We drove through Sutton’s Bay, a small town with a thriving arts center, with Brilliant Books and other stores strung along the main road, Lake Michigan in the background. It was a colorful place with the feel of real life underneath the touristy trappings. What I was learning about the part of Michigan I’d come to was that the arts thrived on long winters and cheaper homes off water. I’d learned that we had great writers like Doug Standon and Jim Harrison and Mardi Link among us—working easier up here than places where celebrity killed off lesser writers. I’d learned the rugged Lake Michigan coasts and lighthouses inspired painters of all kinds, and that photographers caught sunsets over vineyards as good or better than anywhere else in the world.

Once in Northport we passed my favorite used bookstore: Dog Ears Books on Waukazoo Street, where the owner, Pamela Grath, had a magic red chair you could sit in—if she liked you enough. Great places around Northern Michigan. It had taken me almost five years to find some of them, with a lot more to go.

We made the turn north at the center of town and headed out to miles of not much of anything. We turned in at the Crispin orchard. There was another long drive through rows of apple trees before we pulled up to a huge, gable-roofed red barn, and a low red-brick ranch home.

A big man, with big stomach, big chest, big head of brown hair, big suspenders, big round face, and a large German shepherd dog, stood in the middle of the driveway. Dolly parked carefully beside him since he wasn’t going to move an inch, one way or the other. The dog barked, his head bouncing up and down, the hair on the back of his neck ruffled.

“I’m not getting out,” Dolly said after rolling down her window. The big man ambled over, letting his dog go on barking and growling until a gangly teenage boy came from the barn, called to the dog, and took him off toward the house.

“You Deputy Wakowski?” the man demanded, sticking his chin out to emphasize her name.

“That’s me. George Sandini said he called you about us coming out. You Dick Crispin?”

He nodded, then slowly bent forward to look inside the car. He nodded to Jeffrey in the back seat. “You with the INS?” he demanded.

Jeffrey nodded.

“Need to see your badge.”

Jeffrey leaned forward, reached in his back pocket, brought out a brown leather folder and showed his badge over Dolly’s shoulder.

“And you?” He lifted his chin in my direction.

I leaned across Dolly. “I’m with the Northern Statesman.”

He stepped back and threw his hands into the air. “Un-uh. No reporters. What’s going on here can’t be public.”

I assured him I would only use what was happening at his orchard when he was ready and the killer was caught. He thought a long while, long enough to make Dolly get out of the car to vouch for me. Finally he nodded.

“Guess I gotta trust you. Come on,” he motioned the rest of us out of the car. “I’ll take you to where the men are but don’t go thinking you can take ’em in or anything. Once you talk to ’em, they’re out of here. We got the next place lined up.”

We piled into his big red truck and went out the drive we’d come in on to the main road, then north, then west, until we finally turned down a dirt two-track and bounced between rows of apple trees. We pulled into a clearing in the middle of a circle of brown tents, got out, and stood by a row of cars.

At first, the clearing was deserted. We waited a few minutes. Men emerged slowly from the tents. Ten of them. Carlos Munoz, from the Sandini farm, was first. Behind him Miguel Hernandez stepped out to join Carlos. Others walked out until there was a straight line of small, dark guys staring at us. I was guessing these were all the men who supposedly had gone back to Mexico, or most of them.

“That’s all of them?” Dolly looked from one to the other of the men.

“Most. Some left when the trouble first started,” he said.

“You farmers are putting your lives on the line, protecting them like this.”

He shrugged. “Men been good workers a lot of years. Not going to turn our backs now.”

“What if it’s some Mexican feud thing?”

“They said it’s not.”

“Then what is it?” Dolly asked.

Jeffrey and I stood quietly, letting Dolly ask the questions on our minds.

“Don’t know,” Crispin said. “There’s only one connection they’ve come up with—some guy one of them worked for. That’s all I could get.”

“Can we talk to them?” Jeffrey asked.

“Sure. They been waiting. Jose, he’s the one got a name out of Acalan Diaz before he took off. Joe Swayze tell you Diaz found a dead dog on his porch? Diaz told Jose about it, and that he was afraid of some guy …”

We walked closer to where the men stood waiting, were introduced, and then vouched for.

“Any of you know Acalan Diaz?” Lo asked, looking from dark face to dark face.

Dick pointed to one of the six men. “Jose Rodriguez. He was Acalan’s friend. Worked for Joe Swayze too.”

“Jose.” Jeffrey Lo held his hand out to the man. They shook.

