"It was an interview," Jim Bob croaked. This created so much tittering and snickering that I had to wait a full minute before my audience settled down again.
"Whatever you say," I said graciously. "In any case, when Lamont saw Kevin go to the break room, he slipped into the store, using his key, to place the tampered packages on the display rack in hopes the store would be closed down again. It worked well."
Dahlia rumbled like the onset of an earthquake. "He put that stuff in the sponge cakes that made me sick? Him, the fellow in the tar and feathers? I don't care if he raped some girl or not-he deserves to be tarred and feathered and strung up from a tree."
Again, a popular sentiment. Lamont was crouched down so low that we could barely see him, but we could hear his sputters of protest and piteous avowals of innocence.
"You mean," Jim Bob said, rather sputtery himself, "that Lamont did all this shit to make me sell the Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less? He put me through a week of nightmares and cold sweats so I'd belly-up like a trout in a sewage ditch?"
"And murdered Lillith Smew?" Ruby Bee said from behind me. "Just to make Jim Bob sell his share? Don't that seem kinda going overboard?"
"No, he didn't lace the package with a lethal pesticide," I said. "That, indeed, would have been going overboard. He just wanted to keep the pressure on Jim Bob right up to the time of the loan closing. Jim Bob would have been so frantic by then that he'd have been grateful for whatever offer he received for his share of the supermarket. I would imagine Lamont anticipated a fat finder's fee, along with his share, and-"
With a primitive howl born of generations of inbreeding, Jim Bob leapt onto the truck bed and swung wildly at Lamont. His fist stuck in a glob of tar, and he was frowning at it as Lamont shoved him over backward, jumped out of the truck, and ran with surprising agility through the parked cars and around the corner of the high school.
Jim Bob got to his feet, rubbed his tarred fist on his pants, and took off after Lamont. "What about the goddamn loan, you goddamn sumbitch?"
Heather's boyfriend started to follow, but I grabbed his arm and said, "Let him go. The sheriff's got half a dozen deputies waiting out front for him. He'll be charged with felonious assault on various folks' gastrointestinal systems, and we may be able to work out an interstate conspiracy charge that really will attract the attention of the FBI."
The entire scene lapsed into chaotic babbling, which was okay with me. As much as I enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame, I still had business to attend to, and I dreaded it worse than anything I'd faced before. "What about the ball game?" Hammet said, tugging on the hem of my gawdy pink Flamingo shirt. "Kin we play now?"
I glanced over his head at Ruby Bee, who hadn't moved and was watching me with an unfathomable expression. "I wish you'd volunteered the gossip when you first heard it," I said to her. "If you had, I could have tried to do something."
"There are some things folk don't like to talk about," she said quietly. "I reckon it was awhile back when I heard something vague, but it was so nasty that I put it out of my mind. No one likes to think that sort of thing goes on next door or down the road. I just figured it wasn't true and that I wasn't going to repeat it, not even to you and Estelle."
"Nobody wanted to talk about it, not even Hammet." I gently shook his shoulder and said, "But sometimes it needs to be talked about, to be brought out like all the other dirty laundry."
"I promised," he said. "I wanted to tell ya, but I promised. Lissie made me swear to keep it a secret. She said she tried to tell her teacher, but the dumb sow didn't believe her and she had to miss recess for lying."
We were on an island in the middle of the noisy crowd. I could hear my heart beating, and I thought I heard Hammet's, too. His eyes filled with tears and he flung his arms around me, his body convulsed with painful sobs. Once he'd calmed down, I told him where I was going and why, then told Ruby Bee that the game was postponed. Indefinitely.
"Guess we showed him," Kevin cackled as he and his honey bun sat on the porch swing, enjoying the breeze. "Did you see how he fell on his knees? He was so red, he looked like a fire hydrant, didn't he? I'm just sorry a dog didn't wander by and lift a hind leg."
"Don't you go talking like that again, Kevin Fitzgerald Buchanon," Dahlia said. She polished off the last crumbs of chocolate cake, put the plate down in the respectable area between them, and gazed at him until he started to squirm, which didn't take long. "Now if'n I agree to rebetroth with you, you got to swear you ain't gonna act all crazy ever again until we're married and have our own cozy little house."
She may have said house, but Kevin would have sworn on his great-granny's urn on the mantel that she said bed. It was unfortunate. Not only had he been deprived of his darling dumpling's soft, warm body all these long months, recently he'd been obliged to listen to all sorts of gossip and look at photographs that had left some real vivid images in his head.
He glanced over his shoulder. In the living room, his pa was watching television and his ma was clipping coupons out of a magazine. He gave the swing a little push, then said, "Do you happen to be wearing something other than your best blue blouse, my sweetness?"
He was astonished when she slapped the living daylights out of him. He was so plum astonished that he couldn't for the life of him think of anything to say, which was probably for the best.
Mrs. Jim Bob made one list after another. Groceries; chores Perkins's eldest had best do next week-if she intended to keep her job, that is. Refreshments at the next missionary society meeting. Pieces of furniture to have re-covered. Bible verses that could be used as weapons. The Ten Commandments, all of which Jim Bob had violated in the last week. Well, maybe not failing to honor his father and mother, since they were buried side by side in the old cemetery down by Boone Creek. She scratched that one out and wrote, "Thou shall not humiliate thy wife in front of everybody in town."
She put the other lists aside. This was the one to work on, she decided with a grim smile. When Jim Bob came back, she intended to sit him down on the newly re-covered divan for a long while and go over each and every commandment as many times as it took. By the time she finished with him, he was going to wish he'd been tarred and feathered like that disgusting Lamont. It would seem a minor inconvenience compared to what she had in store for him.
Then, she told herself, she would have to do her Christian duty and march right down to the trailer next to the Voice of the Almighty, because she had some questions and was going to get some answers. Her lips tightened as she recalled the bright pink doll, and she grabbed for another piece of paper.
The telephone rang, and she was feeling brightened enough to answer with a brisk "What is it?" She listened for a minute, then said, "No, neither of them's coming in to the bank today. Last seen, my husband was chasing a giant skunk toward Cotter's Ridge. The man at the other end seemed to want to discuss it further, but she didn't, so she replaced the receiver and went back to Jim Bob's list. She had him on adultery, taking the Lord's name in vain, coveting, and at least partially on some of the others.
Mrs. Jim Bob fixed herself a nice cup of tea and went to work.
When Plover and I returned from Farberville, I admitted I couldn't face the PD or the magpies eagerly awaiting a choice morsel to devour. We drove down to Boone Creek and parked under a clump of oak trees. October was nearly a month away, but the relentless heat had turned some of the leaves brown, and we could hear them rustling above us. The water was low, exposing mud bars and expanses of rough yellowish-green rocks.