She waited outside her Charger on Second Street for the Rickreiners, mother and son, manager and candidate, feeling the approach of another scalding day delaminate her into layers of time. Three weeks exactly since she and Harley had made love. Seventeen days since she should have had started her period. Seven days since Taylor had stuck the hoe in Dylan’s arm. Only eighty-seven days until the election. One-eighth of a day—three busy hours—since Grammy Belle had caught her peeing in a jar, around the same time that she got the email from Oppo popping the question: So do you want my help?

Before the sheriff could come further unglued, Babette Rickreiner’s custom-gold Silverado cornered at dangerous speed off Main Street onto Second Street and jerked to an angular stop ahead of the Charger. Something new: the big truck’s tailgate displayed a life-sized 3-D decal that made it look as if Babette had Kenny Rogers bound and gagged in her truck box. Good God, this woman. The horny widow. Candidate Barry followed his mommy in a vehicle perfectly unbecoming of a sheriff, or of any adult for that matter, a vintage El Camino, red, accessorized with a hot-green Yamaha dirt bike tethered upright in the box. Her opponent roared up to bookend the sheriff, who cringed and waited.

First, pint-sized Babette tumbled out, birdy-legged and bazooka-chested, balancing on six-inch-tall wedged sandals. The woman was seventy, dressed twenty-four, and talked like a trucker. This early in the morning, her look wasn’t quite together: her unadorned earlobes sagged weirdly, and she had nicked her teeth with lipstick while driving.

“So you’re just standing out here sunning your tits,” she began.

Sheriff Kick waited for meaning.

“Because you didn’t catch the cocksuckers.”

Ah. And ick. “None to catch,” she answered, not untruthfully. “The building is secure. You haven’t been robbed. I called the service provider. They should have called you.”

Babette rumbled her loose throat and spat a nighttime specimen. She might have rolled her eyes behind the rhinestone sunglasses before she said, “We came all this way…” She opened her complex dental work in a yawn. “Like we got nothing else to do but chase false alarms.”

Your choice to chase, lady. Why not trust the sheriff’s department to handle alarm calls, like a normal business owner?