Chapter 11: Major Arrests

“Oh, Phoebe,” said Aunt Emily on the phone later that evening, “I’m so sorry you wondered, but the furniture came up to the cabin with us. I know it’s odd, but we do this every year. When the season is done, we pack up the whole cabin and store it in the garage attic. Then, in the spring, we cart it all up here and keep it here for the summer.”

“That’s such a lot of work, though,” said Phoebe, who had never heard of anyone doing this sort of thing.

“It is, but we can always get the Stevenson boys to help us. They’re such nice boys. They did all the heavy work. Then they get time to fish and water ski in exchange. This way mice don’t chew things—I used to have such a problem with mice chewing table legs and making holes in dressers. No, I much prefer it this way. But we forgot to mention this to you, and I’m sorry you worried.”

“It’s my fault really. If I hadn’t needed a lamp, I would never have gone looking for one—”

“Of course not, dear. But you should go right out tomorrow and buy a lovely floor lamp for your sitting room. I’m surprised we didn’t see the lack. Are you managing to find enough food for your breakfasts and suppers and making good lunches for yourself?”

“I’m eating fine, Aunt Emily. Thanks. The food is wonderful, though I must admit I don’t take the time for the breakfasts Emogene makes. I’ve just been making toast and coffee.”

“Oh, that’s not good. Breakfast is so important. Look in the freezer in the pantry. Everything’s labeled. Emogene has all kinds of things for breakfast stored there. But lunches, what are you doing for lunches?”

“Skipping it mostly. We’re so busy in the office right now trying to solve major cases, but plese don’t worry. I always have a wonderful supper.”

“Dear, dear. Emogene, she’s not eating.”

“I am too eating, Aunt Emily. I’m fine.”

“Well, we’ll be home soon and you’ll eat better again.”

“Oh, we had a bad storm down here this evening.”

“I heard something on the news about that. You’re all right, though?”

“I’m fine, but we have some trees down and branches littered all over.”

“Jerry, there are trees down,” her aunt said to him like the three of them were sitting together, which they probably were. “Ah, he wants to know if that willow in the back lost another branch. It seems to shed something in almost every storm.”

“I haven’t gone out, but I think so. There was a frightful lightning strike earlier and then a thud.”

“Well, Jerry will see to it when we get home. We might have some of the Stevenson boys come out with a chainsaw and wagon and pick up, so if you see them or just see branches have been picked up, you’ll know they’ve been there.”

“The storm didn’t affect you up in Brainerd?”

“We had a bit of a rain, nothing severe. No damage up here.”

“Oh, good. I was a little concerned when my call went to voicemail. I thought maybe your power had also gone out.”

“No, we’re just fine. We should be home Sunday evening, dear, so I want you to promise to eat well and get a lamp for your sitting room.”

“Yes, I promise. So, are you catching any fish up there?”

Her aunt giggled her little girl laugh and said, “Are we catching fish, Jerry?” Again she giggled. “He says to say we’re catching plenty. See you soon, Phoebe dear. Bye.”

And her aunt hung up even before Phoebe could say good-bye. She set the unit in its cradle and shook her head. “I live in a madhouse. It’s a nice madhouse with wonderful accommodations and great food, but a madhouse nonetheless.” To cart a whole cabin’s worth of furniture back and forth twice a year seemed like a huge ordeal just to make sure mice didn’t run amuck. She was certain mice lived in any up-north cabin summer or winter, and if people weren’t there, they did what mice did. But that surely explained why the big SUV and the pickup had both been gone, though it really didn’t explain the need for both cars. Phoebe gave that a bit of thought, but as eccentric as those three were, maybe logical explanations were not the best use of her time. She let it go.

It had taken awhile to get to sleep after the excitement of the evening, so Phoebe found herself tired the next day when she got up to go to work. But it was a Friday, and that seemed promising. As she drove the long driveway to County 8, she saw a number of trees down, both along the drive and in the woods and wondered if the Stevenson boys would be out to deal with that.

East River Road showed just how damaging the storm had been. At least a dozen trees were down, one had come down against a barn and caved in an attached milking parlor. In town the damage seemed less obvious, but small branches and leaves were scattered in yards and along the street. Still that fresh-washed brightness envigorated her as she drove in. The sun was shining, and the blue sky was cloudless.

The atmosphere in the office had changed from the heavy tension of the day before because of Chief Johnson’s repeated clammoring for results. Even in the locker room downstairs, the air seemed to have been as washed as the countryside by the big storm, but when she arrived upstairs, the detective department was all smiles and grins and excitement.

McKenna saw her walk in and came over. “Did you hear?”

“What? Hear what?”

“The garage gang is caught. The whole lot of them. We bagged the entire gang last night.”

Phoebe’s eyes flew open. “Really? How?”

“Well,” he said with a wide grin. “I think it’s because of you.”

“Me? I was sitting home in the basement.”

“It was your idea that the days of the robberies were linked to moving days off of someone who was on call a lot. It was. Two male nurses at the hospital psyche ward were the ring leaders. They ran a car and a big cargo van. The four teens involved had all been patients in that ward, been treated for drugs but, let’s say, not entirely cured.”

“I didn’t even guess that part.”

“No, but you also figured out that they hadn’t repeated any locations yet. That allowed us to concentrate our patrols in neighborhoods that hadn’t been hit. We did. Then we got lucky.”

“Lucky how?”

“The garages hit were always separate from the houses, not tied to them like in a ranch house. I made that connection. They did that, I think, so that the homeowners would have less of a chance hearing the garage doors go up and down.”

“Makes sense.”

“The home was down on Sixth, right across from the hospital. The garage opened to the alley in the back. The couple who owned it had a nice Buick and a ton of power tools in that garage, a snowblower, a tiller, two canoes, and a snowmobile—a prime target for our theives.”

“They seem to like that stuff.”

“Indeed. Anyway, the team got dropped off just the way we figured they did and closed themselves in the garage. Then, about half an hour later, they called for the cargo van and trailer. But just as it arrived and they had started loading up, the couple came out of the house. They said a dog or something had whined and scratched at their back door. They don’t own a dog, so they came to investigate and saw the robbery in progress and called 911.”

“And a patrol car arrived in time? I figure the pick-up team was fast. Once they stopped, I thought they’d be loaded up in five minutes flat.”

“Which they were actually, so they still might have vammoosed and gotten away. Here’s where we got lucky a second time in the case. When they attempted to leave, they had two flat tires. Two! A light in the alley had been hit by a branch in the storm and come down. The glass could have punctured the tires but the metal of the lamp housing did a better job at that. Still, they pulled down to the other end of the alley and called their drop-off car. It arrived right as squad cars blocked both ends of the alley. A couple of the kids attempted to rabbit, but we got them.”

“Wow! I bet Johnson is happy.”

“He’s over the moon. And the mayor is thrilled. A big story headlines the St. Cloud Times tonight about it. I made sure to spell my name for them.”

“So you are the hero,” she said.

He grinned. “Someone had to do the job. But I spelled your name for them, too.” And he waved his hand over his head as if noting a headline. “‘Newest detective, Phoebe Magillicutty, pieces together facts that result in the arrest of six people involved in a series of garage robberies around town.’”

Phoebe was stunned. “Wow. Thanks.”

He chuckled darkly. “It means, of course, that as it comes to trial, you’ll have to testify.”

“Ah. Well, still thanks. I’m not sure Johnson was so thrilled with giving me the promotion with my handgun scores so low. This should let him know he made the right choice.”

Just then, the door was filled with Johnson’s frame. He bellowed, “Magillicutty!”

She jumped and turned. “Yes, sir?”

He strode over to her, took her hand, crushed it in his grip and shook her arm until all her bones had turned to jelly. “Good work, Magillicutty. I had hoped you had some of your dad’s genes and good instincts in you. Nice to see a law enforment dynasty continue with such vigor.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said, trying not to cradle her poor arm. “All in a day’s work, sir.”

He looked at her oddly, then grinned again. “Indeed. Now if we can get that bastard who’s hurting old women off the streets, I’d be completely pleased, but you saved the Governor’s Opener for me. I can go with my head held high. I thank you for that. Good work.”

He turned and strode from the room. McKenna sidled up to her shoulder and whispered, “Want a sling for that arm . . . or a hospital pass?”

Phoebe flexed her hand and rubbed her shoulder. “He does have a . . . firm grip, doesn’t he?”

“Why do you think I listed you as a major contributor in the arrests? That’s my guitar picking hand.”

“You play guitar?” she asked.

“No, but if I did . . .”

* * * * *

The atmosphere in the LEC remained high all day. Phoebe saw more high-fiving that day than ever in her memory. The chief was so pleased to have one of the two high-profile cases solved that he ordered House of Pizza for the whole department. With the fishing opener that weekend, and a number of patrol officers scheduled to take a few days’ vacation, as well as the chief taking part in the Governor’s Opener, the office cleared out early.

Neil snagged Phoebe’s arm as she was on her way out. “So, are your aunt and the others still gone?”

“Until Sunday, they said. Why?”

“Well, I thought we could maybe grab a bite to eat before you had to return to that sad old house you live in.”

She looked him hard in the face. “Um . . . I don’t know if it’s a good idea to—”

“Oh,” he said quickly, “I quite agree. But I’d like some time quieter than this office so we can discuss the other major case. I mean, I’m going to have to put Homer and Stan back on the rest of our docket, and I can’t monopolize you in the office. Not with you being the newest detective, but I like your instincts. Really, stuff you suggested about the garage thieves made all the difference in getting the arrests . . . and it looks like it’s going to stick, too. I mean, the four teens are going to get juvvy for sure, and one of the nurses broke down and confessed, implicating his partner. Those two are facing serious jail time.”

“That’s good news, but you kind of just slid completely off the topic.”

He drew in a long breath and looked away. Then he looked back and smiled. “Maybe you’re right. We’ve all earned a quiet evening and a good night’s sleep. Good night, Magillicutty.”

And that was that. Phoebe left the office. It wasn’t until she was in her car on the way home that she had misgivings. Sure, chalk up all the reasons for not getting involved with McKenna. Add to them all the issues the man had. Like he was her boss. Like he had just had his fiancée killed a few weeks ago. Like he had issues with her dad. But none of her baggage and his baggage, even stacked in a crazy, easily unbalanced tower changed the fact that Phoebe liked him.

He was awkward at times, dressed a couple of decades behind the times, got pissed when his ego was bruised, but he was nice looking, was fit, had more kindness in him than cowboy, was smart and worked hard at being a good cop. She smiled. Actually, the fact that he dressed behind the times was one of his endearing charms. Phil had spent an inordinate amount of time making himself look good, but never bothered to follow up with actually being a decent human being. And though the divorce with Phil was a new condition in her life, her love of the man had faltered some time ago, long enough that, had not some of the caveats between her and Neil been issues, she wouldn’t have considered a relationship with him to be rebound. Still, this sort of thing might be best nipped in the bud.

As Phoebe drove up the drive to her aunt’s house, she saw that the downed trees on the side of the drive had been sawn up, and work had started on some of the fallen trees in the woods. When she reached the yard, she saw that all the downed branches had been picked up, the lawn had been freshly mowed to “eat” the fallen leaves, and, after she got into the house, she saw that the willow that had suffered the lightning strike, had had that large damaged trunk removed. Though it took away nearly a quarter of the mass of the grand old monarch, the rest of the willow seemed in good shape. The wound had been dressed with tar to keep it free of bug and fungal infestations that could threaten the life of the tree otherwise.

The Stevenson boys did work well. Phoebe had to give them that. She had never known such motivation in a bunch of teenagers. No wonder Jerry paid them well. They were worth it.

Phoebe had just gone to the pantry to check what she might have for her supper, when the doorbell rang. She went to the door to find Neil standing there.

“I know all the reasons why you might not want to see me socially,” he said, “and I’ve got my own issues as well, not the least of which is that my fiancée was murdered just six weeks ago. I know I’m still grieving for her, too. I miss her something awful at times. But I was just offering dinner. Something casual. Maybe we could go to . . . the Red Lobster or the Renassance Café.”

She opened her mouth, but he jumped in again, “The thing is, Magillicutty, I like you. I’ve watched you when you were on the patrol side. I thought you were cute and made a good officer. You had an attitude that took the highs and lows of our business in stride. You solved cases, served papers, did interivews and responded to dog barking incidents with equal integrity and fairness. It’s as if you understood that while a dog barking wasn’t a big deal in the one sense, if someone called it in, it was a big deal to them. I like that you made up a decent identity when I introduced you to Schultz, even with convincing background material. That kind of quick wit is hard to come by.” He paused, out of breath, because he had said all this with little more than a breath or two. “So, that’s it. Is it dumb?”

She smiled. “How can anything be dumb when delivered with as much sincerity as that. It doesn’t change everything, though. You are still grieving. I’m newly divorced. We do work together, and, technically, you’re my boss, my superior at very least. I don’t think we should ignore those things, but I must admit that driving home, I was . . . regretful that we couldn’t just go out for a dinner or two. We do have a lot of baggage to deal with, I fully admit, but, I have to point out one thing. I like you, too.”

His hang-dog expression lifted. “You do? Even though I’m a dork. I mean, I’ve been a dork my whole life and—”

“How about this,” she said, cutting him off. “We might be a bit early for an evening that really could be considered a date. I’d like to take that kind of slow, too, but . . . we both have to eat. How about we raid Emogene’s freezers and see if we can’t find ourselves a nice supper. We could eat it in the livingroom downstairs. It’s quite formal, quite proper. We could watch a movie while we eat. Then you leave, and we think about all this before we get ourselves in too deep.”

He grinned. “I could do that. Some frozen leftovers isn’t date food, and sitting home and watching a movie isn’t a date unless we watch a romatic comedy.”

“Yes,” she said, “a romantic comedy would be bad. But we could watch . . . an adventure, maybe a drama . . . no, I have the perfect non-date watching-a-movie-together-while-eating-leftovers movie.”

The lazagna had been frozen in generously sized pieces and microwaved into a luscious meal they supplimented with a loaf of french bread thawed, sliced the long way and slathered with garlic butter also from the freezer. They ate off separate TV trays while sitting on separate love seats facing the huge flat screen, watching The Neverending Story.

“I always loved the stone monster,” said Neil. “I loved that he ate rocks and savored the flavor of the different kinds of rocks.”

“For me it was always the racing snail,” Phoebe said. “The idea to make something that would be considered slow into something so fast is a delightful twist.”

“Hmm. I liked the snail, but I don’t get why it was your favorite.”

Phoebe said, “I always identified with the snail, I guess. I felt slow and incompetent most of the time, and my dad never made that the slightest bit better. I was that snail, but dad didn’t know that I was secretly a racing snail, something so fast and amazing that he’d just have to be proud of me.”

“I can’t imagine what it was like to grow up the daughter of Zip Magillicutty.”

Phoebe shrugged. “That’s the problem. I can’t either. By the time I came on the scene, he was more broken than whole. He’d lost his son, Skip, killed overseas, and you need to know he was so proud of Skip, of the kind of man he was, the way he lived his life. Losing him cost my dad nearly everything. I never knew the man you knew. Then he got sick, and you have to know that dying sick was never how my dad pictured his death. It made him angry, and, when he was angry, he got mean.”

“Wow. I’m so sorry. I’ll lay off the comparisons from now on.”

Phoebe didn’t like the expression this family history had put on Neil’s face. “No. Don’t. Since coming to the detective side and seeing that portrait of my dad staring at me each day, hearing what you felt about him . . . well, it’s given me a new appreciation of the man. I mean, I never actually met that man, but I can appreciate who he was. Living here with his sister has given me new understanding of him too. I feel like I’m reclaiming something I’d lost and needed but didn’t know I needed.”

The movie had gone to the credits as they talked, and Neil’s focus was entirely on her. As the end of the music brought them back to reality, he said, “I want to say something to you, tell you something, but I know this just isn’t the right time. Remind me later and I’ll tell you.”

He got up. “I’m gonna go. I’m actually getting tired from the stress and effort of this week. I enjoyed this, Magill— . . . Phoebe. The food was great. I really do have to meet this Emogene sometime and complement her on her cooking. Delicious food, perfect movie, wonderful company. It was a great evening. I hope we can do it again sometime. Good night.”

He didn’t wait for her to get up before he crossed the foyer and opened the front door. There he turned as she was coming out of the living room. “Lock up. I need to know you’re safe.”

And he was gone.

Phoebe knew it was the right course, but she still might have been okay with his staying. “I’d have regretted it tomorrow,” she told herself as she locked the door and went back to clear away the dishes and put the living room to rights.

When she had returned the movie on its place on the shelf in the library, gone to the kitchen to wash up the few dishes they had used and made sure all was neat and clean there, she headed upstairs with a steaming cup of hot chocolate, more than ready for bed. And, as she settled in and began to relax, she knew it was the right thing for Neil to leave. It sucked in some ways, but it was the right thing. At least for now.

Chapter 12: Secrets

Phoebe had the weekend off. On Saturday morning, with the house still to herself, she lounged in bed late, meandered down and made some breakfast. She thought she’d try to make an Emogene breakfast, but even as she searched for a frying pan and discovered eight of them in various sizes—a few large enough to cook more than a dozen eggs at once—she changed her mind. Surely she’d use the wrong one and somehow damage it. But she had seen some waffles in the freezer and retrieved a package, then a second one and toasted them. With butter and maple syrup, it made a fine Saturday breakfast with her coffee. The paper was delivered each day to their mailbox, and she meandered down to pick up a couple day’s worth of mail and papers. The morning was warm and inviting. Multitudes of birds twittered and sang in the trees around the house and along the driveway as she walked what was nearly half a mile to the mailbox. Hepatica and violets bloomed profusely in the woods, and she saw some trillium and other flowers she didn’t know. Fern fiddleheads and jack-in-the-pulpit had emerged from the leaf-strewn floor of the woods that would be cast in dark shadows when the oaks and maples above them fully leafed out. Frogs quacked and chirped and peeped from the lake and several shallow ponds in the woods that likely would disappear before summer.

---

The Stevenson boys were already out in the woods. The trees that had fallen along the drive had been sawn into fireplace lengths before she had driven past last evening, but now those rounds had been split and stacked in several location. Phoebe heard an engine, and came around a curve to see the boys at work, and she was amazed at how many of them there were. One of the older boys had a small tractor in the woods with a log splitter attached to the power take off in the rear. He ran the attachment’s lever while several of the middle boys brought rounds of logs over and set them on the splitter. Other boys, slightly smaller ones, stacked the smaller pieces kicked off by the splitter as it broke the rounds into fireplace-sized chunks.

Doing a quick count, Phoebe accounted for seven boys, but she was sure a couple of the oldest boys weren’t there. The Stevenson crew waved at her, and she stopped and came over.

“Wow,” she said, “you guys really have a system going.”

“It’s just splitting wood,” said the brother running the log splitter. He signaled to a brother, who jumped on the tractor and turned off the engine so they could talk. All the boys, clearly having worked hard for a while already that morning, plunked down on logs or the ground.

“I’m not sure I have any of you straight,” said Phoebe. “Are you Bill?” she asked the boy running the splitter.

“Naw, but I’m Brad. Bill and I are identical though, so it’s hard to tell sometimes.”

“Oh, you’re a twin. I thought the twins were younger boys. I remember their names were . . . Tom and Ted. Yes, Tom and Ted.”

Brad grinned. “Those are twins, also identical, but they’re six.”

“Your family has two sets of twins. I remember that now.”

“Yup.”

Phoebe narrowed her eyes. “So, exactly how many of you are there?”

Brad said, “Twelve.”

“Twelve! Wow.”

Another little boy said, “Fynn, Cole, Bill, Brad, Jimmy, Cory, Sam, Deek, Pete, Tom, Ted, and Fester.”

“Is his name really Fester?” she asked, laughing.

All the little boys started laughing too. “Nope,” said middle-sized boy. “His name is really Francis, but he was bald so long we started calling him Fester. You know, that Adams Family character. I go by Deek, but my real name is Stephen.”

The boys were happy, energetic kids, and Phoebe liked them. “So why Deek and not Steve.”

