A Fool and his Honey Page 0,2

squad car had departed, all three of the occupants singing away. I mentally filed away a decision to write a letter to Sheriff Padgett Lanier to commend Levon and Jimmy's restraint and good sense. Martin was shedding his suit coat and pulling on his own heavy gloves from the toolshed built into the back of the garage. He got the wheelbarrow, too.

Besides my heavy red cardigan, I was still wearing my work clothes, a long

sleeveless denim dress over a red T-shirt, but Martin was setting such a good

example that my inappropriate clothes were no excuse to be idle. I found my own

gloves and helped out. As we worked, we speculated on this bizarre event, and

whether Darius, though clearly not in his right mind, had actually broken a law

by dancing naked in our yard.

"How was the library this morning?" Martin asked, after we'd stacked the last piece of wood. I stood back, feeling sweat bead on my forehead from the exertion though the air was bracingly chilly, and smiled at him. He knew I was happier now that I'd resumed part-time work at the Lawrenceton library. "Sam decided patrons with overdue books would be more likely to return the books if they were called personally, rather than sent a postcard. This comes from him reading some study in a magazine, of course. So guess who got to make at least fifty phone calls this morning? Thank God for answering machines. I decided it wasn't cheating to leave a message on the machine." I watched Martin pull off his heavy gloves. "What about you?"

"I had my annual physical, followed by a morning-long meeting about implementing the new EPA regulations." My husband Martin, who has a pirate gene stuck somewhere in his DNA, frequently gets frustrated with his job as vice president of manufacturing for Pan-Am Agra, an agricultural products company. He has not always done something so legitimate and safe.

"Sorry, honey." I patted his shoulder sympathetically. We strolled back to return the things to our toolshed. Darius's pickup and small trailer were still parked blocking my car in, halfway on the gravel and halfway on the grass; when I'd okayed that, I'd only expected him to be there for a little while. The ground had been nice and dry, but as I turned to go back into the house, big drops of rain began to patter down. We simultaneously thought of the truck making troughs in the softened dirt, and hurried back to check the cab of the truck.

Martin said a heartfelt and obscene word. The ignition was empty. I looked in the passenger side. Perhaps Darius had just withdrawn the keys and tossed them on the seat to silence the little beeper that reminds you your keys are in the ignition. I do that occasionally, if I have to run back into the house for a minute or two.

"Look, Martin." I pointed. But not at a set of keys.

Martin stuck his head in the door.

There was an open bottle of generic pain reliever, acetaminophen, on the seat.

Martin raised one eyebrow at me. "So?"

"He started acting so funny so fast, my first thought was that he'd taken a drug. And I don't think he's the kind of man who would ever think of doing something so dangerous."

Martin said, "We'd better call the sheriff's department again." So once again Jimmy and Levon drove the mile out of town that got them to our house, and Jimmy pulled on plastic gloves before he picked up the pill bottle. He poured its contents onto the gloved palm of his other hand. He didn't tell us to leave, so we watched.

Martin saw it first. He pointed.

Levon bent over Jimmy's palm.

"Damn," he said in his deep voice.

One of the pills was a smidge smaller than the others, and not quite the same shade of white. It didn't have the manufacturer's initial on it as all the other pain relief tablets did. The difference was obvious when you were looking for it. But without some good reason to examine the medicine, who would think of doing so?

"We got another one," Jimmy concluded, looking down at Levon. "Someone else has been drugged?" I asked, trying to keep my voice casual and sort of insinuate the question.

"Yes'm," Jimmy said, not catching the warning look Levon was trying to send him. "Lady last week left her purse in the cart in the grocery while she walked over to the frozen section to get some Ore-Ida hash browns. When she was driving