Whatever they were arguing about, it wasn’t sports.

  She considered reading their lips, decided she didn’t actually care what their problem was, and focused her attention on Jack and the original goal of the trip.

  To make friends. To get advice.

  To become a real human being.

  She picked up her shorty. “A sua saúde.”

  “Portuguese?” Jack asked.

  Chandler nodded. “To your health.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  Jack raised her squat seven-ounce bottle and clinked. Chandler drank half of hers in two big sips. The former cop took a more conservative pull and checked her phone.

  “We have a signal. I’m gonna text the fam, tell them there’s no service at the B and B.”

  Chandler nodded. She did not check her own phone.

  She had no one to text.

  Chandler considered her life.

  Is this what it’s all about? No risking my life. No gallivanting around the world. No killing.

  Just sitting in a bar, having dinner and drinks with a friend?

  That didn’t seem like it would be enough.

  What about a new job? Farming had an allure to it. Working the land, making things grow. Hard, tiring work that would help me forgot all the horrors I’ve seen.

  And all the horrors I’ve done.

  Then, during down time, sitting in a bar and having drinks and dinner with a friend.

  That seemed better. Likelier.

  But still not totally fulfilling for the espionage agent.

  So… what then?

  A family?

  Is Jack’s way really the way to strive for?

  Chandler could picture herself married. She’d done ops where she acted like she was in a long-term relationship. And while it always seemed superficial, it was a role she played, not a commitment she cherished.

  Maybe I could marry. But kids?

  No way.

  No way in hell.

  Jack came back to the bar, grinning at her phone. She set it on the bar and Chandler snuck a look at Jack’s new screensaver, of Phin and Sam posing in front of a tent, both giving a thumbs-up.

  Sweet. Wholesome. Loving.

  Normal.

  Maybe having a child wasn’t totally out of the question…

  The bartender came back through the kitchen door, and this time his expression was more open, less guarded. While he didn’t smile, he wasn’t unfriendly when he approached and asked, “What brings you ladies to Flathead?”

  He had a voice like a chainsaw low on oil.

  “We’re renting the house on Evergreen Lane,” Jack offered.

  Again the conversation halted, and again the trio at the other end of the bar turned to gape.

  The bartender may have flinched a little, and waited a beat before replying.

  “Well, welcome to the Fall Down Inn. I’m Toddy.”

  “This your place, Toddy?” Chandler asked, taking a closer look at her surroundings.

  Standard small town shitkicker bar, walls decorated with posters and plaques; Jager and Miller and Old Style, Packers, Brewers, Badgers, and Bucks, old logging and telephone equipment stuck to the ceiling beams with railroad spikes, lighting courtesy of liquor distributor neon signs and old incandescent bulbs hanging bare from antique cloth-covered electric cords, and the omnipresent Northwoods barstools made from lacquered pine logs. Behind the bar was the standard collection of bottles on shelves, with one odd exception.

  Plungers. There’s a rack of plungers.

  Are clogged toilets a huge problem in this establishment? Or is this some Northern Wisconsin aesthetic I haven’t heard of?

  “Family owned for eighty-six years, back when this was a logging town. Great Grandpa cut the Norway pine used to make the bar. A’course, wasn’t a bar back then. Was a sawmill. Flathead was the biggest producer of utility poles in the Midwest. Employed damn near the whole town.”

  On the ride up, Chandler noted that unincorporated Lake Flathead had a population of 186 according to the highway sign.

  Either it was a small mill, or the boom town was no longer booming.

  “Run out of trees?” Jack asked.

  “We did not, ma’am. Founders knew what sustainable meant before it became a thing. Planted ten for every one they timbered.”

  “So why the switch from a mill to a bar?” Chandler asked.

  Toddy began to answer, but one of the three men slammed a can down at the bar, cutting him off with a BANG!

  Chandler didn’t see who it was. They all appeared peevish.

  “How about you offer the girls a traditional Fall Down Inn complementary shot,” said the guy in the middle. It was phrased as a statement rather than a question, and his voice matched his buttoned-up demeanor.

