“God, jeez,” Tony said, sounding shocked. “Put that thing away. I’m going.”

  I began walking slowly back the way I came. Tony breezed by me like a hound dog fleeing from a skunk. He glanced sharply at me, decided I wasn’t a threat, and kept going.

  What was the name he had been hoping for? Did he want to find out who the leader of the gang was? But in the movies, gang leaders liked everyone to know who they were. They didn’t hide behind other member’s skirts. Or in this case, behind their shoes.

  If Tony was trying to finger Shirley, like she said, why was he creeping around the hospital trying to collect information?

  Tony? Angie? Shirley? We had some serious credulity going on here. I was pretty sure I’d used my word for the day incorrectly, but no one heard, since it was just a head thought.

  After Tony drove away, George and I waited in the hospital parking lot while a casket was loaded into the back of the hearse. Then we walked over. I flashed my law badge. “Undercover,” I muttered.

  “We ain’t talking to you,” Hostile Boy said.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” I said to the heavy set woman. She nodded.

  George strolled over to talk to the hearse driver. His job was to find out which one of the gang members was in the coffin. Kent Miller from the Soo? Or Bob Goodyear from Detroit? I had a pretty good idea judging by the speech patterns coming from the angry one.

  Dialects are another thing a good private investor should be able to distinguish between. When George held up two fingers I knew I was right. Bob Goodyear. The shoe-less dead guy George and I had found behind my truck. The one wearing the Kromer who had picked off his own partner.

  “Were Kent Miller and Bob good friends?” I asked, directing my question at the woman who must be Bob’s mother.

  “I told your people already. I never heard of that other guy.”

  “He wasn’t no real Orange,” Orange Shoe said.

  “He was wearing your colors when he went down,” I said, rearranging a loose blond curl and readjusting the Blublocker sunglasses hiding my eyes.

  “He was nobody and nothing. You have to concentrate you efforts on things that count. We wants to know who did Bobby.” He shoved a stiff finger into my shoulder and brought his face close to mine. I smelled fear and I was pretty sure it was mine. “We take care of our own. We be back.”

  “Your guy killed Kent Miller. I saw him fire.” I could see the pores in his face.

  “That was Bobby’s business. Not mine or yours. Bobby was set up. Come on, Ma, let’s get outta this place.”

  Ma! I caught the connection between the dead man, the hostile Orange gang member, and the heavy set woman. “I didn’t get your name,” I said.

  But Bobby’s brother had turned his back on me.

  Chapter 22

  “THIS IS THE DETROIT BANK calling,” I said into Walter’s phone. “Which one? Uh…Detroit Savings and Loan. I need to talk to Dave Nenonen. I’ll hold.”

  Walter leaned against the kitchen sink drinking his version of a latte-half bottom-dregs coffee, half brandy. Five o’clock on Monday afternoon must be the start of happy hour at the Laakso household. Kitty had gone back to the hunting trailer to put pasties in the oven. Cora Mae was studying Walter’s dirty kitchen table for creepy crawlers.

  “Mr. Nenonen,” I said when Dave came on the line. “I’m calling about Angie Gates. She has applied for a position with our bank. Can you give her a good reference? Um…that’s right. You didn’t know she was leaving? Well, this is awkward. Yes. Thank you.”

  I hung up. Dave thought she was coming back to work on Thursday. As I suspected, she was slipping out of town without a goodbye party.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be working for Shirley?” Cora Mae said. “Instead we’re tailing her and verifying the truthfulness of every word she utters.” Cora Mae studied her new manicure, the French thing with white tips. “Lyla does a nice job with nails,” she said. “And she’s got troubles at home again.”

  “Happy ever after didn’t last too long,” I commented.

  “Lyla thinks Tony found out she put us up to watching him.”

  “Impossible,” I said, sheepishly remembering when the local warden had outed me in the woods right near Tony’s turkey blind.

  “She thinks he was being nice to her just so she would call off the dogs.”

  “Is that what she called us? Dogs?”

  Cora Mae nodded.