The boy giggled. “Stephen is . . .”

“He thinks it’s wussy,” said a littler boy. “He thinks Deek is a cowboy name.”

Phoebe nodded sagely. “Oh, Deek is very much a cowboy name. I’m sure I remember bull riders in rodeos called Deek.”

Deek puffed his chest proudly and said to his giggling little brother, “See.”

“So where are Fynn and Cole and Bill? This seems hard work for you guys.”

Brad said, “I’ve run the tractors, this one and the big ones on the farm, for years. That’s nothing. Most of us, ’cept the littles can. And none of these logs are so big we can’t lift them. If some of the big oaks or cottonwoods had gone down, we would’ve had a lot of trouble, but not these. All the trees that went down were maples, willows, and birch.”

“Brad helped with the oak logs on the road,” said little Deek, who Phoebe thought might be about eight.

“What’s your dad doing?”

And suddenly the joking and laughing fell away. Brad said quickly, “The cows. He had to tend to the cows. Dad was milking when we left, wasn’t he, guys?”

In a kind of lock step, all the little boys nodded.

“And . . . mom was in the house baking and making a birthday cake for Fester. He turns four today,” said one of the boys who hadn’t spoken up yet. Unlike his brawny brothers, this was a skinny kid, though he had the characteristic Stevenson blond hair and blue eyes.

Brad looked at him and said, “Pete.” Just his name, but it was a warning, Phoebe was sure.

Phoebe smiled and said, “Well, I’m just on my way to pick up the paper and the mail.”

Brad said, “We’re going to take a break. We’ll finish up here later. Good-bye.”

Phoebe felt dismissed and continued on the walk to the mailbox. She heard the tractor start up again. As she walked out of sight of the boys, she wondered what was going on. She was missing something about their exchanges and didn’t understand exactly what she had seen. They had been lying about something, but she had no idea what it was. And it had impacted the whole gaggle of little boys deeply. She was sure the youngest of those there, a boy younger than Deek so maybe one of the twins—Tom or Ted—had lowered his head and slumped his shoulders after he told about his mom. If Phoebe had to put a name to his actions, she would have thought grief. But that didn’t exactly make sense. She thought maybe, if they were to be neighbors for however long she was going to stay with her aunt, she should begin to straighten out which of the brothers was which. She’d ask Jerry about it.

The end of the drive had a pine planting, and the young trees—not more than fifteen feet high—were candeling, sending out the year’s new growth. The storm had damaged a number of the tender young needles and branch ends. The ground was littered with fallen bits. One young tree, right on the county road had tipped, partially pulling its root ball from the ground, but Phoebe hoped Jerry could save it when he got home.

Phoebe picked up the two newspapers and a number of pieces of mail, some for all three of the oldsters, but none for her, which wasn’t so surprising since she had not let too many people know where she was staying. It had been a sad realization that, since she had no bills except her credit card and student loans, which she paid on-line, and since she had no magazine subscriptions, she didn’t have to make changes at the post office the way so many other had to. Even her checking and savings accounts—what little she had in either—had only on-line monthly accounting.

She turned around and started the walk back to the house. A little creek that ran under the road near the pine woods, had flooded its banks with the run-off from the storm, and charged through the culvert under the drive. On the other side, the flooding had already slowed, and the stream, not quite yet back in its banks flowed through one of the oak woods down to the end of the lake. Where it had raged in the height of the storm, the current had pushed over ferns and flattened grasses. They likely would recover, and the creek burbled and chortled as it flowed over rocks and under the culvert.

Phoebe didn’t have a lot of knowledge of birds, but she recognized the red of a cardinal and thought some of the large crested blue birds might be jays. She heard the hammering of woodpeckers.

This was such a lovely place her aunt had. As she rounded the corner to where the boys had been working, she saw they had left. The tractor was gone, but, clearly, they had not finished splitting and stacking wood. She was concerned that, whatever it was that had altered their happy boy behavior and sent them off home was somehow her fault, but she couldn’t think what she might have said.

She continued on, rounded the rest of the curve, knowing she would get her first view of the lake edge from that venue, but she stopped. There, right in the middle of the road stood the most beautiful, most delicate creature she had ever seen, a young fawn. It turned to look at her, its big ears too large for its head. Big black eyes seemed to watch her calmly. Phoebe took a step towards the elfin being.

“No. Don’t,” said a whisper from near her.

Phoebe turned to see one of the smaller Stevenson boys, the one who had told her what his mother was doing and gotten a slight reprimand from Brad.

“But it’s alone,” whispered Phoebe. “Maybe its mother was killed in the storm.”

“No. It’s mama is right over there,” said the boy, and he pointed discreetly, his index finger held close to his face.

Phoebe peered through the trees, seeing nothing. She scanned the tree trunks, and thickets and the edge of the rise that fell away deeper into the woords. Still nothing. Then the doe’s tail flicked, and, as if by magic, the deer materialized in a thicket of hazel and raspberries at the edge of a clearing just across the road, considerably nearer than she had been looking.

The boy motioned Phoebe toward him, and she tiptoed off the drive into a stand of popple and birch. Together they crouched and watched as the fawn sniffed the gravel in the drive, its beautiful spotted coat blending with the dappled sunlight. Delicately the little creature stepped to the other side of the road on thin, clearly not well-practiced legs and tiny little hooves.

“It was born last night.”

“It’s so beautiful.”

“Yes,” said the boy. “Lots of deer live in the woods. I like watching them.”

A few more minutes and the fawn had climbed the bank on the other side of the road and joined its mother in the thicket. She nuzzled him a moment, then, together, they meandered deeper into the woods. Phoebe and the little Stevenson boy stood to see them mount a rise and disappear over it.

“So, which one are you?” Phoebe asked the boy.

“I’m Pete,” he said.

“Walk with me to the house, Pete?”

He smiled. Phoebe could see that, while Deek liked to be tough and grown up, this little boy was cut from more sensitive cloth. Thinner than Deek and less robust than the other boys, Pete had a narrow face and pale-blond hair, he seemed almost as etherial as the newborn fawn.

Pete took Phoebe’s hand. She was touched. It seemed almost a yearning gesture. For a ways they walked in silence, both listening to the birds and the frogs. When a hawk swung over the road in his silent hunt, Pete pointed.

“Do you know what kind of hawk it is?” Phoebe asked.

“I don’t know all the hawks,” said Pete, “but that’s a redtail. He doesn’t hunt in the woods. He’s just passing over on his way to the fields.”

“Ah.”

As they walked, Phoebe studied the boy. He wore clothes built for a huskier lad even if they didn’t drip off his wrists or drag in the dirt. Hand-me-downs. In a family with so many boys, passing on wearable clothing was the only logical course. His pants had neat patches on the knees and the seat of the pants, but his shoes looked sturdy and new.

“So,” said Phoebe, “your mom likes to bake?”

He looked up at her, and she saw tears forming in his eyes. She stopped in the road, set the mail down on the gravel and took gentle hold of both his shoulder. “Listen to me, Pete,” she said, “I know you lied about your mom, but . . . I don’t know why.”

Big tears slid from his eyes. “Because my mom’s dead.”

“What?” He burst into tears and fell into her arms, and she held him, a little fawn of a boy trembling and miserable. As he sobbed into her shoulder and she crouched to hold him, she felt tears starting to come to her eyes as well, but she didn’t know if she was crying because he was or for their shared grief.

When he had calmed, they both sat on a log at the edge of the drive wiping their eyes and sniffling. She gave him a bit of tissue from her pocket. “I didn’t know,” she said, “and I’m sorry. My mom’s dead, too.”

“She is?” He looked up at her with watery eyes.

“Yes, and my father as well.”

“So . . . you’re an orphan . . . too.”

“Both your parents are dead?” Phoebe said. “I thought . . .”

“Big Pete was dad’s hired hand. Barb cooks. Sheila and George help out., and Big Pete runs the farm.”

He had hesitated just a beat at each name except Big Pete’s. Wait a minute, she said. How can a bunch of kids have hired help? “So are Sheila and George an aunt and uncle or . . .”

“No, but they want us to call them that.”

“So, when did your parents die, Pete?”

“Mom died when I was little, when Fester was born. I don’t remember her much. Dad died last year.”

“I’m so sorry, Pete. That must be hard.”

He nodded. “I miss dad.”

“Yeah, I’m beginning to miss my dad, too. But, Pete, why did you say that your mom was home baking? Why did your brother say your dad was with the cows?”

The little boy shrugged a bony shoulder. “So they won’t split us up. Fynn’s nineteen but Cole just turned seventeen, and the rest of us are all . . .”

“Minors?”

He nodded. “Fynn said if people knew that eleven of us were being taken care of by him, they’d take us away.”

And he was probably right, Phoebe knew, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a better thing than Lord of the Flies.

“How do you do in school, Pete?”

“I’m in second grade,” he said proudly “’cause my birthday’s in September.”

“Can you read?”

“Yup, I could read before I started school. Can add and subtract, too. So can Tom and Ted. Fester can’t, but he’s just four.”

“When you get a report card, how do you do?”

“They don’t have grades in my school—I go to Talahi—but I get ‘excellent’ and ‘superior’ all the time. I’ve never had a ‘poor.’ Why?”

“And you do 4H.”

He grinned, and it lit up his sad little face. “I have rabbits, four kinds. I take ribbons for them when I show them. Last year I got five ribbons.”

“Do you go to church?”

“Sometimes. Dad didn’t go much. I think he was mad at God when Mom died, but Cole takes us sometimes.”

“This is a hard question, Pete. If your mom and dad are dead, where does the money come from to buy food and clothes?”

“I dunno. In the summer we always grow a big garden. It’s mostly in now. I know ’cause I’ve been weeding a lot, and we have animals. We eat them sometimes. I dunno.”

Phoebe figured a seven-year-old really didn’t know how a family functioned and stopped asking him that sort of question. “You want some cookies and milk? I bet we can find some of Emogene’s cookies in the freezer. Emogene cooks for my—”

“Oh, I love Emogene’s cookies and cakes.”

Was it so surprising that he would have eaten Emogene’s treats? They were neighbors, after all.

“Pete.” Suddenly Brad was on the drive in front of them. “It’s time to go home for lunch, buddy. Come on.”

The little boy let go Phoebe’s hands, got up and dashed over to his brother, who rubbed his head, then threw an arm around his shoulders and started to walk through the woods.

“How are you going to cross the lake?” Phoebe asked.

Brad called over his shoulder, “We have a boat.” Pete took off running ahead through the trees, disappearing as quickly as the doe and fawn.

Phoebe just had to know. “So exactly how do you keep the county from stepping in and splitting all you brothers up into different foster homes?”

Brad stopped dead in his tracks, facing away from her. Then he turned slowly and glared at her. “Pete said something, didn’t he?”

“Not really. I’m an investogator, Brad, a detective. I usually can spot it when someone lies. I heard the lie when you talked about your ‘dad’ way before Pete said anything. Does the county even know that twelve kids are living without parents?”

Brad looked back, making sure Pete was out of earshot. “There’s stuff you don’t know,” he said with a touch of anger. “And, yeah, stuff the county doesn’t know. You think it’d be better for Pete and the others to be split up?”

“I think it’s risky for kids not to get the attention they need. Being a parent is a lot of work.”

“Fynn is our parent now. Fester even calls him Dad.”

“But Fynn’s not an adult, not really. Being dad to eleven brothers is too much for one young man.”

“We got Big Pete and George to take care of the fields. Barb and Sheila help with the cooking, cleaning, and laundry.”

“And how old are they?”

Brad sighed. “Well, Big Pete is nearly seventy, I think. George is a little older. Sheila’s like his wife, so . . . older. Barb is—”

“Old, I bet. I just bet all four of them are senior citizens.”

“So? If we had grandparents they’d be taking care of us. But we don’t need anyone to take care of us. We take care of ourselves.”

Phoebe heard a fierceness and determination seldom in the repretoire of a middle teen. “How long has this been going on?”

“A year. Dad died almost a year and a half ago. Mom died four years ago.”

“How’d your dad die?’

Brad face tightened. “You have to understand, he and Mom were a team. A really good team. When Mom died, he was lost. He couldn’t cope. It’s like he was a ghost and most of his soul was already with Mom.”

Phoebe nodded. She had been putting things together. The only way the county wouldn’t interfere in the rearing of a dozen boys was if they didn’t know the family was without parents. That most certainly meant that the father had died on the farm, the boys had found him and buried him on the farm and not told anyone. Chances were he had committed suicide. But she suspected the family was Catholic like so many large families in Central Minnesota. She wouldn’t make Brad say what happened to his father. “So where did Pete and George, Sheila and Barb come from?”

Brad gave a little laugh. He was shaking his head slightly and looking up into the tops of the trees. “You’re going to figure it out anyway. I just hope you don’t tell on us, because I don’t want my family to break up. We’re all we have. We go to school, you know. We all get really good grades. Well, Deek could do a little better. He gets mostly B’s. The rest of us get A’s. We take part in choir and plays. Cole is a star quarterback at Tech. We all play softball in the summer. We have homework time and wash dishes after meals. We take turns doing cooking and laundry and vacuuming. It’s all getting done. We don’t need the county to split us up, and none of us think that’s what’s best for us. We have a farmer’s market stand at four markets each week in the summer and sell a lot of vegetables. We even started CSAs with people that include meat and eggs.”

“And that makes enough money for groceries and clothes and school supplies and taxes, electricity, feed for the animals, seed for the garden and fields, and—”

“We get by.” Again a fierceness older than the boy.

“So who are those four old people?” Though Phoebe was getting an inking of who they might be.

“Big Pete really is our hired hand. He’s been working on our farm for decades. That’s the truth. But . . . George is . . .”

“Jerry.”

Brad shook his head, knowing his family’s secret was out. “Yeah. Barb is—”

“Emogene and Sheila is my Aunt Emily.”

His face tightened again, but he nodded.

“Are they paying the bills, buying food and clothes and paying the taxes?”

Brad raised his head, pride lifting it. He met Phoebe’s eyes. “No, they’re not.”

Phoebe narrowed her eyes. She didn’t see a lie when he said this but she did think there had been a bit of sleight of hand.

Brad said, “Your aunt bought our farm. She paid three million dollars for it, which, of course, was way more than it was worth, but she insisted. She can be a bit stubborn. Maybe you’ve noticed. She set up a trust for all of us to go to college and stuff and some of the interest on that money is what we use to pay all the bills . . . ourselves. Well, Fynn usually handles that. He and Jerry get together once a month and sort all that out. We make our own money selling vegetables and some of the animals we raise. That’s enough for clothes and cell phones for some of us, Ipods, and Deek has a Playstation.”

“Oh, good. I was wondering if you guys were typical boys.”

He grinned. “I guess. The deal with your aunt and Jerry is that they check the house every few days. If we’ve gotten too messy and, like, haven’t done laundry and dishes, we get a probation to fix things. If we can’t keep up with school and the house and the gardens and the fields, we know we have to go into foster care. But it’s been a year now, and we only got probation three times, and all those times were early on. We have our routine now.”

“But you guys are kids and should have the freedom of kids.”

“We’re farm kids. We never had the freedom of town kids. We’ve always had chores and work in the barn and the fields and gardens. That’s how farm families work. We wouldn’t have any more freedom if dad were alive, would we? But we’re together, and we know nothing bad’s going to happen to the little guys in some foster home.”

“Not all foster homes are bad. Most are—”

“We don’t want to take the chance. Look at Little Pete. He’s not a tough, strong guy like most of the rest of us. He was premature and has always been small. But he loves being out in the woods. He’s . . . he’s . . . he’s like Dicken in the Secret Garden, and, yes, Mom used to read us all her favorites. We still read The Little Princess aloud regularly and Little Women. Is that weird?”

Phoebe smiled. “No. Have you read Lord of the Flies?”

He laughed. “Yes, and we’re not. So, are you going to rat us out?”

“I hate seeing so much adult responsibility on your shoulders.”

“Well, that’s where there being a lot of us is a good thing. Fynn, Cole, Bill, and I share responsibility for running things. But we have fun, too. Fynn’s got a girl, and Cole took Amy Slaybauck to the prom, but he’s not serious about her. None of us is so weighed down we can’t do what any guy does. Fynn didn’t go to college, but he didn’t want to go. He likes farming, and he’s good at it. He keeps the tractors and machinery running and takes good care of the cows. We have a grade A milk operation and milk thirty cows. Some of that goes to CSAs but we sell to the creamery, too. He’s always liked responsibility, maybe because he’s the oldest, but he was the one who insisted we stay together on the farm and not get split up. He convinced Jerry and your aunt to help us. He was determined to keep us together, swore he could take care of us better than ‘the system.’”

Phoebe already knew she wouldn’t tell on them. “You’re really all okay?”

“I’d hate to think what Jerry and Emily would do if we weren’t.”

“But are you happy?”

Brad looked toward the lake, his jaw working. “Not always. I miss my dad and my mom. I sometimes wish we had less dishes to do, and laundry sucks, but we’d have dishes and laundry anyway, wouldn’t we? I get sick of Deek’s farts and Cory’s belching, and I wish I had more space to myself—I share a room with Bill, Cole, and Jimmy. But I love gardening, love doing the farmer’s markets. I ride my bike a lot and get the car once in a while. I know what my friends’ lives are like, and I must say I prefer mine. Yeah, I’m happy more than I’m not happy. I think Bill is happy enough. Cole has issues now and again, but mostly he’s okay. He gonna go to the U of M Duluth next fall. The little guys . . . well, they’re happy because they don’t really know so much.”

“Cole’s a little young, isn’t he, to be on his way to college. I thought he was only seventeen.”

“He’ll be eighteen in Novemeber. He started school early. He’s smart, smarter than I am or Fynn, that’s for sure. He got a scholarship that’ll pay his tuition. He just has to pay for room and board, and we have that covered.”

Phoebe started walking toward the house again, and Brad walked with her. After a few minutes, when the house was in sight, she said, “How can I help?”

Brad let out what sounded like a long-held breath and grinned. “Not having to keep secrets around you is already a big help, but I’d sure like to take a sack of Emogene’s cookies home to the guys, if I could. The old folks have been gone a few days, and we ate all we had.”

Phoebe thought that a lovely idea. But when she climbed the front steps, Brad said, “Oh . . . um . . . Emogene keeps stuff for us in the garage freezers.”

When they had gone into the garage and opened one of those two big freezers she had seen there, she saw neat piles of pot pies, trays of casseroles, sized not for the few of them in the house, but for a horde of hungry boys. The sacks of cookies weren’t stored in quart bags either. For the Stevenson boys, she put up gallon-size bags of chocolate chip, oatmeal, sugar cookies, and snicker doodles. Dozens of other carefully labeled packages awaited the boys should they need a quick meal or a homemade treat.

Brad chose a sack of oatmeal cookies. “Thanks,” he said. “This will make them happy for sure.”

As they came through the house, one of the little boys came running up from the backyard. When Phoebe opened the kitchen door, he said, “We brought the boat up to the dock, Brad. Oh, are those oatmeal cookies? Can we have some now?”

“No. They’re still frozen,” Brad said. “These are for after supper. Come on, let’s get home to lunch so we can finish the wood before Jerry and Emily and Emogene get back tomorrow.”

And the brothers charged off, the little one—Phoebe thought this was Sam—pinwheeling his arms and and shrieking, and Brad running after him, growling like a bear. To Phoebe this was pretty normal boy behavior, and it made her smile.

Her aunt wouldn’t accept rent from her or food money. Compared to what she was giving this whole family of brothers financially and with Emogene making food for them on a regular basis, she finally understood that what she might have paid or not paid in rent and for food really did make next to no difference. Her other thought was: Just how rich is Aunt Emily?

Chapter 13: Second Murder

Phoebe had just heated up some soup she found in the pantry freezer—portioned for one person at a time not a houseful of boys—and picked up the most recent paper she had carried in from the mailbox. She opened it and spread it out on the kitchen table in front of her. She had just lifted the first spoonful of thick vegetable beef soup, when she froze with the spoon halfway to her mouth. Then she was on her feet. She dumped the untouched soup back in the pan and shut it with its lid. Then she was out of the house and into her car.