  Toddy appeared confused for a moment, then smiled for the first time, gap toothed. “Toilet shots on me.”

  Chandler didn’t like the sound of a toilet shot, and she liked it even less when Toddy went to the plunger rack and pulled off two of them. Standard wood-handled plungers with the reddish-orange rubber suction cups. Holding them both in one hand he removed a plastic jug from under the bar and filled each of the cups with a bright blue liquid.

  I’m not a fan of the local beer. I definitely am not a fan of whatever that is.

  Chandler looked to Jack, eyebrow raised in a silent question.

  “No thanks,” Jack said, holding up her palm. “I’m not big on mixed drinks.”

  “It’s just a blue margarita,” Toddy said.

  Chandler, who had been drugged more times than she could remember—probably because of all those times I’ve been drugged—also demurred. “Thanks, but no.”

  Toddy shrugged, then offered the plungers to the trio at the end of the bar. Both the aggressive guy and the ex-con guy waved him over, and the men drank from the plungers.

  “Where’d you come up with the plunger idea?” Jack asked.

  Toddy began to wash the plungers in the bar sink. “Grandad did. Along with the bar, he owned almost half the town before it went tits up. Used to be a busy place. Locals, and out of towners. Besides utility poles, Flathead was the number three wooden dowel distributor in the US of A. He always had plungers lying around, and one day he put them to use. Became kind of a tourist gimmick for a while, but the locals still love it.”

  Jack leaned forward, putting her elbows on the bar. “So if you didn’t run out of trees, what happened to Lake Flathead’s timber industry?”

  Toddy’s face flashed pain. “It’s… uh… it’s complicated.”

  “It’s not complicated.” The low-key middle guy who mentioned the toilet shots spoke up. “Back in 1977, folks began to disappear. By 1980, almost seventy people were missing. Gone. Vanished. Never found. Town of thirteen hundred, that’s five percent. Residents got spooked. Families left, and then everything went to shit. Weren’t enough people to work in the mill, so it closed. When it did, more people left. When they left, more businesses closed.”

  Chandler had seen similar things happen in other small towns when the main source of income vanished. But she’d never heard of it occurring due to missing persons.

  “Did the disappearances stop?” Jack asked.

  None of the men answered.

  Jack pressed. “They’re still happening?”

  The mean-looking guy on the end got off his barstool and hitched up his pants. He had some bulges in his pockets, things big enough to be a weapon. “You girls got lots of questions. In these parts we don’t like nosy outsiders coming here, getting in our business. Getting mouthy.” He smiled, and it was ugly. “There’s only one good thing a bitch can do with her mouth, and it ain’t talking.”

  Chandler tensed as Jack stood up.

  Keep calm, Jack. Remember how to de-escalate. We don’t need to ruin our girl time by murdering three people. Chandler glanced at Toddy. Or four people.

  Jack, however, couldn’t read Chandler’s mind. Or she could and simply didn’t care.

  “I bet your mom wishes she did that with her mouth instead of fucking your dad,” Jack said. “I bet you’re a real disappointment to her.”

  The guy’s eyes got wide and he looked ready to charge. Toddy held up both hands like a referee.

  “Now, Zeke, settle down.”

  “She’s right, Zeke,” said a new visitor who just walked in. “That woman will kick your ass so hard you’ll be farting out of your mouth for a month.”

  Out of all the people on the planet, how the hell did this guy suddenly show up?

  “Seriously?” Jack said to the new arrival. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Good to see you too, Jackie,” said Harry McGlade, smiling big. “And Chandler as well. You guys stalking me? Can’t blame you. You’re only human, and I am quite the sensual hunk of man meat. How about I buy the next round for everyone here, and we all talk about a couple who disappeared in this town a few days ago?”

  THE ARTIST

  The Wall Is Solid.

  The Jackhammer Is Noisy.

  The Work Is Hard.

  Art Is Hard.

  Double Hard.

  Hard To Make.

  Hard As Old Leather.

  The Artist Touches The Art. It’s Been Over Six Months.

  There Is Still An Odor. Musty, But Not Unpleasant.

  The Pose Is Perfect. The Concrete Blocks Always Work.

