MISSILE STRIKE IMMINENT 7 page

“I know,” Barbie said, and told Rusty what he wanted him to do. Rusty listened closely, smiling a little.

“Okay,” he said. “Works for me. What are you going to be doing while I’m running your errands?”

“Cooking dinner at Sweetbriar. Tonight’s special is chicken à la Barbara. Want me to send some up to the hospital?”

“Sweet,” Rusty said.

On his way back to Cathy Russell, Rusty stopped by the the Democrat ’s office and handed off the Geiger counter to Julia Shumway.

She listened as he relayed Barbie’s instructions, smiling faintly. “The man knows how to delegate, I’ll say that for him. I’ll see to this with pleasure.”

Rusty thought of cautioning her to be careful about who saw the town’s Geiger counter in her possession, but didn’t need to. The bag had disappeared into the kneehole of her desk.

On his way to the hospital, he reached Ginny Tomlinson and asked her about the seizure call she’d taken.

“Little kid named Jimmy Wicker. The grandfather called it in. Bill Wicker?”

Rusty knew him. Bill delivered their mail.

“He was taking care of Jimmy while the boy’s mom went to gas up their car. They’re almost out of regular at the Gas and Grocery, by the way, and Johnny Carver’s had the nerve to jack the price of regular to eleven dollars a gallon. Eleven! ”

Rusty bore this patiently, thinking he could have had his conversation with Ginny face-to-face. He was almost back to the hospital. When she was done complaining, he asked her if little Jimmy had said anything while he was seizing.

“Yes indeed. Bill said he babbled quite a bit. I think it was something about pink stars. Or Halloween. Or maybe I’m getting it confused with what Rory Dinsmore said after he was shot. People have been talking about that.”

Of course they have, Rusty thought grimly. And they’ll be talking about this, too, if they find out. As they probably will.

“All right,” he said. “Thanks, Ginny.”

“When you comin back, Red Ryder?”

“Almost there now.”

“Good. Because we have a new patient. Sammy Bushey. She was raped.”

Rusty groaned.

“It gets better. Piper Libby brought her in. I couldn’t get the names of the doers out of the girl, but I think Piper did. She went out of here like her hair was on fire and her ass—” A pause. Ginny yawned loud enough for Rusty to hear. “—her ass was catching.”

“Ginny my love—when’s the last time you got some sleep?”

“I’m fine.”

“Go home.”

“Are you kidding ?” Sounding aghast.

“No. Go home. Sleep. No setting the alarm, either.” Then an idea struck him. “But stop by Sweetbriar Rose on the way, why don’t you? They’re having chicken. I heard it from a reliable source.”

“The Bushey girl—”

“I’ll be checking on her in five minutes. What you’re going to do is make like a bee and buzz.”

He closed his phone before she could protest again.

Big Jim Rennie felt remarkably good for a man who had committed murder the night before. This was partially because he did not see it as murder, no more than he had seen the death of his late wife as murder. It was cancer that had taken her. Inoperable. Yes, he had probably given her too many of the pain pills over the last week, and in the end he’d still had to help her with a pillow over her face (but lightly, ever so lightly, slowing her breathing, easing her into the arms of Jesus), but he had done it out of love and kindness. What had happened to Reverend Cog-gins was a bit more brutal—admittedly—but the man had been so bullish. So completely unable to put the town’s welfare ahead of his own.

“Well, he’s eating dinner with Christ the Lord tonight,” Big Jim said. “Roast beef, mashed with gravy, apple crisp for dessert.” He himself was eating a large plate of fettuccini alfredo, courtesy of the Stouffer’s company. A lot of cholesterol, he supposed, but there was no Dr. Haskell around to nag him about it.

“I outlasted you, you old poop,” Big Jim told his empty study, and laughed goodnaturedly. His plate of pasta and a glass filled with milk (Big Jim Rennie did not drink alcohol) were set on his desk blotter. He often ate in the study, and he saw no need to change that simply because Lester Coggins had met his end here. Besides, the room was once more squared away and spandy-clean. Oh, he supposed one of those investigation units like the ones on TV would be able to find plenty of blood-spatter with their luminol and special lights and things, but none of those people was going to be here in the immediate future. As for Pete Randolph doing any sleuthing in the matter … the idea was a joke. Randolph was an idiot.

“But,” Big Jim told the empty room in a lecturely tone, “he’s my idiot.”

