“Bullshit!” Lester shouted. “Pure bullshit! It ain’t true! You keep saying it is, I’m asking you to leave my house!”
“I’ll leave,” starting for the door once more. “Eric almost broke his neck running out the back door. Ruth Ann just had a heart attack, but she’s healthy enough to jump out the window and run when she heard me coming.”
“Doesn’t mean anything. I know my wife. She wouldn’t stoop so low, mess with her sister’s man. No, Shirley, she wouldn’t debase herself. She wouldn’t, she just wouldn’t!”
“They both admitted it to Sheriff Bledsoe.”
“That’s what he says! Who the hell is he, Al Sharpton? He ain’t above lying.”
“Lester, you believe what you wanna. Tell Ruth Ann I’ll eventually catch her and put a foot up her rancid ass. I mean that! So don’t forget to tell her.”
“Okay, Shirley. I’ll make sure I tell her.”
Ruth Ann watched the sandals saunter out the door and disappear down the hallway. Seconds later she heard them click-clocking on the sidewalk out front.
Would Lester stand by and watch Shirley make good on her threat? Did Lester cultivate a seed of doubt what Shirley had told him. She hoped he did, prayed he did, but knew deep down he didn’t. Somehow she had to plant a seed of doubt in his mind.
How?
Yes, she thought, it might work. A little weak—
She started to crawl from underneath the bed. “Aaaauugggh!”
She froze. Someone was screaming, and since she and Lester were the only two in the room and she hadn’t uttered a peep…
“Aaaauuugggh!”
Her heartbeat drummed inside her ears.
“Noooo!” The work boots stomped the floor, then disappeared above the bed.
A pounding noise… a guttural scream… more pounding.
Her favorite bed partner!
Teddy landed on the floor, an arm’s length away, mutilated, his right arm missing, small legs bent abnormally behind his back, only one of three buttons remaining on his deflated tummy.
Ruth Ann considered grabbing him and pulling him to safety. Then Lester pounced on Teddy like a predator attacking small prey and punched him and punched him and punched him and punched him and punched him...
Ruth Ann winced with each punch. Lester, apparently unsatisfied with the damage he’d inflicted, clamped his teeth on Teddy’s one remaining eye and flailed the eviscerated body in every direction… The eye wouldn’t give.
Lester started growling, shook his head more violently, and still the eye wouldn’t give. He stopped, Teddy dangling under his clenched teeth by a gossamer, and stared into Ruth Ann’s face.
She managed a nervous smile and said, “Hello, honey.”
Chapter 24
“Is it too tight?” Robert Earl asked Albert. The boa constrictor, eyes bulging, tongue flitting, flipped and flopped like a worm on a hot plate. “Shoots!” Robert Earl said, and removed the dog collar cinched around Albert’s neck. “I guess it is too tight.”
Immediately, Albert stopped flip-flopping. Maybe this ain’t a good idea, Robert Earl thought, noticing a dark crease where the collar had been.
He’d figured Albert had tired of being confined to a box and desired an unfettered view of the great outdoors. So he hooked one end of a ten-foot dog collar to the clothesline, which would have given Albert plenty of wriggle room, and tied the other end to Albert’s neck—well, the area just below the snake’s head.
The problem was he couldn’t adjust the collar to a proper fit. Too loose, Albert slipped free. A wee too snug, Albert gagged and whipped and then played dead, as it was doing now.
“You can stop it now, Albert.” The snake didn’t budge. Robert Earl nudged Albert with his hand. Nothing. Pushed it, and Albert rolled halfway on his back.
Robert Earl picked it up and the snake hung flaccidly in his hands. “Albert?”
Just then Estafay called from the back porch, “Robert! Robert, Shirley wants to talk to you.”
Robert Earl dropped Albert to the ground and pretended to study his neighbor’s yard. “Tell her I’ll call her back.”
“She’s here.”
“I’m coming.” He took another look at Albert, a twisted white-and-orange knot on the ground.
Inside the house, Shirley was sitting at the kitchen table. “Robert Earl,” she said, “I need to borrow a gun.”
“What you need a gun for?”
“I’m gonna bust a cap in Ruth Ann’s stanky ass,” Shirley said matter-of-factly.
“Are you serious?”
“I sure am. When I get through with Ruth Ann, Eric’s next.”
“Why? What for?”
“It’s rather personal. Just go get the gun. I also need to borrow your truck. It shouldn’t take long to do what I gotta do.”
“You’re joking, aren’t you?”
Estafay came into the kitchen. “What’s the matter, Robert?”
“Family business,” Shirley said. “Robert Earl, why don’t you go get it so I can go.”
“Shirley,” Robert Earl said, biting a thumbnail, “I don’t know if I should do it. I might get into serious trouble. Sheriff Bledsoe just cut me slack on some stuff. I give you one of my guns, you shoot somebody, my butt in hot water again. Sheriff Bledsoe told me the next time my name popped up in some mess, I’m done.”
“Sheriff Bledsoe played a trick on you,” Shirley said. “The polygraph machine was a—”
Estafay interrupted her. “Sheriff Bledsoe cut you slack on what, Robert?”
“I can’t do it, Shirley,” Robert Earl said.
“Cut you slack on what?” Estafay insisted.
Robert Earl shook his head. “Nothing, honey.”
“Why not?” Shirley asked. “You don’t like Ruth Ann. Remember when she and daddy laughed at you? Wasn’t no call for her to do that.”
“I would like to know,” Estafay said, poking him in the chest with two fingers, “what the Sheriff cut you slack on.”
“Give me a gun, Robert Earl. I won’t kill her. I’ll just give her a limp. Each step she takes she’ll think about what she did to me.”
Robert Earl held up both hands. “Timeout! Both of y’all ganging up on me. A tag team—it ain’t fair!”
“Give me a gun, Robert Earl, I’m outta here.”
“Shirley, I told you I can’t do it.”
“A rifle, anything that shoots.”