  Beautiful. But Unfinished.

  The Artist Pulls The Art From The Bunker.

  The Art Doesn’t Bend Or Break. It Is Hard And Dry. Sharp Elbows, Sharp Knees. Face Like A Paper-Mache Skull. Gaping Mouth, Lips Pulled Back, Teeth Bared In A Silent Scream.

  The Eyes Are Sunken. Shrunken. Hollow Sockets In A Dry Face.

  The Artist Will Make New Eyes.

  Beautiful Eyes.

  Beautiful Aquamarine Eyes.

  The Art Is Easy To Lift. Death And Salt Have Removed The Icky Fluids.

  The Artist Works In Private. The Women Have Left The House. No One Is Watching The Artist.

  The Artist Is The One Who Watches.

  The Art Is Dragged To The Back Of The Barn.

  Past More Walls.

  Past More Art That Isn’t Ready Yet.

  The Artist Brings The Art To The Secret Art Room.

  The Night Will Be Long.

  The Night Will Be Good.

  The Artist Ignores The Faint Screams For Help And Visualizes The Pose While Mixing More Concrete.

  The Town Of Lake Flathead Is Dead.

  But The Art Will Give It Life Again.

  Eternal Life In Art.

  HARRY

  Though my surprise entrance was dramatic, humorous, and chock-full of mystery and intrigue, the locals at the Fall Down Inn didn’t appear impressed, and neither did my close personal besties, Jack and Chandler.

  Jack I knew because we’d been partners in the Chicago Police Department a million years ago. Chandler I knew because she was a spy and I sold her weapons. They both admired me deeply, but hid their appreciation and affection behind a veil of feigned disinterest and petty insults. I was curious why they were in Lake Flathead, and wondering if it had anything to do with my case, or if it was just dumb luck.

  Every exciting tale is allowed one strange coincidence, but when it came to these two there were so many strange coincidences I’d lost count.

  I did a cursory sigma male inspection of the four dudes in the room, and pegged them as townies. Bartender seemed like a decent guy but I was sure he had a loaded shotgun and a baseball bat nearby. The three stooges propped against the bar each gave off criminal vibes in different ways. Guy on the end was a sex predator. Guy in the middle was a textbook loner psycho. Guy closest to the women was an ex-con, likely a violent felony.

  Nice clientele this bar had.

  As for ambiance, it was Northwoods Classic. Log walls and ceiling, log stools and tables, log foot rail along the bar, lots of neon liquor signs and old crap hanging everywhere, including a shelf of dusty green glass telephone pole insulators, which looked like large, ribbed butt plugs, though I wouldn’t recommend sticking anything glass up the corn chute.

  Lots of crunchy stuff on the floor, pebbles or maybe rock salt.

  A clue?

  Sure. Everything was a clue when you were a mastermind detective like me.

  I’d happened upon this establishment after finding Traydorn’s cell phone and perusing all of his personal and private information. I was all gangbusters to check out the B and B he’d rented with Mia, but Waddlebutt, my penguin, had the super aquatic bird shits and sprayed my RV fridge with a thick stream of fish head guano while I was hunting around for a sandwich. I was able to clean myself up, but the sandwich was a lost cause. The refrigerator was also a lost cause; I’d toss it on the side of the road and buy a new one before attempting to clean that thick stinky gunk out of all the nooks and crannies.

  Maybe I’d dump it at the Cracker Barrel.

  But all work and no food made Harry a hangry boy, so before checking out Traydorn’s B and B I searched for local eating establishments and decided on the Fall Down Inn, because it was the closest restaurant in twenty square miles.

  Now that you’re all caught up we can resume our regularly scheduled programming.

  So I offered to buy the ladies and the criminals a round of drinks to break the palpable tension likely caused by Jack because she attracted trouble like dead skunks attract crows. But rather than putting in their drink orders, one of the felons at the end of the bar spat out, “Who the hell are you?”

  “Harry McGlade, private eye. You might know the character based on me from my hit TV series, Fatal Autonomy.”

  “I seen that show,” said another one of the dudes. “What does that mean anyway? Fatal Autonomy?”

