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“I kinda talked myself into it, yeah.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful.”Advertisement

Josie clapped her hands and laughed some more. I had been more embarrassed, but not since high school.

“All right, all right,” I said. “C’mon, now. It was an honest mistake. After all, you did kiss me last night. Your old man did get bent out of shape when he thought we spent the night. And, and, and what about all this ‘I’ve known my share of wrong men’ stuff?”

Josie leaned in and lowered her voice.

“First of all,” she said, “my father doesn’t know. Only Dave knows, nobody else. Not up here, anyway. I’ve dated men, some because I enjoyed their company and some because—most people think I’m high-maintenance, they think I haven’t married because I have impossible standards. I like it that they think that. This is small-town America, Dyson. You get politicians and pundits, people talking about small-town values as if they were something to emulate, and sometimes they are, but small towns, this is where bigotry and intolerance hold sway. Discrimination. This is where the militias live. And the Klan. So, please, please, I beg you to keep my secret.”

“Only if you promise not to tell anyone what a nitwit I am.”

“Agreed.”

“Wait a minute. You still haven’t explained the kiss.”

“What can I say? Pour enough vodka into a girl and even you will look good.”

“Thanks,” I said. “That makes me feel so much better.”

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Sometime during the dark side of midnight, we left the tavern and went to Josie’s Ford Taurus. A few patrons followed us out, and we sat in the car until they left the parking lot. While we were waiting, Josie leaned across the seat. “Should we pretend to make out?” she asked.

“You’re an evil woman.”

“You’d think it was because my parents didn’t love me, but actually they loved me a great deal.”

As soon as we were alone, I crept across the county road, opened the padlock, entered the enclosure, reclaimed the GPS loggers, locked the gate, and returned to the car. Josie started it up, and a few moments later we were on the county road heading for Lake Carl. Somewhere along the way I started thinking about Jenness Crawford and the fact that I had known her almost as long as I had known Nina without having any idea that she was gay. Or bi-gay. Or whatever they call it. I found myself shaking my head at my own confusion.

“What?” Josie said.

“There’s something I never thought I’d say to a woman.”

“What’s that?”

“I know a girl that would be perfect for you.”

NINE

The next morning, Jimmy walked into the cabin carrying a map stretched out on a sheet of plywood the size of a high school chalkboard—the City of Krueger was nearly actual size in his blow-up. He probably knew what I was going to say, because before I could open my mouth he reminded me, “You said a big map.”

He propped the board on the back of a sofa in the living room. He knelt on the cushion below it and proudly indicated a series of red numbers inside circles. Each number corresponded with a cash-intensive business that he had identified in a three-ring binder.

“I stopped after I got to eighty-seven,” he said.

“Fair enough,” I told him. I gave him the three GPS loggers. “These will tell you the routes the three trucks took yesterday. Track the movements on your map. Pay close attention to where the trucks stopped, when, and for how long.”

Jimmy produced a PC from a black carrying case and proceeded to connect it to a phone jack. I moved to the cabin door. I was dressed in a pair of Skarda’s swim trunks and carrying a towel. He asked me where I was going. I thought it was obvious, yet I told him just the same.

“There’s no beach,” Jimmy said. “If I were you, I’d take the pontoon out in the middle of the lake and anchor it. You won’t be bothered by weeds out there.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“What about Dave and the old man?”

“They’re still asleep,” I said. “From what I’ve seen of their habits, I don’t expect to see either of them until noon.”

“I should have this all worked out by then.”

“You’re a good man, James.”

He smiled and then quickly looked away, as if he felt it was unmanly to be pleased by the compliment. As I descended the wooden staircase to the dock, I thought what a complete louse I was for putting him and his family in the jackpot. pqdm.com