Page 76 of The Hard Way

“No.”

“Hank Vernon? You think he came and took it from our garbage?”

“Basically.”

“Wait…” She narrowed her eyes. “You think Andy told him about the plug thing? Because that’s what we don’t get, why Andy would ever lie. He’s not like that.”

Odin lowered his voice. “We don’t think Andy lied. We’ve come to believe Hank crawled in the window and unplugged the cooler—”

“Oh my god,” Vanessa said hotly. “The high south window?”

“Yeah.”

“And he knew we’d toss the cheese,” she said. “So he waited. But how did he get it on the truck and…”

“He didn’t put it on the truck—he walked it right into the Pig!” I told her about what we’d learned. The tape at the store. Hank and Nancy Zietlow.

“That’s why your…um…other friend asked if Andy would ever go for Nancy Zietlow.”

I nodded.

“Motherfucker,” Vanessa said. “Hank engineered the whole situation. That is totally Hank. And he somehow fucked with the cheese…”

“What do you mean?”

“The cheese wasn’t bad, dude! It was perfectly good. I held some back from the garbage and brought it home. We’d been eating it. I didn’t even refrigerate it. The cheese was fine.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “That’s what I’ve been saying. That even warmed cheese—if the cheese started good—”

“Oh, hell, you know that cheese was fine.”

Odin was hanging back, following along. He seemed to be enjoying himself, just watching us.

“We ate a lot of it,” she added.

“I thought that was weird!” I said. “That he’d do that and justhappento get a bad batch.”

“We run a clean shop. Cleaner than ever.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Cleaner than when I was there?”

She grinned. “Did I not say cleaner than ever?”

“She did say that,” Odin said.

Vanessa shot him an appreciative look. It warmed me right to my cockles.

“Did you tell this to the FDA?” I asked her.

“Of course. Do you think they believed me? And now we’re shut down. And there was this storm last month where some of the southwest facing panels in the barn came down and we don’t have the funds to fix it. And the rain has been so evil this year. Andy and I put tarps up, but water’s been getting on the pumps.”

“You can’t let that happen.”

“That whole side is tarps.” Something came to her. “You know what? I bet you anything Hank’s giving the Millers a loan to buy us out.”

“I agree.”

“Hank and Nancy Zietlow,” Vanessa said. “Whoa.”

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