Page 1 of Mike

CHAPTER ONE

“…poison is always an option, and easy to get.”

The end of the damning sentence caught Joelle’s ear as she picked up the empty beer bottles on a table next to the couple speaking. They had their heads together, conversing in low tones. But not too low. Joe feigned nonchalance as she extracted a bar rag from her back pocket and wiped the table top she’d just bussed, listening unabashedly.

Nobody ever gave a thought to a waitress having inquisitive ears, which was why she was here. She just hadn’t expected something like this.

“He’s certainly not suspecting anything, but I don’t think poison’s the way. We need to make it look like an accident.”

Cripes on a cracker, Joelle groaned to herself. Now what? She couldn’t just let the conversation go and walk away, but she wasn’t here to gain info on a possible murder, if that’s what this was. The DEA had sent her in—undercover—as a server in this shitty, backwoods Maine bar, uninspiringly called the Local Moose, to gather intel regarding the large fentanyl ring they’d learned was operating out of the area.

Joelle had been scrubbing tables and delivering alcohol to the locals for over a month at the hole-in-the-wall bar just west of Orono, hoping to hear something…anything. So far, she hadn’t been privy to a single peep on the drug front. But now…this?

What the flippin’ flack was she supposed to do with what she’d just heard?

Joe bent down to retrieve some napkins off the floor, continuing her vigilance.

“We can always mess with his power tools, his hunting equipment, or his stupid old truck.” The female, a nondescript brunette, made the statement without any emotion. That was all kinds of fucked up. Who talked about murder like it was a grocery list?

“His truck.” The man snapped his fingers. “I could slice the break lines, or screw with the steering column.” The woman’s companion, a bearded, rough around the edges looking guy stated as he fondled her inner thigh beneath the table.

“Yeah,” she preened, clearly enjoying the five-finger grope. “Maybe that.”

Was she talking about the diddling, or the truck?

“But only if the tampering can’t be detected when someone looks closely,” the dark-haired woman purred.

She was talking about the truck, then, Joelle noted, not her hoo-haw.

“It should be easy to do,” she continued. “Maybe at the house. He doesn’t have cameras or anything around. Not even one of those doorbell ones. I guess he thinks he’s tough enough to take on anybody who wants to break in.” She shook her head. “But remember. He has connections, so whatever you do to his truck, it can’t seem suspicious.”

Dang, the woman was cold.

“I’ll look on the internet and find out the best way to fuck with his ride,” the man responded. “I bet I can loosen a few bolts and make something happen, especially since his truck is like, forty years old.”

Great. The only loose bolts Joe was aware of were clearly in the two heads that had suddenly moved even closer together.

Joelle slowly sashayed to another table that needed to be cleared, hoping to gain a little more info, but the pair had gotten too cozy with their whispering. Shlitz. Now she needed to decide if their boldness was the alcohol talking, or if the pair were actually plotting to bump someone off.

Just as Joelle determined she might have been overreacting to what she’d heard and needed to move on, the brunette snorted.

“Can you believe the idiot hasn’t changed his will or his life insurance policy yet?”

Well, hello.

There was the motive to make Joelle think that the couple’s plotting wasn’t just drunk-chat.

She moved slowly toward the table again to get a good look at their faces, putting on a cheerful but vapid look as she addressed them. “Y’all need anything else?” she asked, using a southern drawl she’d perfected for her undercover work. For some reason it worked every time to charm these Down-Mainers. “Bar’s closing soon.”

They looked up and, yup, they hadn’t noticed her presence until she spoke, and now that they had, they didn’t perceive any threat.

“Nothing else for us,” the woman said, and fished out a credit card, handing it to Joelle. “Just the check.”

“Of course, sugar,” Joelle smiled. “I’ll have this back to you in a pig’s wink.”

Was that even a thing? Joe didn’t care. The woman had just handed Joelle the key to her identity, and as soon as Joe skinned out of her cigarette-smoke-infused waitress clothes later, she’d do a deep dive into the woman, right down to her panty size. She’d have intel in that very same pig’s wink she’d just mentioned.

Heading to the bar, she gave the bartender the table’s tab and the woman’s credit card. Joe noted the name on the plastic. Melanie Carlese. And just in case there were a bunch of women in the system with the same moniker, Joelle chatted up the ever-present Wendel behind the bar to see if there was anything about the pair’s identities that he could add.

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