Always start with a body. Good advice for some ventures, perhaps, but not, if you had asked Willie Sloan, the best maxim by which to organize a day. He preferred a frosted pop tart, a can of Mello Yello, and a leisurely circuit from tropical fish to potted plants to housewares, finishing behind the shoes and appliances. He liked to sweep in segments, block by block, finishing in back and in time for another pop tart. But this morning, right in the center of his second block, was Hyacinth Stowers on her back in the Barbie aisle with a pair of taupe Just My Size pantyhose from four aisles over tied tight around her neck. She lay between the towers of pink boxes that lined Barbie Row, under the smiling gazes of Dance Party Ken in his gold mesh shirt and purple hot pants and Prosecuting Attorney Barbie in her pale pink suit that reversed to silver satin for evening. Hyacinth seemed to have dressed in preparation for the scene - all magenta sequins, with a miniskirt and a ruffle at the neck, just underneath the taupe pantyhose.

When Willie saw her, in the half a second before comprehension turned him around, he dropped his broom and began to carry himself at a fast clip toward the front door, he thought she looked like photos of herself in his yearbook from two years ago, when he was a freshman and she was a senior - she wore dressed like that when she won Miss Sweetheart, Miss Varsity and Snowball Queen. I those photos, she always had a tiara and a banner, and the tiara at least was there in Barbie Row too, though not on Hyacinth anymore. It had landed at the feet of a line of Barbie ponies with washable manes and show ribbons included.

By the time the police arrived and marked off the Wal-Mart parking lot with yellow ribbons to keep the morning customers out, Willie thoroughly regretted his breakfast, but was also discovering a sort of pleasure in being the one with the tale to tell. He told it first to Don Ballard, the manager, running outside to the line of pay phones in front of the store instead of calling from inside. Inside was not a place that appealed to him just then. He told Don about Hyacinth in the Barbs, all blue, with pantyhose around her neck, and Don said "Jesus Christ" and "Shit" several times in a row and hung up. Don was a big fat man who lived in the same subdivision as Willie and drove a big fat Ford Bronco. He sucked tobacco pouches all day because there was no smoking in the store. He could sell a riding lawnmower if he chose to, in ten minutes flat. When he heard Don cursing, Willie knew that his boss would know what to do, and so he relaxed a little, leaned against the outside wall in front, and watched the sun rise over the parking lot and the night watchman drive away from Taco Bell on the other side of the highway.

When Gloria and Edna, the first shift checkers, arrived (just a few minutes before Don, who was a few minutes before the police and ambulance), Willie told his story better. That time, he remembered to explain about how when he unlocked the doors that morning, he had had a funny feeling on the back of his neck and had known, just known, that something wasn’t right. He remembered also to mention how that morning, when he looked at the change on his dresser, he noticed that every single coin (all five) were tails-side-down, which just had to be a sign. By the time he told it to Sam the greeter, while Don and the police were talking on the other side of the lot, he recalled that his cousin Alan had gone steady with Hyacinth for a month in tenth grade and how as a result, he and Hyacinth had both been at a Sloan family barbecue once, and how he and she had talked about the basketball team’s chances at making state finals that year for ten or maybe more minutes, while they both waited in line for hot dogs. That incident, he explained, had always remained burned in his brain - and that was just the phrase - burned in his brain, and now he began to understand why. He didn’t explain to Sam that before, he had always assumed that the burning had been a function of the pink haltertop and matching shorts that Hyacinth was wearing that day and the way her breath smelled like Diet Pepsi when she leaned towards him to hear what he was saying. Sam was almost eighty and probably wouldn’t understand haltertops and Willie suspected that explaining the architectural theory upon which they were based was somewhat beyond him, at least since he was so shaken up this morning, what with the shock of a murder and all.

By the time the police came over, carrying Styrofoam cups of coffee and looking sleepy, to ask Willie how he came to find the body, even though part of Willie kept remembering how strange Hyacinth’s lips had looked - all dark and purplish, but with smudged pink lipstick partly covering the purple - and that part made his stomach turn and turn in a queasy sea of Mello Yello, another part felt rather proud of his cleverness in locating Hyacinth in Fashion Dolls and Accessories before the morning crowd came in and stumbled over her.

