5432852385743

casserole delivery.’ And raise the dish so he can see me through the living room window if he looks.
Will that do?”
“Yes. All I want you to do is distract him for a few seconds.”
“Don’t you shoot if there’s any chance you might hit Sadie. Tackle the bastard. You’ll do okay. The
guy I saw was skinny as a rail.”
We looked at each other bleakly. Such a plan would work on Gunsmoke or Maverick, but this was
real life. And in real life the good guys—and gals—sometimes get their asses kicked. Or killed.
7
The yard behind the house on Apple Blossom Way wasn’t quite the same as the one behind the
Dunning place, but there were similarities. For one, there was a doghouse, although no sign reading
YOUR POOCH BELONGS HERE. Instead, painted in a child’s unsteady hand over the round doorshaped
entrance, were the words BUTCHS HOWSE. And no trick-or-treating kiddies. Wrong season.
The hedge, however, looked exactly the same.
I pushed through it, barely noticing the scratches the stiff branches scrawled on my arms. I crossed
Sadie’s backyard in a running crouch, and tried the door. Locked. I felt beneath the step, sure that the
key would be gone because the past harmonized but the past was obdurate.
It was there. I fished it out, put it in the lock, and applied slow increasing pressure. There was a
faint thump from inside the door when the latch sprang back. I stiffened, waiting for a yell of alarm.
None came. There were lights on in the living room, but I heard no voices. Maybe Sadie was dead
already and Clayton was gone.
God, please no.
Once I eased the door open, however, I heard him. He was talking in a loud and monotonous drone,
sounding like Billy James Hargis on tranquilizers. He was telling her what a whore she was, and how
she had ruined his life. Or maybe it was the girl who had tried to touch him he was talking about. To
Johnny Clayton they were all the same: sex-hungry disease carriers. You had to lay down the law. And,
of course, the broom.
I slipped off my shoes and put them on the linoleum. The light was on over the sink. I checked my
shadow to make sure it wasn’t going to precede me into the doorway. I took my gun out of my sport
coat pocket and started across the kitchen, meaning to stand beside the doorway to the living room
until I heard Avon calling! Then I would go in a rush.
Only that isn’t what happened. When Deke called out, there was nothing cheery about it. That was
a cry of shocked fury. And it wasn’t outside the front door; it was right in the house.
“Oh, my God! Sadie!”
After that, things happened very, very fast.
8
Clayton had forced the front door lock so it wouldn’t latch. Sadie didn’t notice, but Deke did. Instead
of knocking, he pushed it open and stepped inside with the casserole dish in his hands. Clayton was
still sitting on the hassock, and the gun was still pointed at Sadie, but he had put the knife down on
the floor beside him. Deke said later he didn’t even know Clayton had a knife. I doubt if he really even
noticed the gun. His attention was fixed on Sadie. The top of her blue dress was now a muddy maroon.