The dogs barked like crazy when T-Bone banged on the door. I shushed them and let him in. Fred gave him a sniff-over before circling a few times and plopping on the floor. Pebbles was cautious at first, but slowly came forward. T-Bone patted her head before taking the offered chair at my table while I made a fresh pot of coffee.

  Normally I don’t drink the stuff in the late afternoon, but it’s one of our standing traditions in the U.P. and visitors expect to be offered coffee.

  We discussed the rain and made guesses about when it might let up.

  All the while, I tried to figure out what the volunteer firefighter and Ralph Hanson’s morning breakfast buddy was doing in my house.

  “How’s Blaze’s family taking the loss of their home?” he asked as I put a cup of coffee in front of him.

  “Mary is visiting relatives in Milwaukee. He hasn’t told her yet.”

  T-Bone nodded, sympathetically. “I don’t envy him that conversation.”

  “I imagine she’ll be upset at first.”

  “Any more insight into the explosion?”

  I cocked my head to the side and stared at my coffee cup. Apparently T-Bone was on a fact-finding mission. Whether it meant anything was debatable. Whatever his intention, one thing I had discovered with his visit—Pebbles didn’t know him. She hadn’t been afraid, but she hadn’t been overly joyful either. He wasn’t familiar to her.

  “You are closer to the fire inspector than I am,” I said to him. “You probably know more than I do.”

  “It still is an investigation, is all I know. Volunteers aren’t in any inner circles.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough. The pieces are falling into place.” That last part just blurted out. There I went, crowing again. Except it wasn’t simply boasting this time. I hoped to draw a killer to me. Not that I suspected T-Bone, but word travels like lightning.

  “I bet you’re wondering why I’m here,” he said, as I sat wondering. “I heard you were looking for me, and since I also heard that you’re investigating the fire with your son, I thought I’d come by and answer any fire-related questions you might have.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t sure I believed him. The timing was too convenient. One minute, I wanted to find him to grill him about his association with Ralph. The next, he was on my doorstep.

  Thinking back, I’d asked Ruthie who Ralph had had breakfast with, but did I bring it up in front of anybody else? Not that it mattered. It took only one customer overhearing us to get the ball rolling. You couldn’t keep much a secret in Stonely unless you were careful. And I hadn’t been.

  Ralph Hanson might be a rotten dog-person, dress like a hardcore biker, and have access to a lot of chemicals used to make meth, but T-Bone is clean-cut and clean-living. He, and to a lesser extent his wife Crystal, volunteer for everything. Not only is he an unpaid firefighter, but he pitches in for all the local fundraisers, making monetary contributions as well as time commitments.

  All I knew for sure was that he and his wife had been able to retire young, and they loved the U.P. enough to become part of the Yooper (as we lovingly call inhabitants of the U.P.) community.

  “Well?” he said, prompting me for questions.

  “Fire related? Unless you have new information that you want to talk about, I have a firm grasp of the explosion and ensuing fire.”

  T-Bone smiled, and it smoothed out the fine lines in his face. “On a personal note, my wife and I like living in Stonely. It’s been like a dream come true, something we talked about doing for years, picking up and moving someplace where we could slow down and enjoy life.”

  “You’re from Flint, right?”

  “That’s right. And something big happened to set us on this path, to actually live the dream.”

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Between you and me only, right?”

  “Of course,” I lied. This wasn’t attorney/client privilege.

  “I won the lottery.”

  “Really?” That really was a dream come true. I’d tried to win so many times, I lost count.

  “It was one of those scratch-off kind that you buy at the gas station. I won a million dollars.”

  “Wow!” That was a lot of dough. And explained how they were able to retire so young. “But you live just like us.”

  T-Bone laughed. “That was the point. We wanted a simple life away from the rat-race, and where better to find it than in Stonely? Right now we have eighty acres of prime real estate and the house might not be much, but we can always remodel or rebuild. You don’t know how good you have it, Gertie.”

