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penitentiary, filing appeals. Word was out that Dwayne Leets had come down from his cocaine tower in Memphis and put a contract out on Kenny Beeman.
    And a lot of people were waiting for that cap to bust.
    Okay. Take a deep breath. So here was Kenny Beeman dressed in black, driving his black car. He had worked his way up in the world all the way to being a two-bit investigator for the Alcorn County Sheriff’s Department.
    Mitch smiled and shook his head. “Bee, you gotta stop dressing like a Johnny Cash song. Bet you didn’t know that Cash auditioned for a radio job in Corinth when he was starting out…he didn’t get it.”
    “Didn’t know that,” Beeman said as he held up the vodka half-pint Mitch had thrown out the window. “You dropped something. I know you didn’t just throw it out the window, ’cause littering is against the law. And we don’t want broken glass on the road, do we?”
    Mitch laughed softly. “You know what they say. If we could figure out a way to make money off kudzu and broken glass, Mississippi would be the richest state in the Union.” He took the pint bottle, upended it, and shook out the last few drops, then tossed it into the front seat of his truck. “A leftover. Found it under the floor mat. Poured it out. No law against not taking a drink, is there?” he asked.
    “After going to an AA meeting, guess not,” Beeman said carefully.
    “So you been following me, huh, Bee?”
    Like always when they met, the distance between them crackled with dry fuses. One wrong word could flame the air. But Mitch couldn’t help toying a little with the edge of risk. “Instead of creeping around with your lights out following me you should be catching bad guys, like we pay you for,” he said.
    Mitch smiled and Beeman smiled back. “You watch yourself, Mitchell Lee,” Beeman said. “There’s drunks on the road.”
    Mitch carefully did not reply as Beeman spun on his heel and walked back to his car. As the cop drove away, Mitch was more certain than ever. The guy never quit.
    And that’s why, among other things, Beeman had less than forty-eight hours left to live.

3
    WITH PAUL OUT OF TOWN, JENNY DECIDED TO TAKE her mother and Molly out to dinner. After she showered at the club, she called her mom and proposed they go to the Dock Café in downtown Stillwater.
    Jenny and her mother, Lois, ordered salads; Molly always had the macaroni and cheese. They sat at a booth next to the broad plate-glass windows overlooking the historic iron railroad lift bridge that spanned the St. Croix River.
    Molly was telling her grandma about a fifth-grade drama that involved a girl who acted friendly to her face but spread gossip about her with the other girls she played with. Jenny stared out the window at the Wisconsin bluffs across the river, where the bare maples and oaks bunched like mangy porcupines. She caught herself drifting, overheard her daughter’s dilemma, and said, “I spy a new word, Molly.”
    Molly cocked her head. Attentive. It was a vocabulary game they played.
    “Fickle,” Jenny said. “What do you suppose it means?”
    Molly furrowed her brow. “Rhymes with ‘tickle.’” She asked, “Use it in a sentence?”
    Jenny continued to peer out the window and said, “The weather in March is fickle.”
    “Cold?” Molly wondered.
    “Was it cold yesterday? What did you wear out at recess?” Jenny prompted.
    “Just a T-shirt. It was real warm yesterday.” Molly scrunched up her lips, chewing on a thought.
    “So the weather in March is…?”
    “Hot and cold,” Molly said. “Hot one day, cold the next…”
    “Kind of like your friend at school,” Lois suggested.
    Jenny circled her index finger in a tight cuing gesture, “And…so fickle is…?”
    Molly conjured with her gray-green eyes, rolling them back and forth. “Not the same?”
    “Close,” Jenny said. “Think changeable, not constant. As it applies to people, we could say a fickle person is changeable, not