Walter fired another shot into the air. “I told you before and I meant it. Get off my property.”

  “I should incarcerate you, Walter. You can’t take potshots at the sheriff.”

  Walter cocked his sawed-off shotgun and beaded in. “Come and get me, why don’t ya, ya candy ass.”

  Dickey sat back and closed his eyes. I could tell he was wondering what to do next. When he opened them, his head swiveled toward the trailer. I didn’t have time to duck, so I froze where I was.

  That particular non-move works with deer. They need scent and motion before they spook. If you stand inside, without moving a muscle, they can be looking right at you and not really see that you’re there. But turkeys can see you right through the glass even if you don’t breathe. Hopefully my deer tactic would work with the acting sheriff.

  Finally, Dickey turned his attention back to Walter. “I’m assuming you are a man of your word, so I’ll settle for a few answers,” Dickey said. Walter didn’t blink. “I’m looking for two jail breakers and a missing sheriff’s truck. You haven’t happened to see either of those three items, have you?”

  Walter lowered the shotgun and grinned through empty front gums. “If I did see your blame truck, I’d pitch it in the lake.”

  “You have a serious problem with authority figures, Walter.”

  “Only the live ones.”

  Walter stood firm, his feet spread apart, the shotgun cradled in his arms like a baby, while Dickey reversed gears and pulled out backwards.

  “Well, Muffin Cakes,” Kitty said to me. “We have work to do.”

  I lowered the corner of the sheet and plopped blond curly locks on my head. “After you, Big Ma.

  Chapter 19

  AN EFFECTIVE PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR IS like a chameleon. We have to blend with our environment, morph with whatever colors we’re up against, catch the wind and ride it.

  So when Angie’s partner-in-crime left her house on Dakota Street in Gladstone and drove over to a fitness center seven miles away in Escanaba, there wasn’t any question in my mind. I was going in after her. Kitty dropped me at the door and roared off to watch the house in case Angie decided to move while her hostess was gone.

  If Blaze had been functioning on all cylinders and still in his position as sheriff, I would have asked him to run the car’s plates last night. Calling Dickie was certainly out of the question for obvious reasons. If I wanted to know her name, I’d have to introduce myself.

  “Laura DeLand,” she said, accepting my offered hand when I burst in behind her. Laura Delaney had the face of an angel. She should have been modeling in New York or making movies in Hollywood instead of hanging around the sticks.

  “I’m thinking about joining the club,” I said. “Will you show me around?”

  “That’s my job,” a pip-squeak at the front desk said.

  “I’ll do it,” Laura offered, smiling through perfect teeth. “Come on.”

  The fitness room was packed with every conceivable type of health nut fanatic. This morning, without realizing it at the time, I had donned the perfect clothes for working out in a gym. I noticed, though, that I was dressed more like the men than the women. Laura and the other females wore spandex – clingy flexing material that showed off every hill and valley. I’d rather dive off the Escanaba River dam head first onto concrete than expose that much of my body to total strangers.

  I could see the outline of Laura’s belly button peeking out behind tight fabric. Every guy in the place had his eyes on her. She didn’t seem to notice.

  We hit the tread mill. Mine had more bells and whistles than a rocket ship. Laura set me up on a level course and showed me how to slow it down and speed it up. A television screen in front of us was showing the Upper Peninsula morning news.

  Mug shots of Kitty and me flashed on, and the anchor said something I couldn’t hear over the machines and chatter. Where in the world did they get such bad photographs? Kitty looked like a post office wanted poster. Instead of sixty-six, I could have been twenty years older than my real age. Dickey had used a picture of me before I changed my hair color to red. One more reason not to change it back.

  I wished I had added a little more eye liner and lip liner like Cora Mae had shown me. Someone used a remote to increase the sound. A cute TV6 newscaster was warning all of the upper peninsula that two women were wanted for questioning in a Stonely death. A suspect was behind bars. The escapees might be armed and dangerous.

  Grandma Johnson must be swallowing her uppers over this. She never missed the news. It gave her something more to crab about. I could just hear her.

  Some wiseacre next to us said, “They sure look deadly, don’t they?”

  Someone else tittered. “That big one could do some damage.”

  “The little one looks like Aunt Em.”

  “Those are the most dangerous ones.”

  “Hey,” Laura said to me. “I think I saw one of those women on the beach in Gladstone.”

  I pulled my blond curls over my face and strode along on the tread mill at an easy pace. “No kidding,” I answered.

  “Really. I was walking with a friend when that smaller woman tried to approach us. My friend started running, saying let’s have a race like the old days. But she looked frightened.” Laura’s forehead crinkled in thought.

  “So,” I said, eager to redirect her. “Are you new around here?”

  Laura DeLand was one of those people who shared easily. Within a few minutes I knew that she had graduated last spring from DePaul University in Chicago and had landed a job as a reporter with the Escanaba Daily Press.

  I slunk a little more under my hair when I heard that. Geez. A reporter! Why couldn’t she work at the paper mill or the Dairy Flo. Just my luck.

  I increased the machine’s pace by pressing a button and walked faster, thinking hard. Maybe this whole situation could be turned to my advantage.

