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for years. You can bet he's taking it hard."
    "You wouldn't think that way if it was your own daughter. You'd be screaming bloody murder if it was Catherine or Alice who was murdered."
    "Now, Mama. There's no body. We don't know for sure."
    "You know it's true."
    "Well, maybe so, maybe so. But still—"
    "I practically came to get you, thinking of you out there in the dark with those kids and some maniac on the loose. Promise me no more night fishing until this ... this asshole is caught, Bill!"
    Alice and I whip our heads around and look at one another with our mouths hanging open. We can't believe she just used that word! This one so utterly un-Flo-like word chills me more than all the talk of murder.
    "I hardly think there's any call for that," Uncle Billy says. "We can't hide under the covers just because—"
    "Promise me!"
    "All right, Mama, all right."
    "Promise!"
    "I promise."
    "And you'll help me keep an eye on Alice and the boy. Don't let them out of our sight for an instant!"
    "Of course."
    "I mean it, Bill!"
    "I promise, Mama."
    We hear chairs scraping on the floor. Alice grabs my arm and runs for the stairs. We scurry into the bedroom and dive onto the bed.
    "Did you hear what he said, about keeping an eye on us every instant?" she says.
    "Uh-huh."
    She puts her hands behind her head and stares up the ceiling, pouting.
    "This summer just got a whole lot less fun," she says, "all because of Perla Ingram."
    "And the maniac," I say.
    "Yeah," she says, "him, too."

Chapter Six
     
    I WANT TO buy a present for Alice.
    Aunt Flo and I are in the dime store. It's been more than a week since Perla Ingram disappeared and her clothes found in the alley.
    Her disappearance and presumed murder are all anybody talks about. Everybody has a theory. Everybody thinks it was the same person who did something else horrible to her a month ago, but they don't agree on who that is. The sheriff's department is saying it was a "transient," which is what they call bums. But that would be weird, that somebody would just wander through and hurt a girl and then wander through again a month later and kill her. Everybody thinks it's somebody in town, a local, and that has them scared out of their wits. They can't make any sense of it, that somebody they all know and live with and who goes to the same church as them might be a killer of little girls.
    After they're through talking about who killed Perla, they talk about Mr. and Mrs. Ingram and the rest of the Ingram kids.
    We saw Mr. Ingram at the hardware store earlier. He looked like a transient , and he smelled bad. I was surprised when Aunt Flo went over and talked to him. Then I figured out who he was and I understood why he looked and smelled the way he did.
    "Nothing matters," he said. " Dorrie's sleeping a lot. It's all I can do to get her to eat a bite now and again. The kids are helping around the house. They take care of themselves pretty good."
    At the dime store, Aunt Flo talks to another woman. " Dorrie's taken to her bed," Aunt Flo says. "Bud's drinking again. I worry about the kids. He's letting them run wild. We have to get organized. First there were so many people bringing them food that they had to throw it out. Now I don't know. We need a schedule. Pastor says the church collection is over nine hundred dollars."
    I ask Aunt Flo if I can look around and she says, "Yes, but don't leave the store. Don't talk to any strangers." That means I won't be talking to anybody, since everybody in Meddersville is a stranger to me.
    The racks are full of marvelous things—squirt guns, plastic cars and trucks, jokes to play on your friends, balloons that beg to be filled with water, jacks, candy, bubble blowers. I think about getting Alice a ball to replace the one I let Boo steal, but it wouldn't be signed by Skeeter Barnes. Nothing seems right.
    Alice likes old things. She likes stuffed animals that belonged to some other kid. She likes them with ears missing or a button eye that dangles