Heather approached me with a pleading look. "Maybe I was confused," she whispered. "Maybe I was so traumatized that I didn't remember exactly what all happened."
"But, Heather," Darla Jean said, running up to put her arm around her friend's trembling shoulder, "you did remember his name and face. You told me all about it in your bedroom. You told me how he held you down and ripped your clothes off and hurt you real bad, and then how you ran screaming into the street and barely escaped being run down by a truck. It couldn't have been more than a couple of days ago when you told me how you cried out for Beau to save you from this here monster."
"What the hell is she talking about?" Lamont demanded, the whites of his eyes in sharp contrast with the smeary blackness of his face.
The most verbal of the boys hitched up his jeans and gave the crowd a self-satisfied grin. "When I heard it, I decided to teach this no-good sumbitch not to mess with my woman. Us boys dragged him out of the whore's apartment and kept him busy all night long, dint we? He ain't gonna bother anyone for a long while."
"They're maniacs," the purported sumbitch howled. "Arrest them."
"If'n he raped the girl, he oughta be shot," someone from the crowd muttered. This proved to be a popular sentiment, and I had to shout to make myself heard.
"Shut up! This is a farce. If all of you weren't so ready not only to believe what you hear but also to expand upon it for your own amusement, this sort of thing wouldn't get out of hand. Heather, what happened when you interviewed to be a SuperSaver cheerleader?"
"Jim Bob put his hand on my knee."
"Anything else?" I said, turning on all my wattage.
She looked at her feet. "No, nothing else. It just bothered me, so I told Miss Estes. The next thing I hear is this big story of how I was raped. I…I, uh, got confused."
We all turned to Jim Bob, who was as miserable as the girl and kicking up a decent-sized cloud of dust. "I was showing her how long the miniskirt was. I distinctly remember saying that the skirt would come to her knee."
The leader of the pack didn't look much happier, but he managed a cocky voice. "Oh, well, the sumbitch probably raped somebody else. Most likely that whore. That's why the FBI's after him."
"No," I said, "the FBI's not after him, and he and the woman were friends. Cherri Lucinda Crate was nice enough to pick him up outside the supermarket and take him back to unit number twelve of the Airport Arms. Lamont wanted to make Jim Bob sweat, and he was doing a fine job of it until the supermarket reopened Monday afternoon. That was most annoying, because it meant all that wonderful ill will he'd stirred up with the tamale-sauce episode might be assuaged and Jim Bob might be less inclined to sell to an outfit in Texas."
I had everybody's attention except for Mrs. Jim Bob, who looked as if she might attack her husband-but not with amorous intent. She sidled over to Brother Verber and began to hiss at him.
Jim Bob was breathing so loudly we could hear it, and he clenched his fist as he glared at the cartoonish skunk in the bed of the pickup truck. "Then he dumped stuff in the tamale sauce? Is that what I just heard?"
I nodded. "He had a key, so it wasn't much of a challenge to return to the deli Friday night and dump several ounces of ipecac in the quart of sauce. He'd even jotted down the quantity in his notebook so he could calculate how many bottles of ipecac to use. Monday night was more of a challenge, because Buzz Milvin and Kevin were supposed to be there all night and Lamont didn't want to surface quite yet. He was obliged to watch the store from the shadows of the bar and grill until he saw Jim Bob arrive to pick up the receipts. He went into his room at the Flamingo Motel and called Cherri Lucinda, who then called Jim Bob and invited him over for a…visit."
Everybody swung around to see how Mrs. Jim Bob was going to field this one, but she was so intent on her conversation with Brother Verber that it was hard to tell if she'd heard any of it. Disappointed, they looked back at me.
I was tempted to get on the bed of the truck so no one would miss a word. However, I opted for decorum, and merely raised my voice in hopes Mrs. Jim Bob would catch on. "The invitation was so vividly couched that Jim Bob told Buzz to take the deposits to the bank, then hopped in his car and drove to her apartment, not the least bit worried about leaving Kevin in charge of the supermarket."
"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."