  Since I was in full work mode, I glanced sharply at T-Bone. In the past, that kind of statement could be construed as a veiled threat, but T-Bone’s face didn’t convey any warning.

  Just then, the outer door opened and Blaze stomped in. Glancing out the window, I noted that the rain had stopped.

  After greeting T-Bone and exchanging what amounted to absolutely no new information, Blaze slid into a kitchen chair. I placed a cup of coffee in front of him and warmed up T-Bone’s.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked him.

  He gave me a hard look. “Tracking a stolen vehicle.”

  “Who’s was it?” T-Bone asked.

  “Joe Oja’s.” Blaze and I were in a stare-down. I looked away first to express my disinterest, but Paula sure had reported it faster than I’d expected.

  “Kids,” T-Bone offered. “They took it for a joy ride and you’ll find it on some side road.”

  “Unhunh.”

  I could feel my son staring at me, but refused to glance his way.

  “Thanks for the coffee, Gertie.” T-Bone stood up.

  “Wait, I’ll walk you out.” I popped up too because I hadn’t had a chance to ask him about having breakfast with Ralph. Which I did once we were outside.

  “Why?” T-Bone asked. “Is it important?”

  “Not really,” I hedged. “We’re following up on anybody close to Joe. And since Ralph is Paula Oja’s boyfriend and after what happened to Joe, I thought I should check him out.”

  T-Bone shook his head. “Ralph is an okay guy. I didn’t know Joe well or his sister either, but Ralph offered to help on some houses we built, low-income ones for families in need. I thought I’d take him out to breakfast to show my appreciation.”

  Watching T-Bone drive off, that explanation held water. Sort of. I hadn’t pegged Ralph as a do-gooder, but I’ve been wrong about people before. Really wrong.

  Blaze came out and stood beside me. “Where is the car?”

  “Why are you always thinking the worst of me?”

  “Paula Oja described a woman who appeared on her doorstep moments before the car went missing.”

  “And it wasn’t me.”

  “No, it wasn’t. It was Kitty, which meant you were slinking around close by. She drove the getaway car. You stole his. Why would you do a thing like that? And where is it?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, going in and closing the door.

  When I was sure he was gone, I rounded up the dogs and headed for the woods to find that school bus. Instead of going to Pearl’s house, where I’d have to listen to another scolding about her window and my wicked ways, I drove along highway M-35, estimating where the drone I’d piloted had located the bus. Randomly picking a place to pull over, I headed into the tree line with Fred in the lead and Pebbles right behind him.

  You’d think that a big yellow bus would be easy to find. It wasn’t. And it was a good thing that the days in August are still long, or I would have been caught in the dark and most likely lost. That’s how long it took.

  We tromped back and forth in what I hoped was a straight line, up and down, until right when I decided to give up, I caught a flash of yellow to my right. I changed course and heard the dogs rustling around, diverting to stay in range of me.

  There it was! Old, rusted, tires long gone, it listed to one side like an abandoned ship. The side entrance door was open so I peeked in. No sign of life. Cautiously, I climbed the steps and stood looking toward the back of the interior. Nothing. No chemists vials, no sign of an active meth lab. It was clean as a whistle.

  But I wasn’t disappointed at all. Because I smelled that same rotting smell that had permeated the meth dump. Whoever abandoned this ship had done so recently, like this afternoon after our drone encounter. What a mistake to wait. I knew I should have rushed right over here! My only consolation was the satisfaction of knowing I’d shut down this operation, at least temporarily.

  Careful not to touch anything, although with this level of removal I doubted they’d left fingerprints behind, I climbed down and went around to the back where an old logging road was slightly overgrown but recognizable and recently traveled. Logging was big industry at one time and these roads still snaked all over our forests. Heavy rain had made the ground soft. Tire marks were visible.

  I called the dogs, because we were done for now.

