“Jeffrey Lo,” Dolly introduced the man standing beside her. She kept her eyes down as she concentrated on not looking at me.

I scrambled up, as modestly as possible, onto the dock.

Jeffrey Lo stood against the sun, lowering in the western sky, getting lost among the treetops. He was Asian, a little taller than I, with warm skin, very dark eyes, and a nice smile. His blue summer suit didn’t have a wrinkle. His tie was perfectly knotted. Maybe his white Nikes didn’t go with the rest of him, but the guy might just be into comfort.

When I took the hand he held out to me, it was warm, the kind of hand that curves around yours and makes you feel enveloped. I grabbed the towel around my body as best I could, dripping lake water and feeling the blood rushing into my face. As he let go of my hand, I felt a sense of loss, as if I’d been tossed out into a lonely world again.

Jeffrey Lo was one of those guys who could make my knees go weak. A high school kind of thing I was never proud of, when a gangly boy would dip his head down to mine and kiss me ever so lightly on the cheek and I would look up and bat my eyelashes … even back then I kind of made myself sick.

“Emily,” he said, bowing slightly. “Nice to meet you.”

I gave a half shrug. It would have been lovely to meet him too, if I weren’t having the sexual spasms of a sixteen-year-old and if I knew what the two of them were doing standing on my dock.

“Mr. Lo’s with the INS, out of Detroit,” Dolly said.

I gave him a quizzical look. I didn’t have a clue what INS was.

“Immigration and Naturalization Service,” he explained.

I nodded, still very much in the dark.

“Could we go up to your house, Miss … eh … Kincaid … ?”

“Emily.”

“Emily. We need to talk about the murder you two have been investigating.”

I motioned for them to go ahead of me. Better that than to think of him watching me from the back as I made my way through the bracken to my deck. Wet bikinis from behind aren’t pretty no matter what size the butt they’re covering.

Inside the house I told them to sit. Time to get shorts and a tee shirt on though I was already sweating and wishing I could have stayed in the wet bikini. When I got back to the living room Dolly and Jeffrey Lo were deep in conversation, heads bent close. They stopped as soon as I entered the room. I offered iced tea, made some, served it—with the last of the ice in the trays—and sat, looking expectantly at Mr. Lo.

Dolly began. “We’ve ID’d the dead woman. I’ll let Agent Lo, here, explain it to you. And nothing for the paper, Emily. I told him about our special arrangement that you only put in what I say …”

“I choose what I put in.” I snapped. I was no police flunky when I’d been a full-time journalist and wasn’t about to become one now. I was smart enough not to blab things that could hurt a police case but that was all. Despite working with Dolly so closely, I was a good reporter and took pride in that. Every once in a while Dolly got the idea that withholding information from one of my stories was a good idea. So, every once in a while, I had to bring her back to earth.

“Yeah, well,” she shrugged and rolled her eyes at Agent Lo. “Anyway, he understands you’ve been a big help and says he’s okay with it.”

Jeffrey Lo nodded, cleared his throat, and started:

“The woman’s name is Maria Santos. She was an agent with the Secretaria de Gobernacion Instituto Nacional de Migracion.” Impeccable Spanish. The guy was truly smooth. “That’s the Mexican form of what I do: immigration, emigration, naturalization. Mexico City got in touch with our office in Washington when Agent Santos disappeared. My office in Detroit sent me up to look around. The first thing I came across was your unidentified woman who could be Mexican and was dead up here in Leetsville. Got a photo and prints. Sent them to Mexico and got a positive ID. So I’m here for as long as it takes. This is now a government problem and an international crime.”

He waited as if I might have questions. I couldn’t think of a thing or, rather, I had many questions but hadn’t put them together.

“Agent Santos wasn’t here on official business. A cousin of hers in Oaxaca called her about another of their cousins, Acalan Diaz. Acalan came to northwest Michigan with his wife and two children to work on a farm. The cousin told Maria Santos that Acalan was worried. He called and said there was bad trouble up here. What Maria learned from the Oaxacan cousin was that Diaz got threats after working on a particular farm. She was told the threats got so bad he was afraid for his life.” Lo sat back and cleared his throat.

“Did he know which farm this Acalan was talking about?” I asked.

“I don’t think even Agent Santos knew. When she got here Acalan Diaz was gone, along with his family. She found where Acalan last worked and went out there. That’s what the officer and I learned today.” He nodded toward Dolly. “We talked to the farmer this morning. I don’t think the problem was with this particular farm, do you, Dolly?”

She shook her head at him. “Everybody knows Joe Swayze. Good man. Family’s been up here a hundred years or more. Used to run the grange. I’d be very surprised if Joe was into anything bad.”

