However I was doing, it had to be better than Twyla. Everything wrong with me would heal. Not so, her. “I’m okay,” I said. “They’ve got you working, I see.”

“Yep, they thought it would be more effective if a relative sat here,” she said. “So here I am. If you say six of the boys were local, we need at least four thousand dollars for each burial, so our goal is twenty-four thousand. We got these up all over town, but this is a poor place. I think we’ll be lucky to get six thousand through these collections.”

“How do you expect to make up the rest, or do you think that just won’t happen?”

Twyla looked grim. “I think it won’t happen. But we’re doing the best we can. Maybe if the poorer families can just make a good down payment on the funerals through these donations, each individual family can pay the rest on time.”

I nodded. “Good idea.” Emboldened by the pain medication, I said, “It’s too bad the media don’t chip in. After all, they’re profiting by the deaths as well, aren’t they? They should donate something.”

A fire lit in Twyla’s eyes. “That’s a good idea,” she said. “I wonder that I didn’t think of it. What happened today at Tom Almand’s? I’m hearing some mighty funny things. That boy of his in trouble? Hey, Sarah,” she said, lifting her round face to a woman coming in. “Thanks for helping,” she added as the older woman dropped a couple of dollars into the slot.

“There are too many people around to talk about it,” I said quietly. No one had asked me not to discuss the macabre nature of the findings at Tom Almand’s, but I didn’t want to be broadcasting it. Chuck Almand would be a pariah soon enough. I wouldn’t hasten the process. Though some country people tend to be more practical about animals than city people, plenty of the inhabitants of Doraville would be disgusted at the pain inflicted on cats and squirrels and the odd dog…especially if the cats and the dog turned out to be somebody’s pets. “But he’s not a boy you’d want to have dating your daughter or granddaughter.”

“The sheriff says we won’t get the bodies back for a week at least, maybe longer,” Twyla said. “It seems hard that we finally discover Jeff, but we can’t bury him.”

“At the same time,” I said, “you want every bit of evidence that can tie his death to the killer.”

“I don’t like to think about him getting cut up,” Twyla said. “I can’t think about it.”