Twisted

of sweet tea.
    Returning to Jim’s, no, her office, she sat down in the leather chair and spun slowly, listening to the now-familiar squeak of the mechanism.
    Thinking: Well, Sheriff, you were almost right.
    There was only one little variation in the story.
    Which was that Sandra May had known all along about Jim’s affair with Loretta. She’d gotten used to the smell of turpentine on her husband’s skin but never used to the stink of the woman’s trailer-trash perfume, which hung like a cloud of bug spray around him as he climbed into bed too tired even to kiss her. (“A man doesn’t want you three times a week, Sandra, you better start wondering why.” Thanks, Mama.)
    And so when Jim DuMont drove off to Billings Lake last October, Sandra May followed and confronted him about Loretta. And when he admitted it she said, “Thank you for not lying,” took the billy club and crushed his skull with a single blow then kicked him into the frigid water.
    She’d thought that would be the end of it. The death was ruled accidental and everybody forgot about the case—until that man at Billings Lake had come forward and reported seeing a woman with Jim just before he’d died. Sandra May knew it was only a matter of time until they tracked her down for the murder.
    The threat of a life sentence—not the condition of the company—was the terrible predicament she’d found herself in, the predicament for which she was praying for help “from the sky.” (As for the company? Who cared? The “bit of insurance money” totaled nearly a million dollars. To get away with that, she would’ve gladly watched DuMont Products Inc. go bankrupt and given up the money Jim had socked away for his scrawny slut.) How could she save herself from prison? But then Ralston gave her the answer when he’d picked her up. He was too slick. She’d sensed a scam and it didn’t take much digging to find the connection to Loretta. She figured they were planning to get the company away from her.
    And so she’d come up with a plan of her own.
    Sandra May now opened the bottom drawer of the desk and took out a bottle of small-batch Kentucky bourbon and poured a good three fingers’ worth into the iced tea. She sat back in her husband’s former chair, now hers exclusively, and gazed out the windowat a stand of tall, dark pine trees bending in the wind as a spring storm moved in.
    Thinking to Ralston and Loretta: Never did tell you the rest of Mama’s expression, did I?
    “Honey,” the old woman had told her daughter, “a Southern woman has to be a notch stronger than her man. And she’s got to be a notch more resourceful too. And, just between you and me, a notch more conniving. Whatever you do, don’t forget that part.”
    Sandra May DuMont took a long drink of iced tea and picked up the phone to call a travel agent.

T HE K NEELING S OLDIER

    “H e’s out there? Again?”
    A dish fell to the tile kitchen floor and shattered.
    “Gwen, go down to the rec room. Now.”
    “But, Daddy,” she whispered, “how can he be? They said six months. They promised six months. At least!”
    He peered through the curtains, squinting, and his heart sank. “It’s him.” He sighed. “It’s him. Gwen, do what I told you. The rec room. Now.” Then he shouted into the dining room, “Doris!”
    His wife hurried into the kitchen. “What is it?”
    “He’s back. Call the police.”
    “He’s back ?” the woman muttered in a grim voice.
    “Just do it. And Gwen, I don’t want him to see you. Go downstairs. I’m not going to tell you again.”
    Doris lifted the phone and called the sheriff’s office. She only had to hit one button; they’d put the number on the speed dialer ages ago.
    Ron stepped to the back porch and looked outside.
    The hours after dinner, on a cool springtime evening like this, were the most peaceful moments of the year in Locust Grove. The suburb was a comforting thirty-two miles from New York City, on the North Shore of Long Island. Some truly wealthy folk lived here—new money as well as some Rockefeller and Morgan hand-me-downs. Then there were the aspiring rich and a few popular artists, some ad agency CEOs. Mostly, though, the village was made up of people like the Ashberrys. Living comfortably in their six-hundred-thousand-dollar houses, commuting on the LIRR or driving to their management jobs at publishing or computer companies on Long Island.
    This April evening found the dogwoods in bloom and the fragrance