"03 - Much Ado in Maggody" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hess Joan)

Roberto stalked away to find Carlton and repeat every last word of the conversation between the two lawyers. Carolyn folded her napkin and put it beside her plate. She stood up, tucked her briefcase under her arm, and went around the table to stand next to Monty.

"You're so right, dear," she said, noting with malicious pleasure that they had the attention of almost every diner in the restaurant. She accordingly raised her voice so as not to disappoint anyone under the ferns. "How naяve of me to assume you were any different than all the other sleazy, bullshitting, cocksure married men in this city. Lies spring to your lips the instant your pitiful little pricks spring to life. The pricks shrivel and die, but the lies just keep getting bigger and bigger. Too bad the inverse isn't true."

She took his glass of water and poured it into his lap. As she walked through the room, she threw a kiss to Roberto and a hirsute sort in the kitchen doorway. She made it all the way to her office at Woman Aligned Against Chauvinism in the Office before she burst into tears. Her mood did not improve when she found an invitation to her ex-husband's wedding. And by the time her secretary, one Staci Ellen Quittle, came into the room with a stack of telephone messages, Carolyn McCoy-Grunders was sorely pissed at approximately fifty percent of the world's population.


2


A few days later I decided to drop by the branch bank and see how Johnna Mae was doing. I wasn't feeling especially altruistic, but the damn window unit at the PD was feeling downright hostile. The air conditioner in the police car was a work of artЧminimalist art, that is. The fan in my apartment had given up the ghost in a miasma of burnt rubber and acrid smoke. There was no refuge to be taken at Ruby Bee's until the kitchen vents were fixed and certain people's good nature restored, and the repairman was holding the whole damn county hostage. I'd had to stop Ruby Bee more than once from offering to cater a lynch party.

I parked in the bank's gravel lot and went inside, praying that all that money could produce coolness. The branch wasn't up there with Chase Manhattan. It had a small lobby, a pseudomarble counter with two windows for tellers, a few plastic plants, and a wonderfully frigid air about it that won my heart and soul in a New York minute.

Miss Una Corners glanced up to make sure I wasn't a drug-crazed lunatic in a ski mask, then returned her attention to Raz Buchanon, who was scratching his head and grumbling like a chicken truck going up a steep hill. Miss Una was a frail little thing with wispy gray hair, half-moon glasses, and a pinched frown that was getting more pinched by the second. Raz, on the other hand, was a smelly, stubbly, beer-bellied, tobacco-chawin' pain in the neck. And that's a charitable description.

"That is not your balance," Miss Una said patiently. "That is your account number. Surely you don't think your balance runs to eight figures, Raz. That would mean you have in excess of eleven million dollars on deposit with us."

"But it sez right there thatЧ"

"That's the date of the first transaction," Miss Una continued, tapping the crumpled paper with a pencil. "This is the deposit. This is the balance for the end of the reporting period, less the minor charges you're supposed to tally yourself. This is your account number. You do not have eleven million dollars."

Raz peered over his shoulder at me, no doubt worrying that I'd leap on him with a marriage proposal if I found out the extent of his family fortune. Ruby Bee's face might match her blue silk if she saw that apparition waiting at the attar for her flesh and blood. "How much does I have then, Miss Una?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.

"This is your balance," she hissed. The pencil was now tapping like a woodpecker going for a juicy bug in a rotten log. "This number less customary charges."

Johnna Mae came out of the back room before I could scrounge up a poptop ring and spring the question. She climbed up on a stool, pushed a pencil to one side, and attempted a smile. "Hey, Arly, how's it going? Can I help you?"

"I came by to see how you were," I murmured as I moved in front of her window.

"Peachy keen. The dentist over in Starley City says Earl Boy needs braces afore too long, P.J.'s got the colic something awful, and Putter's back started acting up so bad last night I had to drive into Farberville long about midnight to get his prescription refilled. It costs forty-seven dollars, and sometimes he just has to gobble them pain pills down like they was the world's most expensive M&M's."

"Sounds tough," I said. "I wish I could do something."

"Ain't nothing anybody can do, I guess. I called this lawyer fellow in Farberville, and he wanted fifty dollars just to hear me out. He wasn't about to make any promises that he could help, although he was as itchy as a patch of poison ivy to take my fifty dollars."

The door to the office opened and a youngish man in a shirt and tie strode out. "Mrs. Nookim," he began, stopping to appraise me as if I were a particularly questionable piece of real estate. "Excuse me, miss. Please continue your transaction. Mrs. Nookim, I'd like to have a word with you when you're free." He turned and went back into the office. The door closed with a click.

"Is that the newcomer?" I asked.

Johnna Mae stared at me for a long time, no doubt under-awed by my deductive prowess. "Yeah, that's the hotshot head teller. Lord, I'd give anything if just one time he'd sweat. He takes off his jacket every morning when he comes in, but he keeps that tie around his neck like it was the only thing holding his head on. He never rolls up his sleeves. Mr. Oliver never wears a tie, and one time he even came by in Bermuda shorts on his way to the golf course in Farberville. Miss Una like to have had a stroke when her eyes lit on his bony knees."

At the next window, the alleged witness stiffened. "I would never presume to look at Mr. Oliver's knees, Johnna Mae, and you know it." She shoved the grimy paper into Raz's hand and firmly sent him on his way. Then, after a nervous glance at the office door, she joined us. "Mr. Bernswallow is simply doing his best to familiarize himself with his family's banking business. I realize that he can be difficult to deal with, but we must make allowances. He is inexperienced. I've learned after sixty-three years that it will accomplish nothing to yearn for the good old days. We must adapt to change, not whine and complain."

Johnna Mae's eyebrows lowered. "Miss Una doesn't think I ought to report Mr. Oliver for doing this terrible thing to me. She says I should just turn belly-up and accept a demotion and a cut in pay. Of course, Miss Una's going to retire in two years, and she doesn't have a family to feed and clothe and put braces on."

"But I have my hungry little kitties," Miss Una said, tittering. She settled her glasses halfway up her nose and studied me. "Aren't you Ruby Bee's girl? How is she doing these days? We go to different churches, so I hardly ever have the good fortune to run into her. I'd drop by for a nice visit, but I'm afraid I just wouldn't be comfortable in an establishment that serves alcohol. My mother was most adamant in making me swear on the Bible while I was still in pigtails that I'd never set foot in that sort of place."

It was not a major loss for the clientele of Ruby Bee's Bar and Grill. I told Miss Una that my mother was fine, thank you, and that I'd be delighted to pass on a small greeting. Once Miss Una trotted back to her window and opened a black ledger, I looked at Johnna Mae. "Why didn't she get promoted ahead of you?"