“And that’s from one little head ding.”

  “Are you going to sue?” the driver asked, nervously.

  “Joe Oja was stalking me at the gun show!” Kitty was smoking hot mad. “The more I think about it, the more ticked off I get. Of all the nerve! It he wasn’t dead, I’d kill him.”

  I’d gone straight home to dose myself with pain meds, get an ice pack on my head, and take a rest on the sofa. Fred and Pebbles were gnawing on beef bones on the floor beside me. Now, I was talking on the phone—a three-way.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kitty called out, and I could tell she wasn’t talking to me. “I’ll take your drink order in a minute. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  “You’re working,” I said, suddenly remembering. “We can talk later.”

  “It’s slow. I have time. This guy has had too many anyway.”

  “Where are you, Cora Mae?” I said into the phone. At this point, I hadn’t got to the bus part of the story nor had I presented my new theory. Or the fact that my face had been rearranged. It was looking worse by the minute.

  “I’m sitting at the bar at Herb’s,” Cora Mae answered.

  “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t you Joe was after, Kitty,” I said, weighing in.

  “Sure he was, because I’m a dangerous woman.”

  I wasn’t about to argue with her. Of the three of us, she could do the most damage. At least, from my point of view.

  I related the conversation with Ray, told them how Joe was investigating what could only be the Trouble Busters. “When I went into the forest for Pearl’s first missing shoe,” I said. “I came close to finding the meth dump. I’m positive a drone flew over. I didn’t see it, but I heard it. At the time, I hardly noticed. The meth lab operator was flying that drone and must have thought I was searching for the dump. So Joe was sent to keep an eye on me, find out what I knew and keep track of my movements.”

  Kitty stated the obvious flaw in the theory. “So why is Joe dead? Shouldn’t you be dead? You haven’t taken any bullets.” She sounded disappointed, like I still hadn’t paid my dues.

  I didn’t have an answer. “I’m going to need some pancake makeup, Cora Mae,” I said instead. “It can wait until morning, though.”

  “Nobody wears pancake makeup anymore,” she said. “Except for theater. It’s too thick. If you want to start wearing makeup, foundation is the way to go—it’s nice and light.”

  “Do you own pancake makeup?”

  “I might have some in a drawer someplace.”

  “I’m really going to need it.”

  Cora Mae sighed. “Fine. Don’t listen to me. What would I know? I’m just a hot ticket with lots of admirers.”

  I went on to relate the bus shoving episode. “And to top it off, Ralph and Paula are alibiing each other out,” I finished.

  “Convenient,” Kitty added.

  It wasn’t even five o’clock yet. Still time to do some sleuthing. After this latest so-called accident, I thought we had better move fast. “Let’s keep digging for answers. Is Squeaky’s office closed for the day?”

  Squeaky Javis operated the Stonely Insurance Agency from a store front next to the Deer Horn Restaurant. He had a secretary, but she only came in for a few hours every morning to organize claims and answer phones. For the rest of the day, he opened at the office when it suited him.

  “It’s currently closed,” Kitty said, “since he’s in the bar drinking a Budweiser.”

  “Cora Mae, you need to find a ride over to his office, break in, and find out if Joe Oja had a life insurance policy through Squeaky.”

  Cora Mae snorted like I’d just told her a funny joke.

  “I’m serious.”

  “I have a lot on my plate,” she said. “You should have to walk in my shoes just once.”

  I thought about my friend’s heels and said, “If I did, I’d be limping by noon.”

  There was a significant pause while I tried to guilt her over the phone. When it didn’t work, I sighed. “Fine, I’ll do it myself. Do you think you can keep Squeaky in the bar?”

  That brightened her day. “I’ll make that sacrifice,” she told me.

  “Who else is in the bar, Kitty?” I was already gathering my purse and keys.

  “Just about everybody. It’s happy hour.”

  “Is Paula Oja there?”

  “I don’t know what she looks like.”

  “Round face, a lot like Joe.”

