Chapter 4

In fewer than five minutes Joe was calling Hogan from our living room.

Hogan began with a question. “Where are you?”

“Home. Do you need us to be some other place?”

There was a long pause. “Not if I can see you there.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Maybe nothing.” He hung up.

Joe and I looked at each other. “Huh,” I said. “Maybe? Maybe I can make you another meat loaf sandwich. And open a beer.”

“All I need to drink is coffee, but I’ll take a sandwich as long as you have plenty of meat loaf.”

“There’s no point in making meat loaf unless you have enough for the next day.”

I sliced meat loaf, and Joe turned on the outside lights for Hogan. And before I could get Joe’s sandwich onto a plate, I heard a car coming up our drive.

“Hogan’s here,” I said. “Why did he want to meet us at home?”

“He could be trying to dodge Ben Vinton. I know he finds him something of a trial.”

But when Joe opened the kitchen door for our visitor, we saw a second vehicle was pulling into the drive.

“Did Hogan say anything about bringing anyone?” I asked. Joe shook his head.

The two drivers were conferring outside their vehicles, and after a moment they walked toward the house.

Joe and I spoke together. “Mike!”

Then Joe called out, “Come on in! We’ve got lots of meat loaf sandwiches!”

Hogan answered, “I’ll settle for a cup of coffee.”

I was surprised, since I don’t expect anybody at all to turn down a meat loaf sandwich. But I pulled out more coffee mugs, and we were gathered around the coffee table “in a whipstitch,” as my Texas grandmother would say.

“Mike says he’s got something else to tell me,” Hogan said.

“May we sit in?” Joe asked. “Or should we scram?” We all looked at Mike expectantly.

Mike frowned—or I guess it was a frown. It’s hard to tell with a rough-hewn face like Mike’s. His brows slid together, his jaw clinched up, and he ground his teeth before he spoke.

“You two are welcome to sit in. I need to talk to Hogan without that idiot woman from the sheriff’s office, and Hogan thought you wouldn’t mind if we did it here.”

Hogan gave Mike an intense stare. “You have the floor, Mike. Go for it.”

Mike took a deep breath. “A sheriff oughta be a big guy with a white hat and a six-shooter. This man acts like a rabbit! If he had a white hat, it would need holes for his ears!”

This caused Hogan’s jaw to quiver, and I knew that he was trying not to laugh. He spoke, but his voice wasn’t quite steady.

“Well, Vinton’s pretty inexperienced . . .”

“True! He just doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on. That’s why I wouldn’t say anything when he was there!”

“He did act funny, Mike. Tomorrow I’ll try to get him to relax and tell me what’s bothering him.”

Mike ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Maybe you can get it out of him. But with him in such a state, I was afraid to talk, and there’s a couple more things I should tell you.”

Hogan took out a notebook. “That’s why we’re here, Mike. Why don’t you start the whole statement over?”

“Start over?”

“Sure. Step by step. Start with when you reported for work.”

Mike said he had signed in at the Warner Pier PD at eight p.m. The office was closed, of course, but he had a key. He looked over a few notes either Hogan or one of the patrolmen had left for him, then locked up and started on his rounds.

He turned to Joe and me. “Tonight, I headed south. Hogan and I figured out some routes that go by all the businesses, and I’m supposed to follow a different one every night. Also, I’m supposed to vary my times. Some nights I start the rounds a little earlier, sometimes later.

“Tonight I drove down to the south city limits and headed back toward the north. I made around twenty-five stops, kinda zigzagging through the town.”

Joe nodded. “So you don’t show up at the same place at a regular time.”

“Right. Except—I do wind up close to Dolly’s sometime. She gives me dessert and coffee. I have dinner earlier, before I start the rest of the rigmarole.”

He sat up straight and scowled again, daring us to comment on his personal life. “I don’t stay at Dolly’s place long!”

“That’s fine,” Hogan said. “You’re supposed to take a break. As long as you don’t get too predictable.”

“Yeah! ‘There goes ol’ Mike. Must be suppertime.’ Hope I’m not doin’ that. Tonight, I hauled into the alley behind Dolly’s, and the minute I got out of the truck, the excitement started.”

Hogan held up his pen. “Did you see anything unusual before you opened the door?”

“Not before! The fun started when—when I opened it. I saw something then, or thought I did. But purty little Miss Paige started yellin’ her head off.”

Mike’s face screwed up until he looked like an ogre who had smashed his big toe with his own club. Then he dropped his head between his hands. “That woman’s crazy! How could she say she didn’t recognize me when Vinton introduced me to every single person in his department! The two of us talked for about ten minutes.”