He slurped up the last few strands of pasta, mopped his considerable chin with a napkin, then once more began to jot notes on the yellow legal pad beside the blotter. He had jotted plenty of notes since Saturday; there was so much to do. And if the Dome stayed in place, there would be more still.

Big Jim sort of hoped it would remain in place, at least for a while. The Dome offered challenges to which he felt certain he could rise (with God’s help, of course). The first order of business was to consolidate his hold on the town. For that he needed more than a scapegoat; he needed a bogeyman. The obvious choice was Barbara, the man the Democrat Party’s Commie-in-Chief had tapped to replace James Rennie.

The study door opened. When Big Jim looked up from his notes, his son was standing there. His face was pale and expressionless. There was something not quite right about Junior lately. As busy as he was with the town’s affairs (and their other enterprise; that had also kept him busy), Big Jim realized this. But he felt confident in the boy just the same. Even if Junior let him down, Big Jim was sure he could handle it. He’d spent a lifetime making his own luck; that wasn’t going to change now.

Besides, the boy had moved the body. That made him part of this. Which was good—the essence of smalltown life, in fact. In a small town, everybody was supposed to be a part of everything. How did that silly song put it? We all support the team.

“Son?” he asked. “All right?”

“I’m fine,” Junior said. He wasn’t, but he was better, the latest poisonous headache finally lifting. Being with his girlfriends had helped, as he’d known it would. The McCain pantry didn’t smell so good, but after he’d sat there awhile, holding their hands, he’d gotten used to it. He thought he could even come to like that smell.

“Did you find anything in his apartment?”

“Yes.” Junior told him what he had found.

“That’s excellent, Son. Really excellent. And are you ready to tell me where you put the … where you put him?”

Junior shook his head slowly back and forth, but his eyes stayed in exactly the same place while he did it —pinned on his father’s face. It was a little eerie. “You don’t need to know. I told you that. It’s a safe place, and that’s enough.”

“So now you’re telling me what I need to know.” But he said it without his usual heat.

“In this case, yes.”

Big Jim considered his son carefully. “Are you sure you’re all right? You look pale.”

“I’m fine. Just a headache. It’s going now.”

“Why not have something to eat? There are a few more fettuccinis in the freezer, and the microwave does a great job on them.” He smiled. “Might as well enjoy them while we can.”

The dark, considering eyes dropped for a moment to the puddle of white sauce on Big Jim’s plate, then rose again to his father’s face. “Not hungry. When should I find the bodies?”

“Bodies?” Big Jim stared. “What do you mean, bodies ?”

Junior smiled, lips lifting just enough to show the tips of his teeth. “Never mind. It’ll help your cred if you’re surprised like everyone else. Let’s put it this way—once we pull the trigger, this town will be ready to hang Baaarbie from a sour apple tree. When do you want to do it? Tonight? Because that’ll work.”

Big Jim considered the question. He looked down at his yellow pad. It was crammed with notes (and splattered with alfredo sauce), but only one was circled: newspaper bitch.

“Not tonight. We can use him for more than Coggins if we play this right.”

“And if the Dome comes down while you’re playing it?”

“We’ll be fine,” Big Jim said. Thinking, And if Mr. Barbara is somehow able to squirm free of the frame— not likely, but cockroaches have a way of finding cracks when the lights go on—there’s always you. You and those other bodies. “Now get yourself something to eat, even if it’s only a salad.”

But Junior didn’t move. “Don’t wait too long, Dad,” he said. “I won’t.”

Junior considered it, considered him with those dark eyes that seemed so strange now, then seemed to lose interest. He yawned. “I’m going up to my room and sleep awhile. I’ll eat later.”

“Just make sure you do. You’re getting too thin.”

“Thin is in,” his son replied, and offered a hollow smile that was even more disquieting than his eyes. To Big Jim, it looked like a skull’s smile. It made him think of the fellow who now just called himself The Chef— as if his previous life as Phil Bushey had been canceled. When Junior left the room, Big Jim breathed a sigh of relief without even being aware of it.

He picked up his pen: so much to do. He would do it, and do it well. It was not impossible that when this thing was over, his picture would be on the cover of Time magazine.

With her generator still running—although it wouldn’t be for much longer unless she could find some more LP canisters—Brenda Perkins was able to fire up her husband’s printer and make a hard copy of everything in the VADER file. The incredible list of offenses Howie had compiled—and which he had apparently been about to act on at the time of his death—seemed more real to her on paper than they had on the computer screen. And the more she looked at them, the more they seemed to fit the Jim Rennie she’d known for most of her life. She had always known he was a monster; just not how big a monster.