According to the paper, there had been another attack on an older woman. And this one, like Mrs. Plotman, had been killed. But this murder had not been the least accidental. The woman had been knifed repeatedly.

When she arrived at the LEC and raced up to the third floor, she wasn’t surprised to find Neil McKenna already there.

“You have the weekend off, Magillicutty,” he said.

“So do you, I thought,” she retorted. “Was it Schultz again?”

“Well, we don’t know for certain because we don’t have a live witness, but I’d bet on it.”

“And where was our magician this time?”

“Friday . . . he had a bowling tournament at the Granite Bowl. Witnesses up the wazoo. Scored decently and pulled off a nice wide-split save. Got some applause.”

“What do we know about what happened?”

“No doors were forced, so likely he came to the door, knocked, posed as someone who . . . I don’t know . . . was taking a survey, lost a dog, needed a phone for car trouble—all those gambets have been used with women we’ve interviewed. Once the door is opened, he forces his way in and immediately starts pushing the women around, shoving and backing them up, usually until they sit down somewhere or fall down. He yells a lot, theatens them with a fist or, now, a knife. If they don’t capitulate to his demands for cash, he hits them until they open safes or take money out of hiding. He smashes cell phones, pulls cords out of the walls of regular phones, removes emergency I-have-fallen-and-can’t-get-up devises. After he takes money, jewelry, silver . . . whatever he can find, he tells the women to make him a sandwich or get him some cake or cookies. While they wait on him, crying as they do, he eats. Then he leaves. Now he’s added killing to his repertoire.”

“Was there evidence that he made this woman feed him still?”

“Yes. Right on Sylvia Meyer’s dining room table was a plate with cake crumbs on it.”

“Yeah, but if we can get the fork or a cup, maybe we can . . .”

“Yeah, right. Do you remember anything in any of the reports that says a cup with DNA or a fork he’d used to eat was left behind?”

Phoebe thought. “Actually, no . . .”

He takes them with him or washes them or . . . I don’t know. We got no fingerprints, no DNA. No nothing that can put darling Dwuane on the scene categorically. Never have.”

“Okay, have you had Dwuane come in and get fingerprinted?”

Neil smirked. “What, you think I’m stupid? Of course I have. He even gave it all voluntarily, too. He came in with Dick Murphy. Gave prints and even DNA. Seemed like a big joke to him, like he wanted to do that so we would be part of his proof that he couldn’t be committing any crimes.”

“And it matched?”

Neil frowned. “Matched what? You’re not listening. We never got any prints or DNA from any scene, just the descriptions that matched.”

“No . . . no. When he was seven and cut by the prop blade, I just bet he needed blood. They would have had to at least type his blood, wouldn’t they? And that would be on file at the hospital somewhere, wouldn’t it? On some medical file?”

Neil leaned back, studying her. “I suppose, but I don’t get your point.”

Phoebe said, “I don’t know. It’s just a hunch, but . . . well, we know Dwuane can’t actually be in two places at once. Right? Which means we’re still thinking two guys. We’ve talked about that big scar as being everyone’s focus when they look at him, so much so that they are maybe sloughing over other details about his face and person, maybe enough so that two men are posing as one. Chances are, stood side by side, the differences between the men might be significant, but in general and as long as they don’t stand in the same room together, they can interchange the way Dwuane and Dewey did as kids. But his brother died and he has no other siblings or even cousins, so his doppleganger has to be an unrelated person who would, of course, have different DNA.”

Neil was concentrating on what she had said, “But still . . .”

“I figure the one actually committing the crimes against older women is the real Dwuane Schultz because he’s the one with issues maybe about older women, specifically his grandmother who failed to save him or his brother because she couldn’t swim. From what was said, Dwuane’s father didn’t trust or like this mother and kept Dwuane away from her after that. That event in Dwuane’s life was the trauma that set all this in motion, so he’s likely the one to be making the assaults. That means the Dwuane Schultz at the bar and the bowling place and the church, the one with the alibi that makes all of this work is not the grown-up seven-year-old who lost his brother. But we know for certain that the seven-year-old cut by the propeller was Dwuane.”

Neil was nodding now, up to speed with her thought process. “Yes, yes. We never compared any of that. We tested and printed the man who came in who might just be the man in the sunlight so to speak while the Dwuane Schults in the shadows does his thing.” He glanced up at the picture near the door.

When Phoebe saw that glance to her dad’s picture and Neil’s subsequent look at her, she said, “What?”

Neil grinned. “I promised myself not to draw comparisons between you and your dad. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or recall tough memories, but . . .”

She put her hands on her hips. “But what?”

Neil said, “He’d be so damn proud of you. You really do think like he did, and his thinking made him a really good cop.”

“I thought he was a go-by-the-gut cop who couldn’t follow through and then lost convictions after he made arrests.”

“Lawyers got smarter or less moral maybe, pitting themselves against the law officers just to see if they could get perps off, not paying any attention to whether they were putting dangerous criminals back out on the streets, but that’s been true for a long while. And your dad did go by his gut, but differently than your friend Jerusalem Brown. Brown was a true gut cop. That was all he used, and in the era he was first practicing being a cop, it worked, but lawyers started to eat him alive, and he had to retire. Your dad was different. He was smart, and he thought outside the box. I mean, if we’ve looked into all the corners of the box and can’t get the answers we need, it’s sometime necessary to forget the box and look in places that routine cops never think about. Your dad did that. It bought him ten more years as a cop after Brown was forced to acknowledge he had been eclipsed by how lawyers worked.”

Again Phoebe was learning things about her dad she never knew as a child. She was also beginning to realize that, as a child, her view of him had been very incomplete. Zephalon Magillicutty was not necessarily the bastard she had thought he was. What he had seemed to a sensitive, young girl looking for approval was only one view. Aunt Emily was trying to give her a different view and Neil was as well, not because he wanted her to think well of the man, but because his view of him was different from hers, and Phoebe knew that her dad had been tough on Neil. What she was beginning to understand was that her child’s view was incomplete enough to be in error.

* * * * *

They worked the afternoon on the case, going over notes and resorting files and reports. Sylvia Meyer’s son, who lived in the Twin Cities, came up and spoke with them late that afternoon.

“Mom was eighty-three,” he said. His face was pale with reddened eyes from crying, but he spoke to them dry eyed if somber. “She still drove and was doing well. She spent a lot of time at Whitney Senior Center and had so many friends. She loved taking the trips they organize to the casinos. It’s so unfair that someone who loved life as much as she did was robbed of her last years by some asshole thief. I read the papers. I know this is a serial killer. Why can’t you guys do your jobs and get rid of him?”

“We’re trying to,” said Neil.

“Not hard enough apparently. And not soon enough to spare my mother.”

“What was taken?” asked Phoebe. “Have you determined that yet?”

“I know what Mom had,” Marvin Meyer said. “Mom was a collector. Besides the casinos, she loved antique shops. She and her girlfriends did a lot of antiquing. She had a couple silver tea sets—maybe more than that, I don’t know—loads of old silver just stuffed in the drawers of her hutch. She wasn’t big on jewerly, but she had a few really nice pieces, old stuff from like the ’20s and ’30s. All that was taken and about $1,500 cash she kept as mad money. I’ll put together a complete list for you.”

“Thanks, we’ll need that,” said Neil.

When the man left, they commiserated for a bit about his anger, some of it maybe displaced because of his grief, but some fairly righteous, then buckled down and added these facts to their file. Though this woman had been outright killed, stabbed four times as it turned out, and that was at least new in the Dwuane Schultz repertoire as the last death had been determined mostly a heart attack and the blow to the head non-lethal and even likely sustained as she fell, the kind of theft of cash and silver was pretty consistent with what he generally took. In this case, as in the others, he eschewed electronics and credit cards.

After hours of comparisons and discussion, Neil gathered up several files and jogged them together, making a stack of them with the rest of the cases related to the old lady attacker. He turned to Phoebe, who was rubbing her eyes. “So, it’s about eight. I’m starving, and I figure you must be. Want to get something to eat before we call it a day?”

Phoebe said, “What do you have in mind?”

He shook his head. “Not much. We could go get a House pizza and a couple beers if you like.”

“Sure,” Phoebe said. Having set aside her lunch uneaten many hours earlier when she saw the paper, her resistance to maintaining a professional distance from Neil had weakened. At least where food was concerned. “House of Pizza sounds delicious.”

Phoebe drove them over, Neil saying again that he had walked to the LEC. They agreed easily on sausage and mushroom pizza and a couple dark ales. As they waited for the pizza to come up, Phoebe said, “I’m curious. Where exactly do you live?”

Neil shrugged. “I have an apartment just off Ninth. Ninth and Sixth. It’s a small apartment, nothing fancy, but I don’t need much, just a place to crash and fix a few meals. I share it with Benny.”

“A . . . buddy?”

He smiled. “Benny is a very large, very old, very black longhair cat that masquerades as a sofa cushion for hours at a time. He stands on my chest to wake me up in the morning and demands only the best food. No kibble for Benny. His favorite is the Blue Buffalo chicken dinner. He tolerates salmon and chicken and likes lamb and turkey for variety. If you want to be a lifelong friend, however, you only have to open a can of tuna and share the water from it with him.”

Phoebe smiled. “I wouldn’t have pictured you as a cat person.”

“Neither would I. I’m not exactly sure I am a cat person. Benny kind of came with the apartment.” He paused, then said, “I had moved in with Nancy . . . my fiancée. She had the cat, doted on the obnoxious furball. When she was killed, I inherited the apartment and the cat. I can’t say Benny and I are even friends. He tolerates me and makes demands. I change his litter box, feed him and vacuum up his hair.”

When Neil got quiet then, fiddling with his napkin, Phoebe said, “I know you think Dwuane killed her.”

He gave a tight nod, not looking up.

“Yeah,” Phoebe said. “I also know that, while we might put together enough evidence to nail Dwuane on this string of robberies, assaults, and now murders relating to old women, I kind of doubt we’re going to get him for the hit and run.”

Neil didn’t look up. He gave another small nod, then said, “Yeah, I know. But I’m hoping just having him off the street and in prison will satisfy me. I’d like to think it’d help me put Nancy’s death to rest to know he’s not enjoying the spoils of his thefts. I don’t know though. If it’s not enough, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

Phoebe could sympathize with him. She also appreciated his honesty. She knew, if it ever came down to a fight with Schultz, there was a strong likelihood Neil would be more than willing to use his .357 rather than wait for the courts to end Dwuane’s career as a thief and murderer, especially if it looked like the courts might not convinct him. But she also knew a scenario with that in the mix probably wouldn’t satisfy him any more than putting Dwuane behind bars, and it might leave him with lingering doubts the rest of his life, if not end his career and land him in prison for murder if his grief had him reach for his service weapon.

“You realize,” she said carefully, “that we have an even bigger case to solve.”

Neil shook his head slowly, disgusted. “Oh, I know. I’ve known that for a while now. We’ve got Dwuane doing the robbing and threatening, and now killing, but we also have his doppleganger covering for him out in the public. That’s conspiracy.”

Phoebe nodded. “There might be a little more to it. We have two hit-and-run murders that might be connected, at least in some way, to the case. One might have the motive of getting back at you, and the other to get back at the county attorney who brought him to court. But these are attacks on young women, not grandmothers, and there’s no gain for Dwuane other than punishing you and getting even. If these deaths are connected to the case, it’s just possible they were committed, not by the real Dwuane Schultz, who seems to have issues with older women, but by the doppleganger, who might have issues with younger women.”

Neil met her eyes, his face blossoming with surprise. “Oh, shit. I never thought of that. And it’s the doppleganger who’s taken every opportunity to remind me of those deaths, not the Dwuane Schultz who’s clearly not there because he busy harming old ladies. No, I hadn’t connected that. Dammit, now I really do need to nail both those bastards at the same time.”

“Sorry,” Phoebe said.

“It’s certainly not your fault.”

Their pizza came, and House of Pizza pies were just as delicious as Phoebe remembered. She hadn’t had one in a long time. Even though they had ordered a large, they polished off the whole thing. Each on their second ale, they sat back full and in better humor than earlier.

“We’re quite the pair, you and I,” said Neil.

“We are?” Phoebe said.

“Yeah. I like you, and you like me but we’re stuck. You just got divorced and my fiancée was recently killed. That means we have to maybe discount our feelings. I’m senior to you at work and that’s against us. I hate cats but live with one, you live with an aging aunt and old black cop turned gardener and an old cook preparing for sainthood. Yet we work together, work well together, I might add. Is there a future in this?”

She smiled. “There might be,” she said, teasing. “We have an impossible case in front of us that we have to solve, and it’s so convoluted it’s not funny . . . kind of like us. It might be that we can solve this case. Maybe we can’t. But if we can, if we can find a way to put two Dwuane Schultzes in jail, it might just be that we can find a way to thin out the baggage between us. In both the case and us, time is a factor. With the murder case, we have no time. We have to solve this fast, before the bastard harms another woman, and we might just be looking at days until that happens. With us, we need to take time, maybe a lot of time. You have to grieve. I have to reclaim myself.”

He studied her. “You’re a very smart lady, you know that? I’m not surprised exactly because old Zip was certainly smart, but he wasn’t as connected to his own feelings as you are. I always had the impression that something had crippled him emotionally.”

“It might have been Skip’s death.”

“Skip? Oh, you mean your brother.”

“Before I came along, my dad had a son, a grown son. He was in the military police, a weapon’s expert or some such thing. He died, was killed in Afganistan, died in a nurse’s arms in the med-vac hospital before they even could triage him. Or so the story goes. I can’t be sure, because, you’re right, emotional issues stayed off-limits for discussion with Dad, but I’ve seen pictures of him from before I was born, pictures of him and Skip. They were great hunting buddies.” Again Phoebe thought of the rifle she had lost in the divorce, her dad’s rifle. It had appeared in several of the photos with him and Skip, but Skip had always been the one holding it. Her dad had kept it because it had been Skip’s weapon. She had wanted to keep it as a connection both to her father and the brother she’d never known.

“Okay, then,” said Neil. “We take us so slow a regular snail can beat us in a race. No racing snails for us. We put all our energies into solving the case with no time to solve it and give us all the time in the world. I can do that as long as we get one thing straight.”

“And what’s that?”

Neil smiled. “I want it on the table that I do like you, Magillicutty, so that later, when we’ve solved our case and taken the time each of us needs to rebuild ourselves, we can pick up with us somewhere further along than square one. Deal?”

Phoebe felt a warm place growing inside her. It was difficult to acknowledge that she might be ready to form new relationships, but that warm place at least was letting her know she could, and that was already very good news and nothing she’d felt certain she’d reclaim after the divorce. “It’s a deal with the added caveat that I also want it on the table that I like you, McKenna, and I’ve liked you for quite some time.”

He grinned. “Excellent. On this lovely note, and also because it’s late, I suggest we end our evening. It’d be very embarrassing if I suddenly fell asleep in my ale. I’m beat. I need to go home.”

Because it had been a Saturday night and House of Pizza was a popular hangout, when they arrived at the restaurant, no parking had been available in the bank lot that was used for House of Pizza parking after bank hours. They had found a space down Fifth nearly at Division Street. Neil lived in the other direction. Though Phoebe offered to drive him home, he declined, saying a bit of a walk would maybe balance the bellyful of pizza. Instead they hugged outside the restaurant and parted there, Neil heading up the street, and Phoebe down.

Phoebe enjoyed feeling happy. Neil was a very nice guy, someone she could be involved with and not fear him turning into a crazy person, but this time, she would make certain of the relationship before she jumped too far. No getting married after six months, no letting him dictate what she did the way Phil had. If all went to plan, they might be no further in six months than more dinners at the House of Pizza or enjoying a movie at her aunt’s house. They had time to make something good of this beginning they had just formally started, and that also made her happy.

And, yes, she turned to watch him walk away. He had a bounce to his step, even if he was tired, and she liked to think she might be that bounce.

She turned and walked past the bank lot across from the Electric Fetus and paused on the corner to check the traffic, but as it was nearly ten, not much was moving. College kids had gone back to their dorms or were holed up in one of the many bars in the downtown, but nothing was coming or going on First Street.

Phoebe crossed, watching a bus pull out of the station, letting her mind drift into where people sitting in the station had come from and why and where people were going who were waiting for other buses to arrive. She proceeded down the block, digging in her purse for her keys.

The first she noticed of the nearing vehicle was its headlights. Closing from behind her as if it had come down Fifth or turned onto Fifth from First, the lights seemed bright. In that split second, she wondered why anyone would have brights on in town. She turned. The vehicle, a truck or SUV by the height of the headlights was mere feet from her and clearly about to mount the curb. And, as her car was the only one now parked along the street, no parked car stood between her and the bright headlights filling her vision. She was about to be hit.

Phoebe wasted no more time in thought, but lunged for the solid line of buildings along that side of the street. Time slowed down. A nearly block-long wall connected all the buildings facing her, and if the vehicle hit her, she would most certainly be crushed against the building, but, as luck would have it, she fell into the one recessed doorway on that end of the block, her only hope in an otherwise deadly dance between solid brick wall and oncoming vehicle. And in that one step, that one lunge and fraction of a second in time, Phoebe plastered herself against that recessed door.

She felt the crash as the vehicle struck the wall hard. The very brick foundation shuddered around her. Metal shrieked as it tore. Bits of headlight glass sprayed her, hitting her arm and back and legs.

One breath. Another. Phoebe turned, her legs melting beneath her. The black SUV—filling the entryway—had hit the corner of the inset, tearing out a couple bricks and smashing its left headlight. It had missed her by inches only and the barest fraction of a second. She looked at the driver, seeing a dark, misshapen face she didn’t immediately understand.

In the next seconds, the driver, clearly swearing, threw the vehicle into reverse and pulled away from the building, the rear tires squealing and smoking and kicking up debris that hit Phoebe in the face. Then the driver slammed into drive, burning more rubber. The vehicle caught traction and lurched forward, fishtailing toward Division Street. Against a red light, it dove around cars ahead of it, barely missed a crossing car and made a sharp right. Horns blared, cars swerved, but the SUV vanished around the buildings.

Another heartbeat, another breath, and Phoebe unshielded her face, digging dust from her eyes. People were converging on her, coming, it seemed from the bus station up the block. They stood in a circle around the recessed store front. In not more than a couple more seconds, Neil McKenna was at Phoebe’s side, easing her to sit on the step leading to the door of the entryway that had saved her life.

“Are you okay? Phoebe, are you all right? What happened? Are you hurt?”

Phoebe, whose legs could no longer support her, sat and lowered her head into her hands a moment. Speaking into her hands, she husked, “I’m okay. I’m okay.”

Neil had his handkerchief out and was wiping several spots of blood on her head and neck—nicks from the flying glass. He wiped dust and sand from her face.

Phoebe lifted her head, seeing not just Neil’s concerned face, but a dozen onlookers gawking at her. “Get me to my car,” she said.

“No. You should stay put. An ambulance is coming.”

“I don’t need an ambulance. I need to talk to you.”

Her eyes pleaded. He reached down and scooped her into his arms. He turned to the people, the crowd thickening. “Tell them I took her in myself. The ambulance. Tell them it’s okay. Tell the police anything you saw.”

Though Phoebe tried to object, he carried her to her car, standing her next to the passenger door while she dug her keys out of her shoulder bag and handed them to him. He clicked to open the doors and helped her into the passenger seat. He even fastened her seat belt for her before going around to the driver’s side.

After he had pulled away from the curb and turned right on Division Street, she said, “It wasn’t an accident. He had on a ski mask. Did you see the license number?”

“I was too far away for that and smoke from his tires obscured it. You?”

“I saw an AEO and I think one of the three numbers was a seven.”

“Well, that’s something. It was a Ford Explorer, maybe a ’99 or ’98. Damn, you could have been killed, Phoebe.”

“Forget that for a minute. Where was Dwuane tonight?”

“Red Carpet, I think.”

“Go to the Mexican Village lot where he usually parks. We need to find his car.”

