“No,” Lemuel said. “Of course I checked the shop records, as soon as Bobo told me Aubrey was gone. There were two transactions—but one was before you saw her, Olivia, and the second one . . . August Schneider pawned his mother’s silver again. He does that three times a year, at least.”

“This August, he’s an okay guy?” Manfred was returning from Fiji’s kitchen with another beer.

“August is eighty-seven if he’s a day,” Bobo said. “I don’t see him being able to harm Aubrey.”

“But what if he hit her with his car?” Olivia said suddenly.

“No!” Bobo said, protesting, but there was a sudden burst of enthusiastic conversation. The tenor of it was one of relief. The culprit would not be one of them, it would not be one of the Eggleston warriors, and August would hardly know about it.

Olivia leaned over to take Bobo’s hand. “I know you don’t want to even think about that, but what if he did? You know August ought not to be driving. But he’s got no one to take the keys away from him. And he’s got that big old Cadillac.”

“We’ve already looked at the Caddy, and there’s not a speck of blood on it,” said Arthur Smith. The bell had tinkled when he entered, but no one had paid attention.

There followed a moment of total silence. No one wanted to ask what he’d come for.

“I had a strange conversation with the Eggleston family this morning,” Smith said. He’d taken off his hat, but now he put it back on, as though that signaled he was conducting business. “All three of them were coming down with a cold because they’d been standing out in the chilly air last night. I asked them why, and they couldn’t say. Bart was mad at Mamie for telling me that much. But they did seem to chalk that up to you, somehow, Fiji.”

“Oh, boo hoo hoo,” said Lemuel, sounding like the very embodiment of cold himself. “If they were foolish enough to stand out in the rain, it’s hardly Fiji’s fault, Sheriff.”

“Only if she held a gun to their heads.”

“The other way around,” said Bobo unwisely. But then the glares of everyone around him reminded Bobo that he was not going to tell the law what the Egglestons had done, and he subsided.

Arthur Smith said, “If you’re not going to tell me, I could haul you all in and keep you until you told me what happened. But if you’re all right, Fiji, and no one is going to file a complaint against anyone else, there’s not much I can do about it. I was looking forward to an excuse to get that asshole into jail, but if you won’t talk . . .”