All this had taken most of an hour. I now knew Durmond was no longer on the faculty of Drakestone College. I also knew he had a gun in the dresser and a peculiar affinity for disreputable friendships. Then again, I didn't know how his mugging related to the murder, but I was convinced it did. He'd been shot in the stairwell by someone thoughtful enough to put him in a bed. Jerome had been shot in the kitchen by someone who'd felt the need to clean up afterward. Thoughtfulness and cleanliness were not traits I associated with the local criminal element.

I lay down on the bed and began at the beginning.

"I've just about had it with you," Dahlia growled, not at her captor but at her husband, who was in a corner, tied up like a bale of cotton. Marvel had done a competent job of it, although he'd been careful not to cause any pain and had inquired solicitously throughout the process. Kevin had been real grateful, sort of.

"Now, honey bunny," he said, his Adam's apple rippling against the clothesline, "there's no cause to get all upset again. We'll get out of this somehow-I promise. And when we do, why, we'll just go right to Niagara Falls like we planned. You're really gonna like it."

"I ought to drop you in the water while you're still tied up so's I could watch you bobble around like a cork." Dahlia was going to elaborate, but Marvel came out of the kitchen and gave her a mean look. "What's your problem?" she said to him, figuring she could get back to Kevin whenever she had a mind to. He sure wasn't going any place farther than he could roll.

Marvel peeked out the front window. "My problem is two cops out back and about ten of them out front. Jesus, you'd think they had Al Pacino holed up in here." He took another look, then glumly shook his head and sat down near the window. "You doing okay, man?"

"Yeah, I'm just fine," Kevin said eagerly.

"Some honeymoon," Dahlia sniffled. "I've been dreaming of our honeymoon since the day we got engaged. All this year I've been lying in my bed thinking of how romantic it sounded, and how I'd be Mrs. Kevin Buchanon and we could…" She snatched a napkin from the holder and blew her nose. "Aw, Kevvie, 'member when I was working at the Kwik-Screw, and we'd go back into the storeroom and it'd be like there was violin music playing and we were in heaven in each other's arms?"

Kevvie gurgled in agreement, although he wasn't thinking about her arms or fool violins.

Marvel was getting pretty damn bummed out by the situation-and with Big Mama and his main man. He hadn't had more than a few minutes of sleep for several days, and although he'd washed up as best he could in the restroom, he was feeling dirty and sweaty and real tired of his hostages.

And there didn't seem to be a solution, not with the battalion of triggerhappy cops outside. He knew damn well they'd turn him to Swiss cheese if he so much as came to the door and tried to give himself up. They sure as hell weren't going to let him hustle the hostages out to the station wagon so they could all go to Niagara Falls. No, somewhere along the line they were likely to get tired of sitting on their asses and blow up the diner like it was nothing but a target on the practice range.

He went back to the kitchen to make sure they weren't pulling any tricks.

As Mrs. Jim Bob arrived at the rusty sign proclaiming the limits of Maggody, she slowed down, not out of respect for a sign telling her to do so, but out of a growing sense of dismay for what she'd done at Naughty Nights. Well, maybe not exactly dismay, since Jim Bob deserved to pay through the nose for the sin of having a charge account at a store that specialized in lasciviousness.

"One of our best customers," the girl had said, just as if Mrs. Jim Bob looked like the sort of woman who'd be caught dead in a peekaboo bra and bikini-cut panties. He was buying presents for someone else, most likely a slut with brassy hair and makeup slathered on with a trowel.

The elegantly wrapped packages piled high in the backseat had a redolence of sinfulness that was beginning to suffocate her. She'd bought them in a rage, but what could she do with them now? Distribute them at the Missionary Society's next meeting? Donate them as door prizes at Jim Bob's SuperSaver Buy 4 Less? Hide them in a closet where her cleaning woman, Perkins's eldest, might come across them and see those gold stickers? Perkins's eldest was taciturn, but she might take a wicked pleasure in spreading the word around town.

Mrs. Jim Bob turned off the air conditioner and rolled down the window, but the sinfulness emanating from the back seat was worse than swamp gas. It was…Satan's flatulence. Ruby Bee's Bar & Grill was closed, which saved her from having to keep her chin up while she drove past a bunch of rednecks who could tell just from looking what was in the backseat. The police department was closed, too. If that smart-mouthed Arly Hanks ever found out, she'd laugh herself silly before settling down to needling Mrs. Jim Bob till the morning of judgment Day. Roy Stiver was sitting in a rocking chair outside his antique store. Although he failed to do anything except keep whittling on a chunk of wood, she was sure there'd been a funny look on his face as she went by. The willowy hippie woman who owned the Emporium Hardware was on the porch, talking to disgusting Raz Buchanon. They both looked at her, as did Marjorie from the back of Raz's pickup truck, and the hippie even smiled and waved-just like she could see right through the car door.

There was only one thing to do, she concluded grimly as she pulled into the grass beside the rectory of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. She had to seek spiritual guidance. She had to get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness for whichever sin applied, after which she could tell Brother Verber to dispose of the packages in a discreet manner. The episode would be over with. Jim Bob would never dare to mention the charge slip (not if he valued his skin, anyway), and she would simply get back to the Christian business of cleansing the community of illicit whiskey.

After a quick look to make sure no one was watching, she took the packages out of the backseat, careful not to inhale the miasma, and knocked on the metal door.

"Brother Verber, open this door immediately!" she called. "I have no intention of standing here like a salesman with a case of brushes. Open this door!"

Brother Verber did as ordered. "Why, if it isn't Sister Barbara behind that stack of pretty boxes. Are they gifts for the little heathen orphans in Africa?"

She went past him, checked to make sure he wasn't in the midst of counseling any errant members of the flock, and dumped the packages on the dinette table. "They are not for little heathen orphans in Africa," she said with a pinched smile. "They are proof of Jim Bob's perfidy. I brought them to you so you could get rid of them in a manner befitting your position as spiritual leader of the flock. We have to pray over them until Satan flees, and then burn them until they're nothing more than ashes." She'd been planning to suggest he run them out to the Farberville landfill, but this new idea was better, more symbolic, more likely to keep her secret. In fact, she thought with a slightly wider smile, she could scoop up the ashes and put them in a bag to present to Jim Bob. Wouldn't his expression be amusing when she explained they represented over four hundred dollars of lasciviousness?

"What's in 'em?" Brother Verber asked uneasily.

"It doesn't matter. What's important is that they reek of depravity, and we have a duty to make sure they never fall into the hands of some innocent child or good Christian. Go ahead and sprinkle them with holy water, Brother Verber, and we'll commence to pray over them until we see the fierce red devils go swarming off to find another home."