“Damn it, no. You need attention. You’re bleeding, and you’re in shock. You might not know if there’s a more serious injury, something in—”

“I’m not in shock. I’m okay. And if you blow this one chance at catching these assholes, I’ll never forgive you. Turn!”

Neil’s jaw worked, but he turned up Seventh. He went up to Second and turned right to get to Fifth again. When he turned into the Mexican Village parking lot, he slowly cruised. They quickly found the green Taurus with the studman liscense.

Phoebe pointed. “Park across the street where we can see both the Red Carpet entrance and his car. Can you get someone to go in there and see if he’s there?”

Neil flipped open his phone. “Randy, hi. This is Neil from upstairs. I got fifty bucks for you if you do me a favor right this minute. Good. I need you to go into the Red Carpet bar and see if you can find a man—late twenties, thin, maybe five-eight, light-brown hair—who has a wicked scar down the left side of his face. Yes, scar. Eye nearly to chin. It’s jagged and ugly. Real show-stopper. This is important, very important. And I need you to hurry. Take your cell and let me know.”

In less than five minutes, a red Acura roared down Fifth. “That’s Randy’s car. Good he has a parking spot just in front of the Press.”

They waited another five minutes. Then Neil’s cell rang. “Yes,” he said quickly. “You saw him? Really. What’s he doing? Okay, Randy. If you could stay there a little while, keep a discreet eye on him, I’d appreciate it. Yes, I’ll call.”

“Dwuane is there?” Phoebe said. “I would have thought . . . damn, we have something wrong.”

“I don’t know,” Neil said. “Randy said he was talking with some black guy, an older black guy. Real tete-a-tete at a table in the back. Randy asked the bartender about them, and he said the black guy had just beat Dwuane in pool. Badly. Several games’ worth, it seems. Dwuane apparently claimed his was off his game that day. Suggested the black guy come back another day and be beat soundly.”

Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

Neil said. “We have to be wrong about some of our theories. I’ve been afraid that some of what we’ve put together has been a house of cards. Maybe it just crumbled.”

“No,” Phoebe said, rubbing her arm. “I don’t think so.” And she did a mental step back, a trick of coping with her father her mother had perfected. Take a step back, dear, when nothing adds up. Get that perspective. See where what’s happening and what seems to be happening have diverged.

Neil rested a hand on her arm. “Phoebe, are you okay? Does your arm hurt? Where’d you go just then? Maybe I should take you to the hospital anyway.”

She smiled. “No, I’m good. My arms a bit sore from slamming into the door to get out of the way of the Explorer, but I’m okay. I was just channeling my mom for a bit.”

“Don’t tell me she was an ace detective, too?”

“Mom? No, but she had to live with Dad, deal with him at his worst sometimes.”

“Ah. Might have built a good skill set. What did you come up with?”

“How good at pool is Dwuane?”

“Hustler. Shark level. Good enough he can almost lose and pull it out. He can sweep almost any table.”

“So why would he lose to some random old black gent?”

“He met his match?”

“Add to that the fact that the guy who just tried to kill me wore a ski mask in May.”

“Well, I already figured it was the same driver as my fiancée and the district attorney. That it was a murder attempt.”

“In which case I should be dead and totally unable to identify him.”

“But there were the people from the bus station. They could have been witnesses.”

“And with a lady dead on the street and an Explorer pealing out of there, where would their focus be?”

“On you . . . the dead lady mostly, I guess, but someone might have looked at the SUV.”

“Which I bet didn’t have plates that made sense on it. Which was mostly nondescript enough to escape notice, then disappear without a lot of effort.”

“Yeah, yeah, Magillicutty. What’s the point?”

“We know we’re dealing with two guys. Neither of us has any doubts of that. And we’re pretty sure that grown-up twin Dwuane is the old lady killer and maybe doppleganger Dwuane is our hit-and-run killer. So, is old lady killer Dwuane at all familiar with you? Has he even met you if the other one is the one creating the alibis?”

Neil’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t know. I kinda doubt it.” He flipped open his cell and called his friend Randy, still in the bar.

When he closed his cell, he opened the door to the Prius. “The black guy left a few minutes ago. Dwuane is back at the pool table, futzing with a few college kids. I’ll be right back.”

Phoebe watched as Neil walked down the street. He had just gone into the Red Carpet, when movement caught her eye and she saw a black Explorer pull into the south entrance of the lot she was in. He’s come back for me, come to finish the job. In that moment, with her vision going tunnelly and without a lot of thought, Phoebe opened the passenger door and ducked out, pressing the door shut without a sound. She rounding the front of the next two cars in line and then started trying doors to cars, all the while staying in a crouch. She peeked over the hood of a car to see what the Explorer was doing, and saw that it was slowly coming down the line of parked cars, moving way too slowly for a person just looking for a place to park.

After trying the doors on four cars, and with the Explorer getting closer all the time, she found an ancient Buick unlocked and slipped into the back seat, ducking down out of sight. It had tinted windows, and she chanced a glance out, seeing the Explorer—and it had only one headlight—stop directly behind her Prius. The driver’s door opened, and there he was. Dwuane Schultz stepped out minus the ski mask. In just the overhead light of a street light, she could see the wicked scar cut the left side of his face in half. He looked all around, clearly searching for her. He slammed his fist on the roof of the car and kicked it hard. Then he started walking down the line of cars toward where Phoebe was hiding.

Phoebe knew he might see her through the windshielf, and she also knew she ­couldn’t lock the doors without those clicks maybe being heard. A fast glance revealed a blanket in the back seat. She folded herself onto the floor and slid the blanket over herself as best she could. It stank of dog. Then she waited, holding her breath.

She could hear his footsteps when he came within a car of her. He was walking around each car, making sure she wasn’t hiding behind one. She felt it when he leaned against the Buick, maybe trying to see into the back through the tinted glass. She couldn’t breathe, and her heart was thumping wildly. An eternity of a moment later, he walked on. Still Phoebe didn’t move. Silence for another eternity of caught breaths. Then she heard the Explorer start up and drive past the end of the Buick and around the lot to the exit.

Cautiously, she eased the smelly blanket off herself and peeked out. The Explorer was driving down Second Street toward downtown.

Again not really putting a lot of thought to her actions except maybe the imperative that she had an opportunity, she hopped over the seat into the front and reached under the dash. Every cop’s kid knew how to open almost any car with a coat hanger and hot wire an engine. Phoebe was no exception. She had the old Buick running before the black vehicle was out of sight. She pulled out of the lot fast and zipped onto Second without stopping, though she did have to make a hard left to avoid an oncoming Mazda. Then she was in pursuit of Dwuane Schultz. She saw the Explorer turn on Sixth, and she followed, not making an effort to catch up to the SUV, just keep it in sight.

She looked around the front seat of the old car, spying a Twins ball cap that had been chewed, presumably by the dog that usually sat on the blanket in the back seat. Driving for a ways with her knees, she gathered her hair up and jammed the cap down over her head, making sure all strands were inside. Being in an unfamiliar car and somewhat disguised, she crept up on the Explorer. By the time it stopped at the hospital, she was a car behind it. She checked out the license plates, which she could read in total now, but none of the letters matched what she had been sure had been on it before. He switched plates, she told herself. It made perfect sense.

The Ford was following the same route Dwuane had taken when he went home the night they had tailed him. Until he got to County One. He didn’t turn on 134 to go past the WalMart or on Highway 15, but stayed on County One, heading for Sartell. He crossed at the Sartell bridge and got onto Highway 10. At one of the township roads near Royalton, he turned left, crossed the railroad tracks and drove up into the country, roughly in the direction of Opole.

Phoebe stayed more than half a mile from him as these roads were not heavily traveled as a rule. Any car behind him might be considered a follower. But he seemed oblivious to her headlights behind him, and, near Opole, turned into a driveway that led to a rundown farm site. Phoebe noted the fire number and continued on, but stopped just out of sight of the house near a stand of trees to see if he was faking her out and would pull out to go somewhere else. After waiting nearly half an hour, she was sure she had found the hideout of Dwuane number two. She turned the Buick around and returned to town. By then the lot where she had left her Prius was empty, so she headed into the LEC.

Neil was on the phone when she came in, hunched over his desk. His head popped up, and he did a double take. He cleared from the call immediately, and got up. “Oh, God, Phoebe, what happened to you?” He came around his desk, but stopped short of hugging her, though she could almost see in his eyes that he wanted to. Then he sniffed, wrinkling his nose.

“Long story.”

He quirked and eyebrow at her. “Did you steal a car?”

She scrunched her face. “Um . . . yes, actually. It’s just outside. Please call the owner. I had to appropriate it. Police business.”

He frowned. “Police business? What police business?”

“Well, Dwuane came back in the damaged Explorer. He saw my car and came back. I saw him come into the lot and bailed. Hid in the Buick parked a few cars down. Then he took off, and I followed him.”

His brows raised now in surprise. “Really? How’d you—”

“Do you know how to hot wire a car?”

“Well, yeah, but my dad was a . . . oh,” he said, realizing that she also had a cop for a father. “Okay, so you followed him.”

“I got a complete license. Not what I thought I saw or he switched plates, but maybe this will lead to something,” she said and handed him a slip of paper with the new license number. “He pulled into a farmstead outside Opole on Main Highway West near 105th Avenue.”

“This the fire number?” Neil asked, referring to the second number on the scrap of paper Phoebe had handed him.

“Yeah. It’s a rundown farm but has a big barn in good shape and several other out buildings as well as a small, decrepit house. That’s all I could see by the security light.”

“Did you see where he put the Explorer?”

“Not really. He drove around back of the house though, but I could make out several buildings. The lights came on in the house, so he did go in. I watched for a while, but he seemed to have settled in. I smelled wood smoke and figured he’s put in a fire, maybe a furnace or stove or fireplace. I don’t know. Then I came back.” She scrunched up her face again. “So is the Buick’s owner really pissed?”

“Naw he thought it was funny. He figured someone really drunk must have taken it. No one would want it otherwise, he said. What the chief will say about it, I don’t know.”

“Yeah, that kind of has me worried. I would have filled his gas tank, but I had left my purse in my car and had no money. No driver’s license either, come to think of it.”

“Well, aren’t you just the little criminal.”

“Ah, you have no idea.” Then she remembered why Neil had left her in that lot, why he had gone into the Red Carpet. “But tell me . . . was that the Dwuane Schultz who knew you.”

Neil grinned. “I played a game of pool with him. Beat him, too, and I’m only middling. Introduced myself as Al Benson. He shook my hand.”

Phoebe grinned. “We’re making progress, Neil. We’re starting to win. Can you feel it? We’ve gonna get them.” She slumped against his desk.

“I think you’re kinda tired. We are making progress, but we don’t have anything yet. But I need you to write up the near hit and run and the tail. Everything. All the information you can remember. But not now. In the morning is fine. I’ll write up my encounter in the bar. I’d love to get a search warrant on that farm, but I doubt we have quite enough of a case built up yet.”

“We’ll deal with that tomorrow. I am beat. So, where’s my car? I didn’t see it out front.” When he hesitated, she said, “Neil, where’s my car?”

“Oh, it’s in the lot.”

“So, what’s going on now?”

“I was just thinking. You’ve had a lot of excitement this evening, and a little trauma as well. Clearly Dwuane Two was looking for you. Maybe I should bring you home and . . . sleep on a couch. I mean, I bet Dwuane and Dwuane know where you live and—”

“Fine, but I’m showering and going to bed, and you’re staying downstairs.”

“Always the plan, Magillicutty.”

She smiled. They left the otherwise empty office together.

Chapter 14: Closer

Neither the real Dwuane nor his doppleganger came to Phoebe’s aunt’s house that evening. Phoebe headed upstairs when they came in, suggesting Neil find a movie he liked. After a long, hot bath that eased her screaming muscles, Phoebe came back down stairs in her pajama bottoms, comfortable oversized sweatshirt, and slippers. She poked her head in the livingroom door to find Neil watching the Neverending Story again.

She smiled at his consternation of her finding him watching a children’s movie. “Hey, it’s a classic and one of my personal favorites, too,” she said, though she was laughing. “I’m going to make some hot chocolate. Want some?”

“Hot chocolate? Sure.”

He paused the movie and followed her into the kitchen and got out the milk while she brought out mugs and the chocolate mix. She put milk in a pan to heat.

When the milk was hot and mixed with the chocolate, Phoebe got out the immersion blender and whipped up a bit of heavy cream and topped the steaming mugs with generous dollops. Just to finish the treat, she shaved a few curls of dark chocolate on top, trying to make the mugs look just the same as Emogene presented them.

Neil took a sip. “Oh, that’s heavenly.”

“It’s actually not nearly as good as Emogene’s, but it’s better than average.”

They sat at the kitchen table opposite each other sipping the hot chocolate.

“So the Dwuane in the Red Carpet tonight didn’t recognize you?”

“He didn’t seem to. Every time he’s seen me in the last several months, he’s threatened to sue, to get further restraining orders or made some comment about my girl to make me want to pound his face into a wall, which, if I ever did would land me in jail.”

“In a heartbeat. So this really has to be other one, perhaps the one who is terrorizing old women.”

“He must be.”

“But how did he look? Is he really a perfect match for the guy you normally tailed and talked to and who provided the unbreakable alibis?”

“Actually, he’s close. I thought his eyes were closer together and his nose more hawked than the other one. His chin was weaker. Stood side by side in a line up, I doubt any of our former witnesses would know which assaulted them, but no one would think them actual twins or even brothers. You were right. They’re not an identical match of each other. Everyone always focuses on the scar. And the scar on that guy last night looked real, too, but, if anything, this one is uglier, with more white areas, something maybe more consistent with what an outboard prop blade might do to a kid’s face.”

“So, at least between the two of us, we’ve confirmed that there’s two of them, one attacking old women and the other responsible at least for trying to run me down and maybe the deaths of your fiancée and the assistant district attorney.”

“That’s what we think we know, but we can’t prove it, not any of it, not yet.”

It was true. What they believed meant nothing. What they might be able to prove was the only legal way to put these men away. Phoebe sighed. “So, where are we really?’

“If we can get a search warrant for that Opole farm, I’m thinking we might find some of the stolen goods. We might also find a car matching the green Taurus. But we have to make the conspiracy case and link the old lady attacks and the hit and runs. Otherwise one of them is likely to get off or the DA could throw everything out the window, and then we’d be really screwed.”

“I know, and getting all those loose ends tied up all at once is not going to be easy.”

“Nope,” agreed Neil. “We still have a ways to go, but our case on the hit and runs, at least the one relating to you, is suddenly pretty strong. I’ve been thinking we might get a warrant based on that. The problem is that, if we do that prematurely, we lose any hope of nailing the other Dwuane for anything, and he’s killed, too. The one on the farm will get arrested for everything, and that leaves the original Dwuane scott free, and he’s likely the old lady killer. I don’t like that. And that’s only if his lawyer doesn’t make a case of impossibility for all the times he’s had alibis, which he, of course had last night as well, though they might have to find that black guy to prove he was in the bar at the exact moment you were almost hit.”

“That makes the conspiracy angle maybe the most important one to get. But, I’ve been thinking that, to actually pull off convictions on all three aspects of this case, we have to catch Dwuane in the act of attacking an old lady while he has witnesses saying he’s somewhere else, don’t we?”

“Pretty much, but, since we have no idea where he’s going to strike next, we’re screwed. Maybe I could get a judge to let me bug the farm or tap its phones.”

“Good luck with that. They don’t go in for that easily. You’d have to prove he’s a national terrorist or something, and he’s not.”

“Yeah, I know.” Neil sighed.

For a few minutes as Phoebe sipped her hot chocolate, she got to thinking. “I really hate those big SUVs.”

“Like the Explorer that almost killed you tonight?”

“Yeah. My ex loved them. Useless gas-guzzling monsters. And I was just thinking that this is the third time I’ve almost been hit by one since I made detective.”

“What? Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?”

“Because it’s dumb. The first time was as I walked out of the LEC after getting the good news from Johnson. A fire alarm from the station went off and the wind caught my hair. I came within an inch of stepping off the curb right into the path of one.”

“And the second time?”

“That was just a couple of days ago. Also in front of the Law Enforcement Center. Some teen on a bike got in the way of one. He swerved. The kid on the bike zipped between parked cars up onto the sidwalk, but the SUV overcorrected and nearly took me out if I hadn’t dove for the sidewalk on the other side of the street. The parked cars and a street lamp saved me. The SUV fishtailed half a block more, nearly plowed into a bus that swerved and hit a light pole.”

“Get any plates?”

“No. Too much was happening too fast. I mean, the first time I didn’t get my hair out of my eyes in time, and the second I was concerned about the kid and then the people on the bus.”

“What color were those Explorers?”

“Black. Both black. But they only seem to come in black or white or maybe red, don’t they?”

“The one that killed the DA was black. That was the one thing the witnesses agreed on.”

Phoebe blinked rapidly several times. “Wait a minute. I really don’t think the first two close calls were murder attempts. I—”

“But they could have been.”

“No . . . no. I was at fault the first time. The second . . . I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the kid on the bike who was almost killed. He was pretty scraped up and had a sizeable egg on his head from hitting the sidewalk. Should have been wearing a helmet.”

“You maybe be right,” admitted Neil. “Probably are right. I want you to be careful, though. At least one SUV tried to kill you. At least one of those drivers targeted you.”

“But, while I’m certainly connected to the Schultz cases now, I wasn’t at that first miss. I had just been made detective. I mean, who could possibly have known even that? Your fiancée and the DA had a connection to the cases, through you and that court appearance. And the thing tonight is right in line with those. I’m on the case now. But that first near miss had to have been a random accident. And if I’d been hit, I’d probably have been more at fault than that driver.”

“Maybe, but you can’t be sure.”

Phoebe shook her head. The connection Neil was trying to draw seemed a huge reach, but something was inkling in the back of Phoebe’s head. It didn’t rise all the way to conscious thought, but tumblers seemed to be falling into place somewhere in her brain.

They had finished their hot cocoa. Phoebe felt herself sinking toward sleep, the tension of the evening beginning to demand rest. It submerged any hope of pulling the suppositions from her deep awareness, but she’d give all that more thought later, she promised herself. Maybe in the morning it would make more sense. She gathered up their mugs and spoons and put them in the sink. “Figuring how to solve the rest of this is tomorrow’s work,” she said. “Have you got enough pillows and blankets in the living room? We could maybe open one of the guest rooms, if you’d prefer.”

“I’m good.” he said. “I’d rather stay where I can hear the doors. Good night, Phoebe.”

She smiled. “’Night, Neil.” She shuffled off to bed, leaving Neil at the bottom of the staircase and walking up slowly. He returned to the living room, and she heard the movie restart as she crossed over the balcony.

It actually gave her a comfortable feeling knowing Neil was in the house. Several times since she had moved in, something had shaken her, and she thought maybe something about the house made her a little uncomfortable—its sheer size and complexity, the many doors allowing those who lived there to get to whatever part of the yard or garages they wanted quickly but also giving intruders multiple choices for access. Perhaps unfamiliarity with Aunt Emily, who had often been the butt of her father’s jokes and ridicule, made her feel a bit odd. But, if in her youth she had at least known Emily existed, she clearly did not know Jerry or Emogene. Also on her mind were the three instances the evening before where she had been forced to act on instinct and, yes, gut. Twice, she believed, her reliance on her gut had saved her life—diving into that recessed store entrance and slipping out of her car and into the Buick—and the third instance, when she appropriated the car to trail Dwuane the doppleganger, this not-quite-thought-through quick decision might not have been gut instinct, but it surely wasn’t true reason even if it had maybe given them information with the potential to turn the tide against these look-alike men’s nepharious activities. What was on both hers and, she was sure, Neil’s mind was that, should they be able to get a warrant to search the farm, they would find, not only the SUV used to attempt to kill her but evidence that linked the two men in a conspiracy related to the old lady thefts. If any of the reported stolen items were still on the farm, both of the Dwuanes would be culpable. And now, because murder was part of those thefts, they might be able to put away both men for a very long time. There were, however, still many holes in that hope.