  “No one knows. But it sounds cool. I wanted to call it Sex Hammer Torture Murder, but the network suits didn’t think the fast-food joints would sell kids meal toys under that title, because they’re dickless. You guys know what I mean. Especially you on the end.”

  No one seemed to know what I mean. Especially the one on the end.

  I turned to the bartender. “I need a burger and curds, my man. Who wants a beer, and who wants to talk about Traydorn Blouder and Mia Qualt?”

  Blank stares all around. Except for Jack, who masked a barely concealed veil of hostility.

  With that negative attitude it was no wonder someone was always trying to kill her.

  Truth told, a lot of people try to kill me as well. But I chalk that up to envy rather than any of my delightful personality traits.

  I whipped out my cell, showed a pic of the missing couple. “Traydorn? Mia? She’s the shorter one, with the boobs. They rented a B and B on Evergreen Lane.”

  More blank expressions from the men, but the women exchanged a knowing glance.

  “Jackie? Chandler?”

  “We’re renting a place on Evergreen Lane,” Jack said.

  Interesting. Was that considered part of the previous coincidence? Or was it a whole new coincidence?

  Or maybe it wasn’t a coincidence at all. Maybe Jack and Chandler were hiding something.

  That would be an interesting twist. I needed to remember that to spring at the next writers’ room meeting.

  To find out what the women knew I’d have to use every trick in the private detective book, lulling them into a false sense of security while cleverly manipulating them into divulging their deepest secrets, using subterfuge and savvy wiles and my keen natural intellect to coax the truth out of their unsuspecting mouths.

  “You chicks hiding something?” I asked.

  “Hiding what?” Chandler asked. “We just told you we’re renting a place on Evergreen Lane.”

  Touché, Chandler. But this chess game of cat and mouse can only have one victor, and to the smartest goes the spoils.

  “So that’s it?” I asked.

  “I’ll take a beer,” Jack said.

  “Same,” Chandler said. “But something bigger than seven ounces.”

  This prompted the skeevy men to also order beers. I ordered one for myself, then sat in the middle of the bar, keeping one eye on the guys, one on the gals, one on the bartender, and one on the entrance in case trouble came in, or exited.

  The key to always coming out on top was maintaining a state of hyper-awareness so nothing can surprise you because you always expect the—

  “AAAAAAHHHH!” I screeched when Jack patted my shoulder.

  She leaned in and whispered. “What the hell, McGlade? What are you doing here?”

  “Ordering food,” I whispered back. “My penguin shit in the fridge.”

  “Is that one of your stupid expressions? Like you need a dick clog plumbed out?”

  “I wish. You ever wonder what would happen if you filled a super soaker squirt gun with diarrhea? Meet the chinstrap penguin, nature’s ass hose.”

  “Enough said.”

  “Hardly. I got a crisper full of caca. A butter dish full of butt discharge. An ice tray full of ass spray. Tell me when I can stop.”

  “I already did.”

  “Like Italiano Rocky Marciano, I went mano a mano with waterfowl guano.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “But it rhymes. Kind of.”

  I’m awesome.

  “Do you sit at home alone and think of these things?” Jack asked.

  “I’m alone a lot,” I admitted.

  If I were a bear, I’d be a bi-polar bear. Heh heh.

  The bartender disappeared into the back room. Jack pulled a frowny face. “What are you doing in Lake Flathead?”

  “Court-appointed community service. Missing persons case. Why are we whispering? Is it so Chandler doesn’t hear us?”

  “I can hear you,” Chandler said.

  “She seems irritable,” I whispered to Jack. “Is she on her period? Riding the dry-weave burrito? Tense-ies from the menses?”

  “You’re a jackass,” Chandler said.

  “Or maybe it’s not her period. Maybe she’s just mean.” I looked at her. “You’re so immature, Chandler. Hey, how’s your insane sister, Hammett? Does she ever think about me, sexually?”

  “Does anyone?” Chandler shot back.

  “Touché.”

  Our drinks arrived and I decided to interrogate the women later on. So after a big sip of cheap beer I turned my attention to the obvious criminal element in the room. Other than me.