Bitter Business

Cavanaugh and they’re both dead. But—”
    I never found out what else Darlene was going to tell me because she stopped in midsentence. Just then, from the other end of the house came the unmistakable sound of a woman screaming.
     

17
     
    Darlene ran into the main section of the house, through the living room, and down the hall. I was right on her heels. We met Peaches coming from the opposite direction, clutching her pink satin bathrobe around her throat and shrieking like a freight train.
    “What’s happened?” I demanded. I had seen too many emergencies in too few days and my heart was in my throat.
    “There’s... there’s... there’s...” she gasped, pointing in the direction of the bedrooms.
    “There’s what, sugar?” asked Darlene, putting a motherly arm around Peaches’s shoulder.
    “A... snake!” she managed to blurt.
    “Where’s the snake?” Darlene demanded. Relief flooded through me.
    “In our bathroom,” Peaches replied, struggling to regain control of her breathing. “I went in to brush my teeth.... I heard it behind me, rattling.”
    “Did you get bit?” Darlene looked Jack’s wife up and down.
    Peaches shook her head no.
    “Where’s Jack?” I asked. “Is he all right?”
    “He’s in the bedroom. He’s on the phone calling one of the men.”
    Jack marched into the hall and slammed the door quickly behind him. He was wearing black pajamas and knee-high rubber boots.
    “Are you okay, honey?” he asked his wife, his voice still slurred from the bourbon. “It’s nothing to get upset about. Just a big old rattlesnake. Someone must have left a door open, that’s all.”
    Peaches nodded, pulling her thin robe around her shoulders. Jack turned to me.
    “Kate, you take Peaches into the kitchen,” he ordered. “I’ll heat up some water and make y’all some tea,” Darlene offered as we made our way toward the kitchen. “This time of year if we get a lot of rain, the snakes come looking for dry land,” she explained, filling the kettle from the tap. “Remember the time Mr. Philip had one?”
    “Sally was in the kitchen,” said Peaches, smiling in spite of herself. “She turned around and there was a rattlesnake—it must have been as thick as my arm— slithering across her white tile floor.”
    “They heard her screaming all the way down to Chapaloosa.” Darlene laughed.
    “But what I want to know is how this one got into my bathroom?” Peaches demanded anxiously. “I’m so glad I decided to leave Snuggles in Chicago.”
    “That little dog of yours would have been that snake’s dinner,” said Darlene.
    “Ugh!” Peaches shuddered. “I hate to think of that horrible snake slithering through my house.”
    We heard a car door slam outside and Darlene scurried off to greet Tom, the farmhand who had driven our van from the airport. He appeared in the kitchen wearing overalls over a bright red union suit and a pair of high boots. In one hand he held a long pole with a loop of rope at one end. In the other he carried a big blue plastic bucket with a lid. He scratched his head sleepily.
    “Where’s the snake at?” he demanded. In the country, people go to bed early, and Jack’s call had obviously awakened him. His hair stood up comically on his head.
    “It’s in the bathroom, right this way,” said Jack, bringing up the rear.
    “Stay here with me, Kate,” Peaches begged. I was all too happy to comply. The men disappeared, and Darlene, not wanting to miss out on the action, followed.
    “How are they going to catch it?” I asked.
    “Tom’ll slip that loop over its head—it’s a kind of lasso for snakes. He’ll pull the rope tight and then just pick it up and drop it into the bucket.”
    “It sounds like they’re prepared for this.”
    “They do catch rattlers, especially this time of year. Tom’s got a lot of experience with them on account of the dogs.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “When they have a new litter of hunting dogs that they’re starting to train, one of the first things they do is catch a rattlesnake and kill it. Then they run an electric wire through its body. After that they let the puppies loose and let them come sniffing around. When one of them touches the snake they get an electric shock.”
    “How terrible!”
    “Not as terrible as being killed by a snake,” Peaches countered reasonably. “A hunting dog with a good pedigree costs thousands of dollars, and then they spend hundreds of hours training it. If the first time