Bad Company by Virginia Swift Page B

wouldn’t leave, and it wasn’t just because she was protecting Monette. Whatever the sick fucking reason, she was sticking it out.”
    Mary fought down the tears, but her voice shook. “I guess when Tanya finally did get it up to run, it was just too much. Bone had gotten drunk and beaten her up good, then passed out. She drank the rest of the bottle, then got the keys out of his pocket and took his truck. And then drove it off an overpass. I kept thinking there was something I should have done . . . When Monette moved down here, I figured, well, now at least I could keep an eye on her for Tanya. But she was so hostile. Dickie said maybe it would just take a little time until she trusted us. Just a little more time . . .” Mary began sobbing.
    “Come on, Mom,” said Brit, rising and pulling Mary up off the couch. “Why don’t you go lie down for a while.” The telephone began ringing, and everyone glared at it. “You ought to get some rest before other people get here.” She took her mother’s arm and led her off.
    Sally looked around. Nattie was finishing up another call, and Dwayne had answered the ringing phone. Jerry Jeff sat silent, looking at the floor. “It’s Dickie,” Dwayne said to no one in particular. “He says he’s on his way down to the courthouse, then he’ll be back home.”
    “If he’s coming soon,” said Delice, “we’d better get out and pick up some donuts.” Sally gave her a quizzical look, and Delice admitted, “I’m not in the mood to nag today. We can get the coffee too, and anything else you all think we need. Come with me, Sal.”
    Sally didn’t have to be asked twice, even if she wasn’t wild about returning to the Lifeway.
    The scene was familiar, a crazy parking lot, hollering cowboys, befuddled tourists, even the panhandling hip-pies; this time, they said, they wanted gas money. Delice gave them five bucks, telling Sally that maybe it would get them out of town. But in other ways the Lifeway was an eerily new place, transfigured in the last twenty-four hours. Two Sheriff’s Department cruisers were parked in the no parking zone out front. People who passed the cop cars on the way to the entrance gave one another quizzical looks: Why the police? Is there some reason why we ought to be buying our Hamburger Helper someplace else?
    The differences didn’t stop at the front door. Over the years, as a musician and a songwriter who’d done her fair share of recording, Sally had learned something about room tone, the sound a place has when there’s no foreground noise and everything is supposedly quiet. The background hum, a blend of muted small noises, was indiscernible unless you were listening for it. Sally had an excellent memory for sounds, and she knew that the previous morning, the room tone of the Lifeway had been lively, clattering, full of snippets of conversation, the rumble of wheeled pallets stacked with food, the frequent announcements over the loudspeaker: frozen catfish fillets on special at the seafood counter, baggers wanted at the check stands.
    Today the place had a kind of anxious hush. The shelf stockers, usually brazen as they careened around corners pushing racks of canned soda or laundry detergent, were moving slowly and silently. In the front of the store, Scott Atkins stood in conversation with a man in a white shirt and name tag, whom Sally recognized from the smiling picture over the store entrance: the manager. Two deputies were talking to a couple of the regular checkers, who kept casting anxious eyes on the lines building up at the three open registers.
    “This place feels weird,” Sally told Delice. “Like she’d died right in here.”
    “It’s a damn good thing she didn’t. And if they don’t get rid of the weird feeling real fast,” Delice retorted, “it’ll start costing them big money. I’m sorry if that sounds unsentimental,” she added, reading disapproval on Sally’s face, “but that’s the way it goes. You can’t