Free Death by Deep Dish Pie by Sharon Short Page B

trying to dump her out. Or as if she was too big for the couch. Sally’s a big girl, it’s true—nearly six feet tall, and wide shoulders that were the envy of our high school football team’s linebackers, and naturally blond curly hair that was the envy of our cheerleaders. Sally’s nearly two full years younger than me—but she’s always been bigger and tougher and prettier than me. And in school, she used to tease me whenever she got a chance, holding me down and tickling me until I saw stars and gasped for mercy. Unless, of course, she was giving me “swirlies”—dunking me in the toilet in the boy’s bathroom and flushing.
    Now, though, Sally looked downright pitiful. She’d lost too much weight. Her dusty face was streaked from tears. Her shoulders were bony under her thin T-shirt (from Bar-None out on the corner of two state routes, over by String-town, a bar owned by her ex-mama-in-law, and from where a year ago her ex-husband went riding off into the sunset, so to speak, with a redhead named Tikkie, leaving Sally in charge of their triplets, Harry, Larry, and Barry, who just turned four.)
    Sally had her work boot-clad feet propped up on a cooler. She stared at me a long moment, lowered her feet, opened the cooler, pulled out a bottle of beer, twisted off the top with her teeth, spit the top back in the cooler, kicked shut the lid, repropped her feet, and took a long swig. Dear Lord, Sally could intimidate me even when she wasn’t trying to.
    Then she looked at me and sniffled. “If you tell any of those old biddies out there that I’m having a beer, so help me, I’ll whack myself clean dead with this bottle. Let Waylon figure out what to do with our three rug rats. Not that he cares. Never calls.” She took another swig.
    I sat down on the opposite end of the couch, slowly, lest by plunking down extra hard I would send her springing off the end of the couch and flying across the room. Not that it wasn’t tempting, given all the times she’d tortured me.
    â€œSally,” I said. “Why don’t you just take a deep breath and tell me all what’s going on with you and Uncle Otis. The outside looks so nice. But someone said Uncle Otis quit because he found himself another way to make easier money?”
    Sally sniffled again. “You know my daddy. He’s always looking for some get-rich-quick scheme. Usually he brags about whatever it is. But this time, he says it’s hush-hush, top secret.”
    â€œIs he into something with Cletus Breitenstrater?”
    Sally thought a moment. “Maybe. He hasn’t said that. But he has mentioned talking to Cletus Breitenstrater. And once Cletus called over to the bar, asking for Daddy.” She chortled. “Coulda knocked me over with a spoon. Breitenstraters aren’t the kind of company Daddy usually keeps.” She shook her head, a gesture of amazement at her daddy’s ways. “All he’ll tell me is that he’s got a lot quicker way for him to make money than his renovations and carpentry business—and that soon he’ll have enough money to give me to put a down payment on the Bar-None.” She paused, sniffled.
    I lifted my eyebrows. “Bar-None is for sale? And you want to buy it? I thought you wanted to do renovating work?”
    â€œBubbles wants to retire. She’s spitting-nails mad at Waylon for running off from her grandbabies, and she’s offering me the place at a rock-bottom price. I could manage the place from noon to eight, make enough to keep us in food and clothes, and hire a babysitter for the evenings. Bubbles says she’ll babysit until five, but she’s gotta draw the line somewhere. It sounded like such a good deal to me. I could still do renovating every now and then, too.
    â€˜And the pay I was gonna split with Daddy on this job would have given me enough to swing the down payment. But Bubbles won’t wait