Free Mad Season by Nancy Means Wright

who’d started the new boutique, some cute pun on sense and scents, she didn’t want to remember. The town was getting too boutiquey for her taste. The gourmet restaurants popping up! The New Grub Street, Cakes and Ale: literary names, places the locals couldn’t afford—only the new people, flocking into the town because it had a college, and that meant concerts, artsy affairs they could dress up for.
    No one cared about the farms anymore. They were just there, pretty black and white cows to drive past on the way to the restaurants.
    Colm was at the bar, ordering beers. He was leaning on his elbows, smiling, talking to the bartender, a big-bellied man with a red-veined nose—the stereotype of his profession. When the beer came she nodded at Colm and gulped it down. It had taken long enough. She felt she’d been groping about in a cave and couldn’t find her way out. There was the sense of claustrophobia, of panic.
    He peered into her empty glass. “I remember you used to balk at even one. You’ve improved.”
    “I don’t usually. I mean, I’m not that dying of thirst. It’s tonight, I guess, all that’s happened.”
    He poured a little from his glass into hers. “Go on, you need it. Want to hear what I found out at the bar?”
    “Tell me! I should have gone up with you.” She felt better now, flushed, even exhilarated. These wild mood swings, was it menopause?
    “Willy was here like he said, with his friend Joey and another guy from the men’s group home. They horsed around some, bartender served them O’Doul’s. The group-home guy came around eleven to get them, Willy went along. He might have spent the night at the home, we know he wasn’t with Tim. I’ll give the Counseling Service a ring tomorrow.”
    “Willy wasn’t involved, I’ve told you that.”
    Stubbornly, he drank his beer. Of course they had to be certain. Still, she was piqued. Couldn’t he see that Willy was little more than a child? How could he carry out a robbery?
    She told him so. He looked at her out of those hooded Irish eyes; she remembered that stubborn streak. He didn’t like to be reproved, even when he was in the wrong. It was a weakness in him. The arguments they used to have! Yet the fun of making up afterward. . .
    She wiped her forehead with a sticky palm.
    “What else?” she asked, getting businesslike. It was over, that relationship.
    “The barn money. Last night, he noticed it when he was cashing up. Said he’d never smelled anything so bad, thought it came right out of the . .. ‘cow’s ass’ is the way he put it. Sorry.”
    He was wasting his apology on a farmer’s wife, she told him. “No, a farmer,” she amended. She was a farmer. She propped her elbows in front other beer. “Who was it, then?”
    He sank back in his seat, pushed his glasses up on his nose. “He doesn’t know, can’t remember. So many smells in here, on clothing, hands. If his memory comes back, he’ll call. If it happens again, he’ll know—not that it’s any proof.”
    “It was him, whoever came here to the bar. Or one of them,” she said fiercely. “I know it. I feel it. If he came that soon after the murder, he’ll come again.”
    “Maybe. But not if he sees us in here. Belle’s friends?”
    “How would he know?”
    “Interrogators have a way of getting known.”
    “Yes. Shall we go, then?”
    “Can I finish my beer? Just because you’re an alkie,” he poured a little more in her glass. “You can help.”
    She wanted to hit him, she didn’t know why. But she drank the beer. What was wrong with her tonight? She watched him tip the glass to his mouth, calm as a cow chewing; any minute he’d wipe the hay off his chin. Colm Hanna!
    Ha! He’d spilled beer on his shirt. He was dabbing with a paper napkin. Served him right. It felt good to laugh.
    * * * *
    When Vic woke the next morning the telescope was beside his pillow. He sat up and glanced about, like someone was in the room, might beat down on him. But it was