Even the stuff about Coggins’s Jesus-jumping church fit … although if she was reading this right, it was really not a church at all but a big old holy Maytag that washed money instead of clothes. Money from a drug-manufacturing operation that was, in her husband’s words, “maybe one of the biggest in the history of the United States.”

But there were problems, which both Police Chief Howie “Duke” Perkins and the State AG had acknowledged. The problems were why the evidence-gathering phase of Operation Vader had gone on as long as it had. Jim Rennie wasn’t just a big monster; he was a smart monster. That was why he had always been content to remain the Second Selectman. He had Andy Sanders to break trail for him.

And to wear a target—that, too. For a long time, Andy was the only one against whom Howie had had hard evidence. He was the frontman and probably didn’t even know it, cheery gladhanding dumbshit that he was. Andy was First Selectman, First Deacon at Holy Redeemer, first in the hearts of the townsfolk, and out front on a trail of corporate documents that finally disappeared into the obfuscatory financial swamps of Nassau and Grand Cayman Island. If Howie and the State Attorney General had moved too soon, he would also have been first to get his picture taken while holding a number. Maybe the only one, should he believe Big Jim’s inevitable promises that all would be well if Andy just kept mum. And he probably would. Who was better at dummying up than a dummy?

Last summer, things had begun working toward what Howie had seen as the endgame. That was when Rennie’s name had started showing up on some of the paperwork the AG had obtained, most notably that of a Nevada corporation called Town Ventures. The Town Ventures money had disappeared west instead of east, not into the Caribbean but into mainland China, a country where the key ingredients of decongestant drugs could be bought in bulk, with few or any questions.

Why would Rennie allow such exposure? Howie Perkins had been able to think of only one reason: the money had gotten too big too fast for one holy washing machine. Rennie’s name had subsequently appeared on papers concerning half a dozen other fundamentalist churches in the northeast. Town Ventures and the other churches (not to mention half a dozen other religious radio stations and AM talkers, none as big as WCIK) were Rennie’s first real mistakes. They left dangling strings. Strings could be pulled, and sooner or later—usually sooner—everything unraveled.

You couldn’t let go, could you? Brenda thought as she sat behind her husband’s desk, studying the papers. You’d made millions—maybe tens of millions—and the risks were becoming outrageous, but you still couldn’t let go. Like a monkey who traps himself because he won’t let go of the food. You were sitting on a damn fortune and you just kept on living in that old three-story and selling cars at that pit of yours out on

119. Why?

But she knew. It wasn’t the money; it was the town. What he saw as his town. Sitting on a beach somewhere in Costa Rica or presiding over a guarded estate in Namibia, Big Jim would become Small Jim. Because a man without a sense of purpose, even one whose bank accounts are stuffed with money, is always a small man.

If she confronted him with what she had, could she make a deal with him? Force him out in return for her silence? She wasn’t sure. And she dreaded the confrontation. It would be ugly, possibly dangerous. She would want to have Julia Shumway with her. And Barbie. Only Dale Barbara was now wearing his own target.

Howie’s voice, calm but firm, spoke up in her head. You can afford to wait a little while—I was waiting for a few final items of proof myself—but I wouldn’t wait too long, honey. Because the longer this siege goes on, the more dangerous he’ll become.

She thought of Howie starting to back down the driveway, then stopping to put his lips on hers in the sunshine, his mouth almost as well known to her as her own, and certainly as well loved. Caressing the side of her throat as he did it. As if he knew the end was coming, and one last touch would have to pay for all. An easy and romantic conceit for sure, but she almost believed it, and her eyes filled with tears.

Suddenly the papers and all the machinations contained therein seemed less important. Even the Dome didn’t seem very important. What mattered was the hole that had appeared so suddenly in her life, sucking out the happiness she had taken for granted. She wondered if poor dumb Andy Sanders felt the same way. She supposed he did.

I’ll give it twenty-four hours. If the Dome’s still in place tomorrow night, I’ll go to Rennie with this stuff— with copies of this stuff—and tell him he has to resign in favor of Dale Barbara. Tell him that if he doesn’t, he’s going to read all about his drug operation in the paper.

