Side by Side

73

If it was up to him, Peanut Smoot would have set the store on fire and shot anything alive that came out through a door or window. The Utzes were outsiders who had inherited the store from a relative of theirs. They were smug bastards, who figured they were too good to do business in a way that would make their little cracker-box store a profitable enterprise.

Since Mr. Laughlin had asked him to do what Max said, he’d wait for Max to get there before he went in to get the Dockerys. Getting those two out without destroying the store meant that Peanut might buy it from the Utzes’ estate for chump change already stocked. He doubted any of the Utz kids would come out to the middle of nowhere and run a store that didn’t sell enough goods to pay them minimum wage. If they did, he’d make it plain that they had no alternative but to sell it to him.

He had already figured he would have to stage an accident that would explain the deaths of Ed and Edna “Busybody” Utz. The sheriff would investigate it, hold a midnight inquest, and the funeral home would cremate the bodies by accident, and that would be it.

Peanut smiled, pleased by the perfection of his plan.

Terrible tragedy was a part of life. You live, you lose people you love, you make money, you die and you go to heaven-if you’d accepted the Lord Jesus as your savior, which Peanut had on many occasions.

He could hear the kid bawling through the walls of the store.

Peanut hollered out, “Ed, I got an idea! Why don’t you and Edna just go take a drive and when you come back all this will be like it never happened.”

“I already phoned her daddy,” Ed called out.

“I bet you never talked to him, though,” Peanut said.

“Yes, I did. He’ll be sending people you don’t own out here to straighten you out.”

“Naw, Eddie. See, my people got something called sophistication. They’ve got the judge’s phone blocked and wired. Point is, nobody is coming out here but people I’m partnered with. They’ll come, and they’ll kill you all with poison gas or something that won’t leave bullet holes in you.”

“Hey, Peanut?” Utz called out. “I got an idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Kiss my sophisticated butt.”

Utz’s barky laugh was exactly the kind that could piss a man off.