Jose licked at his lips and looked around at the others. They were alone, these ten men, out here in this deep woods clearing. And for a good reason. A woman was already dead. I didn’t sense fear around us so much as something different buried in every pair of watching eyes.

“He gave you a name. Is that true? Somebody threatening him. Maybe threatening others,” Lo asked.

“‘Toomey,’” the man said. “That’s what he said the man’s name was. And he was going to tell me other things—a kind of warning, but somebody came in then and told him to stop talking about the farm and what was going on there and that was the last time I saw Acalan.”

“Anything to do with a dead dog?”

He nodded. “Before that day he told me he found a dog on his porch one morning. Later, I heard there was a man with binoculars watching Acalan when he was out in the fields.”

“He know any reason he was singled out for threats?”

Jose shrugged. “From what I heard, it was because he talked too much about that place he worked. Maybe this Toomey man heard. I don’t know. And I don’t know what was going on. All I know is that Acalan was very … eh … scared.”

“The family went back to Mexico?”

Jose thought a moment, his dark and angry face scowling with the effort. He shrugged hard.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll call the agency in Mexico City,” Lo said. “They’ll get a hold of the family in Oaxaca, find out if they’re there.”

“Another man; another friend of Acalan’s—he told me Acalan came to the United States. He worked on a farm where he wasn’t happy. Something terrible going on there. Acalan was afraid he could be arrested, deported. Acalan talked too much.”

“Is that other man here?” Jeffrey looked around the circle of blank faces with unwavering eyes.

“No,” Jose said. “He’s gone.” He dropped his head and looked at his feet.

“Anything else you remember?” Dolly asked as she scribbled notes in her tiny notebook. “Something about this farm he worked on, or this guy ‘Toomey’?”

“He just told me never to go work for this person. Acalan whispered, like he was … you know … afraid of the walls around us. He said the man was crazy and he saw things there …”

“You sure none of this has anything to do with drugs, right?” Lo put in.

All the men frowned, then shook their head.

“And you’re all legals?” Lo looked down the line of men. “No coyote who brought you here and wants to be paid—nothing like that?”

They nodded.

“So, that’s all you’ve got?” Dolly got to the end of one of her slowly written sentences, looked up, and demanded.

“ ‘Toomey.’ I don’t know …” Jose shrugged and spread his hands. “I don’t know—first name or last name. Americanos, sometimes your names are … eh … you know … funny. But—you won’t say to anybody what I told you.” The man moved close to Dolly as she kept writing.

“Not a word.”

Miguel Hernandez stepped forward, cleared his throat, and said toward all of us, “Maybe dog fighting. That’s what we think. Because of the dead dogs, you know. Or …” he shrugged “… something different. But if the police came to a farm … you know … and it was found out something so bad was going on, Acalan, well, he would have reason to be afraid.”

“Anyone else hear anything like that?” Dolly called to all of them.

One by one the men shook their head. Some made faces. Others stared stoically straight ahead.

A few of the men began talking rapidly at Dick Crispin. Dick patted the air with his big hands, reassuring the frightened men. “We gotta trust somebody. This guy, and these ladies, they promised to help. Nobody’s going to go around putting anything in the paper until this is all over. Right, Emily?”

He turned to me and I nodded.

“You’ll be safe staying out here ’til we figure a better place to move you. Don’t want you in one place too long.”

Without more questions to ask, we thanked the wary men, got back in Crispin’s truck, and headed out toward Dolly’s car and home.

_____

We were on the main road back to Northport in no time, agreeing we didn’t get much from the hiding men.

“Think maybe dog fighting could be it?” Dolly said. “You’d think, if it was going on, somebody woulda been in to the station by now. People up here love their dogs.”

She turned around to look at me and Lo. “That’s the worst kind of cruelty you know? You ever see what happens at one of those things? Geez—enough to make you puke.”

“Like that football player—had a fighting pit on his land,” Lo said. “What I hear, they use other dogs and cats to train ’em. Use them as bait animals. Can’t imagine grown men … oh, well … there’s a lot about human beings I don’t understand.”

“And the name ‘Toomey’—first or last, I wonder?” I asked.

“Could explain the dead dogs.” Dolly worked at the idea.

“And maybe why Agent Santos was murdered,” Lo added. “There’s big money in dog fighting. Have these things where men come from all over the world. A million dollars bet on one fight.”

“So what are we looking for?” Dolly asked. “A man? A farm?”

“Toomey,” Lo said. “It’s a place to start.”