  I glanced down at Fred, who was lying at my feet, licking a paw. I decided to take that as a compliment. We could have been called much worse.

  “Are we rehired?” I asked. That would be a bonus. We were trailing him anyway. Two paychecks for one job. One from Lyla, one from Shirley. I’d like that. We’d have the best fingernails in Stonely and have the money to pay for matching pedicures.

  “No,” Cora Mae answered. “She says she doesn’t want to know what he’s up to. She’s fed up and thinking of leaving him.”

  Serves the dallying fool right. Poor Lyla, though. Realizing you’re married to a cheating spouse has to be tough.

  Walter had finished his second latte when he said, “Think I’ll go down to Herb’s Bar for awhile.”

  Cora Mae, Fred, and I went to the trailer and sat down to dine on steaming hot pasties. Fred had one too.

  “While Cora Mae had her nails done,” Kitty said, splashing ketchup on her pasty and handing the bottle to me. “I talked to Star.”

  My baby girl. I had forgotten her in all the excitement. She must be worried sick about me.

  “She says hi and will you hurry up and solve this case so she can quit babysitting Grandma Johnson.”

  So much for family loyalty and concern. “I hope you didn’t tell her where we were,” I said. “She’d probably turn us in. I’m thinking Star might have more of her grandmother’s genes than she should.”

  “‘Course I didn’t tell her. Star’s been to the jail to visit Blaze. So far he’s happy locked up. He’s bossing Snell around, trying to run the show. Blaze told Star a few things he overhead about the murders.”

  “Like we can believe anything Blaze says,” Cora Mae added, truthfully. My son hadn’t been a natural born liar before the brain disease struck.

  “It depends,” I said, ready to defend Blaze. I can say anything I want about him, good, bad, or terrible, but that doesn’t apply to other people, even friends. “You can judge by what comes out of his mouth. If he’s a five-star general in search of blue diamonds, or if he’s showing you his new dog and you can’t see the dog because it’s invisible, that’s made up.”

  “In other words,” Kitty said. “If it’s far-fetched, don’t believe him.”

  “Right,” I agreed. “So what did he hear?”

  Kitty added more ketchup to her pasty. “The Detroit guy on the roof was wearing Onni Maki’s Kromer.”

  “I thought the guy’s headdress was strange, considering he came from Detroit,” I said. A troll doesn’t usually wear a Yooper hat. I had rolled the stolen hat idea around inside my head earlier.

  “He took it out of Onni’s car.”

  Cora Mae made a face when she heard the name. Onni Maki is seventy years old. He wears gold chains around his neck, a pinky ring, and wraps his hair over a big bald spot. He’s also a widower and thinks he’s the hottest thing in the U.P. He was one of the first men in the county that Cora Mae rejected after only one date. Onni had made Cora Mae pay her own way. “Pond scum,” she said under her breath.

  Kitty scraped her plate and looked around for more pasties. She knew there weren’t any left. It was just wishful thinking. “Onni was part of the posse outside the credit union. Bob Goodyear was trying to disguise himself with the hat.”

  “Instead it made him stand out.”

  “Blaze said Dickey’s been tracking the Orange Gang. I guess they’re a tough bunch. But none of them knows the first guy, the robber. Bob Goodyear must have hired Kent Miller to go in. Dickey thinks he shot him because the robbery went wrong and he was worried about being identified.”

  “That’s the only reasonable part of the whole thing,” I said. “Bob and Kent decide to rob the credit union. Kent goes in, wearing orange shoes. He steals a pillowcase filled with paper. Angie, who is really Shirley, sounds the alarm. Bob kills Kent to conceal his identity. Then someone kills Bob just for grins. And, of yes, the credit union has been robbed, but at a different time than the robbery, and that money is still missing.”

  “Right,” Kitty said.

  “But,” Cora Mae asked. “Wasn’t it dumb to wear orange shoes? They led right to the Detroit gang.”

  “Not to mention the stupidity of stealing paper,” I said. “Kent couldn’t have known he had a fistful of fake money. He had to have thought he had the real thing. And the orange shoes haven’t helped any of us solve the case. So maybe the shoes were a blind lead, meant to confuse us.”

