Bad Company by Virginia Swift

to work today, but everybody else was obviously taking the morning off from their jobs. Sally herself had planned to catch up on some of that backlog of scholarly reading, and was feeling secretly guilty for having put the work aside. Brit, who’d sworn that, as God was her witness, she’d never waitress again, was wearing a long flowered skirt and tailored white shirt—Sally surmised that she must have been pressed into service as an extra hostess at the Yippie I O. Nattie’s costume, ridiculous as it was, was supposed to make her a walking billboard for Branch Homes on the Range. She was already on her cell phone, calling into her office to check for messages, rescheduling appointments, chatting up clients. Dwayne walked in, making a concession to the rodeo in a Western-cut jacket instead of his usual banker’s pinstripes. Delice’s son, Jerry Jeff, who at not quite fifteen seemed to have grown a foot since Sally had seen him a month ago, followed, with grass stains on his pants and green dirt under his fingernails from his summer yard work business. Sally told herself she’d never seen such a hardworking bunch.
    With the exception of Dickie, whose job it was to find Monette’s killer, and Brit’s brother and sister, who were away for the week, the Langhams were there for Mary. Much more than for Monette. Nobody, as far as Sally knew, had been close enough to the girl to really grieve for her.
    Sally went over to the couch. Mary stood up. As they hugged, Sally felt the sorrow and fatigue radiate from Mary’s warm, soft body.
    “Thanks for coming, Mustang,” Mary said. “I guess the hordes are going to start descending this afternoon, and we might need you to do a little steppin’ and fetchin’. I don’t know if this could have come at a worse time. Everybody’s so busy.”
    “There’s no good time with something like this,” Sally said. “It’s just senseless and sad. But Dickie’ll find the guy who did it, I know.”
    There was a bleak expression on Mary’s round, pretty face. “You think so? There are a couple thousand people a day passing through town this week, not to mention all the highway traffic all summer long, or all the local garbage a girl like Monette could have picked up since she moved here. And the guy who killed her could be way long gone, just some piece of poisoned trash rollin’ down the highway. I really wish I felt more optimistic about that.”
    Brit came in the room, bringing a can of Diet Coke for her mother and one for herself. She flopped down in an overstuffed chair, and Mary sat back down on the couch, making room for Sally beside her.
    “You’d be surprised what the cops can do,” Sally said, trying to sound reassuring. “Dickie’s got a great team. It’s amazing to watch them work. Far as I could tell, they collected every single conceivable piece of anything that was lying around up there, and I guarantee, in the next couple of days they’ll be talking to everyone in Laramie who even saw Monette in the last week. I bet that if Dickie has his way, his guys’ll talk to anybody who ever bought a box of cereal at the Lifeway. And that Detective Atkins guy, jeez. By the time he was done asking me questions, I was looking at my arm to see how deep the teeth marks were. They’ll find a trail.”
    “Yeah, that Scotty’s a real bloodhound. But with Monette, there’s liable to be a whole bunch of trails. She took after my sister. She never met a jerk she didn’t want to take home and beg to abuse her.”
    “Bummer to admit it, but it’s true,” Brit put in. “Monette was sitting at the bar at the Wrangler last weekend, pounding down White Russians and doing her damndest to pick up the worst-lookin’ men in the place. She ended up leaving with an ugly little guy who had about three teeth in his whole head, none of which met.”
    “Did she have a thing for guys with bad teeth?” Sally wondered, thinking that might be a clue to who had lured her out to