What do you think we'd be liked to do? Skin the hide offen that kindly ole woman or somethin'?"

Something like that, yes. "I've been getting frantic messages all day. It was reasonable to assume she was having problems," I said, looking down at him. He gazed up with a dopey, angelic expression that almost-but not quite-convinced me he wasn't lying through his teeth. Which I suspected he was. "Why don't I call Mrs. Jim Bob and let her know you made it over here safely?" I suggested.

"She done knows that. I ain't going to get et by a bear in town."

"Let's tell her anyway." I headed for the telephone, but before I could dial the number, there was another knock on the door. Pretty soon I had David Allen on the sofa next to Hammet, who was delighted to make the acquaintance of this unexpected (read: timely) visitor.

David Allen gri

If he expected Hammet to clap his hands in childish glee, he was in for a long wait. Hammet studied him, then said, "What be all those things you says?"

"You've never had a hot fudge sundae?" David Allen said, clearly dismayed. "But that's disgraceful. Criminal. Unforgivable. Come on, you two. I have a paternal obligation to get this child into the presence of seven thousand calories. To the wagon!"

Somehow I got bustled out the door, put inside his wagon, admonished to buckle my seat belt, and swept away into the sunset. I had a quick glance at the PD as David Allen dove around the corner, and something was not right. Before I had a chance to pinpoint it, Hammet Buchanon draped himself over my shoulder from the backseat and demanded to know why anybody'd be fool enough to put hot stuff on ice cream, which was supposed to be cold stuff. And who invented it, anyways? One of those Eye-talians, he bet. David Allen was clucking like a hen.

"When we get where we're going, I aim to sit right here in the jeep," Dahlia said. "I don't aim to wander around in them woods and get spiders in my hair like I did last time. But you better hurry, cause it's getting dark. Arly's going to kill you if we run into a old log and wreck the jeep." She gazed at her beloved, feeling a twinge of sadness on account of his inescapable fate. "She's going to kill you, anyways, for stealing the jeep. It's not even hers."

"I didn't steal the jeep. I borrowed it so we could help in the investigation of the missing woman what got lost in the woods, which is my civic duty. Yours too, honeybun. All we have to do is find Robin Buchanon and bring her back to her poor little baby. Arly won't be mad, 'cause it'll mean me and her solved the case without having to call the sheriff." He gu

"How do you know how to go about finding her, Kevin? There's a lot of trees and bushes. She could be anywhere on the ridge, you know, unless she's over at Starley City a-whorin' on a street corner. How're you going to find her?"

"I don't rightly know, angel," Kevin admitted, begi

"It's gettin' dark, Kevin."

"I see that, sweetie pie, but we cain't turn around now. We just got to hope this trail will take us to the ridge road."

"Why cain't we turn around?"

Kevin gave her a manly smile, since he was a man who was brave and fearless and willin' to take a risk now and then in the name of civic duty. "Because the trail's too narrow. Now you hang on real tight. We'll get somewhere before too long, and you just wait and see if we don't find Robin Buchanon."

Dahlia took a sandwich out of the basket between her feet. She disposed of it in three mouthfuls, licked her fingers, then carefully folded the wax paper into a neat square and tucked it back into the basket. "I trust you, Kevin," she said with a bovine gaze of deep emotion. And a dainty belch. Kevin took one hand off the wheel to pat her knee. The jeep promptly hit a rut deep enough to drown a mule. Before either of them could so much as shriek, the jeep lunged across the weeds and buried itself in a thicket of firs and scrub oaks. Branches slashed at arms and necks. Fir needles slapped faces with the fury of a spinster schoolmarm. The engine, which had squealed in midair, died as the jeep bounced into an unyielding tree. The silence was louder than anything preceding it.

"Oh, lordy!" Kevin gasped. He looked wildly at his beloved, who seemed to have lodged herself on the floorboard in front of the seat. All he could see was her broad back and one leg hanging out the side of the jeep like a fat white salami. "Dahlia! Are you okay?"

"Git me outta here," came a muffled voice. "I got my face in the chicken salad and it's trying to get up my nose and kill me."

It was not easy, what with her being wedged so tightly, but Kevin managed to get her free and settled back on the seat. Her face was bright red, her cheeks puffing in and out at an alarming rate, and her hands fluttering with distress. "What happened?" she demanded when she got her breath back.

Kevin tried to explain, but he could tell she wasn't impressed. In fact, right when he was describing how he'd battled the steering wheel like their lives depended on it, she bent down to see if the sandwiches had been squashed beyond eating. Luckily, they had not, and that was the only reason Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon was allowed to live.

Once she finished a tuna salad on rye and a pimento cheese on white, Dahlia gazed at Kevin. "What d' you aim to do now? We're stuck plumb in the middle of the woods, and I reckon the jeep's busted. It's miles and miles to town, no matter which way we go. And I ain't go

"I never said you had to walk," he protested.

"Ain't no bus service."

"I never said there was bus service, my lamb chop."

"Then what do you aim to do?"

Kevin studied the woods all around them. All tangled and snarly, and on the shadowy side. Getting darker by the minute. Estimating was not his forte, but he hazarded a guess they was more than ten miles from town. He eyed his beloved. She wasn't going to walk, and he doubted he could carry her more than a couple of inches.

She plopped a sandwich in her mouth, and through the chicken salad said, "It's getting cold, Kevin. I heard tell more than one time there was bears and wolves in these here woods. I'm supposed to be at work at nine o'clock. Call for help on the radio; tell them they got to come get us."