“Yesterday afternoon.” He stood in front of my desk looking as cold as a block of ice. When he seen the magazine I’d been reading, and the game I’d been playing, he snickered. “My, my, my. I see you hard at work, as usual.”

“I was taking a break,” I snarled. “As hard as I work, I deserve to lollygag every now and then.”

“You sure do.” He guffawed.

It was too far-fetched to think that Sheriff Potts would let a colored man, who’d been accused of masterminding a white girl’s rape, out on bail. I had to ask anyway. “You out on bail?”

“Naw.” Milton shook his head and hand at the same time. He had on the greasy smock he wore when he was working at the grill, so I assumed he’d come here from work on his lunch hour. “Sheriff Potts let us go on account of lack of evidence.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Since when did them cracker lawmen need evidence when a crime involved a colored man and a white female? There was something real fishy going on and I needed to know what it was. I had convinced myself that my scheme to get him and Yvonne locked up was foolproof. “Oh? How did he figure that?”

“Because there wasn’t no evidence of me and Yvonne setting up no rape. Whoever called the sheriff didn’t tell him nothing to back up their story with. No names, no raped white girl, no nothing.”

I took a deep breath and dropped back down into my seat. “I’m happy to hear he let y’all go. How is Yvonne holding up?”

Milton went on to tell me a few things I didn’t want to hear, like them getting roughed up and them deputies having their way with Yvonne. The thing that really threw me for a loop was what he told me next. “Even with no evidence, we still had to pay off Sheriff Potts to drop the charge. Four hundred dollars.”

My jaw dropped. “Where did you and Yvonne get that kind of money?”

“That’s where you come in . . .”

“You just said y’all paid Sheriff Potts already.”

“We did, in a way. See, Willie Frank got his uncle Lamar to put up the money. We have to pay him back by the end of this month.”

“Hmmm. Well, I still owe you the hush money I wasn’t able to get to you on Wednesday. That’ll help, and I’ll even throw in a little extra.”

Milton shook his head. “Naw, naw. Them itty-bitty eight dollars and ‘a little extra’ ain’t going to do this time.”