Don't think for an instant that I was taking notes or formulating questions designed to elicit further information. I wasn't so much as blinking, and I wouldn't have flinched if I'd been stung by a hornet, or a whole swarm of them.

"Would you repeat that?" I managed to say.

"I said the bullet didn't hit any of 'em, but all the same they put handcuffs on Ruby Bee and took her away, just like she had been holding up a liquor store or a bank. She wasn't nearly as mad as I would have been, although I must say she was acting downright crumpy about the whole thing."

"Why on earth…?" I began, but words abandoned me and I shrugged as if Estelle were across the desk from me.

"You would be too, if a smart-mouthed cop tackled you and nearly made you hit your head on the dresser. They wouldn't even let me talk to her, much less go along to find out where they were taking her. Instead, they made all of us wait downstairs most of the night, then questioned us one at a time in that snooty manager's office. I don't want to say anything unkind about those policemen, but there wasn't a one of them much brighter than Kevin on one of his better days. The one I talked to had a face uglier than a mud fence stuck with tadpoles and an accent I couldn't hardly understand. He hadn't ever heard of Arkansas, if you can believe that!"

"Estelle," I said, getting a little crumpy myself, "you still haven't told me what happened to Ruby Bee. Is she all right?"

"How would I know, Miss Hard of Hearing? I already told you how the police dragged her away in handcuffs and couldn't be bothered to tell me where they were taking her." She gasped. "Oh, dear, there's that crazy whiskery man who's been following me since we got here. I got to go, Arly. He's licking his lips something fierce, and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a knife in his pocket or an axe down his britches. Talk to you later."

"Wait!" I screeched. "Don't you dare hang up!"

She hung up.

I sat for a very long while, staring at the telephone and trying to pluck tidbits of factual information out of the bizarre conversation. A naked man bleeding in Ruby Bee's bed. When the police broke down the door, she'd fired a gun at them. Humorless chaps that they were, they'd tackled her to the floor, handcuffed her, and taken her away to be booked for murder. As of the moment, she'd not returned. Estelle had been questioned. She was now being knifed/hacked by a wet-lipped man who'd been following her since their arrival.

"And that's all we know," I said just to hear my voice and reassure myself I hadn't been beamed aboard any hovering alien spacecraft. The PD looked the same-dusty, hot, seedy if not squalid, in need of a sweeping that wasn't on my agenda any time soon. Outside, pickup trucks grumbled down the highway, along with an occasional car filled with tourists searching for bucolic quaintness and finding a lot of tacky poverty. Car doors slammed as folks came and went at the supermarket across the road. Neighborly greetings were exchanged. A child wailed, a dog barked.

The telephone rang, and this time I did not dally. I lunged for the receiver, slapped it against my ear, and said, "Estelle?"

"Hardly. This is Mrs. Jim Bob, Arly. We'll need seating for six tonight, and I seemed to recall there are only two or three chairs. You need to arrange to borrow some from the Sunday school room at the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall and set them-"

"You got it," I said and hung up. That was a link with reality, I told myself. Ruby Bee might be jailed for murder nearly two thousand miles away, but it was business as usual in Maggody. When the telephone once again rang, I was a little more cautious. "Arly Hanks here," I said.

"This is Eilene Buchanon, Arly. I'm worried sick about Kevin and Dahlia. They were supposed to call last night, but they didn't, and we haven't heard a peep from them for three days now. I was wondering if you could…"

Definitely business as usual. "Could what, Eilene?" I prompted her. "Get in my car and go find them? I thought I heard somebody say they were on their way to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. In that they have several days' head start-and are likely to have taken enough wrong turns to be in Mexico by now, I doubt I'll have much luck."

"I know," she said limply. "I'm just so worried about them. I was deadset against this idiotic idea of theirs, but Earl just laughed and said they should take their best shot at finding it." She began to snivel, and her voice grew hoarse. "They were raised right here in Maggody, where everybody knows everybody. It don't exactly teach you to watch out for people who might be dangerous or want to hit you over the head and steal your car…or worse. Why, they might be-"

"Tell you what," I interrupted, "I'll call the state police and ask them to check with their counterparts along Kevin and Dahlia's proposed route. They were heading east, right?" I diligently recorded their itinerary and wasted a few more breaths assuring her I'd do something about the missing couple. I then replaced the receiver and sank back in my chair, seeking comfort from its familiar familiar contours and tendency to squeak when I shifted.

Ruby Bee had mentioned the name of the hotel in which the silly contest was to be held. I had not written it down, nor had I paid particular attention to the name of the marketing firm that was conducting the contest. I worked on the latter for a while, but all I could come up with was a vague notion that it involved physical violence. My dim memory of the hotel's name stirred a Dickensian ember. Not Twist, not Copperfield, not Scrooge or Cratchit, and at least on my part, not any Great Expectations.

I was not in the mood for literary trivia, but I kept at it until I hit upon Pickwick, gnawed on my fingernails, and shortly before they began to bleed about the cuticles, arrived at Chadwick. I called information and was told by a male of Eastern European origin that the number was not working. I told him it damn well was, and we debated this until he got bored and disconnected me.

I could, of course, call all the precincts in Manhattan. If by sheer serendipity, I found the right one, I could then attempt to track down someone with information about the status of my mother's…arrest for murder.

Or I could cut the crap and do what I would have to do eventually, which was hunt up the directory and start calling those few airlines that flew out of Farberville and ultimately landed in one of the vast, flat wastelands surrounding the island of Manhattan.

Marvin Madison Evinrood Calhoun, known to his intimate acquaintances (and also to the East St. Louis police and the officers in the juvenile detention center) as Marvelous Marvin, Captain Marvel, but usually just plain Marvel, grinned broadly at the elderly woman behind the counter. "I thank you kindly for the donation to such a worthy cause, ma'am. If you don't mind, I believe I'll help myself to a carton of milk and a box of cookies on my way out the door."

The woman shook her head, too terrified to speak, much less object. Later that morning, when she tried to describe the robber to the sheriff, she would estimate his height at well over six feet, although he was shy of that by four inches, his weight at two hundred pounds, although he was closer to one-forty, and his skin to be blacker than coal tar, although it was several shades lighter. Her estimate of his age as fifteen or sixteen would be more accurate, however, as would be her description of an ugly pink scar that ran across his cheek and disappeared into a dimple.

She would also attempt to characterize his antiquated snub-nosed revolver as a cannon and would burst into tears when she described how he'd almost-but not quite-sexually assaulted her in her living room at the back of the store, adding that the only reason he hadn't was that her lard-butted husband had been sitting back there watching a game show on the television set.