Sadie started to back up with a woeful look on her face. “Poor Yvonne and Milton. It’s a good thing they wasn’t locked up but a couple of days. Just think how much more upset y’all would be if they’d been sent to the county jail, or worse. They still fairly young and strong. But as serious as the mess they went through, it might take a while for them to bounce back to normal. You and Joyce being their close friends and next-door neighbors, I know y’all will give them a heap of support.”

Support? That was a joke. If Sadie and Buddy hadn’t left when they did a minute later and continued to go on and on about “poor Yvonne and Milton,” I probably would have snapped. Them two mangy, hustling dogs might finish ruining my life after all. I went back to my office and sat for a few more minutes, stewing like a pot roast. All kinds of ominous thoughts and ideas was swirling around in my head. The main one was, I had to get Yvonne and Milton off my back permanently. And the only way I could do that was to kill them.

* * *

Each day after I closed up, I pulled every single bill out of the cash registers and put it in a box that I kept in my office. Then I set the box on the floor in a corner next to a mountain of old magazines, discarded merchandise, and other odds and ends. I piled two or three other boxes on top of it. There was so many other items on the floor, my desk, and everywhere else in the room, if a thief broke in, he’d never find the money. Getting burglarized was the least of my worries. Except for the usual shoplifters—and me—MacPherson’s had never been looted. The next morning I’d take out enough cash for us to make change for the day. Each Friday I collected the bulk of our profits and put it all in a brown paper bag. I delivered it to Mac and Millie before I went to go visit Betty Jean. They trusted me so much, they never counted the money before I left.

My in-laws wasn’t home when I got there around five thirty this evening. I let myself in and went directly to the pantry. The bag I brung today was almost twice as heavy as the one I’d delivered last Friday, thanks to all the holiday sales this week. I was slaphappy about that. Because of Yvonne and Milton’s new demands, I had to keep a heftier wad than usual.