“I wondered about that,” Joe said. “In a department that small . . .”

Mike gave a vigorous nod. “Right! And let’s face it! A mug as ugly as mine’s not that easy to forget. Even in a dark alley. And what was that Paige doin’ herself, sitting parked in a dark alley?”

Hogan spoke in his most soothing voice. “Mike, I sure understand how bad she acted . . .”

But Mike waved his words away. “That’s not the problem, Hogan. I understand people can be scared or surprised or—well, have some other trouble, but whatever caused her to act that way, it kept me from doin’ my duty!”

“Your duty?”

“Yes, Hogan. I think I saw something! Just as I got out of the truck! But I didn’t get to chase him, or her, or it, down, because of Paige!”

“Okay, Mike! Tell me, what did you see?”

“I think I saw somebody down at the end of the alley. Behind the shoe shop. Running!”

Someone in the alley? Wow! That was a real development! I opened my mouth to ask whom he had seen.

But Mike was shaking his head. “I didn’t have a clear look. Paige—she began to raise a ruckus. And when she pointed her gun at me, I quit lookin’ down the alley right quick!”

Hogan spoke very quietly. “There’s something about being held at gunpoint that destroys your concentration, Mike. Think about it calmly. Picture it in your mind. Can you remember anything about what the person looked like?”

Mike gave a deep sigh. “I’m just not sure, Hogan. I could have imagined the guy. I think—think—I saw someone running. But it was dark. Maybe he was wearin’ black.”

The three of us looked at him silently. I knew Mike had been picked for his job partly because he had particularly good eyesight and steady nerves. I felt that anything Mike saw was likely to be a real thing.

But as he described it, the episode happened in our dark alley. Sure, there were lights here and there, usually over a back door, but could Mike really have seen anything? And if the cops searched, would it be possible to find any evidence there?

Hogan echoed my thought. “I doubt you imagined it,” he said.

Mike raised his head. “To tell the truth, Hogan, I thought Paige acted so weird about the whole thing—well, I felt that she could be mixed up in the deal. Am I crazy?”

“Her behavior was definitely odd.” Hogan pulled out his phone. “And it might be hard to find evidence in a place like that alley. But we’d better check. I’ll call Jerry and tell him to hang around there until daylight. Then I’ll get the state police to give that alley a once-over.”

Hogan got up and went into the dining room, where he called Jerry Cherry, one of his longtime deputies, and held a quiet conversation.

Mike shifted his attention to me. “I guess you know you’ve got a critter under your shop’s back porch.”

“A critter?” I’m sure I sounded incredulous.

“Yup. I’ve seen it every night this week.”

“What kind of a critter?”

“A raccoon, Lee. I think there’s a dozen or so scattered around downtown. Urban raccoons. Mostly mamas. There’s at least three living in that alley.”

Joe and I began to laugh. “Oh my gosh!” I said. “We’ve had them out here on the lakeshore. But this neighborhood’s semirural. I can’t believe they’ve moved into downtown Warner Pier.”

“Oh yes. You and Dolly be careful—and Mrs. Nettie, too. All of you need to be sure to make a loud noise as you go out the back of the shop. If you step on one of those suckers, you could lose a toe. They can be fierce. And they each have forty teeth—forty! Including four in the front that a vampire would be proud to show off!”

Hogan came back to find Joe and me laughing at the thought of being attacked by a cute little vampire raccoon. Joe repeated Mike’s report on the urban raccoons. Hogan smiled, but he also endorsed Mike’s report.

“I knew there were some around,” he said. “Animal control tries to trap them. I’ll call about them again tomorrow.”

“I may just hire somebody,” I said.

Mike stood up and motioned toward the back door. “Listen, you guys, I guess that’s all I had to say. Dolly’s really worried about all this. I guess I’d better run by her place and try to calm her down.”

Joe and Hogan walked out to Mike’s truck with him and waved him off. But I was surprised when Hogan came back into the house with Joe. I was also a little annoyed. It was getting extremely late, and I had to go to work early. Still, I tried to seem welcoming. I even offered Hogan more coffee.

“Oh no,” he answered. “I’m out of here, but I did want to ask Joe what he thought about the way Paige acted.”

The two of them leaned against the kitchen counter, and both stared at the ceiling. Finally Joe spoke.

“Well, Hogan, I’m asking myself just what Paige accomplished by that little stunt.”

“I’ve been thinking about the same question. You got an answer?”

“All I can see is that she kept Mike from chasing the—ghost? The phantom? The whatever it was that he saw running toward the shoe shop.”

Hogan nodded solemnly. “Yep. And was that an accident? Or was it on purpose?”