Page 50 of The Hard Way

“How?” I asked. “They can’t make Tim eat the cheese.”

“He was eating stews,” Thor said. “Maybe Nancy mixed some of the cheese into a stew that Tim ate, and the whole thing about him being unable to resist it sitting in the fridge was bullshit.”

I grit my teeth.

“I’m feeling good about ruling out Denko now,” Zeus said.

I nodded. It was horrifying to think my old nemesis Hank was behind this, yet a relief that Denko might not be sniffing around like a dangerous hellhound. Hank was dangerous for sure, but not a trained assassin out to kill us.

“I can’t fucking believe Hank would frame your sisters,” Thor said. “He can’t have the farm, so he makes sure they lose it anyway? Spiteful fucker.”

“No. You guys. He’s getting the farm.”

“I thought the Millers were buying the farm.”

“Oh, they’ll have it for a few years. But guess who they’re getting the loan from? Remember how I was wondering how the Millers could possibly have the cash to buy our farm? Price of alfalfa hay and all that? Maybe your minds were too consumed with milkmaid porn, but I was thinking about the case and how it didn’t make sense. Because theydon’thave the cash. Hank will lend it to the Millers, and he’ll do what he did with my folks—put something tricky in the loan that gets him the farm if they miss a payment. Or maybe not even tricky—nobody ever thinks they’re going to miss a payment.”

“That’s what Andy was hiding,” Zeus said. “A condition of the loan was probably to keep it confidential.”

Odin usually chimed in on these brainstorming things, but he sat there perfectly silent. Okay,silentwasn’t quite right; his stormy expression was loud as thunder. Which meant he was really fucking angry. Dangerously angry.

“Exactly—he’d want them to keep it quiet. But nobody else in their right mind would lend to the Millers. They’re bad with money! This is it. The answer.” I looked around at my guys. “Right? We have him.”

“Not yet,” Zeus said. “We still have to prove all of this.” He glanced nervously at Odin. He, too, sensed the stormy thunder. “We can’t just go shoot him in the face.”

“So what if we go around to all the motels with their pictures?” I tried. “You know we’ll find a clerk who’ll identify them together.”

“Probably.”

“So we got him, right?”

“We got him for capitalizing on this tragedy,” Zeus said. “We got him for being the asshole who gets the girl and the farm. But we can’t connect him to the cheese.”

“But we have phone records, the affair, probably the loan…”

Thor shook his head sadly. “We need the cheese.”

“He put it in the case,” Thor said. “Does the Piggly Wiggly have an anti-shoplifting system? Cameras?”

“If they do…Christ, this was six weeks ago,” Zeus said. “If they have it on video, they probably didn’t keep it.”

“HankVernon,” Odin growled, staring thunderously into the middle distance. “He kills a man and frames your sister. He thinks he can get away with that.” He turned his gaze to me, then, and the darkness I saw there scared me. “He won’t.”

Thor and Zeus riveted their gazes to Odin.

“Which is why we’ll handle it,” Thor said in his calmest and most serene tone. “We’re on the job.”

“Don’t act like you don’t see exactly what I see,” Odin said. “This is a good crime with very little physical evidence.”

“Maybe they’re storing footage in the cloud,” I said. “Maybe they have surveillance in every aisle. Maybe they never clear the cache.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe. You think Hank is stupid?” Odin asked. “He would let himself be filmed putting tainted cheese into the dairy case? Do we have film of him sneaking to the farmhouse and taking it from the dumpster? If that’s what even happened? Because that’s what saves your sisters. Short of a confession. And Hank isn’t Andy. It would take a lot to make him confess…”

I sighed and slumped back in my molded seat. Detective work was a lot harder than it looked onLaw & Order. It was amazing any cases ever got solved in real life.

“We keep going forward,” Zeus said, eyeing Odin. “Look how far we got by following the leads.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, noting the worry in Zeus’s voice.

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