  “That could be most of the customers.”

  “Is Walter in there?” I asked.

  “You know he likes to drink at home,” Kitty said, the earlier heat gone from her tone. “Why?”

  “I want to ask him if we can use his drone for surveillance.”

  “I’ll ask him for you.”

  I hung up, apologized to Fred for leaving him behind, gave the two pals their evening meal, and pulled out of the drive, heading for Squeaky’s office.

  It was then that it dawned on me. Kitty’s voice had changed from her normal tone to a sweet, sugary one when I mentioned Walter.

  Was he her secret lover?

  Chapter 12

  Normally, I wouldn’t break into a business office right on the main drag during daylight, but these were extenuating circumstances. Someone had tried to kill me. Joe Oja had been murdered in plain view of my home, and Blaze’s house had gone up in flames. Then there was a meth dump, which meant a meth lab nearby. That spelled dangerous, desperate criminals who would stop at nothing. I felt like time was running out. Whether that time was mine or someone else’s, I didn’t want to find out.

  A good investigator covers all the bases. Motives for murder are simple, usually one of the three Rs—rage, revenge, or riches. If Joe had an insurance policy, that would be the perfect motive and would point right at Paula Oja.

  The Deer Horn was open for breakfast and lunch, but not for evening dining. Ruthie usually closed up around two or three, depending on business. So there weren’t any cars in her lot when I checked the time and clocked in at six. The insurance building was closed up tight, too. Times like these, I wish for short winter days. In other words this was a broad daylight B&E.

  I drove around the back so my truck couldn’t be seen from the road and went to work on the back door of Squeaky’s business. I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of success once I got in. First, there was a fifty-fifty that Joe Oja even had life insurance. And two, if he did, odds were about even he’d purchased it from Squeaky. Javis is like a bull dog when it comes to sniffing out new clients and convincing them to buy insurance. Plus, none of us like to give business to Escanaba when we can go local. So in spite of the fact that we don’t like Squeaky, we support local. It’s a love-hate relationship.

  It took only one swipe of my fake driver’s license. One swipe down the crack in the door, and it snapped open as easy as a pop can. You’d think the guy would have installed deadbolts, but they must cost more, and we all know that Squeaky squeaks.

  The sun was a bit lower in the sky, casting light across the front of the office. It was a one room affair with a reception desk, Squeaky’s desk directly behind, and a bank of metal file cabinets against the back wall.

  All the cabinets were locked up tight; a problem I hadn’t anticipated.

  “Get his file cabinet keys,” I said when I turned on my phone and Cora Mae answered hers. My phone announced that Blaze had called several times while it had been powered off. “All the cabinets are locked.”

  “How?” Squeaky must be right there beside her, or she’d be complaining instead of speaking in monosyllables.

  “Check his pants pockets.”

  “What?”

  “We’re counting on you. Get them to me. I’m at the insurance office, around back.” I hung up, wondering if she’d come through for me. After all, this was her area of expertise.

  While I waited, I called Ruthie at home.

  “I’m working with Blaze,” I told her when she answered. “And we need to confirm the whereabouts of several neighbors on the morning of the explosion out at our place. Who was in the restaurant around nine in the morning?”

  Ruthie started ticking off names of locals. Then she said, “George wasn’t in like he usually is.”

  “He drove my family members to Milwaukee for a visit. What about Carl Anderson?” I hadn’t heard his name on her list.

  “Carl hasn’t been feeling well,” Ruthie said.

  “I noticed he’s lost some weight and his color is off.”

  “That’s probably why he wasn’t in the Deer Horn yesterday,” Ruthie suggested.

  Considering that Carl claimed he’d been there, I double checked. “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. Is there a problem?”

  “Not at all. “After I recovered from the initial shock, I asked about putting a lost dog sign on the restaurant door to throw her off if she was following my thoughts on Carl. Ruthie didn’t have a problem with it.

