Free It's a Crime by Jacqueline Carey

of Maine. There were plenty of people in black at the wedding; no one worried about that stuff anymore, but Ginny looked scrawny, pasty-faced, and unhealthy in her black garments. At the reception at the local Marlboro Inn, Pat hugged her, which Ginny never used to let her do, and said, “You must tell me everything that has happened.”
    “Sometime,” said Ginny with a slow, brow-furrowing smile. She handed her a wedding present—a teakettle for “Lydia Bunting”—and a card with notes on
Mallow.

    SHOOTINGS:
    three drug dealers
    porn peddler
    Mallow’s father
    street minister with sinister motives
    cocaine-sniffing widow of Senator
    Bud Caddy (flesh wound only)
    an unspecified but large number of dogs at an animal rescue shelter

    BEATINGS:
    massage parlor owner
    mailman
    person drinking in bar who refused to give Bud Caddy information in an unpleasant way
    bartender
    bartender’s brother, filling in for him
    Bud Caddy
    Vietnam vet friend of Bud Caddy
    different bartender

    Pat put this away with her paper wedding bells and her (mailed) telegrams and her white satin shoes with their three bows apiece.

CHAPTER
6
    F rank’s voluntary surrender date was in two months. The ensuing time was a bit like one of those exercises: What would you do if you knew the world were going to end tomorrow? You’d act the same, Pat concluded, only much, much more so.
    Frank tried to call many people, not just Neil. The morning after the sentencing, as Pat passed by his study, she heard him say, “When did you give him the message?” There were dozens of people he could have been referring to.
    Then he started ordering packages from all over the world. Pat had never known before what was available. Premium meats from Colorado, live lobsters from Ogunquit, jams from Devonshire, England, spices from New Orleans. Once a heart locket arrived for her from Tiffany. Soon unopened boxes littered the kitchen (though still not the cavernous living and dining rooms) because Frank rarely had the patience to cook or to wait for Pat. And there were so many restaurants to visit before his incarceration. How could he bear to last a year without having another warm spinach and shrimp salad from Blue Heaven?
    They drank a lot. Frank ordered a mixed carton of single malt whiskey and three cases of wine, nearly all red. He and Pat drank wine at lunch and then had another glass with every little snack (even, redundantly, with a handful of grapes once). When Frank was disappointed in a vintage of wine, he simply opened another bottle. Pat lined up all the opened ones on the deep shelf under the row of windows in the kitchen. The sunlight shone through the colored glass, corks sticking up from the necks like sprouted seeds.
    Frank never seemed particularly drunk—or sober. One night he said, “There’s no reason not to drink all the time. At least that way you get to be happy for a little while.” His tone indicated that he considered this a devastating indictment of the situation, but Pat could see only its truth; she nodded cheerfully.
    The only person Pat went out of her way to call was Brenda, who said, “Instead of going to jail, these guys should have been sentenced to community service. They could go to an Indian reservation where they might do some good.” Though what help a couple of crooked accountants would be on an Indian reservation, Pat wasn’t sure. Maybe one of the casinos could use them.
    Pat’s problem was that she was tired a lot of the time. It’s hard to keep drinking in the afternoon. She was hyperalert, however. She felt she had to match Frank’s windup appetites with a semblance of vivaciousness. If she weren’t there to help buoy the moment, who knew what horror would ensue? And if a hangover was particularly acute, it was all the better an excuse to block out any thought at all.
    Neither she nor Frank slept much. Pat spent a good deal of the night in her “library,” which was on the third floor and featured two