Trying not to let her mind rev up with the complexity of the case, Phoebe slipped into her bed and turned out the lights. She felt no need to fall asleep with her television on, even on a timer. Not that night. Her mind almost was in more need of quiet and rest than her body, especially since it had worked so hard on its own. But her body was beyond tired and bruised and stung by glass. And a certain amount of shock she had experienced from the violence and tauma of the two assults needed recovery as well. And though she wondered if sleep would come after so much terror had visited her, it did. And quickly. Sleep swept over her like a tide, enveloping her almost as quickly as the blankets and sheets settled over her and warmed with the heat of her body.

* * * * *

She dreamed that they had discovered that there were three brothers, triplets, all with exactly the same scar. And, while they had found evidence to link two of the brothers in crime, the third provided air-tight alibis that got all of them off. With great frustration, she saw the three brothers laughing and high-fiving each other out of the courthouse and Captain Johnson cornering her and Neil and telling them they were fired.

She roused enough to end the dream and turn over, and the images that came to her changed. She saw the SUV barreling toward her, slamming into the bricks right next to her. This happened over and over, then that image shifted. She saw the SUV coming at her, and the damage to the headlight kind of hopped from the right one to the left one back and forth. The massive vehicle just stood in front of her and did this dance where the damage shifted back and forth.

* * * * *

Pheobe washed into wakefulness and alertness all in one gasp. At first she wondered what had wakened her, then knew it had been a sound. But she also knew that not just any kind of sound would awaken her so abuptly. Something was wrong.

She threw off her blankets and surged out of bed, noting in the moment it took her to slip on her slippers that morning had come. Sunshine angled through her northeastern window that overlooked the back gardens. Morning, but still early. She grabbed her service gun from her night table and ran for her door.

With her door open, she clearly heard another gun clicked off safety somewhere in the house, and a welling up of voices that she could not sort into any she recognized. She ran along the balcony half in a crouch of readiness, looking down, trying to see what was going on, but no one was in that view. No one was at the front door or stood in the foyer.

She descended the stairs with her back to the wall and slid around the corner to the dining room and kitchen hall. Neil, just a few feet beyond the dining room entrance, threw an arm out when she reached him, blocking her way, and pushing her back behind him against the wall.

“I’ll say it again,” he demanded, “identify yourselves.”

“You identify yourself,” yelled back another voice, sounding angry and annoyed.

“I’m Neil McKenna, St. Cloud PD.”

“The hell you say.”

That voice, different from the first, Phoebe knew. “Jerry! Jerry, is that you?”

“Phoebe, sweetie, are you all right?”

“Yes, yes. Neil is here at my request. It’s all right.”

Neil looked back at her as he lifted the barrel of his .357. “Jerry Brown? Is that you?”

“Yes, you mangy young pup.”

“Who are the guys with you?”

Another voice. “We’re Fynn and Cole Stevenson. We live across the lake and help Jerry with stuff. We’re supposed to be here. You’re not.”

Neil stood up from the half crouch he had maintained, the tension leaving his body, the gun hanging down from his side. He turned the corner into the kitchen. Phoebe came in right behind him, then moved to his side. Fynn and Cole rose slowly to standing from behind the island. The kitchen patio door stood open, and Jerry stood there, Emogene and Aunt Emily, wide-eyed and holding boxes behind him. A box that either the boys or Jerry had carried into the house lay on its side on the kitchen floor, its contents of kitchen stuff splayed across the tiles, maple syrup leaking from a broken bottle and mixing with what looked like cornmeal and maybe flour. Little jars of spices had rolled every which way under the table and against the wall and almost into the dining room. Phoebe thought this might have been the noise that had so abruptly awakened her.

Both Fynn and Cole had revolvers, .45s from the size of them, which Phoebe thought odd at best. Theoretically, they were coming from the cabin her aunt had up by Brainerd. The cabin in Brainerd might have been rural or on wild lake shore, but why would the young men still have guns on their belts? They had been fishing, not hunting. Both lay their weapons on the counter. Fynn rubbed a hand over his beard, which was still about four days old, and let out a breath.

Phoebe would have thought him wild-eyed both from surprise and the excitement of the situation, but, somehow, he looked . . . professional, serious. Just the way Neil looked at the moment. But Neil was a seasoned cop and Fynn wasn’t. Phoebe didn’t understand. Cole looked a little wide-eyed, but almost with a kind of excited glee, like he’d been itching for just this kind of stand-off to prove himself. Phoebe didn’t know what any of that meant.

Emogene’s mouth pursed. “Well, just look at that mess. Which of you cowboys thought to drop that box so spectacularly instead of setting it on the counter?”

Cole suddenly looked sheepish. “Sorry. It seemed like the best idea at the time.”

Aunt Emily came in, set her smaller box on the counter, stepped carefully through the mess of the downed box and came over to Phoebe, embracing her. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much, my dear. Is everything all right?”

“Hi, Aunt Emily. It’s good to see you, too.”

Aunt Emily turned to Neil and held out her hand, “And just who are you, sir, to be defending my niece from . . . her family?”

“Sorry about that, ma’am,” said Neil. He took Emily’s hand. “I’m Neil McKenna, head detective at the St. Cloud PD.”

“And why does my niece require a detective to stay in my house overnight?” It seemed a coded inquiry.

“It’s kind of a long story, ma’am.”

Emogene, her box on the kitchen table and her fists on hips, said, “Well, the lot of you get out of here and tell your long stories elsewhere so I can put my kitchen to rights. Then I’ll make some breakfast for everyone.”

Fynn said, “We’ll be going, Jerry. I want to get home and see that my brothers have behaved themselves and not thought up ways to blow up the shed. Again. Come on, Cole. We’ll unload the rest of the stuff later.”

“No hurry, boys,” said Jerry. “Get some sleep after you’ve seen to your brothers and the livestock. We can unload this afternoon.”

The two burly young men slipped back out the kitchen door.

“Out,” ordered Emogene again, and Aunt Emily led the way to the living room, grabbing Phoebe’s hand and dragging her along with her.

At the living room door, Emily paused. “Ah,” she said, “I see the two of you have kept Mr. McKenna’s presence in the house professional.”

Neil quickly gathered up the blanket and pillows and set them off to the side, while Jerry knelt in front of the fireplace and set about putting in a fire. “Bit chilly this morning,” he offered. “Have a seat, Neil.”

“Actually,” said Neil, realizing he stood in his t-shirt and boxers, “if you don’t mind, I’ll just go get dressed before we explain what’s been going on.”

“Oh,” said Phoebe, in pajama bottoms and a thin tank top, “that’s a plan. I think I’ll just run up stairs and throw on something, too.”

Phoebe felt her face warm as she realized the particular tank top she wore was so old and thin that chances were everyone, including Jerry, Fynn, and Cole could have seen a lot through the clingy fabric. Then she smiled as she ran up the stairs. She wasn’t upset that Neil might have.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt that hid everything in its bulk and went to her bathroom to see a wild sleep head of hair that made her again consternated. She brushed her hair quickly into a simple pony, threw some water on her face and applied just enough foundation to not look quite so splotchy from the abrupt morning and swings of emotion. With her feet tucked into joggers, she made a point of coming back down the stairs at a more settled pace. She went into the living room to find Emogene just setting out a large carafe of coffee. It smelled wonderful. The cook turned and met Phoebe eyes as she was about to return to the kitchen, angling her glance back toward the room and giving Phoebe an appraising smile. Again Phoebe’s cheeks warmed.

“I’ll have some scones ready in a couple minutes,” Emogene said. Then, humming, she returned to the kitchen.

Phoebe came into the living room, but stood just at the door a moment. Jerry had finished putting in the fire, and already its warmth seemed to ease the tension and newness of the atmosphere in the room—several layers of that atmosphere.

“So, you’re a detective?” Emily said, seated in a comfortable armchair, a cup and saucer in hands. She sipped at her coffee while waiting for Neil to respond.

McKenna, dressed in the clothes he had come in the evening before, took his cup and went over to the couch in front of the fire. He sat and smiled. “I am. Been in the department fifteen years now, though some of that time was spent as a beat cop. Started on bicycle duty. I hated that. Almost quit law enforcement that first year. But life improved after I got a car. It was my luck to come into the detective side just as a number of senior detectives were retiring. I moved up in rank probably way faster than I would have otherwise because of that.”

“Still a modest bastard,” Jerry growled. “Don’t let ’im fool you, Em. He’s a good investigator. I might even go so far as to say gifted. Even after I left and Zip retired, he moved ahead of Homer and Stan because he earned it. Homer might have minded, but Stan didn’t. Stan didn’t want the responsibility of being head detective.”

Neil smiled. “No, he didn’t. If he was head, he’d have to behave with a little more propriety in the office and not eat half of Homer’s lunch every day. Stan didn’t want responsibility and Homer was senior to me only by a couple months, so advancement wasn’t something he could be assured of. I shot better and did better on the tests.”

“Stan still doing that?” laughed Jerry. “Eating Homer’s lunch?”

“You know Stan the Man, professional moocher. Keeps Homer’s wife off his back, though. Bea would suss out Homer’s fast food addiction if he couldn’t honestly say that Stan ate his lunch.”

“Damn,” said Jerry. “Nothing changes. Bet he was the one who got my blue powder.”

Before Neil could respond, though he was coloring fast, Phoebe said. “He was, Jerry. You’re so right. I think the blue improved him, too.”

Jerry laughed. Phoebe tried to make her laugh sound genuine. Neil just kind of blinked.

Emogene came in with a tray of steaming scones, butter, a couple varieties of jelly, honey, and little plates. She set these down next to the coffee tray. A little space opened up in the conversation as they each got a plate, put the schmear of their choice on the hot scones and sat back down to enjoy the flavor of lemon or cinnamon. Neil nudged Phoebe with his hip.

For just a moment tribute was given the hot scones by way of silent chewing.

Neil rolled his eyes back as he swollowed his first bite. “I must say, Emogene—can I call you that?—I don’t understand why you’re not head chef at some fancy French restaurant.

“Two sets of twins, seven kids, a sick husband—life,” she said succinctly. “I’m just so pleased that, at this end of it, I get to play chef to such appreciative people,” and she smiled at Emily and Jerry and Phoebe in turn. “It warms the cockles of my heart to have people like my food.”

“Now that Emogene’s here,” said Jerry to Neil, “let’s have the 411 on why you’re here.”

Even the explanation of what she and Neil had experienced in the last few days seemed convoluted and improbable. But Neil gave an unembellished rendition of getting one case solved under somewhat odd circumstances, making Phoebe wonder again how the garage thieves’ van had managed to have two flat tires at the same time and how the St. Cloud police had managed to get to both ends of the alley so quickly and right after the drop-off car returned to help the pick-up crew. She began to believe both the drop-off car driver and the police would have had to have been called pretty much as the in-garage team had been dropped off. But how could that have happened?

Her attention shifted as Neil started in on the second murder committed by the old lady attacker, and Emily gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. Neil aired some of their theories and pointed out how similar to Zip Phoebe was in her out-of-the-box kind of thinking, giving them important options in the search for this nasty killer and terrorizer of older women.

“I have to check if Dwuane Schultz still might have medical records from the time he was in the hospital at age seven, and that’s going to hopefully tell us if the one with the iron-clad alibis is him or the doppleganger. It’d be great to have some fingerprints, too, but we have none his on file. Just the one, and that probably was the doppleganger.”

He got to the attempted hit and run and let Phoebe tell her version of what transpired the rest of the evening. Emily gasped several times as Phoebe told the story and how she escaped by the skin of her teeth. Phoebe continued with the rest of the story, of Randy checking out the bar and Neil going to see which Dwuane was in it. Then she told of the SUV cruising the parking lot and one Dwuane looking for her, how she hid and how she followed his truck when he left.

“You hot wired the old Buick,” Jerry said with a grin.

“I did and in a nanosecond at that. Then I followed Dwuane.”

She told where that tail had led, how it was a similiar direction to what had been followed the night she and Neil had tailed him. She figured, Dwuane had been heading home to the farm out by Opole, but he had spotted the tail and verred back to town to the appartment that was supposed to be his home.

“Oh, my,” said Aunt Emily. “I can’t believe someone tried to kill you, Phoebe dear, and I see now why this nice Mr. McKenna stayed in the house last night. It was police protection.”

Jerry grinned. “Kind of, Emily, my dear. Only in part.”

When Neil tried to object, Jerry waved that objection away before it was voiced. “Don’t worry, pup. No one’s a prude here.”

“Well,” said Emogene, getting up. “Those scones were just an appetizer. If you’ll come into the dining room in about five minutes, breakfast will be served.” She left.

“No one might be prudish,” said Phoebe, her face very red, “but Neil slept down here as you can plainly see, and I slept in my room.”

“That’s nice, dear,” said Aunt Emily. Then she called, “We’ll be right in, Emmie.”

Jerry nodded. “But first, Phoebe, we want to discuss something.”

“What?” she asked.

“We heard from the boys that you know something about the Stevensons that maybe should stay private.”

Phoebe blinked, at first not sure what he was talking about. “Oh, that. Yes, I do want to talk to you about that.”

“Should I leave?” asked Neil, getting to his feet.

Jerry rolled his eyes and motioned him to sit. “It’s kinda like Georgie Peters.”

Neil’s eyes opened wide. “Really?”

Phoebe looked from the one to the other. When neither seemed inclined to pose an explanation, she frowned.

“You have to understand, dear,” said Aunt Emily, “Dan really loved Candice. I mean, theirs was this once-in-a-lifetime, ever-after kind of love. All they talked about was raising their boys and growing old together. Then Candi died giving birth to little Francis. It shouldn’t have happened. Everything had gone well. The baby had been born, and he was a big, robust kind of baby. Dan was holding him, and he walked out of the room to show his new son to the other boys. He was gone for just a couple of minutes. Then the doctor came out and called him back in, but it was already too late. Something happened, something . . . broke, and Candi bled out right there on the delivery table with doctors and nurses standing there. It happened so fast, no one had time to do anything. Just like that, Candi went from being happy and nearly jumping off the table—she was such a strong, capable woman—to . . . gone.”

“Dan couldn’t accept it,” Jerry said sadly. “He blamed the doctors, blamed himself for stepping out of the room, blamed God finally for taking her, but Candi just wasn’t coming back whoever was to blame. Dan managed to limp by, a broken shadow of the man he had been, for over a year. Then he couldn’t do it anymore. He took his shotgun out into the barn one night. The boys found him, found his note that tried to explain a love so strong that death was too much to come between them. He told the boys to stay together if they could.”

“Well,” said Aunt Emily, “you know that would have been unlikely. A bunch of boys from a year old to nearly grown. The county would have stepped in, but what foster family could take all those strapping boys? They would have been split up. It would have been unlikely that even the twins would have been able to stay together.”

“We couldn’t let that happen,” said Jerry. “They called me that terrible night, but Fynn and Cole, who found Dan, had already buried him in a nice spot out by the lake, on that hill the cows graze. He’d like it there, loved sitting there and watching the sunset and the cows. But those poor kids. Their faces would have broken your heart, so fiercely loyal, so damn full of grief.”

“So we stepped in,” Emily said, picking up the story, and, in doing so, giving Jerry a moment to wipe his eyes. “We kept the littlest four here for a while, but Fynn was determined that even that was not what his mother and father would have wanted. Fynn had cared for baby Francis that first year of his life when Dan just couldn’t. He figured he could continue to care for him and the others. He wanted the little four home. We already knew he could handle them, even the baby. Picture that strong lad with a baby carrier on his back milking cows. Little Francis went everywhere with Fynn from plowing and planting fields to weeding gardens. I swear Francis was never more than ten feet from Fynn for any moment in those first few years. We’d stop in daily to make sure all was well, but, truthfully, Fynn’s a wonderful dad to little Francis and the little twins and tough Deek and gentle Pete, and the rest. We made sure they could survive, made sure they had enough of everything. Emogene actually came on when Francis was just newborn to help feed that crew. And it’s working. The Stevensons function like a well-oiled machine most of the time. It’s good to see.”

Phoebe began to see some of the real dynamics of her aunt’s home and life, and she was so proud to be related to her.

“Fynn, with Cole as his lieutenant, runs the show,” Emily said, “and the other boys treat them as their parents. It wasn’t like any of those boys were trouble makers. They were always wonderful kids. Big Pete, Dan’s farm hand, poses as the father for school conferences and such, but Fynn’s the motivating force behind his brothers’ success in school and 4H and anything they tackle. Those boys always got great grades, have always been great readers. Their parents helped with homework and studying for tests, monitoring projects, and Fynn had that background ingrained in him and was able to step into that role. He makes sure his brothers have every opportunity and activity he had as a boy. They really are in 4H—all of them—and they’re a force to reckon with in the county judging. Two or three always go to the state fair.”

“If they hadn’t been doing so well,” Jerry said, “we’d never have continued this or even considered it in the first place. But they are doing well and deserve the chance to be their own family even if the county would split them up and put them in foster homes in a hot minute, figuring it was best. But it isn’t best, not in this instance. We check on them all the time and spend a lot of evenings—”

“Evenings when you have some club or other?” asked Phoebe, her mind jumping with understanding.

Emily smiled. “Well, those Stevenson boys do love to sing and bird watch, and until we knew you’d accept what we were doing, we thought it best to . . . slide over exactly where we had our club meetings. I hope you understand, dear.” She giggled.

“You didn’t know if you could trust me,” Phoebe said, a little hurt, but not really.

“Well, we were pretty sure,” her aunt said, “but you had so much on your own plate, I didn’t think it wise to worry you or concern you. And so much was at stake for those boys.”

Neil said, “How many boys are in that family?”

“Twelve,” said Jerry. “They range from nineteen to four now with two sets of twins, an older one and a younger one.”

Neil’s eyes bugged. “That’s a . . . that’s a little more . . . that’s a lot more involved than Georgie Peters.”

“Someone else you cared for?” Phoebe said, reality dawning, her gaze flitting from Jerry to her aunt and back.

“He was such a sweet little boy,” said Emily. “He ran away from home as a twelve-year-old, but the county kept bringing him back home because his dad was part of the county government.”

“Trouble was,” said Jerry, “as a county administrator, old George Peters was a good egg, but as a dad to a sweet little gay boy, he was brutal. He thought he could beat the homosexuality out of Georgie, and it didn’t look like the county was going to step in at all. So I did . . . Emily and I did. I found him, run away again, his eyebrow cut, bruises up and down his arms and back and legs, and we brought him here. Didn’t tell his dad. Zip knew. Neil, here, was with Zip when he found out, saw the condition of the boy, and agreed to keep his mouth shut if I could get the boy into a safe place. Well, there’s no place safer than here. Georgie stayed with us for six years. He’s in college now out in Oakland. Pre-med. Doing great. Got a nice boyfriend who’s an artist. They call and write all the time. We’ll have them out after the semester’s done.”

“I get cards and emails from him all the time,” said Aunt Emily.

“And you knew about this?” Phoebe asked Neil.

“I knew. The whole time. And I agreed that the system had failed that kid. Failed him big time. I also had seen the injuries and pain that boy had suffered and figured he’d had enough. And now, if Jerry says the Stevenson boys are better off in the arrangement they have, living all together even without a mom or dad, I believe they are.”

And Phoebe knew she loved Neil and Jerry and her aunt and Emogene even more. These were all caring individuals who put people before law. As important as law was—and as someone in law enforcement she had a passion for law—people were more important. Laws were meant to protect people, and when they failed to do so, whatever it took to protect people had to be, in some universal sense, law.

Phoebe looked at Neil. “But when I talked about Jerry, you didn’t know him.”

He shrugged. “I never met Emily, never knew exactly where Jerry lived, and when he took in Georgie Peters, it seemed a good plan that I didn’t know where he lived. It was that whole plausible deniability thing. And I’m kinda glad we did it that way because his dad the county administrator came into the office one day and demanded that someone tell him where his son was being hid. I could honestly tell him I didn’t know.”

Emogene came into the middle of the doorway, her fists on her hips.