  “Well it worked,” Kitty said. “I’m confused. We have to straighten this out so we can quit hiding in this sorry excuse for a home.”

  Cora Mae was thinking hard. “What if Bob set up Kent? He sent him in knowing he wouldn’t make it out alive. He and someone on the inside had already taken the money.”

  “That won’t work,” I reasoned. “If Bob took the money, he wouldn’t want Kent to get caught holding paper. That would lead to a full investigation, which it did, and then everyone would know the money was missing, which they did.”

  The more I thought about it, the more confusing it became. “All we have to do,” I said, letting Fred out of the trailer to do his business, “is find out why Kent stole play money, find out why Bob killed him, figure out who killed Bob, and find the missing money.”

  None of us said anything for awhile. We were out of ideas. The orange shoe business had preoccupied us for too long. During the robbery, I remembered thinking the robber was insane to wear orange shoes in a holdup, especially if they led somewhere. Maybe it was a ruse, after all.

  Maybe we should concentrate on our own backyard a little more. That left Shirley, Tony, Dave, and Sue. All were insiders and had opportunities to steal from their employer.

  I scrapped my plate and started a sink of hot sudsy water.

  That’s when someone opened up on the trailer with an automatic weapon.

  By the time I whirled around and realized what was happening, Kitty had blown off the chair she was sitting on. She hit the floor seconds before Cora Mae and I took a similar dive. Only ours was voluntary action, Kitty’s had external force behind it.

  “I’ve been hit,” Kitty screamed, clutching her chest and rolling onto her side.

  Frankly, I was relieved to hear her speaking even if I hated what she said. Blood seeped through her fingers where she clutched her chest. She looked down. Her hands weren’t staunching the flow.

  “I never expected to go out like this,” she moaned. “I always thought it would be my heart that gave out, with the extra pounds and all.”

  “Shush,” Cora Mae said, “You aren’t dead yet.”

  Up until now, Cora Mae has been the one with all the questions and insecurities. What are we going to do next? How are we going to handle this mess? Why do we have to drive around in this cruddy vehicle? Why? Why? Why?

  I’d never seen her react under real pressure, but I was witnessing it now.

  “Nine-one-one,” she screamed into her radio, louder than she needed to. I assumed for our attacker’s benefit so he’d know we had contact with the outside world.

  I threw the kitchen table on its side and scooted between it and the refrigerator, dragging Kitty with me the best I could, considering she outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. Her legs were still exposed, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. Cora Mae was behind the wood-burning stove with her back up against the wall dividing the living room and bedroom. She continued to shout our emergency into her radio.

  Where was Fred? At first, I thought he was inside with us, but then I remembered letting him out. Please Fred, be off chasing squirrels on the opposite side of Walter’s house.

  Too bad Walter was down at Herb’s Bar or he would have taken care of the madman with his arsenal of stashed weapons. If only I could get to the house and find them. But I didn’t have a chance.

  Another volley of firepower interrupted my thoughts. Windows blew out. Glass rained down. I had my radio out and changed the frequency to the one the local cops use. I screamed into it. “Machine-gun fire. One of us is down. Walter Laakso’s place. Ambulance. Help.”

  Blood was draining from Kitty’s face and heading for the hole in her chest. I heard sirens wailing in downtown Stonely, calling in volunteers for an ambulance and the posse. Herb’s bar would be cleared out by now.

  I hoped they wouldn’t be too late.

  “Stay with us, Kitty,” I said. “Help is on the way.” Her eyes were fluttering. I wasn’t sure she heard me.

  All was quiet outside. The shooter hadn’t anticipated our radios and our ability to contact outside help from the hunting trailer. He had to be gone by now. Only a fool would hang around until the entire town arrived.

  “Go, Gertie,” Cora Mae said. “Get out of here. I’ll stay with Kitty. They’ll arrest you if they catch you here.”

  I’d thought of that. If our local law enforcement found me here, they’d haul me in. I’d be behind bars with Blaze. Kitty would be in the hospital, and Cora Mae couldn’t even drive. Who would be left to save us?

