Dead Easy - Brossura

"Magical."
-- The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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-- Charles Mathes, author of The Girl at the End of the Line

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I cut the dirty butcher paper, and a severed hand slapped the sticky floor with a sucking sound. Only a tiny band of gold made it seem remotely human. I was thinking that a shroud ought to be soft and white, not crackling and brown. I was thinking about that ring, too: how the sound of that hand broke the holiness of the night the way death breaks a marriage vow. I just didn't know why I was thinking that--yet. It was four in the mid-summer morning at Easy.

Dally caught her breath, then sat on a stool.

I looked up at her. "Is this why you called me?"

"Did I know what was in there? No." She blinked once. "Was I worried about it? Yes."

"Any idea where this came from?" I searched the package.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure it's a package from home." She sounded like a zombie.

"I see." I rubbed my eyes. Why she thought the thing was from home, 1 didn't want to ask.

I had just fallen asleep when I'd gotten her call, only thirty minutes earlier. She'd been in a weird mood for quite a while, and things between us had been uncharacteristically strained. But I only have three rules to live by, and one of them is that whenever Dalliance Oglethorpe calls, I come. Later for the other rules--but they both involve her too.

Home. Invisible, Georgia. That's where we grew up--what we got out of. The town was so small it din't make the state maps, and you couldn't even see it from the highway. It's in south Georgia, which is usually flat, but Invisible is surrounded by little hills and old pines-- unless you're standing in the middle of it, you can't see it. Hence the name. We'd always tried not to talk too much about it.

So even though I thought better of asking why she thought the package was from that place, I heard myself say:

"What makes you think that?"

She only looked away, confirming that I'd been wrong to ask.

"Well," I told her, getting to my feet, trying to change the mood, "it's not your birthday, so I have to wonder what's the occasion. It's got to be something important--must have been a lot of postage."

"No postage." She shook her head. "It came special delivery."

"Yeah"--I glanced back down at the package--"I guess it did, at that. You didn't happen to see who brought it in?"

"God, no."

"You were here all alone?"

She nodded.

"But you hadn't locked up?"

Another nod.

"That means to me that somebody was watching, knew just exactly when to slip in, plop this down, and take off. My guess is that you were back in your office checking the totals for the night?"

She pressed her lips tighter.

"Why wasn't the door locked?"

"Hal was anxious to leave. Had a date. I said I'd lock up. I was just taking the cash box back to the safe. Before I locked the doors. I heard a noise. I thought it was Hal. I yelled out. No answer. I came in. There it was."

Unusually short sentences for our Ms. Oglethorpe. She was knocked all the way back, it seemed, by her little gift.

"Okay." I took in a deep breath. "Do we open the package the rest of the way?"

"Let's see what we've got." She was breathing funny. I thought I should humor her.

I knelt back down. There was nothing else in the nightmare Christmas package except for an envelope, unaddressed.

"Care to see what this says?" I sat on the floor. She nodded again. She would not, under ordinary circumstances, have been a woman of so few words.

I ripped open the envelope, pulled the note out, and read it aloud. "Easy payment plan: installment one."