  When I pulled onto M-35, looking for a place to turn around, I couldn’t help noticing that T-Bone and Crystal’s property was the next one up the road, butting up to the state forest just like Pearl’s. From the entrance to their driveway, I couldn’t see the house because it was set way back behind a wall of cedars. I turned around using their gravel driveway, my suspicion radar going off.

  The wealthy Smiths didn’t stay in my sights for longer than a brief thought. They had enough money to last them a lifetime without having to risk losing everything by dealing drugs.

  As I prepared for bed, I recalled some facts about drug houses, wondering how I came up with them, since this wasn’t an everyday occurrence in my world. Probably from cop shows. Anyway, there is supposed to be a lot of coming and going, something that would be noticed in Stonely and talked about. Since rumors weren’t flying around, the drugs must be being sold elsewhere. Another clue—there might be excessive trash on garbage pickup day, but not in this case, because these dealers have a place to dump their used containers and equipment. Then there was the smell, like cat urine or rotten eggs—like inside the school bus.

  Whoever had been making meth was one step ahead of me.

  But only one.

  Chapter 18

  Word For The Day

  REPERTOIRE (rep er twar) n.

  A collection of skills or types of behavior

  That a person habitually uses.

  I woke up the next morning really missing George, and looking forward to his return, even though that meant Grandma Johnson would reappear and make my life miserable again. Things weren’t exactly hunky dory right now even without her, but at least my home was a refuge of sorts.

  After a three-way phone conversation to update Kitty and Cora Mae on the empty bus discovery, I smeared makeup on my bruised face, which actually looked a little better, and drove over to Carl’s house to play hardball with him.

  “You’ve been lying about your whereabouts on Monday morning,” I said without preamble. We were facing off next to his garage where the door was open and he had climbed up on his riding lawnmower.

  “I was where I said I was,” Carl said with darting eyes.

  “Look me in the eye and say that.”

  So he actually did.

  “Okay,” I went on, “name one person who can vouch for you.” I had my hands on my hips. Some people refuse to give up even after they’ve been found out. It seemed that Carl was one of them.

  “Walter,” Carl said.

  I snorted. “Walter protects his friends whether they are guilty as charged or not. He’d swear up and down for me if I asked him to. He’d swear on a stack of bibles knowing full well he was lying. You have to do better than Walter.”

  Carl started up the lawnmower, drowning out my last sentence. He shifted into forward gear and took off across his yard. Whatever he was hiding wasn’t going to be dragged out of him easily.

  He drove out of sight, so I strolled into his garage and nosed around a bit. The contents of his garage was standard guy—lots of tools and assorted unidentifiable objects; things I would have pitched if it were up to me. But when I opened the door of a storage cabinet in the back corner, I found something I hadn’t expected.

  I found a black drone, sitting there as pretty as can be.

  Barely hesitating, I grabbed it and ran for my truck.

  Carl came back into view, took one look in my direction, and roared toward me, opening up the mower full throttle. I almost made it to the truck before he cut me off and jumped down.

  “You can’t fly that thing on my property,” he snapped.

  “Very funny, Carl, except I’m not laughing. Do you see me laughing?”

  Darn. I’d done it again. Left my purse with the weapons in the truck where they were no use to me. And I didn’t have Fred to protect me. He’d been so happy to hang out at the house, I’d left him there.

  I backed up, almost to the truck door.

  “That’s right. Go home!” Carl ordered. “I don’t know what’s got into you.”

  “I found this drone in your garage, and you know perfectly well that I did. Things aren’t looking so good for you at the moment.”

  Carl’s face went even whiter than it’s been lately. “I don’t own a drone. I told you that.”

  “Then what was it doing in your garage?”

  Carl looked confused. Then his eyes narrowed. “You’re setting me up? That’s stooping pretty low, don’t you think, Gertie? Framing an innocent man to close one of your cases and make yourself look good.”

  We threw accusations back and forth for a while until we ran out of charges to hurtle. Finally we glared at each other. “I’m taking this with me,” I said.

  “Fine! Good riddance.”

