"A crying shame," I said to complete the symmetry. I had no idea what was up, but I had no doubts I would find out in the next thirty seconds.

It took sixty because we lapsed into a temporary standoff. Ruby Bee and Estelle exchanged looks and waited for me to demand to know the cause of this bleak vision. I contemplated the gold flecks in the mirror and waited for them to spit it out.

"Don't you want to hear about it?" Estelle finally said, pissed because she'd caved in and knew I knew it.

"Sure," I said. "Can I have that iced tea?"

"It's that monstrosity Jim Bob's putting in across the street," Ruby Bee said. "It's going to put plenty of folks out of business, and you got to do something about it."

Realizing I wasn't going to see iced tea anytime soon, I leaned over the bar and got myself a glass of water. "It's ugly, it's been tying up traffic for six months, and it's likely to be staffed by Buchanons from under half the rocks in Stump County. Who's it going to put out of business?"

"Your mother," Estelle said. "The ad says it has this big deli section with tables and plastic silverware so you can eat right there in the store."

"The picnic pavilion," Ruby Bee added in a dull voice.

I shook my head. "It may hurt business for a few days, but it's not going to win anyone's heart for long. That kind of food's never good, and you're the best cook in the county."

Ruby Bee pointed a shaky finger at the empty room. "Just take a look for yourself Nobody's here."

I tried to figure out how to tiptoe around this one, but nothing all that clever came to mind. "I've heard lately that you've been…confrontational with your regular customers," I said carefully. "You've been getting hot under the collar, demanding loyalty oaths and, in general, running everybody off." Valuing my life, I did not add that the hottest topic at the pool hall was whether or not she was too old for PMS (she was).

"I never!" Estelle gasped.

Ruby Bee once again began to wipe the counter, but without her earlier energy. "Maybe I have. I'll be the first to admit I'm not pleased with this pavilion directly across the street. I'm too old to learn how to make croissant sandwiches and mousse. All I know how to make is regular food like meat loaf and scalloped potatoes.

"And all your customers will try the new place and then come right back here like they always did," I said soothingly.

"What about the Satterings?" Estelle demanded. "You think Ivy and Alex can count on folks' loyalty when their produce costs more?"

"I don't know what to tell you. What about you, Ruby Bee? You buy from them because the stand's convenient. Are you going to buy produce at the supermarket because it's cheaper?"

"Of course not," Ruby Bee said, although not with enough conviction to fool a toddler.

Estelle was still into the voice of doom. "And that Mexican fellow that bought the Dairee Dee-Lishus is right upset, I heard. Dahlia said Kevin said he liked to throw a pot of boiling chili at him. The Mexican at Kevin, not the other way around."

"There's not anything any of us can do about it," I said. "Believe it or not, not even Maggody can withstand a spurt of progress every now and then. We used to gripe about the lack of merchandise and the exorbitant prices at the Kwik-Screw. Now we're going to have to face a larger selection and reasonable prices. I'm afraid we're stuck with it, ladies."

"Unless this picnic pavilion at Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less goes belly-up the first day it opens," Estelle said in a casual voice.

"Why would it?" I said in an uncasual voice.

"You just never know."

"That's right," Ruby Bee said, gazing over my head. "You just never know."

The last bit of reading matter of any significance had not yet been read. It was a letter addressed to the Maggody town council, and it lay in a well-polished silver tray in the foyer of Jim Bob's house. He had ignored it on his way out the door, and Mrs. Jim Bob, who opened whatever mail caught her eye, was much too worried about the upcoming Corinthians II face-off in Sunday school to bother with local affairs.

Jim Bob would read it over coffee the next morning, and it would take him all day to figure out how best to use it to his own advantage, which was pretty much how he approached everything.

The letter was from the Starley City Youth Center and was thick with dates, guidelines, rules, regulations, methods of compliance, and boring stuff like that. The gist of it, however, was that Maggody was invited to enter its local championship baseball team in the Starley City Labor Day Weekend Invitational Intermediate League Baseball Tournament (in subsequent paragraphs referred to as the SCLDWIILBT, but don't try to sound it out, 'cause you can't without coming off like you're drunker'n Cooter Brown).

Maggody didn't have a local championship baseball team, but not because there wasn't a competitive spirit. It had a good high-school football team, and a darn tough basketball team. The local 4-H'ers always picked up their fair share of blue and red ribbons at the county fair. The Future Homemakers of America thrived under the enthusiastic guidance of Miss Lottie Estes, and the club's secretary secretary-treasurer had won third place in the state bake-off with her Lemon-Lime Surprise Dinner Rolls.

Maggody didn't have a soccer team, though, because it was a sissy foreign game where you wear shorts and don't get dirty. It didn't have a chess team or an IQ Bowl team, for obvious reasons. And because nobody'd ever given it any thought, it didn't have a championship baseball team. Not yet, anyway.

"Then the high-school band plays, right?" Lamont asked, a small notebook in one hand and a much-gnawed pencil in the other.

Jim Bob poured himself another four fingers of bourbon and sat down on the edge of the lumpy bed while he tried to remember exactly what the band director had said. "The band's going to gather behind the store at one-thirty, get theirselves lined up however they do it, and then come marching around to the front at exactly two o'clock."

"In full uniform?"

"Yeah, full uniform. White bucks, brass buttons, feathers on their heads, all that shit. But some kids are away for the summer, so there'll be holes. Both tubas are gone, along with all but one of the drums and a goodly number of the clarinets. There wasn't any way Wiley could make them come back for the grand opening."

"I suppose not," Lamont muttered, "but if we're down to a fat flutist and a pimply trombone player, I'm not sure it's worth it. We don't want to look foolish in front of the media. The ribbon cutting's at two-fifteen, and then we'll try to keep the camera crew and reporters around as long as we can with free food. I'll have a bottle of booze in the office."

Jim Bob bunched the pillows against the headboard and settled back on the bed, taking a wicked pleasure in putting his dusty shoes on the motel-room bedspread. "Hey, Lamont, I had a helluva an idea over the weekend. You're going to love it."

"Yeah, go ahead," Lamont said, making a note to check that the store uniforms were starched before they were distributed to the employees. Who were the dumbest people he'd ever met. Three-quarters of them were named Buchanon, and all of those blessed with simian foreheads and nasty little yellowish eyes. And therefore resembling, in varying degrees, Jim Bob Buchanon and his tight-assed wife, who'd been introduced as Barbara Anne Buchanon Buchanon. Lamont had been appalled, but not surprised.

Jim Bob looked as smug as a retriever with a splattered duck in its mouth. "I got this letter from the Starley City folks saying Maggody could enter a team in some damn fool baseball tournament. I started thinking about it, and I finally called over there and got some information."