“Tomorrow,” she murmured, and closed her eyes. Two minutes later she was asleep in Howie’s chair. In Chester’s Mill, the supper hour had come. Some meals (including chicken à la king for a hundred or so) were cooked on electric or gas ranges courtesy of the generators in town that were still working, but there were also people who had turned to their woodstoves, either to conserve their gennies or because wood was now all they had. The smoke rose in the still air from hundreds of chimneys.

And spread.

After delivering the Geiger counter—the recipient took it willingly, even eagerly, and promised to begin prospecting with it early on Tuesday—Julia headed for Burpee’s Department Store with Horace on his leash. Romeo had told her he had a pair of brand-new Kyocera photocopiers in storage, both still in their original shipping cartons. She was welcome to both.

“I also got a little propane tucked away,” he said, giving Horace a pat. “I’ll see you get what you need— for as long as I can, at least. We gotta keep that newspaper running, am I right? More important than ever, don’t you t’ink?”

It was exactly what she t’ought, and Julia had told him so. She had also planted a kiss on his cheek. “I owe you for this, Rommie.”

“I’ll be expectin a big discount on my weekly advertising circular when this is over.” He had then tapped the side of his nose with a forefinger, as if they had a great big secret. Maybe they did.

As she left, her cell phone chirruped. She pulled it out of her pants pocket. “Hello, this is Julia.”

“Good evening, Ms. Shumway.”

“Oh, Colonel Cox, how wonderful to hear your voice,” she said brightly. “You can’t imagine how thrilled we country mice are to get out-of-town calls. How’s life outside the Dome?”

“Life in general is probably fine,” he said. “Where I am, it’s on the shabby side. You know about the missiles?”

“Watched them hit. And bounce off. They lit a fine fire on your side—”

“It’s not my—”

“—and a fairly good one on ours.”

“I’m calling for Colonel Barbara,” Cox said. “Who should be carrying his own goddam phone by now.”

“Goddam right!” she cried, still in her brightest tone. “And people in goddam hell should have goddam icewater!” She stopped in front of the Gas & Grocery, now shut up tight. The hand-lettered sign in the window read HRS OF OP TOMORROW 11 AM–2 PM GET HERE EARLY!

“Ms. Shumway—”

“We’ll discuss Colonel Barbara in a minute,” Julia said. “Right now I want to know two things. First, when is the press going to be allowed at the Dome? Because the people of America deserve more than the government’s spin on this, don’t you think?”

She expected him to say he did not think, that there would be no New York Times or CNN at the Dome in the foreseeable future, but Cox surprised her. “Probably by Friday if none of the other tricks up our sleeve work. What’s the other thing you want to know, Ms. Shumway? Make it brief, because I’m not a press officer. That’s another pay grade.”

“You called me, so you’re stuck with me. Suck it up, Colonel.”

“Ms. Shumway, with all due respect, yours is not the only cell phone in Chester’s Mill I can reach out and touch.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I don’t think Barbie will talk to you if you shine me on. He’s not particularly happy with his new position as prospective stockade commandant.”

Cox sighed. “What’s your question?”

“I want to know the temperature on the south or east side of the Dome—a true temperature, meaning away from the fire you guys set.”

“Why—”

“Do you have that information or not? I think you do, or can get it. I think you’re sitting in front of a computer screen right now, and you have access to everything, probably including my underwear size.” She paused. “And if you say sixteen, this call is over.”

“Are you exhibiting your sense of humor, Ms. Shumway, or are you always this way?”

“I’m tired and scared. Chalk it up to that.”

There was a pause on Cox’s end. She thought she heard the click of computer keys. Then he said, “It’s forty-seven Fahrenheit in Castle Rock. Will that do?”

“Yes.” The disparity wasn’t as bad as she had feared, but still considerable. “I’m looking at the thermometer in the window of the Mill Gas and Grocery. It says fifty-eight. That’s an eleven-degree difference between locations less than twenty miles apart. Unless there’s a hell of a big warm front pushing through western Maine this evening, I’d say something’s going on here. Do you agree?”

He didn’t answer her question, but what he did say took her mind off it. “We’re going to try something else. Around nine this evening. It’s what I wanted to tell Barbie.”

“One hopes Plan B will work better than Plan A. At this moment, I believe the President’s appointee is feeding the multitudes at Sweetbriar Rose. Chicken à la king is the rumor.” She could see the lights down the street, and her belly rumbled.

