She might be in pain, on drugs, and irritable, but nothing was wrong with Carol’s powers of observation. She narrowed her eyes at Sela. “You look different. Like you’re high on something. Have you been smoking dope?”
“It’s been quite a day,” Sela replied. “A couple of times I wished I had some dope to smoke, and that I knew how to smoke. Has Barb or Olivia filled you in on what happened at the Livingstons’ house?”
“Barb said someone broke in on them, but both Jim and Mary Alice are all right.” Again the narrowed eyes. “Is that wrong? Is one of them hurt?”
Sela pulled the bedside chair around so she was facing Carol, and sat down. “As far as that goes, they’re all right. But the man had a gun, and Jim shot and killed him.”
Carol sucked in a breath. “Shit. Shit shit shit.”
“We did the best we could.” She detailed how they had handled the situation, with the photographs and Trey’s efforts at fingerprints, the statement she’d written up and had Jim sign. “If there’s anything else we could have done, other than sending someone to Sevierville to fetch the sheriff—assuming anyone is even in the sheriff’s office these days—I can’t think what. We also have another problem. A lot of people in the valley don’t have fireplaces. Some are probably getting by with kerosene heaters, but they’re going to run out of kerosene eventually, when the weather gets cold and stays cold.”
“Which could be any day.”
“Yes. A possible solution is clay braziers, if we can find a kiln here in the valley. Someone is checking with another woman who maybe used to do pottery—”
“Mona Clausen used to do some pottery, if I remember right.”
“That’s the name! I’ve been trying to remember. Someone else mentioned her and was going to check.”
“She used to have a small kiln, too. She and her mother made pottery to sell in the souvenir stores.”
“Then pray she still has the kiln or knows someone local who does. I also told the community patrol about the gasoline in my tanks. Trey Foster is going to rig up a suction pump, and we’re going to start dispensing it in five-gallon increments tomorrow morning at nine.” She paused. “I didn’t tell them about the small tank. Am I wrong?”
“I wouldn’t have told them either, so if you’re wrong, I’d be wrong right along with you.” Once again Carol shifted her weight, winced as her ribs protested.
“I still feel guilty, but then I think about you and Olivia, and—”
“And family is family.”
“The patrol is telling people as they go around the valley.” She sighed. “I tried not to let Ted Parsons get to me, but he questioned everything I said. If it hadn’t been for Mike and Trey, I probably would have walked out.”
“No, you’d have wanted to, but you’d have stayed.” Carol patted her hand. “I know that, even if you don’t.”
“I think Ted wants to feel important. He was the boss in his tire stores, but he’s an outsider here and we don’t listen to him so much. He was talking to some guy Mike said was a Dietrich—I don’t think I know them—and Ted was all puffed up, telling people about the gas as if it was his.”
“The only Dietrichs I know live on the Townsend end of the valley. Lawrence and Zoe. Both of them are heavy into meth. I wouldn’t trust them as far as I could throw them.”
That was where she’d heard the name, Sela realized, when Carol had said back when they were first getting organized not to let Zoe Dietrich go into old people’s homes to help them because she’d steal their medications. Without doubt the Dietrichs would show up to get gasoline, and she hoped they used it to leave, to go where they were more likely to find a thriving drug trade. Knoxville wasn’t that far; they could make it on a couple of gallons of gas.
The thing was, she wouldn’t be the only station owner who had cut off their pumps to save the gasoline. It was more likely that all over the country people would be getting into the gas reserves for exactly the same reason she was, to use it before the octane degraded too much to be usable. Did that mean that, for a certain stretch of time, groups of people who had been in one spot would start moving around? It wasn’t just that smart people would know the rural