  “Go,” Cora Mae ordered. “I’ll tell them you ran after the person who shot Kitty.”

  Another thought crossed my mind and that one got me fired up for flight. Cora Mae would have full access to George if I went to jail. Like I mentioned earlier, my mind does strange things under duress.

  Sirens wailed and I estimated I had about two minutes, if that. I cautiously raised an empty gardening glove in one of the windows and waited. Nothing. I stuck out my left arm thinking if I had to lose one it might as well be the one I didn’t write with.

  Nothing.

  I grabbed my purse and glanced back at my friends down on the floor. Cora Mae was cradling Kitty’s head.

  When I opened the trailer door, a note was taped to the outside of it. Just a warning it said.

  I looked at the blood covering my two friends and thought it had been much more than a warning.

  Chapter 23

  AS I’VE SAID BEFORE, WE love our weapons in the U.P. Most of us have at least three or four. Some of us have dozens. Automatic weapons might be illegal in this country, but Yoopers never consider themselves bound by the same laws as other United States citizens. We do what we want to.

  Me? I had my purse full of weapons, but they only worked up close. That wasn’t good enough. Than I remembered Grandma Johnson’s pistol. I’d taken it away from her the last time she waved it around in the air, threatening me and my dog.

  The run from the trailer to Walter’s rusty junker was the longest of my life. There’s not much scarier than the potential of a shot in the back by a hidden sniper. Every second I expected to feel the impact of a riddle of bullets ripping into my torso. While I started the truck, I anticipated someone out there beading into my forehead with a scope. My hands shook while I fumbled with the ignition.

  I blew out of Walter’s driveway, amazed that I was still alive. Half a mile down the road, I spotted something resembling a big bear ahead of me. As I approached, I realized it was Fred running along the side of the road. He was heading home, the smart boy.

  After a mutually warm greeting, Fred hopped into the truck and we raced home to pick up Grandma’s pea shooter. It wouldn’t stand up against the kind of weapon that was used at the trailer, but it was better than nothing.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the bullet hole in Kitty and the color draining from her face.

  The guinea hens did their little alarm dance around the truck until I stepped out and they recognized me. Fred dashed for the house, only two steps ahead of flapping wings and pointy beaks. I opened the door, we stepped in, and I instantly smelled old lady.

  “What are you doing here?” I said to Grandma Johnson, who stood over the sink eating an orange in drippy bites. “You don’t belong in my house.”

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” the she-devil said, wiping her chin with her fingers. “Sit down. I’ll get you a cup of coffee.”

  “I don’t have time to chitchat,” I said. “I’m picking up a few things. Then I’m gone.”

  “I need to say my piece,” Grandma said. “I went to bingo last night with Pearl and she set me straight. As hard as it is, I’m apologizing to you for everything I did.”

  What a shock. My mother-in-law had never, ever admitted wrongdoing in all the years I’d known her.

  “I’m sorry I got you in trouble,” she said, easing down at the kitchen table and looking at her hands. “Our family is pulled apart because of me. Blaze in jail, you on the run, me without a home.” At that, she gazed up at me with baleful eyes.

  By now, I was hearing sirens in the distance, coming from every direction. Dickey and his deputies would comb the woods searching for the person who shot Kitty. They’d also be looking for me, but they’d assume I was on foot.

  Eventually, they’d stop here to tell Grandma and Star that I was missing, lost in the woods, or worse. I had plenty of time before that happened.

  “Kitty’s been shot,” I said. “I don’t know if she’s going to live.”

  Grandma gasped. “What happened?”

  I gave her a rough outline. “There’s a very bad person who is getting desperate,” I said, after finishing. “I need to stop the killings and get my son out of jail. As much as you’d like to think that I’m a renegade criminal, I’m not. You and I are on the same side. We want the same things.”

  “Okay. I can see that now.”

  I didn’t know whether to trust her or not. Grandma Johnson hadn’t displayed any signs of humanity in all these years. Why would she start today?

  “What can I do to help?” Grandma asked.