“Will you listen and pass on a message?” And she heard what he did not add: You contentious bitch?

“Happy to,” she said. Smiling. Because she was a contentious bitch. When she had to be.

“We’re going to try an experimental acid. A hydrofluoric compound, man-made. Nine times as corrosive as the ordinary stuff.”

“Living better through chemistry.”

“I’m told you could theoretically burn a hole two miles deep in the bedrock with it.”

“What highly amusing people you work for, Colonel.”

“We’re going to try where Motton Road crosses—” There was a rustle of paper. “Where it crosses into Harlow. I expect to be there.”

“Then I’ll tell Barbie to have someone else wash up.”

“Will you also be favoring us with your company, Ms. Shumway?”

She opened her mouth to say I wouldn’t miss it, and that was when all hell broke loose up the street.

“What’s going on there?” Cox asked.

Julia didn’t reply. She closed her phone and stuck it in her pocket, already running toward the sound of yelling voices. And something else. Something that sounded like snarling.

The gunshot came while she was still half a block away.

Piper went back to the parsonage and discovered Carolyn, Thurston, and the Appleton kids waiting there. She was glad to see them, because they took her mind off Sammy Bushey. At least temporarily.

She listened to Carolyn’s account of Aidan Appleton’s seizure, but the boy seemed fine now—chowing ever deeper into a stack of Fig Newtons. When Carolyn asked if the boy should see a doctor, Piper said, “Unless there’s a recurrence, I think you can assume it was brought on by hunger and the excitement of the game.”

Thurston smiled ruefully. “We were all excited. Having fun.”

When it came to possible lodging, Piper first thought of the McCain house, which was close by. Only she didn’t know where their spare key might be hidden.

Alice Appleton was on the floor, feeding Fig Newton crumbs to Clover. The shepherd was doing the old my-muzzle’s-on-your-ankle-because-I’m-your-best-friend routine in between offerings. “This is the best dog I’ve ever seen,” she told Piper. “I wish we could have a dog.”

“I’ve got a dragon,” Aidan offered. He was sitting comfortably on Carolyn’s lap.

Alice smiled indulgently. “That’s his invisible F-R-E-I-N.”

“I see,” Piper said. She supposed they could always break a window at the McCain place; needs must when the devil drives.

But as she got up to check on the coffee, a better idea occurred. “The Dumagens’. I should have thought of them right away. They went to Boston for a conference. Coralee Dumagen asked me to water her plants while they’re gone.”

“I teach in Boston,” Thurston said. “At Emerson. I edited the current issue of Ploughshares. ” And sighed.

“The key is under a flowerpot to the left of the door,” Piper said. “I don’t believe they have a generator, but there’s a woodstove in the kitchen.” She hesitated, thinking City people. “Can you use a wood-stove to cook on without setting the house on fire?”

“I grew up in Vermont,” Thurston said. “Was in charge of keeping the stoves lit—house and barn—until I went off to college. What goes around comes around, doesn’t it?” And sighed again.

“There’ll be food in the pantry, I’m sure,” Piper said.

Carolyn nodded. “That’s what the janitor at the Town Hall said.”

“Also Joooon-yer, ” Alice put in. “He’s a cop. A foxy one.” Thurston’s mouth turned down. “Alice’s foxy cop assaulted me,” he said. “Him or the other one. I couldn’t tell them apart, myself.”

Piper’s eyebrows went up.

“Punched Thurse in the stomach,” Carolyn said quietly. “Called us Massholes—which, I suppose, we technically are—and laughed at us. For me, that was the worst part, how they laughed at us. They were better once they had the kids with them, but …” She shook her head. “They were out of control.”

And just like that, Piper was back to Sammy. She felt a pulse beginning to beat in the side of her neck, very slow and hard, but she kept her voice even. “What was the other policeman’s name?”

“Frankie,” Carolyn said. “Junior called him Frankie D. Do you know these guys? You must, huh?”

“I know them,” Piper said.

She gave the new, makeshift family directions to the Dumagens’—the house had the advantage of being near to Cathy Russell if the boy had another seizure—and sat awhile at her kitchen table after they were gone, drinking tea. She did it slowly. Took a sip and set the cup down. Took a sip and set it down. Clover whined. He was tuned in to her, and she supposed he could sense her rage.

Maybe it changes my smell. Makes it more acrid or something.