  After we disconnected, I thought about Carl. He sure knew a lot about drones. And his weight loss and general sickly appearance could be due to consuming drugs instead of food. He’d lied right to my face, trying to establish an alibi when he didn’t have one. I’ve known Carl forever, but people change when drugs and money are involved. Perfectly decent human beings can lose their moral compasses if the circumstances are right.

  Would Carl have blown up Joe, though? Maybe. It the stakes were high enough. But would Carl push me under a bus? I hated to think that he might.

  I peeked out the back door. Nobody bearing a set of keys had arrived yet.

  So I returned Blaze’s call.

  “Where are you?” he demanded. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  “Enjoying my freedom from Grandma. What are you working on?” While we conversed, I rummaged through stacks of folders on Squeaky’s desk, an afterthought that should have been a ‘before’ thought.

  “You mean besides rebuilding my house?” His tone was still angry.

  “How’s that going?”

  “It’s only been a day. This is going to take a year or more. Right now, I need to talk to you about a drone and how it’s all over town that one attacked the truck. Didn’t I tell you to keep it to yourself?”

  “I’d already told Carl before you suggested that I keep it a secret.”

  “I didn’t suggest it. I ordered it!”

  “So arrest me.”

  After a moment of silence, he said, “The truck was towed to the back of the jail. We went over it again, and found something. It might be nothing.”

  Blaze was about to share information?

  “And?” I said, suspicious of his motive for including me.

  “We found a tracking device on the underside, behind the front bumper.”

  “A homing device?”

  Blaze continued, “A stroke of luck. If the device had been on the back end of the truck, it would have blown and we’d have never known.”

  “Who’re we?”

  “Me and the fire inspector.”

  “That discovery changes things.” It didn’t change a thing for me. I’d already been working the case. But this meant Blaze was stepping in too. Why was he telling me what he’d found though? That was very un-Blaze like.

  “It might be significant.” Blaze conceded. “Do you remember anything else?”

  “Besides the drone?”

  Blaze heavy-sighed into the phone. “I’ve been up and down the area, conducting interviews, and nobody else saw a drone.”

  “That’s because it came through the back field along the river. The flier wouldn’t have traipsed it right down the middle of the road. All three of us saw it.” I picked up a file folder with Johnson Fire written on the tab. Score! Squeaky had all his current claims and investigations in a pile on his desk

  “Your two cronies would say anything you told them to say. But I’m making more inquiries in spite of my doubts. The fact that the truck was being tracked is concerning. Wish I knew who owns it. Any ideas?”

  Now that I thought about it, Blaze and I have played give-and-take before. We each give a little and take as much as we can. Another mother and son dance. I’ve always suspected that Blaze shares only when he realizes I was right all along. Only then does he feel guilty enough to throw me a bone.

  “Nothing on the owner of the truck,” I replied.

  “That was a trick question. You shouldn’t have replied. Aren’t you supposed to be finding another way to spend the day?”

  “I can spend it any way I want.”

  “What a surprise. Anything else to add to the case, since I’m stuck with you?”

  “Not a thing.”

  I wasn’t ready to share the meth dump discovery with Blaze in case he called in every federal agency in the state to breath down our necks. If that happened, whoever was operating a lab would shut it down and disappear. Besides, Blaze and I might have our differences, but he’s still my son and I love him. If anybody was going to die during this investigation, it was going to be me, not Blaze. I’d watched enough television to know that people who dealt in drugs played hardball.

  Dying isn’t such a big deal if you have to make a choice between yourself and one of your kids. And if I did get myself blown to pieces, well, I’d be joining Barney. As for George, he’d miss me, but Cora Mae has been itching to get her claws into him. She’d be a source of comfort, among other things.

  “I saw a new dog over at your house,” Blaze said. “Like you need another one.”

  “It’s a lost dog. I’m trying to find her owner.”

  I smiled when we hung up. Things were heating up. The homing device was a biggie. While Joe was following us around, somebody was checking up on him.

