"09 - Miracles in Maggody" - читать интересную книгу автора (09 - Miracles in Maggody)

Miracles in Maggody



An Arly Hanks Myster (book 9)





Joan Hess



Acknowledgements



To the 1992-93 AAAA State Basketball ChampionsFayetteville High School Lady Bulldogs



Carrie Braker, Carrie Cawthon, Wendy Cook, Emily Corrigan, Heather Cullers, Cher Gabbard, Anita Hampton, Melissa Hayden, Becca Hess, Dawn Jenkins, Ashley Jones, Erin Kirkpatrick, Melissa Levesque, Jennifer Masters, Marika McKinen, Laura Neeley, Sharon Neeley, Melinda Polk, Catherine Reynolds, Sharlie Reynolds, Melissa Simpson, Cherry Starling, Cari Tanneberger, Paige Thompson, Laura Todd, Cherie Tyree, and Lindsey Wagner.



Although each and every character in this book is fictional, your accomplishment remains very real.



1


The so-called extraterrestrials who'd visited Maggody a few months ago had found no sign of intelligent life, and I doubted anyone else could, either. Maggody's tucked up in the northwest corner of Arkansas, but it's not some picturesque little town with storybook houses, quaint cafщs, and carefree, college-bound children flying kites in a field of wildflowers. Maggody is more a hodgepodge of rusty mobile homes, uninspired tract houses, shacks, a dirty barbershop and a dirtier pool hall, and snotty children playing serial killer in an illegal dump. There may be more cars and trucks set on concrete blocks than cruising the roads. There certainly are more Buchanons; they're strewn across the county like rabbits. As a rule, rabbits are smarter than Buchanons, with damn few notable exceptions. You can spot a Buchanon a mile away by his or her yellowish eyes, simian forehead, and thickнlipped, repugnant sneer. Most of them are related to each other in more ways than one. Mayor Jim Bob Buchanon's my least favorite, with his wife, Barbara Ann Buchanon Buchanon (aka Mrs. Jim Bob), running a real close second.

It's hard to explain why I, Ariel Hanks, had come limping back home to this oasis of poverty and incest. The primary catalyst was the collapse of a disastrous marriage to a hotshot Manhattan advertising advertising executive. It had taken me a while to realize his office was the only one in the agency with a sofa that made into a bed. The divorce had been far from amiable; it was the one time he'd really gone out of his way to screw me. Now it was taking me a while to convince myself that my head was on my shoulders instead of in a place where the sun don't shine (as we say in MaggodyЧwe're partial to euphemisms).

I was entertaining all these gloomy thoughts as I drove past the town limits sign (pop. 755), past a peculiar metal structure known as the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall, past a lot of storefronts with boarded-up windows, and into the gravel lot in front of the Maggody Police Department. When I first accepted the job as chief of police, I considered putting out a sign reserving the prime parking spot. However, it didn't take long (maybe twenty minutes) to realize that the citizens weren't exactly fighting for the privilege of parking by the door. I'd twiddled my thumbs for seventeen days before someone came in to report a stolen lawn ornament (a concrete garden gnome, I seem to recollect).

The pace had picked up, though. Tourists driving through on their way to the crowded country music theaters and go-cart tracks of Branson, Missouri, would never suspect the bizarre happenings that put everyone in a tizzy and me in bed with a pillow over my head.

There'd been kidnappings, murdered movie stars, booby-trapped marijuana patches, feminist rebellions, a downright psychotic period when Maggody had been the hometown of a famous country singer, and fairly recently, the most absurd string of incidents imaginable involving crop circles, aliens, and dueling tabloid reporters. And let's not forget the Bigfoot sightings.

Somehow or other, we all kept muddling along. My mother, the infamous proprietor of Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill as well as maven of the grapevine, might go so far as to switch the daily blue plate specials or serve popcorn instead of pretzels at happy hour, but only when she's feeling risquщ. Most of the time she sticks to the traditions, one of which is to make pointed remarks about my lack of promising beaus and my biological clock, which as far as I can tell is still ticking away at thirty-four. She's more enamored of the idea of grandchildren than I am of an icy cold beer on a sultry August afternoon.

It being a sultry August afternoon, I wasn't all that thrilled as I dutifully went into the PD, glanced through the mail that had accumulated in my two-week absence, and debated calling the sheriff's office to notify the dispatcher that I was back. I finally decided against it, since there was a real danger that Sheriff Harve Dorfer actually might have something that would interfere with my immediate objective. He seems to believe I'm the only officer in the county capable of writing up a really juicy accident report or intervening in a domestic dispute out on some remote dirt road. He may be right. A goodly number of his deputies are Buchanons; I can eat an icecream cone without anything dribbling down my chin.

I wasn't in the mood for anything but that beer I mentioned earlier, and maybe a grilled cheese sandwich to tide me over until supper supper time. I made sure my bun was firmly affixed to the back of my head, applied a layer of lipstick, took my badge from a desk drawer and stuck it on my T-shirt, and walked down the road to Ruby Bee's.

There were more pickup trucks and cars in the lot than had graced the PD parking lot in the last three years. I squinted at Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less across the road. Heat was shimmering on the asphalt, but business was far from booming. There were a few people trudging in and out of the Suds of Fun Launderette (also part of the Jim Bob Buchanon financial empire), and the old coots were nodding on the bench in front of the barbershop. Roy Stiver was sitting in a rocking chair by the door of his antiques store, playing the redneck for a couple of tourists ogling a pie safe. My amazingly inefficient efficiency apartment is above the store; at some point down the line I was going to have to drag my suitcases upstairs and start shaking sand out of my unmentionables. The sand was likely to enhance the decor.