It's Murder at the Buy-Right

14

If you're a sinner in a small rural community, and it's found out, word spreads like smoke in a tornado. Everyone checked their billfolds to see if they had been duped by the phony money that was being passed around. Nobody reported finding any, but everyone began casting a suspicious side glance at each other.

Could it be possible that neighbor Joe was passing it? How did Sally pay for her new dress? Wasn't Ralph and Winnie living high on the hog?

Suspicion and gossip were stoked to a rolling boil.

It looked like, for the time being, whoever was passing around the funny bills had left town or was lying low. Whispers of the FBI landing at any minute have a tendency to send the bugs back into their crawl spaces and under their rocks.

It couldn't be proven one way or the other if the counterfeiters were still around, but that didn't stop Sheriff Albion from proclaiming the county was free of them.

A vote for Albion was a vote for family, for security, and for the American way.

The elections were coming up, and this year's race was a hotly contested one.

For the first time in two decades, somebody had decided to give the sheriff a run for his money.

***

Thanks to her frequent forays to the Dollar Store, Daisy Ann was slowly rebuilding her wardrobe. It wasn't the same quality as her old one, but Iggi was right. 

Some of those clothes had made more than several rounds around the block as fashions changed, went out of style, and suddenly were 'rediscovered' again.

Things seemed to be getting back to normal. Maybe everyone could relax. Then Deke found a dime bag of weed sitting on a shelf between the quart jars of pickled pigs' feet and local honey.

"Somebody's trying to shut me down!" he grumbled.

He wouldn't tell Daisy Ann his plans, but she knew her boss was hatching something. He gave Tex and Grit the night off. Handed them both a couple of twenties and told them the tips were on him.

"Treat your ladies to a few beers on me," he said.

They looked at Deke like he'd grown a third eye, but they grabbed the money, pushing it deeply into their jeans pockets before the old man could change his mind and ask for it back.

"You boy's been working hard. You deserve a little fun. Heck! I was young once too, you know!"

Deke was neck deep in setting his trap.

Daisy Ann just knew it.

She waited for her boss to hand her two bills. They'd buy a lot of duds at the Dollar Store.

"Not a chance," Deke said. "You get off just like regular. I'll see you tomorrow bright and early."

"But Deke, That ain't fair."

"Fair's a walk down the sawdust path of the freak show, Daisy Ann."

Deke Dewitt was a tightwad of the first degree.

"How come they get a bonus, and I get zilch," she said.

"I gave them that money because I think those two are behind all the hocus pocus that's been happening around here."

"Wait a minute," she said. "Let me clarify this. You think they're guilty, so you give them money. You trust me, so you give me grief."

"That about sums it up. Besides, I heard them make some snotty remarks the night I staked out the store behind the dumpster. If I'm right, they won't be getting any more of my hard-earned loot. You, on the other hand, will remain in my employ – bleeding me dry and collecting your pay like always."

"Ain't you a professor of reason," she said. "Are you sure about them, Deke? I still ain't convinced they got it in 'em.

It takes a considerable amount of cunning not to get caught. We're talking Grit and Tex here. They've got about a half an ounce of backbone between them. I'm not sure it's that much.

Much less the two ounces of imagination between the both of them it would take to come up with rubber snakes and what not. I think you just lost yourself forty bucks for two very hung-over employees for the night shift tomorrow."

"We'll see."

Deke staked out the store for several nights.

He had no idea what to expect, and the thought of having to fire an employee or two left him with a really bad taste in his mouth.

In the end, it was moot.

Nothing happened.