“I am anxious to see the sights.”
“You must be on drugs. The only sights around here are fat people, ugly buildings, and corn.”
“Tell me about them.”
Corrie grinned. “Okay, sure. We’re now approaching the lovely hamlet of Medicine Creek, Kansas, population three hundred and twenty-five and dropping like a stone.”
“Why is that?”
“Are you kidding? Only a dipshit would stay in a town like this.”
There was a pause.
“Miss Swanson?”
“What?”
“I can see that an insufficient, or perhaps even defective, socialization process has led you to believe that four- letter words add power to language.”
It took Corrie a moment to parse what Pendergast had said. “ ‘Dipshit’ isn’t a four-letter word.”
“That depends on whether you hyphenate it or not.”
“Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Joyce all used four-letter words.”
“I see I am dealing with a quasi-literate. It is also true that Shakespeare wrote:
Corrie looked at the man reclining in the seat beside her, his eyes still half closed. He was seriously weird.
“Now, may we continue with the tour?”
Corrie glanced around. The cornfields were reappearing on both sides of the road. “Tour’s over. We’ve already passed through town.”
There was no immediate response from Pendergast, and for a moment Corrie worried that his offer would be rescinded and all that money in the glove compartment would vanish back into the black suit. “I could always show you the Mounds,” she added.
“The Mounds?”
“The Indian Mounds down by the creek. They’re the only thing of interest in the whole county. Somebody must’ve told you about them, the ‘curse of the Forty-Fives’ and all that bullshit.”
Pendergast seemed to think about this for a moment. “Perhaps later we will see the Mounds. For the present, please turn around and pass through town once again, as slowly as possible. I wouldn’t want to miss a thing.”
“I don’t think I’d better do that.”
“Why not?”
“The sheriff won’t like it. He doesn’t like cruising.”
Pendergast closed his eyes completely. “Didn’t I say I would concern myself with the sheriff?”
“Okay, you’re the boss.”
She pulled to the side of the road, made a nice three-point turn, and headed back through town at a crawl. “On your left,” she said, “is the Wagon Wheel Tavern, run by Swede Cahill. He’s a decent guy, not too smart. His daughter is in my class, a real Barbie. It’s mostly a drinking establishment, not much food to speak of except Slim Jims, peanuts, the Giant Pickle Barrel—and, oh, yeah, chocolate eclairs. Believe it or not, they’re famous for their chocolate eclairs.”
Pendergast lay motionless.
“See that lady, walking down the sidewalk with the Bride of Frankenstein hairdo? That’s Klick Rasmussen, wife of Melton Rasmussen, who owns our local dry goods store. She’s coming back from lunch at the Castle Club, and in that bag are the remains of a roast beef sandwich for her dog, Peach. She won’t eat at Maisie’s on account of Maisie being her husband’s girlfriend before they got married about three hundred years ago. If only she knew what Melton gets up to with the gym teacher’s wife.”
Pendergast said nothing.
“And that dried-up old bag coming out of the Coast to Coast with a rolling pin is Mrs. Bender Lang, whose father died when their house was burned down by an arsonist thirty years ago. They never found out who did it, or why.” Corrie shook her head. “Some think old Gregory Flatt did it. He was the town drunk and kind of nuts, and one day he just sort of wandered off into the corn and disappeared. Never found his body. He used to talk about UFOs all the time. Personally, I think he finally got his wish and was abducted. The night he disappeared there were some strange lights in the north.” She laughed derisively. “Medicine Creek is an all-American town, and everybody’s got a skeleton in his closet. Or
This, at least, roused Pendergast, who half opened his eyes to look at her.
“Oh, yes. Even that dippy old lady whose house you’re staying in, Winifred Kraus. She may act pious, but it’s all a crock. Her father was a rum-runner and moonshiner. Bible-thumper, too, on top of that. But that isn’t all. I heard