  As an investigator I have to take what comes my way and put a spin on it, just like a newspaper reporter might do when she’s writing a piece for the paper. “I have a story,” I told her. “If you answer a few questions, I’ll give you something to get you a big raise.”

  Laura looked interested.

  “Meet me outside when you’re through,” I said, getting off the machine by letting go of the rail and sliding off the back end. It wasn’t the most graceful landing I’ve ever made.

  Chapter 20

  I KNEW HOW LONG IT could take a young woman to finish a workout and gussy herself up, because I went through the process when I raised my own girls. I had to wait through Laura’s shower, blow drying of really long thick hair, and a fresh makeup application from a tote bag full of supplies. After checking on her progress several times, I hung around outside with a cup of coffee from the café next door.

  “Big Ma,” I said into my radio while sitting on a street bench. “What’s happening over your way?”

  No response.

  “Big Ma, calling, Big Ma.” Maybe information about the radio’s capability had been exaggerated. The range was supposed to be twelve miles. Kitty was seven away. I was ready to give up on raising her when I heard her voice.

  “Hunh?” she said. Not exactly the fancy vocabulary of a woman taking an online legal course.

  “Were you sleeping?” I asked. “You were. I can’t believe it.”

  Kitty snapped to and denied it, but I could hear confusion in her voice that heavy sleep brings when a person is startled awake.

  “Where’s you-know-who?” I asked, realizing we had forgotten to give Angie a code name. Kitty better know the answer. Here I was risking bone-breakage and ripped muscles while she sawed lumber.

  “Our target’s standing still,” she stuttered a few seconds later like it was fresh news to her too.

  I signed off and waited some more.

  Finally, Laura appeared and we agreed to slide into a back booth at the café, just like in the movies. Laura had paper, pen, and a recording unit that she set in the middle of the table.

  “No taping,” I said, then remembered my own little unit. I secretly rifling through the purse on my lap, found it and turned it on.

  “You said you had a story,” Laura began.

  “I do, but no taping. And I ask my questions first.”

  “Okay.”

  “You protect your sources, right?” I’d watched enough crime shows on television to know the drill, but she was young and might not understand all her professional ethical duties.

  “I won’t reveal your identity, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “Ready for your first question?”

  “All right.” A waitress brought coffee for Laura and gave me a refill.

  “Tell me about Angie Gates?”

  “Who?”

  “Angie Gates?”

  “I’ve never heard of her.”

  Then I remembered. Angie Gates wasn’t really Angie Gates.

  “I mean Shirley Hess,” I said. That did the trick.

  Laura had met her in college. Shirley left school after her freshman year. They kept in touch and Laura had offered Shirley a temporary place to stay. Shirley had decided a few days ago to make the move to Lower Michigan. She had been at Laura’s house since yesterday, finalizing plans.

  She had told me she was taking the week off to decide what to do next. What about the teller job? Had she given her employer any notice?

  “When’s she moving?” I wanted to know.

  “She’s still packing up her things and she’s waiting for a delivery. A week at most, she thought. Why are you asking questions about my friend?”

  “I can’t tell you that, and you’ll be better off if you don’t mention our conversation to her. What kind of delivery is she expecting?”

  “Some items she bought on online. She doesn’t have an address yet where she’s going, so she’s having them shipped to my house.”

  “Has she ever mentioned someone named Tony Lento?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  My purse started speaking.

  Toodles to Muffin Cakes I heard coming from inside it. The mini recorder flew to the floor when I fumbled with the purse. Sweet Cheeks and I are onto Tigger.

  I turned the radio off as Laura retrieved my recorder from under her seat. She took a long look at it. “You recorded our conversation without my permission?” she said, a little anger in her voice. “At least I was above board with my intentions.” She opened the unit and removed the tape. “If you want this back, you’ll have to let me record your story.”

  Who knew someone as young as Laura could be so tough and street smart? I had to give her credit, she had me cold. Now I had to decide how important the tape was. Then I remembered that my conversation with Angie in the bar’s parking lot was on it. And the female voice in the woods where Tony had his secret little love nest.

  “Deal,” I said, reaching out and turning on her recorder. “Let me start at the very beginning. You better get a refill on your coffee. We’ll be here awhile.”

  I had to take off the wig to convince her that I was Gertie Johnson, the one who had every cop in the U.P. searching for her. Laura stared at me with big, round, eager eyes. To a cub reporter, I must be a gift from heaven. I told her almost everything, even information that had been kept out of the newspapers. I told her about the robbery and the pillowcase filled with pretend dollars, about real money missing from the credit union, about the dead guy and the Orange Gang. I even told her about Blaze’s Glock and how Kitty and I ended up in jail because we stole the weapon and buried it in a compost heap.

  What I didn’t want her to know was the extent of her house guest’s involvement, how Angie, or rather Shirley, had made several accusations against a local resident, how she wanted me to prove that he had set her up to take the fall for murder and bank robbery. I didn’t want Laura to know how Shirley had hired me and lied to me. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the alarm button-happy teller might be major involved, in spite of her denial.

  Was Shirley Hess sending me on a wild goose chase? Was she talking turkey, or crying wolf?

