Sheriff Potts ignored my question and picked up the telephone and dialed. “Moe, it’s a bloodbath over here. Don’t send the ambulance. It’s for white folks only. Get that telephone list out of my desk drawer and look up the number for that colored undertaker; Rufus . . . uh . . . Morgan. Give him a call and tell him I said to get his tail over to Odell Watson’s residence lickety-split. It’s the house next door to the right of them bootlegging darkies we recently dealt with.” After all that had happened since yesterday evening, I didn’t think there was anything else somebody could say that would shock me. What the sheriff said next did. “And tell the undertaker he’ll have to make three trips.” He paused and sucked on his teeth. “Naw. Odell is dead and so is them bootleggers.” There was another pause, this one longer. “Yup. You right about that. I seen something like this coming, too. I been telling folks for years that colored folks are mentally limited, so them and alcohol don’t mix. All right now. You go on and do what I told you, you hear?” Sheriff Potts hung up, adjusted his cap, and gulped down the glass of water Mama had just handed him. After a mighty belch, he set the glass on the coffee table and went on. “The undertaker will get here directly. He’ll haul Odell and them other two corpses to the morgue so the coroner can do his job. After that, they’ll be released back to the undertaker for funeral and burial purposes.”

Mama and Daddy were standing side by side in the middle of the floor, looking like they were about to pass out. It was a miracle I hadn’t already done that myself. “Sheriff, are Yvonne and Milton dead, too?” I asked.

“Yup. Somebody beat the dog shit out of them. There was a bloody hammer on the floor.” Sheriff Potts took off his hat and used it to fan his sweaty face before he put it back on. “There was also a large butcher knife with blood all the way up to the handle, which is what I suspect Odell got stuck with. I don’t want y’all to move his body. That’d be tampering with evidence.” He pulled his watch out of his shirt pocket, checked the time, and then mumbled something I couldn’t make out. After a loud snort, he started talking again. “Joyce, I’m sorry you lost your husband and your neighbors. Just be grateful the perpetrator didn’t do you in, too.”

“This is the devil’s work. Who else could be behind something so evil?” Daddy said in a raspy tone. “There ain’t never been no murder in this nice, quiet neighborhood. Now we got three?”