Page 30 of Up In Smoke

She'd almost died. And she was concerned the next person wouldn’t be so lucky. Still she hadn't quite brought herself to hand over all of her information to Sebastian Kane and Chief Taggert to fully run the investigation.

So she pulled out her phone and called an older number.

“Ivy!” the voice answered, clearly glad to be hearing from her.

She should have called for a better reason, she thought. But she hadn’t, and she needed him now. “I hope I haven't caught you at a bad time.”

Former detective Orlando Tavares was now on the road with his fiance, Chloe Goodman. They worked together as part of the privately funded missing persons investigation unit. Nebraska's own Reiner Institute funded them and touted their incredible success rate. “Don't worry about it.”

Ivy noticed that he didn't sayit's not a bad time. Then again, they hunted missing children, so maybe there was never a good time. She didn't know how they dealt with what they saw, but somehow they did.

Ivy had helped them with cases on several occasions. When they had missing kids local to the area, she pulled records and fed them information and answered questions the best she could. She liked the work and felt that she was doing her part to reunite children with their families. Though she hadn't thought of it as building up points, it was definitely time to cash in her chips. “I need some help with some background information and I've exhausted all my resources.”

She could hear in the background as Chloe's voice asked, “Is that Ivy Dean?” He must have nodded or motionedyesbecause Ivy immediately heard, “Hi, Ivy!” from the background and she told him to tell Chloe that she said hi, too.

“We have an arsonist in town.” There wasn’t time to beat around the bush.

“We heard. How can we help?”

She explained about the particular places the arsonist was hitting and her theories about the Hernandez family and about Luke's own suspicions. “Can you pull records without alerting anyone?”

“You haven't turned this over to Taggart?” he asked.

This was the shitty part, where she couldn't even point her moral compass in one direction or another. “One of Luke's brothers is in need of rehab again. Another, if accused, could easily be found guilty whether he is or not … with his record, he’ll just go down for it. Then, if we put him away and we’re wrong, the arsonist is free to strike again … In fact, Luke is very concerned that his brother isn’t the right guy. Honestly, I think he’s concerned the brother is into something illegal, but if it’s not the arson, Luke doesn’t want to touch it and he doesn’t want to be the trigger for it. He's really concerned about what happens if we get it wrong.”

“Okay, gotcha,” Tavares readily agreed, making Ivy feel that maybe her own reasoning wasn't quite so crazy.

She fed him everything she had to get them started and then set him and Chloe loose to dig up police and federal records.

Only a few moments after hanging up with Orlando and Chloe, her phone rang.

“Hello, Miss Dean. I'm here at the front door.”

“I'll be right there, Mr. Gentson.” She made her way quickly around the counter, weaving her way through the short hallways, not wanting to leave the older man standing and waiting too long. She unbolted the door and glanced around quickly. The library faced the main street and several cars passed by, meaning at least a few people in Redemption now knew that Mr. Gentson was here.

She had told the elderly man that she wanted to interview him for an oral town history. Which was actually a plan that Ivy had, so it was a fudge, not a lie. As a child, she had been taught that lies were bad, then it was demonstrated lies that suited her parents or the elders were fine. It had taken her a while to develop her own code. As an adult, she'd found many good reasons not to tell the truth. Some to save her own skin but many out of kindness to others.

In this case, it was to protect Luke’s family.

She knew the older man had so much useful information about the town, and she would use this interview in that process. So she now had no issues telling him he was here as part of her project and no trouble saying that to anyone who might have seen him come in during closed hours.

Motioning him to sit down in one of the big comfy chairs at the center study table, she told him, “You’re my first interview for this project! And I’m honestly not sure which way the project is going to go. I do know I want it to do a few things. I want to really capture the memories of those who grew up here over the decades and I want it to include things that we can’t find in the books and records.”

He was nodding along, seeming pleased to be part of the work. She hoped he never found out that she was also milking him for information. But if his stories helped her locate the arsonist, he might like getting that credit. The man appreciated being appreciated.

It took them a good hour to get through the basics of when he was born and who was in town then. She took copious notes and asked clarifying questions. Then she asked about prominent families in town. She started with the Balero family, then the Millers, thinking maybe she could throw the Hernandezes into the mix and he wouldn’t notice.

“Okay.” She smiled, hoping he couldn’t read her ulterior motives. “You’ve told me about the prominent families. What about the notorious ones?”

Sure enough, two families later, he said, “The Hernandez boys.”

Though there were several families named Hernandez, Mr. Gentson was talking about Luke’s family. But she was confused by the names. “There’s no Diego in the family.”

“Oh, the Santiago Hernandez I’m talking about is the father of the last batch. His brother was Diego, and his other brothers were Carlos and Pedro.” No wonder she’d been confused, several of the names had been recycled in the current generation. But she didn’t even have to probe, he volunteered what she needed and Ivy gave a silent cheer.

“That next round of Hernandezes was just as bad. I always wondered what kind of trouble they would cause when they grew up. And here we are.”

Ivy felt her suspicions start to gel.

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