Lo went on. “This Joe Swayze said a woman came to talk to him last week. She wanted to know what was going on with Diaz, but all Swayze could tell her was that Diaz never said where he’d worked before. Now he and his family are gone. He said the workers are all getting nervous. Oh, and he’d just heard from one of the men that a dead dog was found on Diaz’s doorstep one morning.”

I sat back, taking it all in: more dead dogs, threats. Drugs was the only thing I could come up with. Or that “coyote” revenge.

“Agent Santos wasn’t here officially. We got that from her boss in Mexico City. They couldn’t send her here for that kind of complaint. It would have been reported to us and we’d take it from there. What Agent Santos did was ask for time off to come on her own to investigate, and then she stayed in touch with her boss. I learned that while she was here she stayed in a motel in Kalkaska. We got the name and phone number from Mexico. I’ve been through her room and found nothing we didn’t already know—except for a phone number, which I had traced, and that was this Swayze’s farm.”

“So Acalan Diaz went back to Mexico? Why?” I asked. “Didn’t he know his cousin was coming?”

“The family’s not in Mexico as far as anyone there knows. No one in Oaxaca has seen any of them. But he could have gone to another state to find work. He hasn’t been heard from. They’re all worried about him and his family, and sick about what’s happened to Agent Santos.”

I looked at Dolly, who made a weird face and shrugged her shoulders. International crime wasn’t exactly her forte nor was it mine. We were in way over our heads.

“How can I help?” I asked, looking to Dolly to make sure I wasn’t treading on any toes here. She nodded at me. ‘In this together.’ I could hear her now. There were times the woman’s Three Musketeers spirit was amazing.

“We’re breaking the story and want you to contact your editor, get it in fast. Got her photo.” He leaned over and handed me a picture of the woman I’d only seen dead on the littered floor of the Old Farm Road house.

“Actually INS protocol dictates that I conduct my own investigation, separate from yours. But, to tell you the truth, I need you and the deputy here because you know the people, the farmers. If I did this on my own I’d be starting so far back it would take me months to catch up. I need to talk to anybody who might have seen or heard something that could help. What I’ve learned so far is that the Mexican workers have been leaving the farms, and just a month before harvest starts. I’ve got to find where they’re going and what’s scared everybody so bad.”

“Do you think the Diazes are dead?” I asked.

“No idea.”

I looked over at Dolly. “Okay, let me get the story in first. I’ll call Bill, give him a heads up.” I sat down at the laptop on my living room desk and made quick notes of everything Lo could give me. Lots of huge, unanswered questions. What brought the agent here? What did she discover that led to her death? Where was her cousin and his family? Most of all: what was going on? I ended the article with a plea to anyone who could help and gave the phone number of the Leetsville police station and the INS office in Detroit.

I e-mailed the story to Bill, with the photograph, then called him, explaining what was happening. I said I was staying close to Dolly and the INS agent, and would be in touch.

My part was finished.

I thought.

Lo leaned forward, hands clasped together. “What I need from both of you now is your help. You guys could save me weeks of interviews. You know, cut right to the chase. Dolly here’s been looking into Agent Santos’s death already. You’ve both been interviewing farmers. I’ve got all that, but what I need are the names of other farmers who might know something, who might still have workers on their places. I don’t want to step on any toes here …” He looked meaningfully at Dolly, who dipped her head, agreeing. “I think we’ll move along a lot faster if we work together. I guess that’s all I’m saying. I’d like you to be a part of it, Emily.”

This guy knew how to smile. He melted me right into line. It was to my benefit anyway, I told myself as I smiled back at him—a big, simple-minded grin like I sometimes caught on Sorrow’s face when he was thrilled to pieces with the idea of a new toy.

Outside, in the driveway, standing next to Dolly’s battered police car, we agreed to meet in the morning. EATS was decided on despite Dolly’s objections and the drawbacks of everybody listening to our conversation.

“Hey, Dolly.” I brought her up short. “You’ll have to get over your snit sooner or later. The one thing I’ve learned about a place like EATS is how much help we can get there. You know as well as I do that if we need a farmer’s name or ideas for places to contact migrant workers, EATS’ll have somebody sitting in a booth right next to us who can help. And what nobody else knows, Eugenia will.”

She agreed after a couple of grudging remarks about people who should mind their own business.

“If you didn’t give people things to worry about they wouldn’t be in your face,” I said, then smiled at a puzzled Agent Lo.

“Dolly’s got this thing …” I started.

“Watch it!” she warned me.

“She’s got this thing about the people in Leetsville. Seems they try to take care of each other and worry about each other and help each other. Dolly doesn’t like that.”

Lo gave me an odd look, then turned it on Dolly.

“Let’s just keep this to police business,” Dolly growled at both of us.

I spread my hands, letting them know that was fine with me—business only.

I stood under the arbor waving as they backed up my driveway, through the birch trees, and out to Willow Lake Road.