  Questions hung between us. Carl probably wanted to ask if I was taking it to Blaze. And I wanted to question him about Monday morning again and find out if he was hooked on drugs.

  “This would be the time to come clean,” I offered, opening the truck door.

  “Planting evidence is a crime,” Carl replied. “And I caught you red-handed. Don’t ever set foot on my property again, or I’ll shoot you.”

  “You don’t realize what you’re saying, Carl.” I was shocked. Carl and I had been friends forever. We’d had our ups and downs, but we’d never held a grudge. This had to be the drugs talking.

  I quickly drove away, picked up Cora Mae, and went to Kitty’s house, where I recapped the showdown with Carl.

  “What next?” Cora Mae said, staring at the drone in the center of Kitty’s kitchen table.

  “I have several tricks in my repertoire,” I told her, not able to come up with a single one at the moment. What was next? And why did I always have to be the one to think of the next step?

  Kitty while brushing her wig said, “Your word for the day is repertoire?”

  I frowned. “How do you figure them out so quickly?”

  “Because they are so lame. The minute you say one, I know. Actually, repertoire is one of your better words, more every-day-ish than usual.”

  “You mean the others have been words that are too big for a backwoods bumpkin like me?”

  “No. It’s that…uh…okay, if I said something like, ‘I’m going to besmirch his name’ would that sound to you like something I would say?”

  “I guess not. But you shouldn’t be faulting me for wanting to improve my repertoire of words,” I said, trying to make light, but unable to put much lightness into my voice. The confrontation with Carl had taken all the light out of the day.

  “Are you turning Carl in to Blaze?” Cora Mae asked.

  “Not yet.” I really didn’t want to do that. I felt a flash of anger. Carl had put me in a difficult position.

  “Someone could have planted the drone in his garage,” Kitty pointed out. “It would be easy.”

  But it was a fluke that I happened to look there,” I said. “I’d love to believe that’s true, but the drone coupled with Carl’s fake alibi—

  Kitty’s landline rang. She answered and listened for a minute. Then she hung up and stared at the phone.

  “Who was that?” Cora Mae asked.

  Kitty shrugged. “I don’t know, but I’m to tell Gertie to go back and check inside Carl Anderson’s garage for the proof you’re looking for.”

  I stared at Kitty. “A male voice?”

  Kitty nodded her bald head.

  “And he said, ‘go back’? Are you sure?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “Carl must be the ring’s fall guy,” I said. “What in the world has he gotten himself into? The caller didn’t realize that I already had the drone. But someone watched me go over to Carl’s and then come here.”

  “That’s creepy,” Cora Mae said, stating my own feelings exactly. “Was it another drone, do you think?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then…” Kitty began. Our eyes met.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “What?” Cora Mae asked.

  “Follow me,” I told them.

  After stashing the drone in Kitty’s bedroom closet, we went outside and worked together to comb the truck, inside and out, up and under. I found the tracking device under the front right wheel rim and presented it to my partners.

  We all stared at the little square box.

  Cora Mae took it from me and said, “This is a lot like the one that I just bought. It’s supposed to be easy to install; five seconds flat according to the directions.”

  “Since when do you need a tracker?” I asked.

  “It’s to catch cheaters.”

  “You aren’t even dating anyone.”

  “Not at the moment, no, but for when I do.”

  She handed back the device. What should I do? Leave it on my truck? That wasn’t the best option. I glanced up. Kitty’s garbage was out by the road.

  “When does the garbage truck come by?” I asked.

  Kitty grinned, following my thought pattern. “Any time now. I’ll dispose of it.”

  I handed over the tracking devise.

  The most disturbing discovery was that the caller was intentionally leading me along and wanted me to know that he was playing with me. He had to figure I would check my truck and find the device. He was telling me loud and clear that he could make me drink wet concrete any time he decided to mix it up. Or maybe in his cat-and-mouse game, he’d send a drone instead. Another one with a bomb in its arms.