Chapter 30

They agreed on breakfast in forty-five minutes and hung up.

“What the heck is going on?” I asked.

“I’ve been thinking that Digger could clear up a few mysteries and I’m not letting him leave here until I get answers.”

“But you’ve talked to everyone else on the phone. Is there a specific reason you want to quiz Digger eyeball to eyeball?”

“I want him to trust us, not see us as the enemy,” Joe answered.

“Huh?”

“We’re breaking bread together,” Joe said. “That’s what friends do.”

I couldn’t argue with that. My husband had certainly taken to being a gumshoe.

“Hotcakes,” I said decisively. “Everybody likes hotcakes.”

That settled the menu and settled my discussion with Joe. I didn’t have time to ask any more questions. I had to get dressed—no time for a shower—make another pot of coffee, cook bacon, and dig out my grandmother’s recipe for Texas hotcakes. Joe set the table, opened the downstairs windows, and made a quick trip to the store for orange juice. Digger’s truck was in our driveway before I had a chance to ask anything at all.

I called out a welcome to Digger. And being from Texas, I started by mentioning the weather.

“Hi, guy! Come on in! Gorgeous day. We’ve got the whole house open.”

Digger waved at us. “Gorgeous is right. Not many October mornings when we can enjoy the sun like this in west Michigan.”

I think Digger had managed a shower. He looked cleaner than I’d ever seen him. Even his fingernails sparkled, and he was wearing pressed jeans and a cheerful plaid shirt rather than his usual overalls.

Joe kept the conversation general. When Digger offered a comment about the local murder, Joe cut him off. “Hey, let’s forget crime until we’re through with our hotcakes.”

The remark seemed to reassure Digger. Joe didn’t even mention that he had talked to Chip earlier. They discussed the Chicago Cubs, cussed the government, and argued about which Michigan farm produced the best maple syrup.

They left me out of the conversation, and that suited me fine. I didn’t understand what Joe was up to. I had stacked the plates in the sink and refilled all the coffee cups when he came to the point.

“Well, Digger, do you need anything more before we get down to serious conversation?”

“I’ve had seconds, Joe. I don’t need thirds. And I do need to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“That gun, of course. I feel pretty sure you’ve figured out how it got in the rafters.”

His remark surprised me, and so did Joe’s reply. “You put it there.”

Huh? The pistol that nearly shot me? Digger had put it in the basement of the Bailey house?

Digger didn’t answer Joe directly. Instead, he looked at me with a pitifully hangdog expression.

“Listen, Lee,” he said, “I had no idea there was a bullet in that gun. I swear I checked all the chambers. I nearly fainted when it went off. I’m still waking up with nightmares every night.”

The room should have whirled, I guess.

Was Digger telling me that he had hidden the revolver in the rafters of the Bailey house’s basement? Was he saying that?

Joe told me later that I hardly reacted to Digger’s apology. I know I didn’t drop my coffee cup, knock over the syrup pitcher, or fall out of my chair and wind up lying on the dining room floor. But if I didn’t show outward turmoil, it was because my insides had begun to churn like an ice cream freezer.

First, I told myself that I was misunderstanding what Digger had said.

Second, I felt truly stupid. Why hadn’t I realized the logical explanation of how the pistol got into the rafters was that Digger had put it there?

As soon as I got to the Bailey house, Digger had told me he had known where the basement key was kept. He said he had waited outside for me, but there was no reason that couldn’t have been a fib. He had had every chance he needed to hide the pistol before I got there. No wonder Joe had mentioned that he couldn’t understand why—if the pistol had been there all along—he or Hogan didn’t find it when they cleared the basement out.

I should have realized it hadn’t been there until Digger wrapped it in an old dusty rag and put it there. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Me dumb.

This analysis didn’t take more than a minute, and during that minute Digger and Joe were staring at me, waiting for my reaction.

I set my coffee cup down gently. “Digger,” I said, “you’d better explain where you got that gun and why you hid it in that basement. Or you’ll never see another pancake in this house.”

Digger grinned. “Aw, Lee. Not that!”

