Page 82 of The Hard Way

“Can you go there when it’s dead and talk to her?” I asked. “But without being obvious? See if she knows a criminalZ?”

“No, I’ll do better than that. She hangs out at Meatn’ Place. She’s always wanting me to stop by.”

“I don’t want you out there investigating.”

“I was gonna go one of these days anyway. Come on, let me help. Candace is here with Kaitlin.”

“You can’t tip Lexy off that you’re going specifically to get this.”

“Dude, trust me. I’ll make it into gossip or something. Like a game. Wait—I’ll tell her I have a friend who is having an affair with a criminal type in the area who’s nicknamedZ. I’ll say my friend won’t say who it is. She’ll enjoy the challenge of guessing it. She’ll think it’s fun. She loves analyzing Malcolm’s friends.”

“I don’t want you getting mixed up—”

“I’m more than mixed up in this. Let me help. I’m doing it anyway. You can’t stop me.”

I smiled. Vanessa was stubborn like that. “You’re awesome,” I said.

She lowered her voice. “Hank needs to go down. Everyone agrees, and I mean everyone, unless their last name is Vernon. Did you hear about Glenda?”

Vanessa went on to tell me how the beloved owner of Blue Deer Ice Cream—the place I was so sad to see closed—killed herself after Hank made her lose the ice cream shop that had been in her family for generations.

“Everybody’s scared of him. He has everybody’s mortgages, and it’s like this reign of terror. Nobody was reading the small print until it was too late, or else the terms are really good, and they think, ‘Hank screwed this or that person but he won’t screw me.’ And then he fucking screws them. And he sues them if they talk bad about him. He’s a liar and a cheat, but people want to buddy up to him because he’s rich. He’s horrible.”

We can be more horrible,I thought, but I didn’t say that.

Chapter 12

By lunchtime the next day, things were seriously on track. Zeus got one of our shady friends from Guvvey’s to pay a dirty cop to request the fingerprints.

But best of all, Vanessa came through with a name: Jeremy Zern.

Jeremy was a guy in Dieter’s Corners who was apparently a total scumbag and stole a lot of electronics, according to Vanessa’s friend Lexy. When we did a police records search, we discovered he’d never been arrested.

He wouldn’t be in the system. Excellent.

We had two suspects! All we needed now were Jeremy’s and Chas’s fingerprints to compare with the ones taken from the scene of the break-in.

It was decided that Zeus and Odin would find Jeremy Zern and get his prints. They were better at looking disreputable than Thor and I were, and I think Zeus wanted to keep an eye on Odin.

Thor and I would hunt down Chas and get his prints. They weren’t sure about letting Chas see me, but I promised them that Chas and I had hardly known each other at all. The disguise would totally work on Chas.

Zeus and Odin headed out to Dieter’s Corners. There was a bar that did a 10 a.m. happy hour that Jeremy Zern talked up on his Facebook page. He took pictures there a lot.

Meanwhile, Thor and I headed out to the local coffee shop, me in my horrible but very convincing stick-on nose and unflattering glasses. The coffee shop had a bulletin board that was flyer central for everyone who offered services in town. There were massage therapists, arborists, computer repair guys.

Sure enough, Chas the handyman had a flyer there. I ripped off one of the little rectangle ruffles, and Thor gave him a call to talk over a job.

Chas agreed to meet us on his lunch break.

***

Thor and I settled into the back booth at the Morningside Diner. He was the mysteriously hot millennial, and I was his dorky bride.

I scanned the room, relieved I didn’t know anybody too well, though it was really only my sisters I had to worry about.

Strange how things look when you’ve been away two years. I vividly remembered the stencils of chickens all along the top of the wall, and the blue checked tablecloths. But there were other aspects of the Morningside I didn’t remember, like the chrome everywhere looking just a little bit fake, and the shabby bathrooms.

Everything had seemed nicer back when I lived there.

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