"She was the Snowball Queen," he explained, "She used to write an advice column in the school newspaper when I was a freshman. And she wore an ankle bracelet every single day - people say it had a real diamond in it - I heard she even wore it when she went swimming. I found her, and just as soon as I saw her lying there, I knew right away that something bad had happened."

Don Ballard had spoken to the police right before Willie, and had cursed many more times in the course of the conversation, apologizing each time, but the words kept slipping out.

"Why it had to be today that a goddamn body shows up in goddamn store - excuse officers - I’m sure I don’t know. I mean Jesus H. Christ, this is the beginning of the end-of-summer swimwear, lawn care, flip-flops and tank tops blowout, not to mention BTS, that’s back-to-school, officers. Notebooks, lunchboxes, pencils with Casper the goddamn friendly ghost - sorry officers - and a body, a fucking dead prom queen, is not going to help the profit margin, now is it, son?" He turned to the younger of the officers, who barely looked 21 and had cut him shaving that morning. "Let me answer that for you. No sir it will not," Don continued and inserted a tobacco pouch in the small sac between his lower gum and lip, "And I’ll tell you why ... because nobody, bot a goddamn soul, if you’ll excuse me men, likes looking for bargains and checking the aisles for stray corpses all at the same time."

"Mr. Ballard," said the older police officer, "I understand you’re a business associate of Mr. Stowers. Would you like to join us when we break the news to the family, as a close friend and all?"

"You guys sure as hell can have that honor all to yourselves, if you don’t mind my speaking plain," said Don. "I am not itching to go wake up Dandy Stowers before he’s even had his morning coffee and let rip the news that his daughter has turned up all dead right smack in the middle of his very own shopping center. Right in the middle of his very own goddamn anchor store. I believe, if I am not mistaken, that this sort of thing is exactly what they pay you brave boys in blue for, if you don’t mind me saying so, officers."

About this time, when Willie was finishing his story for Sam the greeter, Don looked up and saw the local news trucks rolling down the highway, up early and on the scene. "Fucking media circus," Don mumbled. "Goddamn Twin Peaks bullshit, right in the middle of BTS."

Half an hour later, 14-year-old Marigold Stowers opened her front door to a third officer, who held his hat in his hands and looked sheepish. Marigold, who preferred to go by Goldie because she had dark hair and enjoyed irony, looked at him through narrowed eyes. She wore a pair of silk boxer shorts and an oversized t-shirt. She was gnawing on a candy bar.

"Hello, Ronald," she managed in her boredest tone. "Daddy isn’t here. He had a breakfast meeting with the Mayor. He’ll be back sometime soon. If you like, you can wait in the living room. I’ll be doing something else, so I don’t really care."

"Hi Goldie," Ronald said sadly. "I guess I’d better try to track him down instead of waiting. Thanks for the offer though."

"Our honorable Mayor Dickerson is accustomed to breakfasting at the diner off the interstate, I do believe," said Goldie, balancing on one foot and balling her Three Musketeers wrapper. She flicked it lazily at Ronald and leaned on the doorframe. "I’m told he enjoys a hearty omelet. Daddy isn’t one to quibble. I’d try there."

"Thanks for the tip Goldie." Ronald patted her awkwardly on the head, much to her disgust.

District Attorney J.J. Brookman began his fourth cup of coffee and twirled a pen madly as he flipped from channel to channel, reclining precariously behind his desk. Between shelves of codes and reporters, he had mounted a massive television, which he kept at a low hum throughout the day. Mornings, he channel surfed.

He paused at the local news footage of Shelly Ann Downs, investigative reporter, in front of the Wal-Mart in Dandy Stoker’s shopping plaza on the edge of town. Police milled around behind Shelly Ann. A gangly teenage boy in a Wal-Mart uniform, eating a pop tart, stood behind her, trying to get in the shot as the camera tightened to avoid him.

"We are on the scene of what is already being called ‘The Barbie Murder.’ While the identity of the victim has not yet been released, pending notification of the family, sources tell us that the toy department in this local Wal-Mart witnessed quite a lurid scene last night." Shelly Ann seemed to try not to sparkle with excitement as she described the crime.