“Oops,” giggled Aunt Emily in her little-girl voice. “Our five minutes was up about ten minutes ago. We’re coming now, dear.”

“You better be,” said Emogene.

* * * * *

Later, Phoebe and Neil walked down by the lake. “Listen to those frogs,” said Neil. “They’re just going a mile a minute. So many of them.”

A flight of cranes soared overhead, clattering as they flew.

“Your aunt has such a lovely place out here,” Neil said.

Phoebe smiled. She turned to him and said, “Do you think there’s something going on between Jerry and my aunt?”

Neil looked surprised. “I don’t know. Why? Do you?”

Phoebe shrugged. “I’d be happy for both of them if there was, but I’ve never seen anything that would say so. As far as I can see, it’s just three old folks living together and treating each other well.”

“Seems so, though knowing Jerusalem Brown a bit longer than you have, I’d consider that it’s more likely they’re in cahoots—like keeping the Stevensons together—than some romantic relationship. He’s not shown any romantic inclinations that I’ve ever seen. Confirmed bachelor. But he’s always been a crafty cop who gets stuff done in whatever way seems to make the most sense to him. He was a confirmed gut cop after all, and though the legal system eclipsed him in so many ways, that doesn’t mean he couldn’t find some way to adapt.”

Phoebe paused on the path and stared at him. “What exactly are you talking about?”

Neil took her hand and led her over to the dock. They sat on an overturned canoe. “Remember that cabin break-in case where the brothers and cousin were caught because the process server had the wrong address?”

“Yes. County caught a lucky break.”

Neil nodded. “Yeah . . . or a lucky opportunity was handed to them. And stuff like that seems to happen all too often around the county and the police department. You’re still new, so maybe you don’t know. Keep watching.”

“I don’t get your meaning.”

“Then we catch the garage gang and the city cops appear as if by magic, and the van they were using had two flat tires and the drop-off car came to help and everyone was fenced in by the cops converging almost miraculously, snared in a trap the city cops didn’t exactly create. Did we just get lucky?”

“Yes. The thieves messed up.”

“No they didn’t. They had a sweet arrangement that shouldn’t have failed them.”

“I don’t get it.”

Neil shrugged. “Let’s just say that I’ve been around Jerusalem Emmett Brown a long time, and stuff like that kind of happens around him. If he’s playing papa to a couple of squads of soccer players all in one family, I’m wondering if old Detective Brown hasn’t come out of retirement, not in any official way, mind you. To do that he’d have to buck the smart-ass lawyers who so loved to discount his ‘gut.’ I don’t think he’ll ever go there again. But, here’s the thing. I knew you had moved in with your aunt. I didn’t know your aunt was the woman Jerry was with, and, you have to know, romantic or not, he and your aunt have been together for a number of years.”

Phoebe gave all this some thought as they walked into the back yard, the light was just right to illuminate part of the living room. The three oldsters were sitting at a card table, having a very animated discussion. Phoebe and Neil couldn’t hear a word, of course, but whatever they were discussing seemed very important to them. One after the other of them seemed to be making a passionate point. When Phoebe and Neil got back to the house, though, coming in through the kitchen’s patio door and walking through the house to the living room, they found the three oldsters rather sedately playing three-handed cribbage. Whatever the discussion had been, it was over.

“Who’s winning?” Neil asked.

“Who always wins,” groused Jerry. “Emily. She has a five for every ten, a six for every nine, an eight for every seven, and I swear she always has aces to make thirty-one. It’s uncanny.”

“I hope you remember you dealt this particular hand,” said Emily, spreading out her cards and counting out twenty-four points. Both Jerry and Emogene groaned. “Not the most spectacular hand possible, but not bad. Oh, look, that puts me to within two pegs from finishing.”

“Yes,” said Emogene, “and I’m not past the skunk line yet. If I get skunked again, I swear I’m not playing cribbage for a month.”

It was Emogene’s turn to shuffle. While she was doing that, Emily said, “You two young people ought to go to the movies or something. It’s got to be boring as dirt watching us, and cribbage doesn’t play five.”

“Don’t push,” said Jerry quietly.

“Oh, pish-posh. I’m not pushing, but I know Phoebe’s either been cooped up in this house or working. Nothing in between. That’s not healthy. With someone maybe trying to kill her, it’d be a good idea for Neil to stay with her, but why does it have to be boring? Go take in a movie. That new President one is supposed to be good, and didn’t they redo Jaws or Alien or . . . no it’s Jurassic Park in 3D.”

“I did want to see that,” said Neil. “That or The President. What do you say, Phoebe?”

“I guess I’d be okay going to a movie . . . not Jurassic Park, though.”

So it was arranged. Neil left to check in at the office, then go to his apartment and feed his cat, shower, and change clothes. Phoebe joined Emily and Jerry in cribbage for a game, while Emogene went to start supper. By the time Emily won that game and Phoebe was badly skunked, she was sure Emily and Jerry cheated chronically, and blatantly. Jerry regularly dealt off the bottom of the deck—she could see that—added generously when counting his hand, and didn’t seem to be able to move his peg accurately, but what Emily was doing, Phoebe couldn’t quite pick up, but she got to the finish awfully fast.

“You’re both sharks,” she complained. “I see why Emogene doesn’t like playing with you.”

Emily and Jerry practically rolled out of their seats laughing.

“Of course, we are, dear,” said Emily, with all the sweetness of a cookie-baking grandmother. “And so is Gene.”

Emogene, laughing too, had watched the last of the game from the living room door, having finished her prep in the kitchen. “Yup, I am. I’m just not at good at it as those two.”

“The trick,” said Jerry as he shuffled for the next game and Emogene put all the pegs back to the beginning place, “is to know precisely what game you’re playing. You sat down, Phoebe, and thought you were going to be playing a game of cribbage. I mean, all the signs are there. We have the cribbage board out, after all. We deal the right number of cards for cribbage and fix on fifteens and thirty-one. It sure looked like cribbage, didn’t it? But we weren’t playing cribbage in the usual sense. You’re the only one who thought it was cribbage.”

“But . . . surely it was cribbage,” said Phoebe. “Everything about what we played was cribbage.”

“It’s supposed to look that way, dear,” said her aunt. “But what we were actually playing is a game we’ve made up based on cribbage. We call it slide, and it has completely different rules even if it looks almost the same.”

Phoebe had heard her aunt use that term earlier when they had been talking about their club meetings but were really spending time with the Stevenson boys. The meaning was a form of sleight of hand, a form of misdirection. “Show me,” said Phoebe.

All three shook their heads. “Nope,” said Jerry. “Sorry, kiddo, but you don’t get to play slide yet. Soon, maybe, but not yet.”

And while Phoebe could take that on face value, she had a feeling Jerry had been talking about something very different than the corrupted form of cribbage.

For another game, Phoebe watched, trying to catch any of them in what they were doing, but they were too quick for her or just too good at this game of slide that looked like cheating at cribbage to her. Then she threw up her hands and went upstairs to shower and get ready for the movie with Neil.

Phoebe liked the idea of going to a movie with Neil, but she was surprised that both her aunt and Jerry seemed so okay with the idea. Jerry, at least, should have been more protective, she thought. Then again, they weren’t her parents and she wasn’t some sixteen-year-old going out with an older man. It also looked like, after days away from home in their Brainerd cabin, all they wanted to do was tease each other in the living room and play cards.

Phoebe opted for a relaxing bath in her Jacuzzi. Her muscles were still sore, and all the little cuts from the flying glass needed a soak. She dressed casually, in her best-fitting jeans and a filmy, silk blouse she liked. It had some electric greens and blues in its random splashes of color and a few sparkly bits on the collar and shoulders.

Neil came out at 5:00. By then Emogene had an early supper ready for them, and they joined Emily and Jerry in enjoying rosemary-roasted chicken, creamy scalloped potatoes, asperagus in a spicy sauce, and a fresh salad made with some of the first lettuce from Jerry’s garden.

Neil was in gastranomic heaven and gushed all through the meal. Every bite seemed ecstacy for him, and Phoebe began to understand that he had not had good food pretty much since his fiancée died, that he maybe hadn’t been enjoying even the meals he ate in his grief and mourning.

When Phoebe walked out with Neil, she found that he had come to fetch her in a squad car. “Do you not own a car?” she asked.

Chapter 15: Twist

“I do own a car,” Neil said, “but I’m waiting on an update. Barb in dispatch is going to radio me when that information comes in.”

“What information?” Phoebe asked.

“Blood type and whatever else is available through medical records for Dwuane Schultz.”

“You followed up on that,” she said.

As they pulled out of the driveway onto the county road, Neil said. “That and a few other things. I feel we’re getting so close on this case. I didn’t want to lose momentum.”

“What besides Dwuane’s juvenile medical records are you dealing with?”

“You had a partial license for the SUV that tried to run you down. Then you gave me that complete plate. I’m trying to get info on both. I know the alibi Dwuane could have changed plates and neither will match up to anything useful, but if one does, we might get a name to attach to the doppleganger.”

“That sounds good.”

“Yeah, and I have Judge Benson’s considering a warrant to search the farm. He’s waiting for something, anything really, that might link the resident to the hit and run or the Schultz case. A hit on the license might do that.”

Phoebe was hopeful they were making progress in the case. Chief Johnson would be pleased. Phoebe had it all figured out. The Dwuane who lived on the farm in Opole was responsible for trying to kill her with his Explorer, and he had probably killed both Neil’s fiancée, Nancy, and Carol Berg, the DA who had had him in court. That would put him in jail for, likely, the rest of his life. They would discover that, when Dwuane Schultz had been seven and in the hospital, his blood had been typed and was different from that of the Dwuane who had come into the station with his lawyer to give fingerprints and blood and DNA samples, but the hospital records would confirm that the other Dwuane, the one who had been attacking older women did match those samples. And they, somehow, would catch him in the act of attacking a woman, and he would also be put in prison for the rest of his life. Two cases solved. Two dangerous men removed from society.

For Phoebe, it all fit. She had reasoned it all out and was certain she had it right. She and Neil went to the LEC so Neil could check on his computer searches. She happened to turn and meet the eyes of her father’s photograph up on the wall. For a long moment, she held that stern, unforgiving gaze, and her confidence crumpled around the edges. “See past the obvious,” that portrait was saying to her. Those piercing eyes warned her, “Don’t hold to one theory just because it’s logical or easy. Life’s more complicated than that. Way more complicated than logic. Take in the whole picture, the overt one and the subtle one behind it. Put the pieces of the puzzle together without having to bite off corners.”

And she remembered how Neil had caught a girl shoplifting candy, but that the shoplifting wasn’t the whole story—not even the most important part of the story—and the little girl doing the stealing wasn’t the one who really needed correction. The case had evolved to be about a bully but didn’t even end there. Only when the story pushed back to the abuse that drove the bully did the whole picture come into focus. Only then was the overt and the subtle put together. This was also the message that Jerry had given her. “Trust your gut, but don’t leave any conviction to that alone.” And it was what slide was all about, too, she was sure of it. “See past the obvious,” her father again warned her.

Phoebe sat down and starting working on what she actually knew as opposed to what she thought she knew or believed she knew. As the columns on the sheet of paper took form, her eyes opened in surprise.

* * * * *

A hand gripped Phoebe’s arm. She jumped. Neil looked at her. “You okay, Magillicutty?”

She flipped over her sheet of paper. “God, you startled me. I was just thinking.”

“That was thinking? I was about ready to notify psyche that you were catatonic. I’ve called your name half a dozen times.”

“Really? Oh, sorry. I was channeling my dad.”

“We can go to my parish priest for an exorcism if you like,” he offered, smiling now.

“Yeah, I’ll pass on that, and, no, my head isn’t going to spin around.”

“Really? Seems it might have been doing that mentally though.”

She bounced her eyebrows. “Kind of.”

“Want to talk about it?” he said and pointed at the sheet of paper she was folding.

She tucked the paper into her pocket. “Not quite yet. I have to get a few more facts before that’s going to make sense.”

“Well, if it’s the case you’re talking about, I have a few more facts.”

“Yeah? What?”

Neil gathered up his leather jacket and started walking out. A glance at the clock told Phoebe they needed to hustle to make it to the movie on time. “We got some hospital records,” he said, holding open the LEC door for her. “Seven-year-old Dwuane Schultz was type B negative, though actually we got that off earlier records because the ones where he was cut by the propeller have mysteriously vanished.”

“Which means he thought about that at some point, maybe helped those records disappear.”

Neil nodded and held the door to the squad car for her. “The Dwuane who came in with his lawyer was O positive. Not a match. And we dug up a set of fingerprints from a juvenile shoplifting record that should have been sealed, but someone had misfiled in his adult jacket, and they don’t match Dwuane’s new prints either, and those were also in the jacket.”

“So, that means that the man with all the alibis is the doppleganger.”

“Seems so,” Neil said, pulling into traffic on Second Street on his way to Third. “We also got lucky on the license plate number. You gave us a partial, then a totally different complete one. We got a hit on the complete one, though it registers to a Chevy Suburban, not a Ford Explorer.”

“He must have switched plates.”

“That’d be my guess, but our luck still held. That complete plate goes to a William Engles as owner of a black 1995 Chevy Suburban. But he also owns a black 1998 Ford Explorer.”

“He did switch plates.”

“Well, if he did, it’s creative because that Explorer’s plates are not the AEO you saw. They start TRD. Still, Engles lives outside Opole, the address matches the one you trailed him to.”

Excitement filled Phoebe. This was a clear break-through. “So William Engles is our doppleganger?”

“Could be.”

“Could be?”

“Well, William Engles is sixty-seven, bald, weighs maybe 240 and is five-foot-five.”

Phoebe pressed her eyes shut. “Not a match. It’s a switched license plate, but . . . if the address matches . . .”

“It’s a clue, not a slam-dunk.”

“But that’s not who got out of the truck in the parking lot when I hid in the Buick. The man I saw, and I saw him clearly, was either Dwuane or his doppleganger, scar and all.”

“I understand. I did some more checking. William Engles has a son living with him who is a better match.”

“Oh?”

“We don’t know if we’re right on this, and, unfortunately, we’re aren’t going to know anytime soon. Judge Benson passed on the warrant. Said our evidence was too circumstantial.”

Phoebe let out a long breath. “Some of the things we’ve been thinking are working out pretty much as we’ve been figuring they would, though.”

“Yes,” said Neil carefully. “We guessed there were two look-alikes involved. There are. We have proof on that, and we’ve seen both of them. We guessed that the man who knows me on sight isn’t the man who’s been attacking the old ladies. I think we’re correct on that, too.”

“Clearly he couldn’t be.”

“But we’re also thinking that, since the real Dwuane was in the Red Carpet last night when you nearly were run down, he was innocent of that, but, since the other Dwuane got out of the Explorer looking for you, he likely was the hit-and-run driver.”

“Yes,” said Phoebe, “but that’s maybe more of a guess than we should be making.”

“You think so? Are you doubting what you saw?”

“Not so much that as I’m thinking we need to go cautiously here.” Her dad’s voice was in her head again.

Neil considered. “That’s what the old man was telling you, wasn’t it? Don’t let the perfect logic of our theories mess with the imperfect reality of fact.”

“Yeah,” Phoebe said, meeting Neil’s eyes. “Yes, exactly that. Those are Dad’s exact words. He must have said that a hundred times to me as a kid.”

“I know. He hammered them into me often enough. We don’t know what we don’t know.”

Phoebe smiled. “I could almost see Dad saying that. You had his same inflection even.”

Neil took a swing into the Parkwood Apartments across from the theater. Phoebe didn’t even question why. They drove around the lot, looking for the green Taurus with Studman on the license. It wasn’t there.

“So where is Dwuane tonight?” Phoebe asked.

Neil dug in his back pocket, pulling out a small notebook wrapped in a rubber band. He consulted it. “On a Sunday night like this, he could be at his bible study group or the church choir that practices a week in advance or . . . tomorrow is going to be the third Sunday, isn’t it? Yup, that means he’s volunteering at Good Will this evening. He should be there until nine. I’ll call Barbie and have a squad run by and check.”

They crossed the road to the theater and found parking near the First Fuel Bank station and walked in, still deciding about what movie they wanted to see according to the posters lined up outside the theater.

“Looks like The President is gone,” said Neil.

“I actually thought it might be, but my aunt mentioned it. I guess I’ll be seeing it on HBO or a DVD.”

“So we can still consider Jurassic Park 3D, if you want,” Neil said.

“I don’t think so, but Oblivion could be good.”

“What about 42, the Jackie Robinson story?”

“Yes, let’s see that,” said Phoebe.

“Hey, Phoebe,” someone called from behind them.

Phoebe turned around. Brad or Bill Stevenson and a high school girl were a couple places in line behind them. Taking a chance on which twin the boy way, Phoebe said, “Hey, Brad. Night out?”

“Wow, you can tell us apart. Yeah, I’m Brad. I couldn’t get away with Fynn and Cole gone, so, with them back, I get a turn out. This is Sharon Harper.”

The girl, a pretty blond with a cheerleader’s body, smiled, but was clearly shy about speaking to an “older” woman.

“What’re you gonna see?” Brad said.

“Looks like 42. You two going to watch the dinosaurs?”

“No,” said Brad. “Actually, we’re thinking about that Jackie Robinson movie, too.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open a bit, and she looked at Brad hard. Then she turned to Phoebe again and gave her an award-winning smile. Award-winning because it was clearly total fiction. Miss Sharon Harper no more wanted to see 42 than turn purple. What wasn’t apparent to Phoebe was why Brad was going to see a movie his date didn’t want to see. That made her wonder. And that wondering, even before they sat in the small theater, choosing the second row center, made Phoebe’s mind start down a whole succession of streets in a very dark neighborhood of her mind.

“Hey, you with me?” said Neil. He was still standing as she sat.

Phoebe looked up, startled yet again. “Sorry.”

“I’m going to the concessions. What do you like?”

“Oh, let’s see. Popcorn. Lots of the nasty, bad-for-you-but-tastes-great butter. If you like, we can share some. I tend not to eat a lot of it, but I love it.”

“Good, because I love it, too, and I eat way too much when I go to the movies. I’m only getting a small container, though. And I’m getting some M&Ms.”

“Oh, good. Almond ones for me. And a lemonade.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Brad and his date, having gone to the concession counter before sitting down, came in. Sharon wasn’t looking too happy. They climbed to the back of the seating almost without looking at Phoebe, who made a point not to seem like she was noticing that Brad had looked for her.

When Neil returned with popcorn and drinks and candy, he sat down carefully. Phoebe relieved him of one of the lemonades and the popcorn.

“I need to go home,” she said.

“What?” Neil said. “What are you talking about? The movie hasn’t even started.”

“It’s complicated, but I think Dwuane Schultz is going to strike again tonight, and I know where.”

“What? How could you possibly know that?”

“Listen carefully,” Phoebe said, her voice low, though with the previews starting, no one but Neil could hear her. “Brad is here to watch us, to make sure we don’t leave.”

Neil couldn’t help glance back, though Phoebe grabbed his chin and pulled it toward her. She knew that would look weird, so she kissed him as if that was why she had turned his head. Surprise blossomed in his face. “Are you okay?”

“Please listen to me. We’ve had a shadow since I became detective. I’m sure of it now. The process server who just happened to get the right wrong apartment. Two flat tires on the garage theives’ van. You found medical records after Dwuane had tried to hide them, juvenile records that should have been sealed but were in his adult file jacket. I’ve been through those files one end to the other. Those records just got into Dwuane’s file. Who would do all that? Who could do all that?”

Neil slowly shook his head as a new preview came on with a bang, some sci-fi, outer space war taking place. Then he met her eyes in the darkened theater. “Jerry could do that, all of it. Would, too, if he wanted you to look good as you got your feet under you. I haven’t seen him in the LEC for a while, but that old dude is a sneaky bastard, and he’s got a lot of friends. Tons of them. He could sweet talk his way into records and evidence lockers pretty much any time he wanted.”

