Mischief In Maggody

"Where's Hammet?" I said suddenly.

"I believe he said he was going back to David Allen's house. He's been sleeping over in #2 next to me, but he's right enchanted with some macaroni dish David Allen seems to serve him."

I picked up the receiver and slowly dialed the number of the sheriff's department. Harve and I talked for a while, then he transferred me to some young whiz kid who was very patient with my lack of knowledge in his field of expertise. It didn't bruise my ego too badly. The kid probably couldn't handle the subway system in New York, much less the crosstown buses or Pakistani cab drivers.

Hammet answered the telephone at David Allen's house. I thanked him for the dried arrangement and invited him over for cookies and milk. When he asked if David Allen could come along, I said most certainly, then said good-bye before my voice betrayed me. Ruby Bee reminded me that I was wearing an army surplus T-shirt and that my face was shinier than a red billiard ball.

I changed clothes, but I couldn't figure out how to change faces. Ruby Bee left to see how Estelle was doing behind the bar, pausing only to make a comment about the quantity of soup left in the bowl and the way some people went back on their word, even with their own flesh and blood. I shooed her out, then settled on the sofa. When I heard a tap on the door, I yelled for them to come in.

"Hi, Arly," Hammet said. He took a handful of weeds from behind his back and held them out. "More sorrel and some starworts that ain't too buggy."

David Allen came in behind him and offered me a box of candy. "This is from both of us. We figured if you had some aversion to chocolate-covered cherries, we could eat them for you."

"Thank you," I said as I accepted my presents. "You'll have to forgive my appearance. Ruby Bee can't decide if I'm a billiard ball or a stewed tomato. I'm not real thrilled to be either, but only time will help."

"I think you look prettier than a skillet of red-eye gravy," Hammet said, always the gentleman.

I rewarded his effort with the box of candy and told him to sit next to me. As David Allen perched on a nearby chair, I heard a car pull up next to the store. "Hey, Hammet," I said, "let me ask you something. You and your siblings came back here Saturday afternoon, right? You hung around and watched television until it was so late the cha

He nodded mutely, since his mouth was full of candy.

David Allen gave me a quizzical smile. "I didn't want to call Mrs. Jim Bob so late, and I doubted she'd care where the children were, anyway. She washed her hands of them in the grand style of Pontius Pilate. Should I have bolted my door and left them out in the rain or something?"

"Of course not," I said soothingly. "Once you got home, all you could do was let them in for the night. It was admirable, considering how exhausted you must have been."

"Drinking a beer doesn't require much exertion," he said.

"At Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill?"

"Why're are you asking me all this? I thought we were friends, Arly, so if you've got something to say, just go ahead and say it."

I leaned back and tried to look pained, which wasn't all that hard. "The sheriff ordered me to ask where everybody was that night. It seems there was a holdup in a convenience store just this side of Starley City. Man in his thirties or early forties, blond hair. I know perfectly well it wasn't you, but Harve made me swear I'd get everybody's whereabouts." I was already hating myself before I asked the next question. "Were you at Ruby Bee's having a beer?"

He wasn't convinced by my fanciful story of collecting alibis, but I suppose he thought it was due to my injuries. "That's right, but I don't know if I can prove it. It's always so darn crowded and noisy on Saturday nights that you can't talk to anyone, and the only lights are those dreadful pink things over the dance floor. I don't know that many of the regular customers."

He also didn't know Ruby Bee's had been closed because the proprietress and her sister in crime were climbing the hill to Robin Buchanon's cabin. He'd seen the two earlier in the day, so he had no reason to think they had disappeared shortly thereafter. His lie made me feel a little better.

"I'll assure Harve that you're not a holdup man," I said. "If he insists, we can always dig up some of the regulars; somebody must have seen you. I'm sorry I had to ask."

"No problem," he said, visibly relieved.

I touched Hammet's arm. "So how's it working out with your siblings? Is everybody making friends with his newly found father?"

"That preacher man sent Bubba and Sissie to his cousin's house in the next county, but they were right pleased. The lady has a big house and cooks good. He's just an old fart. Who'd want to live with him?"

"Not I," I said, gri

"They're at the holyfied lady's house. Sukie said the lady's been locked in her bedroom since they first got there, and her pa stands at the door and talks to hisself. They got some other woman what cleans and cooks. It din't make a whole hell of a lot of sense to me, but Sukie don't mind, and Baby don't know better."

"And your pa?"

Hammet gave me a long-suffering look. "This social worker woman says she's a-go

I glanced at David Allen. "I feel really badly about all this. The worst thing is that we may never learn who Nate's partner was. It had to be someone local, you know. Whoever it was telephoned Nate the minute I was out of the way. They were up and back in less than three hours."

"If we didn't know it was impossible, I'd say they had you under surveillance," he murmured.

Hammet swallowed the gooey mess in his mouth. "How'd they know you was up there to begin with, and how'd they know when you left?"

"A very good question," I said. I limped across the room and poured him a glass of milk. When David Allen declined a beer, I limped back and sat down, hoping I wasn't trembling so hard he could see it. "The first problem, Hammet, is that no one should have known about the murder. But the dispatcher blabbed to Mrs. Jim Bob, who blabbed to you and to David Allen, who blabbed to Ruby Bee and Estelle. I doubt it went any farther than that." I looked across the coffee table. "You didn't tell anyone else, did you?"

"No, I only told those two because of Baby. I didn't realize it was a secret, but I spent the rest of the day fooling around in my garage."

"And then went to the bar?" I said, inviting a repetition of the lie to remind myself not to feel so damn guilty. When he nodded, I continued. "Well, let's presume this partner found out some way and realized that I was staking out the marijuana patch. The next problem is that he seemed to know the minute I started to drive back down the road." Hammet wrinkled his forehead. "How'd the sumbitch know that?"

"That is the zillion-dollar question. At one point I asked myself if I was an airplane being tracked on a radar screen. But I'm not an airplane, am I?" Hammet shook his head, eyeing me warily in case I really did think I was one. "But," I added, "I did have something sort of like an airplane. Earlier I told my mother I spent the night with bugs and my beeper, but I was wrong. I spent the night with a bugged beeper."

"What's that?" Hammet gasped.

I kept my eyes on him. "Well, a beeper has all these circuits inside it. One of them is called an oscillator circuit, and it can be modified with one little chip. Not a corn chip, mind you. A computer chip."

"Why'd someone be fool enough to modify this oscillator chip?"

"Because then the beeper would emit a special radio frequency that could be tracked just like it was a tiny airplane-or a model rocket. You'd need a radio directional finder, but some people with expensive hobbies have them so they won't lose their toys. Since the beeper was always on my belt, I could be tracked, too."