Stumpy jerked slightly, and his mouth turned down. “How’d you know about that?”
“You just told me,” Abner said. “Got an answer to my question?”
“They’ll kill me.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Ain’t as stupid as I look. Folks like this, you don’t mess with.”
“That’s why you’ve been hiding out in the swamps?” Abner said. “You’re afraid?”
“You’d be afraid, too, old man.” He chewed on a piece of dead skin on his thumb. “Between you, me, and the wall, I got myself into a bad spot. To get out of it, I had to do this…thing. I had to take a few things from the storeroom and then leave them in the janitor’s closet for pick up. But that’s all.”
“Who picked up the chemicals?”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“Who asked you to steal them?”
“Y’know, now that I think about it,” Stumpy said, “maybe it’d be good idea if I was to stop talking.”
I took the phone from Abner. “Listen to me, Stumpy. We can help, but you have to help us prove you’re innocent.”
“That’s the problem. I ain’t innocent.” Stumpy signaled the jailer. “I’m guilty as sin.”
6
“That didn’t go as planned,” I told Abner as we walked down a long concrete corridor to the waiting area.
“I wish he’d told us more about the chemicals,” Abner said. “That’s the key to solving this thing.”
I signed out at the jailer’s desk. “He’s just afraid. I would be too, if they were accusing me of arson.”
“The arson charge isn’t scaring him. He knows he’s not guilty. There’s something more going on here.”
The jailer buzzed the door, and we walked into the waiting room. “Don’t you think Hoyt is going to be pissed about you investigating?”
“What Hoyt doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He can arrest me again if he wants, but the charges won’t stick. He’s just trying to scare an old man.”
“But why? You’re helping him solve the case.”
“Some men,” Abner said, “don’t want to be helped.”
I tailed Abner out. “So, what leads do we follow now?”
“You interviewed that band teacher, right?”
“Not yet. Eugene Loach—”
“Loach. That name keeps coming up, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Doc,” I said, “It does.”
“He’s got nothing to with this case, Boone. Leave him to the experts.”
“Whatever you say, Doc.”
But I had no intention of letting Abner throw me off the trail. Stumpy Meeks was counting on me. The chemicals stolen from the schools were all alkali metals. Highly reactive. Highly volatile. Very difficult to remove once they were handled. Easily discovered with spectra analysis. I had to get Eugene near a spectra analysis machine. Obviously, that wasn’t going to work. I needed a lord high substitute, something capable of identifying minute traces of alkali metals.
We reached the main entrance to the jail area. I opened the door for Abner again, and in walked a middle-aged woman wearing heavy sunglasses and a kerchief over her hair.
“Dr. K?” I said.
“Oh!” she said. “Boone! I didn’t see you there. Good heavens, what are you doing here?”
“Visiting Stumpy Meeks.”
“Stumpy? You mean Henry.” Her mouth pinched so tightly, her lips disappeared. “How, how do you know Henry?”
“We’re friends. Sort of. He asked me to come down. They’re trying to charge him with arson. He doesn’t have a lawyer.”
“He certainly does now.” Her shoulders drew back, and her spine straightened. “I’ve seen to it.”
“So you’re friends with Stumpy?”
“Not really.” She removed the sunglasses. She’d been crying. “Henry Meeks is my brother, and I’m here to see me through this ordeal. We Blevinses always stick together.”
“Wait,” I said. “His last name is Meeks.”
“Henry is my half-brother,” she said and excused herself.
As we walked across the parking lot, my mind reeled with the implications of what my science professor had just revealed. If she and Stumpy were half brothers, then so were Stumpy and Mr. Blevins. That meant that Stumpy had an interest in the same property that Blevins had sold to Landis.
Funny, Stumpy didn’t look like someone who had recently inherited valuable property.
“That was interesting,” I said as we climbed into Abner’s Range Rover.
“Downright peculiar,” Abner agreed. “But it does make your job easier.”
“How so?”
“There’s no reason for you to interview the band teacher. I just found out all I needed to know.”
“Great. Now, I can go after Loach.”
“No, leave Loach to the—“
“Experts. I know.”
Luckily, the US Government and the United States Navy both thought I was an expert at gathering intelligence.
I had the service medal to prove it.
7
“You need to borrow my what?” Cedar asked me a few hours later.
We were on the courthouse green, where volunteers were setting up tents for the YamFest vendor fair. My mom had reserved three booths for the fair—one for her vet practice, one for Lamar’s business, and one for the Allegheny County Historical Society. The Society had launched a petition against the Tin City development, and they were hoping to collect hundreds of signatures to stop the re-interment of the cemetery.
“Your nose.”
Cedar clapped a hand over her face. “No way.”
“Not your nose, you’re N.O.S.E. Your device for detecting smells. I need it to gather evidence against Eugene Loach.”
“Just teasing.” She said. “I knew what you meant. But seriously? You’ve got Loach on the brain.”
“What if I told you that he is a serial arsonist and that I need to find traces of alkali metals on his person to prove it?”
“Alkali? That’s like sodium and lithium.”
“And potassium, rubidium, cesium, except for francium.”
“Which hardly exists on Earth. I know. So you’re looking for all of them?”
“Sodium, definitely. Maybe others. The chemicals in the school lab.”
“The one’s that were stolen?”
“Bingo.”
“You think Eugene Loach stole them?”
“Bingo.”
“And you think Eugene Loach is suddenly smart enough to use alkali metals without blowing himself up?” she asked. “If you say bingo, I’m never kissing you again.”
“Bin—“
“Boone!”
“Sorry, couldn’t help myself. No, Loach isn’t smart enough. Stumpy admitted that he himself stole the chemicals and left them for someone else to pick up.”
“And based on this crackpot theory, you’d like to borrow my research experiment, a project that I’ve worked on for months, for hundreds of hours developing the software, the N.O.S.E device, calibrating data, and crunching numbers?”
“Yes?
“No.”
“No?”
“No. Absolutely not. You’re not holding it up to a redneck version of Bigfoot and risk getting it crushed. Besides, it’s too unwieldy. I use a shopping cart to transport it.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I do have another idea.”
“Oh?”
She whistled. “Chigger! Here, boy!”
The beagle bounded out of her VW, which was parked on the green near the stature of General Allegheny. He raced across the grass, zigzagging through the rows of metal folding chairs, until he reached us.
“Here,” Cedar said, rubbing the dog’s ears, “is your answer.”
“Chigger?”
“Hello? Five million scent receptors and trained by US Customs to detect bombs.”
“Chigger flunked out of bomb sniffing school.”
“Only because he was too aggressive around men,” she said. “Don’t besmirch the name of my dog.”
“Besmirch?”