Read Murder Shoots the Bull for Free Online

Cokes both.”
    “It’s tacky sneaking food into a movie.”
    “Well, folks wouldn’t do it if they didn’t charge an arm and a leg.”
    “It’s not like you couldn’t afford it.”
    “Y’all look.” Bonnie Blue brought us back to the subject, Arthur and his lady friend. “She’s having trouble getting in the car.”
    Arthur helped Sophie Sawyer sit sideways on the seat, then picked up her legs and placed them in the car.
    “I hope he’s not selling her any life insurance,” Sister said.
    I don’t know why, maybe it was the gentleness of the way Arthur was helping Sophie, but I had a sudden memory of a weekend camping trip that the four of us, Arthur, Mitzi, Fred, and I, and our five children had taken years before. The children were still small, and we had rented two popup camper trailers, packed practically everything we owned in and on them, including the kids’ bicycles, and gone to Wind Creek. It was summer, but after supper we built a fire to toast marshmallows.
    The children, worn out from a day of swimming and playing, didn’t complain when we washed the stickiness from them and put them to bed in the campers. The four of us sat by the fire talking, tired and happy. A slight breeze came up, and the smoke kept following us.
    “Let’s go swimming before we go to bed,” Mitzi said. “Wash off this smoke.”
    And, daringly, we stripped to our underwear and walked into the warm water of the lake, our young bodies firm and beautiful.
    Sister poked me. “She’s having one of her fugues,” she explained to Bonnie Blue. “Does it all the time.”
    “Must have been a good one, the way she’s smiling.”
    “It was.” I could still smell the campfire.
    Sister pushed her chair back. “I’m going to get us all some bread pudding.”
    Bread pudding is one of the specialties of the Hunan Hut, moist, with just the right amount of raisins, and a lemon sauce on the side. Southern Chinese, I suppose. And delicious.
    “Tell Bonnie Blue about the investment club while I’m gone. Both of you want lemon sauce?”
    Bonnie Blue and I nodded yes.
    “What investment club?” she asked.
    I told her what Mitzi had told me.
    “Joy McWain?” she asked. “The cheerleader with the big thighs in the commercial?”
    Where on God’s earth had I been? I admitted that I had never seen the commercial.
    “Those red satin underpants would put your eyes out,” Bonnie Blue said. “It was something.”
    It must have been.
    “Here you go.” Mary Alice set bowls of bread pudding before each of us and sat down. “What do you think, Bonnie Blue?”
    “It looks great.”
    “I mean about the investment club.”
    “It sounds like something I need to get into. I don’t have any more sense than Daddy does about money. Somebody comes in, says, ‘Abe, I’ll give you ten dollars for that picture you’re working on,’ he grabs the money and growls. Buries it in the backyard in a Mason jar.”
    Bonnie Blue’s father, Abe Butler, is one of Alabama’s foremost folk artists. If he was really doing this, and Bonnie Blue seemed serious, his backyard would be loaded.
    “That could be dangerous,” I said.
    “Nah. He’s got him a great big Rottweiler out there. Calls her Sugar Pie.” Bonnie Blue took a bite of her bread pudding. “Umm. This is good.”
    “Maybe you ought to unearth a couple of jars and investit for him,” Sister suggested. “It’s not drawing interest out there in the yard.”
    “Sister!” The woman has the morals of an alley cat.
    “What? It’s going to be hers one day anyway.”
    Bonnie Blue took a sip of tea and looked at her glass thoughtfully. “You remember Jaws? ”
    We nodded.
    “Remember Jaws’s teeth?” She paused while we remembered the teeth closing on the boat with Richard Dreyfuss in it. The look on his face.
    “Now think Sugar Pie.”
    We got the picture.
    “Like I said, it sounds like something I need, though. When’s it meeting?”
    “Wednesday morning at the Homewood