  I couldn’t put it together. She had saved the credit union from a robbery, or so she must have thought at the time, until the pillowcase was opened. The robber had even clunked her with his gun. And it was obvious that she didn’t have thousands of dollars of stolen money, because she couldn’t come up with a single dollar for a retainer for my services. And she was frightened enough to hide in Gladstone and plan an escape.

  Another contributing factor was the dead guy’s missing shoes. Someone had taken them off his feet, and that someone could have been Tony Lento. I’d seen him at the dance. He had the opportunity. Money probably was the motive.

  But why would anybody plan a heist and risk life and freedom to steal wads of Monopoly money?

  I watched Laura trot to her car with her reporter equipment. “Can I get a picture of you?” she asked, straightening up from the backseat with a camera in her hand and a big Cheshire cat grin on her face.

  We found a spot behind the fitness center where I could remove my disguise and brush out my hair. I cheesed for her several times before I saw a picture on the back screen of her digital camera that I liked well enough to want printed in the Escanaba newspaper.

  What they’ve done with cameras since my day is truly amazing.

  Before she left, she gave me her business card.

  Chapter 21

  WHAT WAS TOODLES DOING with my Sweet Cheeks? To say I was jealous and distrustful of Cora Mae would be a huge understatement. George Jack Erikson was going to get an earful from me, that was for sure. So was my best buddy, the man stalker.

  Either she learned to drive alone pronto or she stayed home. No more teaming up with my man. It felt good to say that. My man. Barney had been my one and only until he drowned. It took me a long time to get past that, and I wasn’t going to blow it. And Cora Mae was going to keep her mitts to herself.

  I felt bad about my feelings, but not bad enough to change them. Cora Mae had gone through every single man in the U.P. except the one she was out joy-riding with right this minute.

  I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

  “Toodles, where are you?” I said into my radio. “Big Ma and I are near the big city. And remember that other ears could be on our frequency.”

  Toodles came back, “Sweet Cheeks is talking to me. Wait a sec.”

  I regretted giving George that moniker. At the time it was great fun calling him Sweet Cheeks, but it sounded pornographic coming out of Cora Mae’s mouth.

  “I’m back,” Cora Mae announced. “Stay where you are. Tigger’s heading your way. So are we.”

  “We’re trading places as soon as possible,” I said into the radio. “We’ll wait in the pines near the cemetery and stay in touch with you until Tigger reaches his destination. Then you and Big Ma can team up, maybe get that manicure you’ve been talking about.”

  “Roger and out, Muffy.”

  ***

  They came up around the bend into Escanaba so fast I had to run a red light to stay with them. Tony blew through the intersection with a speck of fading yellow showing on the traffic light overhead. George made it through on full yellow, and I squealed out trying to tuck the butt-end of Walter’s rust bucket in under the changing light. I didn’t make it. Solid red.

  I checked my rear view mirror for cops. The coast was clear. Luck was on my side.

  “He’s heading toward the hospital,” I guessed, turning onto Ludington at the next light.

  At first I thought Tony must be visiting a patient, or maybe he did financial work for the hospital. But when he turned into a lane that ran around the back of the building, I spotted a hearse next to an unmarked door. Tony pulled into a small parking lot. George had no choice but to continue on.

  I got a good look at the hearse. I looked like every other death mobile I’d ever seen. “That entrance leads to the morgue,” I said.

  By the time we circled back around, Tony was standing by the door with a heavy set woman and a young guy wearing orange shoes.

  I almost panicked until I remembered our disguises. We passed within three feet of Tony without drawing any attention from him. By the time we found parking spaces, the three of them had disappeared inside.

  “Now what?” Cora Mae said out George’s passenger window. She looked way too comfy to me.

  I yanked her door open and rearranged my envy-green face into a smile. “You and Kitty are through for the day. She’s going to give you a final driving lesson on the way back to Stonely.”

  Cora Mae looked at Walter’s truck. “Not in that old thing?”

  “A driver needs to know how to handle all kinds of vehicles. Up and out.”

  We changed places and I watched Cora Mae jerk out of the parking lot, riding the brake all the way.

  “I don’t know how you women roped me into this,” George said. “I’m losing a day’s work just to consort with criminals.” He had a grin on his face, so I knew he didn’t really mind. “I kind of like you as a blonde.”

  As much as I wanted to stay with George and listen to his sweet talk, I had a mission to accomplish. Tony Lento was in the morgue with one of the members of the Orange Gang. “I’ll be right back,” I said, before slinking over to the entrance door and scouting for trouble. Then I heaved my shoulders back, raised my chin, and walked down an empty hall that smelled of disinfectant and something worse. Hushed voices ahead slowed me down. I slid to the side of the hall and pretended to look for something in my purse.

  “I’ll give you fifty bucks,” Tony was saying, “if you give me a name.”

  “Don’t got no name, Man.” I imagined those words came from the Orange member. He sounded hostile. “We pickin’ up one of our own. Leave us be.”

  “A hundred. I’ll give you a hundred bucks.”

  “You want I should shoot you right here in the morgue. Then you wont have far to go to get youzself pumped up with preservatives. Save on the cost of the amblance.”