  The fire file didn’t contain much, a few pages of handwritten notes that didn’t tell me anything new. I picked up another file with Joe Oja’s name written on it. Inside was the insurance policy for the dead man. It wasn’t a fortune. But twenty thousand dollars went a long way in the Upper Peninsula.

  Paula Oja was the beneficiary.

  Surprise, surprise.

  “Forget the keys,” I told Cora Mae when she answered her phone.

  “But I finally got them out of his pants,” she hissed.

  “Put them back,” I said.

  And with that, I let myself out, leaving everything as I’d found it.

  Chapter 13

  Word For The Day

  CALLOW (KAL oh) adj.

  Young and inexperienced. Immature.

  Wednesday morning dawned full of promise, with a sunny sky and a light breeze that gently billowed the bedroom curtains. First thing, I fed Fred and Pebbles and let them out to take their chances with the hens that were pecking around for bugs outside the door. After several cups of coffee and a bowl of blueberries and cream, I called the dogs and we took off for the Deer Horn Restaurant to hopefully run into Paula’s boyfriend, Ralph Hanson. Carl should be there, too.

  All I knew for sure was that this was a pernicious situation and I wasn’t going to be mollified until it was over. That made me smile. I’d remembered two whole days of words, which had to be a record. Eating blueberries was improving my mind by leaps and bounds.

  Honestly, even without the blueberries, remembering is much easier since I started choosing less pretentious words. Mollify is one I might actually use once in a blue moon. Pernicious is on the line, not quite in the realm of daily vocabulary selections, but callow is another possible future word in my repertoire. Repertoire slid through my mind and stuck. That was going to be my next word-for-the-day, mainly to reinforce it.

  I pulled up to the restaurant.

  As predicted, Carl’s car was in the parking lot, along with several other vehicles, including the motorcycle I’d seen Ralph Hanson riding. I had two more promising suspects, and I really wanted to be able to point my finger at Paula and/or her boyfriend rather than Carl. But he’d lied about his whereabouts, and I couldn’t ignore that.

  As I stepped out of the truck, Kitty blew up in her Lincoln. She came awfully close to taking off the open door of my truck and me right along with it. She probably would have if I hadn’t slammed the door shut and flattened against the body.

  “Hey,” she called when she heaved herself out of the car, oblivious to how close she’d come to ramming me. “What are you doing here?” She seemed nervous, like she wasn’t particularly happy to encounter me.

  “I could ask you the same thing,” I replied.

  “Having breakfast.”

  “Me, too.”

  Kitty looked pretty good considering the earliness of the hour. Her black flip was neat and straight and she’d applied some pink to her cheeks. “Where’s Cora Mae? You should be over at Cora Mae’s.”

  “She doesn’t get up this early,” I told her, although she had to know that.

  “Now I understand why you asked her for pancake makeup last night. What happened to your face?”

  I’d completely forgotten about my injury. Which sounds impossible, but I’ve been focused on the case instead of my face. “It must look worse than it feels,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  “Results of being thrown under a bus.” Maybe this would be my bullet for the team.

  “Come sit in my car,” Kitty said with sympathy in her voice. “We’ll fix you up. I didn’t admit it to Cora Mae after she dissed pancake makeup, but I use it all the time, ever since I had chicken pox as an adult. Don’t ever have chicken pox as an adult, because it leaves scars on your face. Can you see the scars?”

  I squinted at her. “Not a bit.”

  “We’ll fix you too.”

  “Make it fast. I don’t want anybody inside to get away,” I told her.

  After a quick but sufficient plaster job, while the dogs watched from the open truck window, Kitty and I banged into the restaurant and took seats at the counter. I stopped to wonder why she came here. Kitty doesn’t make a habit of eating breakfast at Ruthie’s. I plunked into Otis’s empty seat, shoulder to shoulder with Carl, and Kitty took the one next to that. We’d barely sat down when Ralph stood up from a seat at a table, threw some bills on the table, and walked out.