“Yes, I expect Jerry could. But that means he’s also probably involved with our biggest case. And I think he and Aunt Emily got us out of the house . . . and out of the way on purpose tonight. Didn’t your buddy say that Dwuane was talking to an older black guy who trounced him in pool? Does Jerry play pool well?”

“Yeah. He’s pretty good. Used to be anyway.”

“And the one he was talking to was the twin Dwuane because that one didn’t know you and we know the alibi Dwuane does. What if he told that Dwuane, the one we’re pretty sure is the old-lady killer that a certain old woman with a house full of everything Dwuane likes was going to be alone tonight.”

“Dwuane would sense a setup.”

“If he said it like that, sure. But if he were just . . . shooting off his mouth, a disgruntled gardener bragging about maybe lifting silver himself.”

“Phoebe . . .”

“Dwuane is going to be at my aunt’s house this evening. I’m telling you.”

Neil frowned. “This is nuts, Phoebe. This doesn’t make sense.”

She smiled. “No, it really doesn’t. It’s behind the sense. It’s slide instead of cribbage. It’s sleight of hand that, with any luck, Dwuane Schultz, sleight of hand artist that he is himself, isn’t going to see through. But we have to be there. We have to make the arrest.”

“But, if you’re right, they sent us to a movie to get us out of the way.”

“And those crafty old trio played slide to let me know that I had to step out of the usual paths and beyond the usual rules to see what really was going on.”

Neil lowered his head and leaned to her ear. “But if Brad is watching you, he’s going to see you leave and maybe call to report that, but . . . Magillicutty, this is nuts.”

Phoebe tipped her lemonade down her front and stood up with a shriek. “Argh,” she said loudly. “Look what I did. What a klutz. I have to get cleaned up.”

People around her laughed and pointed. “Sorry,” she said to people behind her.

As she crossed in front of Neil, she leaned down and whispered, “Wait just until the picture starts. Pick a loud scene, then duck out. Be careful.”

Then Phoebe reached the aisle, brushing lemonade off her pretty blouse. She hurried out.

The theater had gotten a lot more complex inside since its recent remodel. Phoebe did make a stop in the ladies’ room and sponged off as much of the lemonade as possible, but the fabric of her blouse shed it pretty well anyway. Then she peeked out and made a dash to the pizza restaurant inside the theater, ducking inside and finding a corner that gave her a view of the length of the main hall to the theater hall she had just left.

Ten minutes later, Neil came around the corner, looking irritated. He had left the popcorn container and his drink behind, maybe indicating he was going to return. Her drama with the drink had sprayed him as well, and he didn’t look happy to be leaving with a wet sweatshirt and pants front. She snagged him as he walked past the pizza place.

“Hey,” he said. “Will you quit jerking me around. You are definitely off tonight and I—”

She covered his mouth with her palm and pulled him further back out of view. There at the corner of the hall stood Brad, his face hard, serious—not a boy’s expression at all. Sharon wasn’t with him. He looked around, up and down other hallways, then walked past the restaurant to the front of the theater, clearly searching. He looked out the front windows. He could have seen the squad car Neil had driven to the theater from there and looked in its exact direction. He made a fist and bumped it a couple of time on the sill, his expression almost angry, like maybe he had failed in his assigned task.

Neil took her hand away from his mouth. “So, why is he following you?”

“He needs to know where we are, what we’re doing so we don’t mess up the events at home but still might be coached to arrive there just in the nick of time.”

Brad started back into the theater, walking quickly as if trying to check other halls and venues. Just after he passed their hidden location, Neil rounded the corner and snagged him, spinning him around. At first surprised, Brad’s face quickly settled into frustration. He slid his eyes to Phoebe. “You’re just too good, you know. You figure stuff out way too fast.”

“Aunt Emily and Jerry are in danger,” she said. “This is way too big for them. Dwuane is a killer.”

Brad made a raspberry. “Naw. No way. Jerry’s got it covered. But we have to wait a little longer before we go out there.”

“Why?”

“The asshole has to arrive, doesn’t he? And Aunt Em has to get her lines. She’s never had lines. She’s been looking forward to her speaking role for weeks. They’ve been after that thief for a while now, and those two are pretty good at what they do.”

Neil narrowed his eyes, clearly having some trouble understanding what was going on. “And what is it they do?”

Brad smiled. As he made a swooping gesture with his hand, he said, “They slide on past the stuff that keeps regular folks from messing up things. When Fynn wanted to keep us a family without the county knowing we didn’t have parents anymore, they helped us. When Georgie’s dad was beating the shit out of him and no one would stand up to to George Peters, they hid Georgie and made life safe for him. That’s what they do.”

“So what exactly are they planning tonight?”

Brad said, “You’ll see. Shall we go?”

“What about your date?” Neil said, pointed back to the theater they’d been in.

“Sharon? Bill’s with her. She can’t tell us apart. They’ve gone to see the Jurassic Park 3D just like we planned earlier, so she’s happy. Bill likes her better than I do anyway. Come on, we should get out to the house now.”

Brad seemed to enjoy sitting in the back of the squad car. “Hey, you got handcuffs I can use?” he said, holding onto the grill between the front and the back.

Neil turned and gave him a dirty look. Brad laughed and sat back.

“Seat belts,” Neil said.

“Aye, aye, captain,” said Brad, saluting and searching for the belt ends. “You know it’s really kind of gross back here.”

“It’s actually ten times grosser than you think it is,” Neil said with a chuckle. “Just belt in.”

In moments, they were back on Division Street and headed through town.

“Wait a minute,” said Neil. “This isn’t going to work. Even if we catch the thief in the act of stealing and roughing up Emily, the other one is going to have a perfect alibi and get off.”

“Yeah, but he’s not,” said Brad. “We’ve been working overtime trying to find that dude. Slippery guy. Then Phoebe here tails him right out to his house. That was . . . that was so rad. Jerry was really proud of you, Miss Magillicutty. He couldn’t stop grinning. That made it easy. Now it’s just a matter of keeping on our marks, as Aunt Emily would say. ‘You hit your mark on stage, deliver your lines, and it’s all shiny.’”

Phoebe raised an eyebrow. “And Aunt Emily uses the word ‘shiny’?”

“She might have said something similar.”

Just before the driveway to the house, Brad pointed out a little dirt set of tracks that angled to the back of the house. He had Neil turn off his lights, which nearly put the squad car up a tree, but as soon as they came out of the woods, the evening, though falling quickly to darkness, was just light enough to let them see their way.

“Park behind that shed where the other cars and stuff are parked,” directed Brad.

Jerry’s SUV, the old pickup, and another truck were already lined up behind the shed.

“I assume the Buick is in the garage alone,” said Phoebe. “Where’s the Camry?”

“Our place. Miss Emogene’s watching the little kids—feeding them something amazing, I’m sure. Fynn, Cole, Bill, and I all have parts to play in this gig. I’ve mostly done mine. I’ve just got to get you into the house without the murderer catching on. Piece of cake.”

They walked to the house, avoiding anywhere near the kitchen and dining room so those big windows and patio doors didn’t let the murderer, if he was already there, catch sight of them in the waning light and bright backyard security light. Instead, he brought them to a side door Phoebe didn’t know about, one she thought might let them into the house down the long hall where Aunt Emily’s, Jerry’s, and Emogene’s rooms were.

They actually entered into a sitting room of a suite. It was a lovely, flower-filled room with doilies all over. Phoebe figured it was her aunt’s rooms. Arranged pretty much like her own suite, it was, if anything, slightly larger.

All three of them tiptoed to the hall door. Neil had his service automatic in hand and peeked out after opening the door just a crack. From that vantage, they could see down the hall and into the back part of the foyer, but not much more. In that small slice of the big house, nothing moved, though voices seemed to be coming from maybe the dining room or kitchen.

Brad waved them across the hall rather than down it. They ducked into the room opposite Emily’s. This one was more masculine in its decor and furnishings, with leather instead of doilies, more dark plaids than bright pastel colors. They crossed into a room with a billiard’s table with velvet pocket liners and two lamps hanging over it to light it perfectly.

From there they passed a bedroom with a mounted fish or two, crossed swords over the brick fireplace, a bear rug on the floor and carribou antlers on the wall.

Brad walked unerringly into the dressing room just off the large bath and tapped on a piece of wall. In a moment, the panel slid aside, and Fynn, earphones pushed down to his neck, looked out. “Come in. I have chairs. Watch the main screen.”

Phoebe and Neil, with Brad behind them, came into what was clearly a surveillance room with a dozen screens showing various views of the house, yard, and garage. She was amazed. She’d been living in the house and never saw any cameras or surveillance equipment. Clearly the house and yard were carefully wired. While she easily attributed this to ex-cop Jerry, she had no idea why. But as she looked from screen to screen, Phoebe realized that some of the screens showed places Phoebe couldn’t readily identify.

On one screen, Phoebe saw the front yard of Emily’s house, showing the circle drive that allowed cars to come right up to the front entrance. Parked there was a car she didn’t recognize. “Whose car is that?” Phoebe said, pointing to a new, very high-end BMW highlighted by a camera that showed the front entrance.

“No one’s,” said Fynn. “It’s a rental.”

They put on the ear phones Fynn handed them and pulled up chairs to see what what going on. Phoebe remembered when she had come down to the library to look for a movie to watch and had seen a light near the floor against one wall. She figured that light had come from this very surveillance room, that had to abut the library right where she had seen the light that day. Another tiny puzzle piece fit together.

Phoebe was bewildered by all the surveilance cameras on a house where her aunt lived with her elderly friends. She couldn’t add it up in her mind, and that momentarily distracted her from what could be going on. She looked at the bank of screens. Some were clearly of rooms in the house, some watched outside the house, but then considered the several that didn’t seem to be part of the property at all. In fact, as she studied one scene, she realized it was of the yard of the farmstead in Opole. Though she had only told Jerry about trailing her supposed hit-and-run perpetrator hours before, he had managed to get a camera up to watch that property. She knew, unlike what she and Neil had tried to do in seeking a warrant to search the farm and failed, Jerry, who didn’t go through the proper channels, had given them visual assess to the farm. Conversation began again in the dining room of the house, and her eyes snapped to that screen.

Chapter 16: The Murder of Emily Magillicutty

Jerry and Aunt Emily were talking, going over contingencies. Phoebe heard her aunt’s voice, but the woman she saw . . . “Is that Aunt Emily?” she said.

Fynn cast her an amused glance. “In films she played women from their teens to seniors. And that’s through her whole career.”

Emily’s appearance had changed hugely. Her long hair had been concealed in a white poodle-cut wig that made her look older. Her face, made up the way it was, had added ten years to her look. Though Emily was very trim for her age, almost delicate, she had suddenly gained some thirty pounds, looking rotund and soft. Phoebe realized she had to have on a padded suit on. Emily’s typical jeans and slacks paired with colorful tops had been exchanged for a faded gingham housedress that zipped up the front. She wore support hose and orthopedic shoes. And she had a cane in hand, when Phoebe knew she didn’t need one. Though Emily was eighty-two maybe, she now looked years older and a whole lot frailer than she really was. The heavy glasses she wore gave her a molish look, and the cane made her look infirm. Emily the actress was in costume, and Phoebe could appreciate that.

More than that had changed. The dining room had grown a glass-fronted cabinet filled with silver, including a very fancy, filligreed tea set. Lined up on the bottom shelf were several polished wood boxes, the kinds that often held expensive silver flatware. The walls held framed paintings that had not been there before. Phoebe thought she recognized a Rembrant, a Picasso, maybe even a Van Gogh from other places in the house, pictures Emily had called printed. The frames, no longer simple black wood, had been exchanged for elaborate gold-leafed museum-quality frames, that alone declared these painting to be originals and not prints. Tiny spotlights highlighted each, almost single-handedly pointing out how important the paintings were.

Jerry, looking up at a camera, tapped an almost concealed earpiece and crossed his lips with a finger. He melted into the wall. Almost literally. He disappeared behind a panel in the dining room Phoebe had never suspected was there. Emily smiled and gave the camera a tiny wave. She was having fun.

Phoebe said, “She doesn’t know how dangerous this is. Fynn, this is crazy. We have to stop this before it’s too late. Neil, help me.”

Fynn looked alarmed and held out his hand to her as she started to get up, but Neil, standing just behind her chair, rested his hands on her shoulders and kept her seated. “Let’s give it a few minutes, Phoebe. Jerry’s near at hand and we’re here. Let’s let this play out a bit.”

“But my aunt could get hurt. We’re practically across the house from her. If this goes bad, we’re too far from her to help.”

Fynn said. “You don’t really know your aunt. I do. She’s fine.”

Another camera, the one that faced out front, showing a silver BMW that Phoebe didn’t recognize, now drew Phoebe’s attention. Movement. A green Taurus pulled up to the house and parked alongside the BMW. For a moment, the camera zoomed in on the license plate: Studman. Dwuane Schultz had just arrived. It parked next to the very expensive BMW.

Phoebe’s heart picked up its pace. The old lady killer was outside the house, and her aunt was going to expose her life to him. “No, no, no, no. This can’t happen. Neil . . .” she whispered, her voice raised an octive, and her hands clasped his on her shoulders.

He gave her fingers a bit of squeeze. “We’re right here.”

The Taurus’s engine shut off, and Dwuane stepped out. Fynn had the camera zoom in on his face, and the cruel scar made him look more sinister than Phoebe could imagine. He was looking at the BMW appraisingly, covetously.

“We can’t let this happen,” she said. “He’s too dangerous. You all know that. You’re all risking Emily’s life.

Fynn turned in his chair. “Please wait. Please trust that Jerry and Emily know what they’re doing. Trust that we have this well planned out. No one wants to see Emily hurt.”

“No,” said Phoebe, and she struggled out of Neil’s grip and stood. “Dwuane Schultz is too dangerous. He’s hurt most of his victims, killed the recent ones. This guy’s a killer. Fynn you’ve got to see that. Neil, please. I don’t want him to hurt—”

Neil wrapped his arms around her middle and pulled her against his body. “I know this looks dangerous, but we’re very near by. Jerry’s even closer. If we have a prayer of catching this guy in the act, this probably is the only way. We always knew we’d have to catch him during an attack. How were we going to do that if we never knew where he was going to be? We’ve already talked about that.”

“I know. I know. But he’s dangerous. And that’s my aunt.”

“I know. So does Jerry.”

“But Dwuane could kill her.”

“I know,” said Neil, his voice unaccountably calm, matter of fact. “I know. This is very dangerous. Hands down. But I think enough protections might have been put into place to keep that from happening. I’ve worked with Jerry before. He’s very careful. What I also know is that Dwuane will kill his next old lady victim . . . and the next after that. And no other women he might attack is going to have a hundreth of the protection your aunt has right now, and we haven’t a prayer of setting something up like this to trap Dwuane. This is scary and dangerous and maybe the only way to put this bastard behind bars. Think what it would mean to take Dwuane off the streets.”

Phoebe was thinking of that, and it wasn’t offsetting her trepidation about the scenario being put into play. “Maybe a woman cop could do this, someone who had fighting skills. Someone wearing a vest and is armed.”

“Not before other old women are put at risk. If we stop this, Dwuane might strike at some other old woman tommorrow. Certainly before we could set something up.”

Fynn was still watching her, ready to help Neil keep her from bursting out of the room and going to the dining room.

Phoebe’s mind raced trying to find some possibility, some way that didn’t put her aunt in the same room with a killer. “Let me do it. Let me be the old woman.”

Fynn huffed a laugh. “We don’t have a way to put that into play. It’s too late. Schultz is at the door.”

After another moment of struggle, she gave up. She accepted what she had already known, that letting this charade play out was the most hopeful chance of catching Dwuane in the act of attacking an old woman that they had. If Emily could come through this unharmed, it was worth the risk. She knew it was her father thinking this. Emily’s brother had never considered anything his sister did as important. Maybe he’d be appreciative of what she was doing now.

“Is she going to be okay,” Phoebe asked in a teary voice of no one in particular.

Fynn relaxed minutely. “We’ve taken a lot into account. I think we have this choreographed pretty well.”

Phoebe drew in a ragged breath. Neil relaxed his hold, and Phoebe slid back onto the chair, sitting at the very front of it, tense. Neil stayed at her back.

Fynn turned back to his set of screens, and Neil patted Phoebe’s shoulders and kept his hands there, not really holding her in the chair, but certainly offering his physical support.

And so they watched as the deadly dance of risk and chance began to play out.

Dwuane still eyeing the BMW, walked up to the front door and rang the bell. He had a dog leash in hand, probably planning on asking about a lost pet to gain entry into the house. They knew he had gained access to houses by ringing the bell and getting the old women to simply let him in. No break ins. Car break-downs, lost dogs. These very innocent tactics worked with a lot of people. Misdirection.

Emily had disappeared into the kitchen. She came out carrying a small tray holding two cups and saucers, a plate mounded with cookies, and a brown paper sack. At the sound of the doorbell, she set the tray on the dining room table and picked up her cane. Even before she left the dining room, she transformed again. Not only was she in costume, but now she added acting, becoming slightly stooped and looking completely nearsighted as she squinted through the thick glasses. She slowly made her way out into the foyer, calling. “I’m coming. I’m coming.” Her voice sounded a lot frailer than Phoebe knew it to be.

Emily tried to peer through the front door’s peephole, but it was set just a bit too high for her. She pulled the curtain aside on the side window. Dwuane’s expression hardened. He was staring at Emily with dark intensity.

Emily opened the front door and blinked up at the man there, at Dwuane Schultz, the old lady killer, who still looked at her, his face cruel.

Phoebe’s heart pounded, every muscle in her body tense. She didn’t understand why he was looking at Emily with such hatred. Yes, it’s hatred. This was the moment he should be going into his spiel about losing a dog. Testimony from some of the early victims of robberies had corroborated that Dwuane often taked about a lost pet or engine trouble or having seen an accident down the road. Then he pushed in right afterwards, gaining access to the house and getting quickly down to business.

Emily smiled up at this dangerous killer. “You must be Todd, Dave’s friend. Right?”

Through the front door camera Fynn had trained tight to Dwuane’s face, he suddenly narrowed his eyes in confusion. Phoebe realized women might ask him what he wanted, who he was, but she bet none had assumed he was someone else.

“You have no idea how relieved I am you agreed to take my car out to my daughter in San Diego. Such a generous thing to do, Todd. Here’s the key.”

Emily pressed a set of car keys into Dwuane’s left hand and turned back into the foyer. Dwuane looked at the key in his hand, looked back at the sparkling BMW, then back at Emily as she prattled on, slowly tapping her way into the house. He brows were knitted. But he shoved the leash into his pants pocket, clearly understanding that he didn’t need this prop in order to gain access to the house.

“Now I have the gas money right here,” Emily was saying, shuffling back into the dining room. “Are you sure five hundred is enough?”

Dwuane took a few steps into the house, and his eyes wandered around the foyer with some interest, but, as he followed Emily into the dining room, they quickly fixed on the silver cabinet, then took in each of the paintings. His cruel mouth stretched into a smile. The camera for this scene seemed to be over the door into the kitchen and it caught Dwuane’s expression behind Emily’s back. When she mentioned five hundred dollars, however, his eyes snapped to her with an intensity that took Phoebe’s breath away as she watched. She drew in a quick breath.

Fynn snapped her a look, then turned back to the screens as Emily spoke again.

“And here’s the fee we talked about,” Emily said in an ultra-grandmother voice, taking up one, then another envelope from the dining room table.

Phoebe held her breath. She could see that Dwuane was interested. He was fixing on the easy wealth this old woman was offering him, actually handing to him without issue. He looked as if he couldn’t believe it. The old woman was making it way too easy. It was almost a joke. His grin changed from the cruel one to something almost appreciative.

Of course he’s playing along, thought Phoebe. He’s a twin who traded on misidentity as a child and has worked it perfectly lately to steal from and harm old women. That misidentity had been handed to him without his imput was rare, but Dwuane clearly loved it and stepped easily into the role presented to him. He wouldn’t question it, Phoebe realized. He just thinks himself smart for taking advantage of it when it fell into his lap. She was appreciating the planning that had gone into this ruse. She felt her muscles relax just a little.