Joe reached over and took my hand. “No threats yet, Lee. We want to hear the whole story. First, Digger, how did you know the pistol was missing? That it had been missing—or so I think—for twenty years, since the night of the pretend holdup at the Country Convenience Store?”

“I figured it out from the story all of the guys told.”

Digger fortified himself with another gulp of coffee before he went on. “Of course, before the Sharks faked the holdup on the Country Convenience Store, I kinda knew something was up. Chip and the others had been on the phone or talking out in the driveway or just generally acting as if they were planning something. They wouldn’t tell me anything—I was just the kid brother. So I pretended not to even be interested.”

By pretending not to listen, Digger had been able to eavesdrop and learn a few things. He hadn’t understood the details of their plot, he said, except that it involved the Country Convenience Store and “guns.”

“Of course, I felt sure they weren’t going to shoot anybody. They kept laughing about it, you know. Not acting as if they were going to do any harm. The idea of a real robbery didn’t cross my mind.”

So, Digger said, he was as surprised as anybody else when he heard about the stunt and the way Brad pulled out a pistol and turned it on the rest of the Sharks. He had learned of the trick when he went down to the local teen hangout, the Corner.

But the next day Brad had called Chip, and Digger had managed to listen in.

“Brad had realized that the pistol wasn’t under the counter, where he kept it,” Digger said. “And Brad was afraid he was going to be in trouble with his dad over it.”

“As an adult, I can see why,” Joe said.

“Sure. Firing the pistol was a dumbbell thing to do. Somebody coulda been killed. So anyway, Brad told Chip that if anybody knew what had happened to that pistol, they’d better get it back to him right away. And Chip said he didn’t know where it was. Brad said he was afraid to tell his dad it was gone.

“Then, a couple of days later, Brad passed the word around that the pistol had been found. His dad said he had had it. So it wasn’t missing anymore. It was back in its case.”

Digger frowned. “But the guys still seemed sorta worried about it. I never understood just why.”

“How did the gun get into your hands?”

Digger looked sly. “I kinda found it.”

“Um-hmm. Kinda found it because you knew where to look?”

“No, it was just sorta dumb luck.”

“Sorta?”

Digger ducked his head and gave Joe another sly look from under his eyelids. “Sorta,” he said.

Just after the holdup, Digger said, Spud backed off his friendship with the Sharks.

“I never really knew if he got mad at them, or they got mad at him. But they all just quit hanging around together.”

And a couple of months later, the VHD Foundation announced its scholarship list, and Spud was right there on it. Plus, Spud quit bumming rides because he finally scraped the money together to buy a secondhand car.

“You’d think the guys would have been happy for Spud, but they weren’t,” Digger said. “His name was mud. And pretty soon, his name was nothing. They didn’t mention Spud at all.”

Digger thought the rest of the Sharks believed Spud was the last person seen with the pistol, Digger said. But they had no proof that he had taken it, hidden it, or otherwise made off with it.

“Hanged by the opinion of his peers,” Joe said.

Digger drank coffee. “That’s how things stood for years,” he said. “Then a couple of months ago Spud called me to handle a little plumbing problem for him out at the Country Store. And the manager, Hilda, was griping to me about how she had to do everything, how Spud rarely showed up or paid any attention to the place. And she joked about his safe. Said she couldn’t figure out what kind of man had such a silly thing, a little box so light anybody could walk off with it.”

“So somebody did,” Joe said.

Digger grinned. “I wasn’t going to steal anything, Joe! In fact, I brought the box back to the store the same afternoon I took it.”

“And in the meantime?”

“The lock wasn’t worth piddly. I had it open in five minutes.”

“And the pistol was in there?”

“Yep. I just kept it.”

“Did Spud come around wanting it?”

“No. He never said a word. The way Hilda was talking, I assumed he must have forgotten all about it.” Digger drank his coffee.

“I doubt he forgot it,” Joe said. He kept his voice casual. “What else was in the safe? Money?”

“Nope. No money. Nothin’ but a pair of shoes.”