Willie Frank’s jaw dropped. “Good God! We was right. There ain’t no doubt about it now. There is only one way Odell could know how long it took Sheriff Potts to get here, too. He’s got to be the lying blabbermouth that made that call!”

“Exactly. What he said put the last nail in the coffin,” Yvonne growled.

“His coffin,” I added. “I hope he don’t stay here too long tonight. I’m scared I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

“Now hold on, Milton. We can’t do nothing for a while. In the meantime, we have to keep acting normal. The last thing we want is for Odell to get suspicious of us,” Willie Frank said. All of a sudden, he got a strange look on his face and he scratched his head. “I can’t imagine what y’all done to make him do such a thing.”

“I can. It ain’t nothing but straight-up jealousy,” I declared.

Willie Frank and Yvonne looked at each other, then at me with confused expressions on their faces.

“All right now. Y’all don’t need to look so confused.” I cocked my head to the side and nodded at Yvonne. “I got the best-looking Red Bone woman ever born. Look at all that long straight hair, that slim little body, and them baby doll features on her face. She look more like twenty-two than thirty-two. Every colored man in this town wish they was in my shoes, and in my bed.” I winked at Yvonne. “Odell is stuck with a woman I wouldn’t be seen with at a sideshow. Hell, she is a sideshow.” I laughed and was glad Yvonne and Willie Frank did, too.

“Well, Joyce is mighty plain, and looks rather long in the tooth for a woman of thirty-five. But she ain’t that bad,” Willie Frank defended. “She do got some saving grace: a big inheritance coming to her someday.”

“It don’t matter that she’ll be rolling in money when her folks kick the bucket. She still won’t be half as mouthwatering to look at as Yvonne.”

“I don’t know, y’all. There has to be more to this situation than Odell being jealous,” Willie Frank said. “Y’all swipe a lot of stuff from the store—a heap more than anybody else. He could have got wind of it, but was too skittish to confront his close friends and neighbors. But he’s losing money left and right and decided to put a stop to it.”