dollars.”
The woman raised a brow.
“Buck-fifty, then.”
The women shuffled and bargained over a few more items before Maggie banged open the back-office door.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
She continued to thank her way up the aisle. “Thank you,” she said again. “You don’t know what this means. My babies can have a merry Christmas.”
“Bless you both,” she said to Sarah, then banged her way out the door and into the street.
Dennis limped behind her with the shoes and the jeans. “You reckon these’ll sell?”
Sarah Hunter tried to keep it to a whisper, but it was hard to do. “If you want to sell them,” she said, “get yourself a store and sell them yourself. Personally, I don’t want nothing to do with them.”
“Why not?”
“Cause they’re hotter than a two-dollar pistol.”
“She said she bought them herself.”
“And didn’t show no receipt to prove it. And the tags is off but they never been worn. And here’s Maggie Boylan, the biggest thief in five counties telling you some bonehead story. And you think they ain’t stolen.”
The two women at the children’s bin decided it was time to settle up. Sarah rang them up and bagged them up and helped them out the door, all with one critical eye on her husband.
She waited until the women had started gossiping down the street before she lit into him for real.
“What,” she wanted to know, “did you think you were doing?”
“I bought some clothes. We’re in the business of selling clothes.”
“Think a minute.”
“Think what?”
“Where’s Maggie Boylan gonna get the money for clothes like that?”
“How do I know?”
“Her old man’s been in jail all these months because he took the hit for her and all’s she can do for him is to sit out in that little house in the country and stay high on OxyContin. She ain’t got one dime to rub against another and she’s gonna come in here with some new kicks and a pair of britches look like they come off of Shania Twain’s ass and it don’t occur to you there might be something fishy about the whole damn deal?”
He shrugged. He was good for errands and for fixing things up, but he had no business sense at all.
He started back to the office.
“So how much did you give her?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“Twenty bucks!”
“Twenty bucks.”
“You know she’s probably smoked your twenty bucks by now. Or she’s put it up her nose. You know it ain’t for no Christmas toys in layaway.”
He rattled around in the back room looking for his tool. “Do you know where that hacksaw went?”
“Do I ever use a hacksaw?”
“I thought I’d ask.”
“So what were you two talking about for so long back there?”
“About how her kids wouldn’t have no Christmas if she couldn’t put some money down on layaway. How they got her old man locked up over nothing. How the county’s keeping her from seeing her kids . . .”
“Because she’s an unfit mother.”
“So I felt sorry for her.”
“I reckon you felt a little more than that.”
“What are you saying?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Now you’re talking crazy.”
“You were thinking with the wrong head. That’s what I was saying.”
He waved the hacksaw at her and clumped and shuffled out the back door.
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES later, a girl stalked in with metal in her lip and a shaky fire in her eye. She looked straight at Sarah and asked, “Has Maggie Boylan been in here?” Her fire died quickly and she lost the track of Sarah’s eye. Then she became just a girl with metal studs in her lips and nose, a nervous young girl who could not look Sarah in the eye. And that was what gave Sarah the clue.
“She stole my clothes and I want to know has she been in here?”
Sarah shot Dennis another glance—this time it was an I-told-you-so glance.
“I know she’s going around trying to sell my stuff, so I want to know has she been in here?” She pulled a bulky, spangled purse off her shoulder and set it on the counter.
Sarah pulled the shoes and the jeans from behind the counter. “These look familiar?”
“They’re familiar enough. How much did she get you for?”
Sarah silenced her husband with another sharp glance. “She didn’t get us too bad,” she said.
“I don’t have anything to pay you with.”
“Then don’t pay nothing.”
“Well, I hate for you to have to take the hit for what she done.” She sucked in her lower lip and chewed on a stud. She reached for the shoes, but Sarah set her hands across them.
“She’ll get hers in the end,” Sarah said.
“I reckon.”
“She’ll do the wrong person and that’ll be the end of Maggie Boylan.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sarah folded the shoes and the jeans together and put them in the spangled bag. “If she ain’t died of an overdose first,” she said.
“She sure could,” the girl said. She stretched out her hand for the bag, but Sarah held on a moment more. “It’s a shame,” Sarah said. “I knew her when she was a girl and she was as good a girl growing up as there was.”
The girl nodded, but she did not seem to hear. She was eager to get out the door. She put the bag under her arm, nodded briefly, and turned toward the street.
Sarah followed her out the door, then watched from the front step. The girl ran to the corner, got into a car, started it up, and pulled into the street.
And