A picture was forming. Not a pretty one. A lot of new cops, very young cops, sworn in less than forty-eight hours ago and already running wild. The sort of license they had exhibited with Sammy Bushey and Thurston Marshall wouldn’t spread to veteran cops like Henry Morrison and Jackie Wettington—at least she didn’t think so—but to Fred Denton? Toby Whelan? Maybe. Probably. With Duke in charge, those guys had been all right. Not great, the kind of guys apt to lip you unnecessarily after a traffic stop, but all right. Certainly the best the town’s budget could afford. But her mother had been wont to say, “You buy cheap, you get cheap.” And with Peter Randolph in charge—

Something had to be done.

Only she had to control her temper. If she didn’t, it would control her.

She took the leash from the peg by the door. Clover was up at once, tail swishing, ears perked, eyes bright.

“Come on, you big lug. We’re going to lodge a complaint.”

Her shepherd was still licking Fig Newton crumbs from the side of his muzzle as she led him out the door.

Walking across the town common with Clover heeling neatly to her right, Piper felt she did have her temper under control. She felt that way until she heard the laughter. It came as she and Clove were approaching the police station. She observed the very fellows whose names she had gotten out of Sammy Bushey: DeLesseps, Thibodeau, Searles. Georgia Roux was also present, Georgia who had egged them on, according to Sammy: Do that bitch. Freddy Denton was there too. They were sitting at the top of the stone PD steps, drinking sodas, gassing among themselves. Duke Perkins never would have allowed such a thing, and Piper reflected that if he could see them from wherever he was, he’d be rolling in his grave fast enough to set his own remains on fire.

Mel Searles said something and they all broke up again, laughing and backslapping. Thibodeau had his arm around the Roux girl, the tips of his fingers on the sideswell of her breast. She said something, and they all laughed harder.

It came to Piper that they were laughing about the rape—what a goldurn good old time it had been—and after that, her father’s advice never had a chance. The Piper who ministered to the poor and the sick, who officiated at marryings and buryings, who preached charity and tolerance on Sundays, was pushed rudely to the back of her mind, where she could only watch as though through a warped and wavery pane of glass. It was the other Piper who took over, the one who had trashed her room at fifteen, crying tears of rage rather than sorrow.

There was a slate-paved square known as War Memorial Plaza between the Town Hall and the newer brick PD building. At its center was a statue of Ernie Calvert’s father, Lucien Calvert, who had been awarded a posthumous Silver Star for heroic action in Korea. The names of other Chester’s Mill war dead, going all the way back to the Civil War, were engraved on the statue’s base. There were also two flagpoles, the Stars and Stripes at the top of one and the state flag, with its farmer, sailor, and moose, at the top of the other. Both hung limp in the reddening light of oncoming sunset. Piper Libby passed between the poles like a woman in a dream, Clover still heeling behind her right knee with his ears up.

The “officers” atop the steps burst into another hearty roar of laughter, and she thought of trolls in one of the fairy stories her dad had sometimes read her. Trolls in a cave, gloating over piles of ill-gotten gold. Then they saw her and quieted.

“Good evenin, Rev’run,” Mel Searles said, and got up, giving his belt a self-important little hitch as he did so. Standing in the presence of a lady, Piper thought. Did his mother teach him that? Probably. The fine art of rape he probably learned somewhere else.

He was still smiling as she reached the steps, but then it faltered and grew tentative, so he must have seen her expression. Just what that expression might be she didn’t know. From the inside, her face felt frozen. Immobile.

She saw the biggest of them watching her closely. Thibodeau, his face as immobile as hers felt. He’s like Clover, she thought. He smells it on me. The rage.

“Rev’run?” Mel asked. “Everything okay? There a problem?”

She mounted the steps, not fast, not slow, Clover still heeling neatly behind her right knee. “You bet there’s a problem,” she said, looking up at him.

“What—”

“You,” she said. “You’re the problem.”

She pushed him. Mel wasn’t expecting it. He was still holding his cup of soda. He went tumbling into Georgia Roux’s lap, flailing his arms uselessly for balance, and for a moment the soda was a dark manta ray hanging against the reddening sky. Georgia cried out in surprise as Mel landed on her. She sprawled backward, spilling her own soda. It went running across the wide granite slab in front of the double doors. Piper could smell either whiskey or bourbon. Their Cokes had been spiked with what the rest of the town could no longer buy. No wonder they’d been laughing.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 562