Free The Rampant Reaper by Marlys Millhiser Page B

figured you’d gone back looking for her. Since you lost her.”
    â€œWhy would I do that?”
    â€œDon’t you feel any responsibility?”
    Actually, she did, but Myrtle was not the place to let anybody know that. Poor old woman was wearing nothing but a thin dress, sweater, and tennis shoes the last time Charlie saw her. “You’re the marshal, that’s your job.”
    â€œHere you are in the pool hall swilling beer and that poor old lady’s out there? It’s supposed to freeze hard tonight. Know that?”
    Charlie took another bite of pike burger which she absolutely didn’t want—it was twice as big as she could eat and her capacity valve was about to revolt. “I’m not one of you. She’s your responsibility. I don’t live here, remember? So what are you doing sitting in the pool hall when you could be out freezing your butt doing your job? What’s the matter with you?”
    That elicited a two thumbs-up from Edwina, an accolade Charlie couldn’t remember ever receiving from her mother.
    â€œYou are not normal, lady.” He had the nerve to grab a french fry off her plate and dip it in her ketchup.
    â€œOh, come on, Brunsvold.” Kenny Cowper walked up with a glass of beer of his own and one for the marshal of Myrtle. It was like he just appeared suddenly up out of the floor, which, with someone his size and magnetic charge, was an impossibility. He slid in beside Edwina. “Last time you lost Marlys, she’d slipped into Orlyn Sievertsen’s doghouse between his Labrador and Saint Bernard. All three were warm as toast next morning, and Orlyn’s dogs have been howling nights ever since ’cause they want Marlys back. Admit it. Marlys Dittberner is crazy. But she’s not dumb, and certainly not
helpless. Meanwhile, women, I would just like to point out that your real sin here in Myrtle is to come into my pool hall and piss off my clientele by ignoring the whispered jokes, smirks, leers, winks, and nod-nods around you. Have you no shame? Sitting here totally absorbed in your own conversation? It is incredibly rude, self-involved, self-important, unfeeling, and—”
    â€œAbove ourselves.” Charlie winked at her mom.
    The marshal shook his head in disgust and poured more ketchup for Charlie’s fries. “Don’t look at me like that. You’re the one wouldn’t let me have pecan pie for brunch.”
    Charlie was so stuffed she couldn’t get through a third of the second beer and Delwood Brunsvold went through her fries in minutes. She’d just handed him the rest of her sandwich when Ben, the same guy who stopped them this morning, rushed in with almost the identical question as then. “Marshal, you looking for Marlys? I just saw her next door and she’s buck-naked. Gettin’ cold out there.”
    If Charlie didn’t know better, she’d have thought this whole scene was scripted.

    It had been a long time since Charlie Greene had seen her breath frost the air and felt a stinging nip at the end of her nose. But the rest of her was warm, if bloated. The law in Myrtle had declared that everyone stay in Viagra’s except Ben, himself, and Kenny Cowper so as not to frighten Marlys.
    The jeers this time were not for Charlie and her mother.
    â€œWhose army’s going to frighten Marlys Dittberner?”
    â€œYou need help, boy, you call.”
    But everyone except Charlie followed Marshal Del’s orders.
    â€œThis woman’s trouble.”
    â€œI noticed.” Kenny reached around a partition, grabbed his jacket, and put it over Charlie’s shoulders. “Southern California girls got water for blood. Hot water, but still—”

    His down jacket came to below her knees and she was glad of it. She and Ben stood waiting for the marshal and the owner of that jacket to act out in the doorway.
    â€œAgainst the law to have open liquor containers on the