arrived ahead of me. The bar went dead silent when I stepped in, but conversations resumed as soon as they saw it was only me.
Star was behind the bar with Red, who was named for his brilliant shock of red hair.
“I need help,” I said to Star after she plunked a diet pop down in front of me. “Mary’s gone for a few days and I can’t handle my new business and take care of Grandma and Blaze at the same time.”
“I get off in thirty minutes, I’ll come over.”
I sighed with relief.
“I’m off tomorrow,” she continued, “I’ll do it then, too.”
“You’re the best.”
“I know,” Star said, with a twinkle in her eye, which left me pondering what she meant by that remark. Star’s husband ran off several years ago and she’s been playing the field ever since. My baby is cute and cuddly and I miss spending time with her. Between helping the boys keep Herb’s running and her active social life, I don’t see much of my daughter.
I drank my pop, then headed home to wait for Star to get off work.
____________________
“What do you mean, you lost him?” Cora Mae said from her kitchen table as the sun set in orange stripes outside the window.
“It’s harder than it sounds,” I said, digging into the platter of pan-fried chicken Kitty had made on Cora Mae’s little-used stovetop. “It might help if you could drive. Kitty and I are doing all the surveillance work.”
“You can practice behind the wheel with me,” Kitty offered, licking her fingers. “You had your license at one time, so you must know how. You’re just rusty.”
“I better start right now,” Cora Mae said. “Because you and Gertie are doing an awful job of tailing him.”
That was the truth, but I hated to admit it. “That’s not true,” I said.
Cora Mae used her fingers to pop one measly piece of lettuce into her mouth from the salad in front of her. “I’ve been doing research while you two have been busy losing Tony.”
“You found out who he’s seeing on the side?” Kitty asked.
“No. I found out about the orange sneakers on the bank robber.”
“We should look into that case, too,” I said. “Since I was one of the hostages, I’m interested.”
“Nothing could keep you away from a case like this,” Kitty said. “Even if you hadn’t been in the credit union when it happened.”
Cora Mae ate another bit of lettuce. “Kent Miller came from the Soo, that’s his legal address, but he was trying to break into a gang.”
“Imagine applying for a gang position. Is that how it’s done?” I said. “And what are they called? The orange shoe gang?”
“That’s their logo, or whatever a gang calls its individual mark.”
Kitty rolled a mouthful of chicken into one cheek. “He was a gangbanger? Wow. A gangbanger right in our backyard.”
“An amateur one,” I reminded her. “A real one would have shot all of us.”
Kitty tackled another piece of chicken. “Why would he announce himself that way?”
“He never expected to get caught. Gang members aren’t very smart,” I guessed with some confidence. Not that Stonely ever had a gang. The closest we came was two years ago when Jesse Olson and his gang took baseball bats and beat up all the local mailboxes in broad daylight. That gang wasn’t too bright, either.
“It’s an inside job,” I said. “His accomplice has to be Dave Nenonen. He’s the manager, so he’s the only one with total access to the cash. And you should have seen what a hurry he was in to open the vault. Didn’t put up a fuss at all.”
Kitty nodded. “Maybe Dave siphoned out the money over time and the robbery was intended to draw attention away from him.”
“Dave’s like family,” Cora Mae said. “He’s not our guy.”
Every man in town is like family to Cora Mae. She’s dated almost all of them and doesn’t have a mean word to say about a single one. Before Dave married Sue and while Cora Mae was between husbands, they had a little fling. When they meet here and there in town, I can’t help noticing that Dave won’t look Cora Mae directly in the eye. Like if he did, he’d remember something so special, he’d lose control of his married life.
That’s what Cora Mae does to a man.
Tonight, after nibbling her few crumbs of rabbit food, she dressed all in black-dainty boots, tight black jeans, and a soft and fuzzy sweater with glitter. Kitty wore a housedress tent thing and had combed out all but a row of pin curls in the front.
“You still have pin curls in your hair.” I thought I should mention in case she had missed them.
“I know,” the beauty queen answered, without offering an explanation. “How’s it going with you and George?”
I’m a recent widow, so George and I are taking it slow at my request. George has been a family friend for as long as I can remember. He’s sixty years old and can fix anything that’s broken. The two of us are like soul mates. To top it off, he has tight buns and great muscles in all the right places.
“He’ll be along later,” I said. “He’s finishing a carpentry job.”
Since Star was babysitting Blaze and Grandma, and had agreed to take them to play bingo, the three of us had free reign to handle business. The big occasion that had Kitty doing a comb out was the spring dance in Trenary. It was held in the senior center, next to the church that hosted the bingo games Grandma and Pearl were going to.
Friday night dances in the U.P. aren’t as filled with excitement as non-Yoopers might think. However, all the locals would be there, including Tony and Dave. We could pick up a lost trail and question Dave at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone.
As it turned out, only one bird died, and it wasn’t either of those two boys.
Chapter 7
TRENARY, WITH FIVE HUNDRED RESIDENTS, is a big city compared to Stonely. It has a few bars, a grocery store, a pizza place, and the cemetery where my Barney is buried. It’s also home to the U.P.’s famous Trenary toast, a Finnish cinnamon treat sold in a brown paper bag. We love strong coffee, and we love to dip Trenary toast into it.
If it were daylight, Cora Mae and I would have stopped at the cemetery and visited her three deceased husbands, who managed to get buried together in one plot with room left over for Cora Mae someday. I often wonder what they would have thought of their final interment arrangement.
Barney’s waiting on me too, but I’m not nearly ready to leave this world-although I miss him so much, I have a permanent ache in my heart.
The drive to Trenary was slow going. I followed Kitty’s car in the Trouble Buster truck, which used to belong to Blaze before the department bought him a new truck and put this one on the auction block. I nabbed it for a song. The best part of the deal was the lights and sirens were still in good working order.
Cora Mae swerved down US 41 like a drunken sailor. Kitty had to be scared near to death sitting in the passenger seat next to her. Driving isn’t going to be one of Cora Mae’s top abilities, but to be fair, I had a couple of incidents when I started to drive. In fact, I rolled my Barney’s truck into a ditch and totaled it.
I’m such a good driver now, I can multitask while steering. Reaching under the seat, I pulled out my Glock and caressed it. I’d always wanted one, and here it was, resting on my lap. I considered putting it in my purse for the dance, but reluctantly rejected the idea as a bad accident waiting to happen.
Up ahead, Cora Mae steered right at a ditch, then overcorrected and aimed toward the other side of the median. I returned the Glock to the floor, turned on the truck’s lights and siren, came alongside Kitty’s Lincoln, and forced Cora Mae to a stop on the side of the road.
“Kitty,” I said, after stomping around the front of our vehicles and wrenching open the passenger door. “I’m
