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leaving until her lawyer gets here.” I planted my unsteady feet as firmly as I could on the community center floor.

    “So how’d your keys get under Miss Kenan?” the chief asked in a jocular voice, as if he were asking how she’d done in a tennis match.

    Cindy shook her head. “I have no idea. I thought they were in my purse.” She held it up helplessly. “I did run into the bathroom to blow my nose before I went out to call our kids — I didn’t have any tissues—”

    “You told me you didn’t go into the bathroom,” the chief reminded her.

    “I did not!” she replied hotly. “You asked whether I went to the bathroom. I didn’t go. All I did was blow my nose and come straight back out.”

    Ah, the English language can be so confusing sometimes.

    Remembering the urgency with which she had left the meeting, I suspected Cindy had also needed a moment to cry out her fury at Willena before talking with the children.

    “So how did your keys get under Miss Kenan?” The chief repeated his question in a voice like warm oil.

    “Don’t answer,” I warned. “Don’t say a word until you’ve called your lawyer.”

    Cindy was too upset to pay me any attention. “I told you, I don’t know. Willena wasn’t even in there. But wait! I got the keys out of my purse because I thought I might get in the car to make my call. While I was blowing my nose, I put them down on the counter. But Willena wasn’t there. Nobody was. They were still in the meeting.”

    “Willena left several minutes after Cindy,” I contributed.

    The chief ignored me. “May I see your cell phone?” he asked her, holding out one hand.

    “Wait!” I cautioned. “Call your lawyer.”

    But with what some call the frankness and others the naïveté of the innocent, Cindy had already fumbled in her purse and held it out. He snatched it, turned it on, and pushed the redial button. In a second I heard my son’s voice. “Hey, hon. You feelin’ better, or is that Kenan bitch still gettin’ you down?”

    Chief Muggins closed the phone and palmed it. “I’ll need to keep this for evidence. I’m taking you down to the station, Mrs. Yarbrough. You can call your lawyer from there. You go on home, Judge. If I need a magistrate, I’ll have to call another one.”

    Cindy’s phone began to ring — no doubt Walker wanting to know why they had been cut off. The chief ignored it.

    Cindy reached back into her purse.

    Faster than I knew he could move, he pulled his gun and aimed it straight at her. “Freeze!”

    My heart thudded in double time. Cindy dropped her purse, shaking all over, and lifted her hands. “I was getting my keys for Mac.” Then she remembered that her keys were still in the chief’s hand. Her eyes locked on them as she added in a an unsteady voice, “She came with me.”

    I gave the chief the look my sons call Mama’s Freezing Look. “You can put that gun away now.”

    He lowered it and returned it to his holster, but I could tell he’d enjoyed that little display of strength and power. I’ve always thought that the biggest problem with guns is that so many of the people who carry them are the kind to act first and think later. “You’ll have to come with me,” he told Cindy.

    “But Mac . . .” She turned to me, her eyes huge and full of all sorts of messages: I’m sorry I can’t take you home. I’m scared to death. What about my children? Do something, please!

    “I’ll call Joe Riddley to come get me,” I told Cindy, willing my voice to sound steady and calm. “He owes me a ride or two. And I’ll go stay with the kids until you get home.”

    “Don’t tell them about this, please?” Her face was so white I was afraid she was about to faint.

    “I won’t. I’ll send them to bed, shall I?” I tried to sound like this was a normal delay in her schedule.

    “Please.”

    “Then I’ll send Joe Riddley back over here.”

    At that point the chief decided to be magnanimous. He held up