He knew when to gab and when to shut up. He didn't retort that it was clear that everything with my wife was not okay. Instead he ambled off down the ...ar in response to a couple of raised beer mugs.She started as another woman plopped down on the stool beside her own. "Connie! Jesus, you startled me," said Kendra."Sorry. Anyway, what's up. You sounded stressed out when you called," said Connie Dunn, age 36, pretty, short, and best friend of her current companion."Yeah, well, I am I guess," said. ”“It’s that kind of town I’m afraid. Outsiders aren’t made all that welcome. Hell, there’s even a division between The Townies and The Villagers in school.”“That Liddington girl you hang around with is from one of the villages, isn’t she? That would seem to disprove what you just said.”I nodded. “Yeah. But that’s ... I’m still not sure what’s up with that. Let’s call her and me the exception that proves the rule. None of the other Villagers bother with me. Not even her two best friends.”“Does. The man had been scalped, as had the body of the naked woman stretched out on the ground and tied spread eagle by wrists and ankles to the stakes driven into the ground for that purpose. Her body was also badly mutilated. By the side of the cabin lay the body of a tiny baby with it's head smashed nearly flat.From the dried blood splatter on the log end of the partially standing cabin corner, it appeared the child had been swung by the feet with full force against the log end. A little mongrel. I figured it was all part of the intoxicating effect that her nudity -- and, more acutely, the possibility of someone's seeing her in that condition -- always seemed to have on her."Keep the noise down," I whispered, "or somebody's going to come out to see what's shakin'." I'll show them what's shakin'," Tess answered at once at full volume, after which she burst into another round of uncontrolled giggles.Kim was very little help to me. She'd liked that last one -- she was becoming an.