“It wouldn’t hurt to scope out her place first,” Kitty said.
“After dark,” I agreed, starting to feel night’s chill crowding out the late afternoon air.
“What about Tony?” Kitty asked. “Ouch, Cora Mae, watch those pins. You’re digging into my scalp.”
“Lyla fired us,” I said, telling them about the phone call from Lyla and the cozy couple’s re-alliance. “We’re officially unemployed.”
“You did the right thing by keeping quiet about the other woman,” Cora Mae said. “You can’t get involved in their marriage.”
“Lyla hired us to get involved. I feel like I’m letting her down.”
“I hope she’s going to pay us for the work we did,” Kitty said.
Now was as good a time as any to break it to my partners. “We had a trade agreement. She’s giving us manicures.” I slung it out there, and it hovered in mid-air.
After a period of dead silence, Kitty exploded. “What! I don’t have any other job but this one! I was counting on cold cash in my hand.” She stood up, hands on hips, and stomped a foot.
“Oh goody,” Cora Mae said, holding one hand up for a quick assessment. “I want some of those acrylic nails, the French ones.”
Kitty held her hands in my face so I could see her nails. I never noticed before, but they were chewed down into the quick worse than I remembered. “Do I look like a woman who cares about her nails? Do I? I have to pay for my online legal course. How am I going to do that?”
I’d never seen Kitty so mad before. She must really be desperate for money.
“We could have another rummage sale,” I suggested, looking around Kitty’s private junkyard. “And Herb’s bar needs a part-time bartender. Since my grandsons own it, I can get you in.” I crossed my fingers and hoped that Red and Ed wouldn’t mind that I was doing a little hiring for them.
“How soon?” Her voice was still angry.
“Anytime. Want to work tonight?”
“Saturday night will be too busy at the bar for a training lesson. All I know how to do is pour beer.”
“That’s great, because that’s all anybody ever orders.”
“Not tonight. We have a surveillance run. And you know how I like those.”
Had Angie Gates killed Bob Goodyear behind the Trouble Buster truck with my Glock? Was she the third partner? Did she turn against the men, planning to keep all the money for herself? I thought about that while heating up pea soup.
It smelled delicious, and I realized how hungry I was. Pea soup is a traditional Swedish dish that I learned to make from Grandma Johnson, with a few minor revisions. She uses pig’s feet or pig knuckles in hers. Mine is made with ham hocks. I gave the soup a final stir and processed some more information about Angie.
I’d seen her at the dance. She looked a little fidgety. I thought she was waiting for someone who was running late. The only thing I knew for a fact was she hadn’t killed the credit union robber because she’d been on the floor behind the counter klonked out. And I’d seen the whole thing happen. Did the orange shoes she was throwing in the water belong to Bob? Or was she a member of the same gang and hiding the evidence?
“It’s ready,” I called out to the Bobbsey Twins, who were napping in the living room. Blaze’s large body covered the couch and Grandma slept upright in a side chair. Mary, who was watching the TV6 news, had to shake them awake.
Fred ate with us, only his meal was in a dish on the floor. Kibble and a crumbled piece of his favorite-bacon.
“Pea soup’s lots better made with pig’s feet,” Grandma said, before she even had the spoon to her mouth to taste it.
I sat down and ignored her while I ate.
Blaze hummed, carrying on our family tradition of humming when the grub was good. I smiled.
“Thanks for having us over,” Mary said.
“You shouldn’t have to come home from a trip and start cooking right away,” I said.
Grandma humpfed. “You women don’t know how good you have it.”
“Sure we do,” Mary answered, sweetly. That’s Mary, always smoothing ruffled feathers.
“Don’t patronize me,” said Grandma.
“After we eat, I’m going out for a little while,” I told them, confident that any trips they made would be on foot. Mary and I gave each other a conspiratorial glance. Mary had the keys tucked away in a safe place.
“Why don’t you come over to our house?” Mary said to Grandma. “We can play cribbage.”
Our family is a card-playing family. Anything we can deal out, we’ll play. Rummy, Poker, whatever.
“Fifteen-two?” Grandma perked up. “Better than sitting around in this mess.”
Chapter 13
BEFORE WE DID ANY EYE SPYING or illegal breaking and entering, we wanted to make sure the acting sheriff wasn’t slinking around near Angie’s place. Dickey Snell’s truck wasn’t parked at the jail, so the three of us drove past his house in the Trouble Buster.
When Kitty had joined the team, she took over all remaining space inside the truck, so Fred had to ride in the back bed. He didn’t seem to mind, sitting calmly watching the scenery go by. In the beginning I used to worry that he might jump out and get hurt. But he’s a smart dog. It hasn’t happened.
Almost every dog in the U.P. rides in the back of an America-made truck. Fords are popular here. One thing I never did though was put my kids back there. Some people even do that. You see them tooling down the road like they think it’s a fun hay ride. Carrying kids in the cargo area of a truck is legal in Michigan as long as the vehicle is going less than five miles an hour. Can you believe those whacky laws?
The practice was a source of serious frustration for Blaze, who had to scrap more than one kid off the road over the years. Not to mention the parties of hunters, riding around in the back, drinking cheap beer, and falling out on their heads.
Lights were on at Dickey’s house, so I drove past very slowly. “What do you see?” I said to Kitty, who was sitting on the side closest to the curb.
“I can see the top of a head,” she said, rolling down the window and sitting as tall as she could. “That’s Dickey’s greasy comb-over turned toward the television set. Hit it. We’re safe.”
We turned away from the big lights of Stonely. The dark swallowed us up.
I’m not much of a night driver, especially in the twilight that comes right before true darkness. The residents of the U.P. don’t believe in spending their taxes to promote light pollution, so we use our brights to watch for critters crossing the roads.
I had my partners helping me scout for possible problems when something went wrong with the Trouble Buster’s electrical system. The lights stopped working as soon as we turned off US 41 and began to cruise toward Trenary.
I pulled over.
“Holy Cripes,” Cora Mae said. “The world’s gone black. Dang. What’s wrong?”
“Lights aren’t working,” I said even though it should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain.
Kitty lurched out on her side, and we walked to the front of the truck and stared at the headlights. I kicked the bumper, hoping to jar something back in place. Kitty pounded on the glass.
Cora Mae, our resident electrical engineer, stepped out in her high heels and said, “The bulbs must be burnt out.”
“All of them?” I said. “All the way around the truck?”
She nodded. “Do you have any spares?”
“Nobody carries spare light bulbs around. Besides, that’s not the problem.”
“We’ll have to finish the mission in the dark,” Kitty said. “It’s not like we haven’t done this before.” Which was true. In the past, we’d evaded Blaze’s wrath plenty of times by dousing the lights.
“Yes,” I said. “But you were driving then. I’m night blind.”
And that’s how race car Kitty got control of my vehicle. You’d think I’d learn from past mistakes.