“It’s no trouble at all, ma’am,” Dwuane said to Emily, playing into the role of a nice guy handed to him. “I’m just that happy to transport your car. No problem.”

“Oh, my God,” whispered Phoebe. “He bought it. He thinks Emily mistook him for someone else and is playing along. He doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?” said Neil.

“He doesn’t know he’s playing into the sting.” Then she huffed a laugh. “He doesn’t know he’s playing slide.”

Fynn turned and grinned at her.

Brad clucked his tongue. “A twin’s greatest ace is pretending to be someone he’s not. Of course he bought it. He was genetically programmed to buy it.”

Phoebe turned and looked at Brad, knowing he was correct, knowing, too, the importance of Brad and Bill helping to snare this killer. Identical twins would know Dwuane’s mind and a twin’s unique skill sets.

Dwuane’s cruel mouth twisted into an almost-winning, almost-churchy smile. He even slid off his cap. He was in character now, as much as Emily was, though he couldn’t know it wasn’t of his own making. He reached out, about to snatch the envelopes, but Emily put them right into his palm, even patted the top envelope.

“Now don’t be mad at me, Todd,” Emily said, squinting up into his face through the thick glasses, “but I did put in a kind of bonus . . .”

Dwuane closed his hand slowly around the envelopes. Phoebe could see him feeling the thickness of them, measuring the wealth with his thumb. His mind had to be spinning with the possibilities and with the enjoyment of the game of switch he had found himself playing without even trying, and without knowing he hadn’t controlled it.

“Now just you sit down and help yourself to a cookie while I get the tea water, Todd. We’ll have a nice little cup of tea together before you have to go.”

The kettle started whistling just then, though Phoebe was sure it wasn’t an actual kettle making the sound, and Emily scurried off to the kitchen, tapping her way there on the cane, looking convincingly like some ancient gnome.

Dwuane looked at the car keys and money. For a moment, Phoebe thought maybe he’d just leave. The car was worth more than fifty grand, and even the thousand dollars plus in his hand was more than he realized from some robberies. He could walk now and hardly be accountable even for theft. Phoebe found herself almost hoping he’d take the quick reward and just leave. Her aunt would be safer. He’d be all the richer and probably knew he’d be free and clear for at least a week before anyone began to wonder where the car went. Even if the police were called in then, they would have a stone-cold trail. The car would have been sold or chopped by then. They wouldn’t have the same case, of course. They’d have Dwuane for grand-theft auto but not assault. But not having him for murder would be safer for her aunt.

But then Phoebe’s stomach went cold. She saw a wicked smile widen Dwuane’s mouth, and he chuckled, and Phoebe knew he wasn’t going to leave before he was finished, and that could mean taking everything he deemed valuable and making an attempt at least on her aunt’s life.

Dwuane ripped open one envelope and looked inside. With Fynn manipulating the camera with the skill of a director, the image on one screen zoomed in and caught the flare of several hundreds, five crisp new hundred-dollar bills. He tore the end off the other envelope and shook the bills partly out so he could count them. Seven new hundreds in that one. Again Dwuane smiled a wicked smile, and looked appraisingly about the booty-laden dining room, a room carefully stocked to tempt his greed. Nope, he wasn’t going to leave. He was going to take everything if he could, including Emily’s life, and Phoebe wasn’t entirely sure any safety could protect her aunt if Dwuane was too quick.

Phoebe pressed her eyes shut and bit on her lip. Dwuane was as greedy as he was cruel. He wanted the rest of the wealth he saw, all of it, and maybe he also wanted to act out his revenge again on the grandmother who let his brother die. Whatever motivated this evil man should soon come to the fore. And he had been set up to go there as well. Jerry and Emily wanted to confuse him, then push him into his greed.

The chubby, near-sighted, lame Emily bumped her way through the swinging door with her teapot, covered in a flower-printed cozy, and Dwuane clutched the money protectively, looking up from his hand with just his eyes, eyes completely devoid of kindness. Predator eyes, cold and calculating and filled with greed.

Emily said, “Now just you sit down and help yourself to a cookie or two, Todd. We’ll have a nice cup of tea together. Then you can be off.” Emily filled two porcelain cups and covered the pot again with its cozy.

“Oh, do sit down, Todd,” Emily implored sweetly when Dwuane hadn’t moved. “It’d make me so happy to know I’ve given you a bit of caffeine and put some sugar in your system before you start your long journey to the West Coast. We want you to stay awake and energized, don’t we? Oh, and I have a sack full of cookies for you to take with you and nibble as you drive,” she said, indicating a bulging brown sack with folded over top on the table near the cookie plate. “At my age, I can’t eat them anyway, much as I’d like. Diabetes don’t you know. So you might as well enjoy them. They’ll just go to waste otherwise. Do sit with me a couple of minutes, Todd. I know you want to be off as soon as you can, but please take a few moments with an old woman. I don’t get company often, you know, certainly not handsome young men.”

Emily was playing the quintessential grandmother to perfection. Anyone should have softened. Dwuane seemed to stretch his shoulders, looking over the table. He reached down and fingered one of the silver spoons. Deciding, are you? thought Phoebe. Wondering if you can get more out of her? Come on, asshole, play the role. She’s all but given you your lines.

“Well, for just a minute,” Dwuane muttered, though he still didn’t sit. His eyes roved the glass-fronted hutch and the old masters paintings. He leaned to the side just a bit, and Phoebe knew he was trying to see if the nearest painting had a safe behind it.

Emily spooned some sugar into Dwuane’s cup without asking and handed it to him with its saucer. She set a little plate nearer the end chair where she wanted him to sit and slid the cookies closer to him, smiling all the while. Then she filled her own cup and sat. She put her lace-edged linen napkin primly in her lap. He, of course, Phoebe knew, would ignore his napkin. Emily took up her teaspoon and slowly stirred her tea as she looked up, smiling, at Dwuane.

Under her gaze, he sat, though Phoebe could see he didn’t really want to, and set down the tea cup and saucer, none to lightly either. The spoon clattered, and the tea in the cup sloshed slightly onto the saucer. He was still playing the role of Todd, generous car transporter, but it was quickly wearing thin. He took a chocolate-chip cookie and bit off half of it. Then, while chewing appreciatively—and who wouldn’t appreciate Emogene’s skill in the kitchen—he helped himself to a couple more of those cookies and a couple oatmeal cookies as well, depositing the lot on his plate.

Greedy right down to the cookies, thought Phoebe. This isn’t a person who can restrain himself one bit.

Dwuane shoved the rest of the chocolate chip cookie into his mouth and grabbed an oatmeal cookie, hardly swallowing before that went in as well.

“Do you like the cookies, dear?” Emily asked, nudging the plate closer. “I made them myself.”

“Yeah, they’re . . . really good,” Dwuane muttered with an appreciative rise of his eyebrows.

He quickly ate all the cookies on his plate, then took a couple more from the serving plate and bit both at once. “Look . . . I gotta be going,” he said, spewing crumbs. He transfered the cookies to his left hand, the one that still held the two envelopes and the car keys. He took a long swig of his tea, draining half the rose-patterned porcelain cup in the process, then pushed himself from the table, scraping the floor with the chair. As he stood, he took a dramatic turn away from Emily before coming around full circle to face her again. The camera caught the move easily. As he had turned, he pulled a snubnose .38 from his belt, hidden under his gray sweatshirt. Phoebe gasped. The last murder had been with a knife, not a gun. Dwuane was again escalating his level of violence. Neil took her hand in his and squeezed. He said, “Fynn, you guys planned for this?”

Fynn tipped his head, kind of cringing. “We tried to plan for everything. Don’t much like seeing any kind of gun, though. We were hoping he’d stick to a knife.”

When Dwuane came all the way around, he had that gun pointed at Emily and a nasty leer on his face. “Listen up, grandma,” he said to her. “Seems to me you got a cash stash here somewhere to pull all these nice crisp hundreds out. I want it. Now.”

Emily stopped stirring her tea. She opened her eyes wide as if in surprise and dropped the spoon. It clattered against the cup and saucer before landing on the damask table cloth. To Phoebe, this seemed like a convenient signal to Jerry. She tried to will him to appear, but he didn’t.

“Oh, my!” Emily said. “Todd, what are you saying?”

“Deaf, eh?” The young man leaned aggressively toward her and shouted, “Get the fuck up! Get me the cash! Get me the silver! Hear that, you incompetent old bat?”

Phoebe knew right that Dwuane was channeling his father’s hatred of his mother for putting his sons in her care and ending up with one dead and the other scarred for life.

Emily slid from the chair, and stood shakily, holding onto the chair as if needing that support and positioning herself with it between her and Dwuane. Dwuane took an aggressive step toward her and cocked the gun. “The cash, bitch,” he shouted.

And then she did it. Phoebe saw her draw in a belly full of breath. She saw her aunt’s expression change. No longer the helpless old, nearsighted grandmother, Aunt Emily had reached the profession part of the performance, the part she had played many times before and knew very, very well. She opened her mouth and let loose with one of her stage screams. A really good one.

Fynn had wisely pulled the earphones off his head even as Emily stood up, but Neil and even Phoebe were a little slow to realize the need to do that. So when the scream started, they gasped and flipped their earphones aside. Phoebe had heard one of her aunt’s screams already, but this one was different, louder, more piercing, definitely more painful to the ears. Emily might have been eighty-something, but there was nothing old about her lungs or her voice. After all, she had been an epic movie screamer.

Even as Fynn flipped to the speakers and quickly turned down the volume, her scream rocketed out of her, filling the dining room, filling the house, surging out into the yard and moving halfway down to the lake before she ran out of air. And Emily could sustain a really long scream. That long fall off a cliff she’d talked about came to Phoebe’s mind. But this scream sounded like the victim had just seen that the thing following her was a vampire. Mortal terror, disbelief, and surprise filled that wordless utterance. She might never have had lines in all the movies she had been in, but she sure could emote into her screams.

At the first blare, Dwuane took another step in Emily’s direction, his face a snarl, his gun hand raised as if he might backhand her with the weapon. Phoebe gasped, and again was on her feet. But then something changed in him. He blocked his ears, one hand still holding the gun, the other filled with money and cookies. The cookies broke apart in his grip, crumbling into his hair and raining down crumbs. The envelopes crushed down tight, and the gun barrel pressed into his scalp as he tried to keep Emily’s scream out of his head. He shut his eyes and doubled over. By the time Emily ran out of breath, he was sinking to his knees, and the gun and cookies and envelopes of money and car keys had tumbled from his hands to the Oriental carpet. He collapsed face down in a kind of clump, then toppled onto his side, his knees pulled to his chest. At this point, he was breathing raggedly, and his eyes rolled in his head. He refocused for just a moment, caught sight of Emily standing over him and gasped out, “You bitch,” then lay still.

Phoebe was struggling for air, her eyes glued to the screen. But it suddenly went black. “What happened?” she yelled. “Get the image back. What happened?”

Fynn said, “That’s a wrap. Brad, can you handle this?”

“I got it, big brother,” Brad said and took Fynn’s seat, putting on the earphones.

Fynn opened the door and led the way. Phoebe and Neil followed on his heels. They used a different door to exit, and it, indeed, opened into the library. From there, Phoebe bolted past him and sprinted to the dining room.

Jerry had just stepped from his hiding place when she skidded around the corner. He was pulling latex gloves over his hands. “He good?” His tone seemed matter of fact, casual even.

Emily nodded. “Out cold, Mr. Brown,” she said. She had already seated herself back at the table and had her tea cup in hand. She took a sip and smiled when Phoebe burst in. “I wasn’t sure he’d drink the tea at all, but right after inhaling all those cookies, he slammed it down. Big slug of it. I started counting right then. He made it to about a thirty.”

“I don’t understand,” said Phoebe.

Jerry checked Dwuane’s pulse. “Pretty long, all things considered. All those cookies in his gut might have slowed down the knock-down drug. He ate more than half what was on the platter, the greedy bastard.”

Fynn rolled in a gurney and flattened it next to Dwuane. He and Jerry, with Neil’s help, lifted SUV around. After loading Dwuane into it, Jerry turned to Emily. “You okay, Miss Em?”

“Me? I’m just fine, thank you, Mr. Brown. Always feels good to have lines to say. Never got that when I was on screen.”

Jerry patted her shoulder. “Well, them movie guys were just dumb not to let you talk. You were a pro, Miss Emily. I believed every word. That scream was world-class, though. Quite the thing. Never knew anyone to get quite that much volume and expression into pure wordless sound. But you’re okay, not too worked up by seeing the gun?”

She nodded. “I’m just fine.” Then Emily rested her hand on his sleeve, and he smiled down at her. “What is it, Miss Em?”

“I came close to giving him the other cup, you know. He was almost content with the car and the money.”

Jerry nodded. “I could hear it in your voice, Em. But I knew he wouldn’t take the easy way. From the way he’s pushed old woman around and now gotten a taste for killing, he likes it too much. He’s killed three old women I know about, Miss Emily, and he would’ve made it four tonight without much batting an eye. Even with you being so generous to him. He’d have killed you and ransacked the house, taking everything portable.”

Phoebe knew Jerry was right. Dwuane would have killed her aunt and taken anything of value that was portable. “But he’s never left prints,” she said. “Police have tried to finger him, but he always slips away. Then he kills again. This time he’s done.”

“Three old women?” Neil asked. “That’s not right, is it? He killed that one almost by accident. The last one he stabbed, but—”

“He killed his grandmother,” Jerry said. “She was his first. He’d gotten the thieving down well, knew he wasn’t going to get caught, so he was ready for his next step, and I believe the killing had been in his plans all along. His grandmother was in a nursing home for nearly two years. He killed her just a couple of weeks ago, smothered her with a pillow.”

Phoebe said, “That’s right! The aid had said, when they found her dead one of her pillows was on the floor, and he didn’t know how it had gotten there.”

“No,” said Neil. “He told me his grandmother died a couple of years ago.”

Jerry looked up at Neil and said, “First of all, it was the other Dwuane who talked to you. Always the other one, and that one lied to you when he told you his grandmother was already dead, or maybe his grandmother was dead. Dwuane’s wasn’t. Thata fooled me too. Kept me from looking for the woman for quite some time. I would of thought this whole robbery escapade would’ve started with killing his grandmother. But no. He savored that moment, building up to it slowly. Once he worked up the wherewithal to kill old women, she was on his short list. At the end, old Sadie Schultz looked pretty much as we have Emily portrayed.”

“That’s why he hesitated at the door,” Phoebe said.

Jerry nodded.

Emily slowly shook her head. “It’s one thing to be a thief. Stealing is mostly about getting to point B without going through point A, making money fast rather than slow. But he was ready to take everything I had, including my life, and I could see in the end he was less concerned with my life than filling his face with cookies. He fingered the spoon, looked about the room. I could see it in his shoulders that he wasn’t going to leave before I was dead and he had everything he could get his hands on.”

“I know, Miss Emily,” said Jerry soothingly. “I know. It’s a sad state of affairs. But now more’n twenty old ladies have had their share of justice and not even one more will have to suffer at this guy’s hands.”

“And you’re sure this was the one who had killed and robbed those other women?” Neil asked. “No doubts? I mean, there’s that doppleganger . . .”

Jerry patted his stomach. “The gut never lies, McKenna. Besides, we’re not done yet, well, actually, we should be pretty well wrapped up by now, but we had two stages working at the same time.”

Phoebe rested a hand on her aunt’s shoulder. “Aunt Emily, this was so dangerous. I can’t believe—”

“Oh, posh,” Emily said. “I’ve been on more dangerous sets than this one. All those electrical cords and coaxial cables alone were a nightmare. And, since dark is scarier than daylight, I was forever tripping over stuff even just to get to my mark. Broke my arm once doing it, though I finished out the scene—the scream, that is—before I let them take me to the hospital. And I’ve had dozens of guns pointed at me—”

“Fake guns,” Phoebe said. “Toys.”

“Still, you get used to it. I was in character, dear. That Dwuane’s gun was real didn’t actually register.” Then she zipped her house dress down an inch. Phoebe could see the edge of the Kevlar vest. “It’s too big,” she said. “Silly thing reaches almost to my knees. But Mr. Brown insisted.”

“But just before Dwuane collapsed, he was going to hit you with his gun,” Phoebe said. “Your face wasn’t protected. That could have been life-threatening.”

Jerry came over and said, “Phoebe, dear, I’d never put Emily at unnecessary risk.” He produced a tazer. “I was ready to pop him if I had to. And I wasn’t in his sight line so he’d never know what hit him. I knew Ms Em was safe once the scream started.”

Three of the middle Stevenson boys walked in carrying empty boxes. Their hands were also encased in latex. They proceeded to lift the paintings off the wall and load up all the silver from the glass-fronted cabinet. Among the many pieces was an ancient silver manorah.

“By the time we get this stuff out to the farm in Opole, Dwuane here will have touched every last piece. We’ll make sure there’s a few good prints on some of them, smeared ones on everything else. The other Dwuane is waiting for us . . . not quite willingly, you understand. He’ll have touched all the pieces too by the time the cops arrive. And, of course, we have our video.”

Phoebe and Neil went out on the front porch with Jerry, while Emily, humming, headed to her rooms. Phoebe hoped she’d rest.

Phoebe could see that, inside the van, Fynn was pressing Dwuane’s unconscious hands to the painting frames and getting ready to have him mark the silver. One of the middle boys brought out a teacup and Fynn pressed Dwuane’s lips to it.

“But he already drank from it,” said Phoebe. “Why risk smearing that print?”

“That cup,” said Jerry, “is in the kitchen. Won’t do they find something more’n tea in the residue of it. This one just had pure tea in it.”

Phoebe could see it was a complicated choreography. But there were some other issues.

“We should call the cops,” she said.

“Soon,” said Jerry. “Speaking of cops, though, you both have to be the arresting officers, you know. That’s your role. I want to talk to you about how you should write up your reports.”

“What about the other guy?” pressed Neil. “The doppleganger. We think that one might be involved in that hit and run—”

A shot rang out, and a chunk of stone exploded from the edge of the column about a foot above Phoebe’s head. Stone bits stung the side of her face. Other bits broke glass in the front door’s lights.

Neil’s arm surrounded her shoulder in that same instant and pulled her down behind the brick planter wall just off the entry, while all the Stevenson boys hit the dirt behind the SUV.

“You did have that one thing wrong,” Jerry said, lying near Phoebe, his arm over her protectively as well. His tone was again, surprisingly, matter of fact.

“I did?” she said, her eyes roving. “What . . . what did I have wrong?”

Neil, his gun drawn, was about to lift his head, but Jerry pulled him back. “No need, son. Just wait.”

For a long, tense moment, the evening was punctuated only by the chirping and quacking of frogs and a long, slow loon call out on the lake. The moon escaped racing clouds and washed the front yard with silvery light brighter than the security lamp.

Then Phoebe heard a shout from the woods. “Clear!”

“That’s Old Pete,” said Jerry, starting to get up. “Yup, you missed one thing. So, here’s the question: What if it wasn’t Dwuane or his doppleganger who tried to run you down? And what if there was a connection between those two other women who were hit-and-run victims, but it had nothing to do with Dwuane Schultz.”

Phoebe turned, some of the images from her dream suddenly in her head, the dream where the broken headlight was the left, then the right. “What? No, they were. They had to be. And he tried to kill me. He was masked when he slammed into the building, but I saw him when he got out of his Explorer in the parking lot, and he was looking for me. I got a good look at him.”

“You did,” agreed Jerry easily. “You really did see him in the parking lot. And that was the doppleganger for sure because I was in the Red Carpet having a chat with the real Dwuane Schultz just before that. When I came out of the bar and saw you and Neil hanging around, I found a decent vantage and watched. But, though I can see how’d you get to believing he might be, the doppleganger just ­wasn’t the guy who tried to run you down or who shot at you just now. And, yes, dear, he was aiming at you.”

Phoebe said, “But it makes sense that, since we were making progress on the case, both he and Dwuane Schultz might want to see me dead or want to hurt Neil. It makes sense that it would be him.”

“Sweetie, things can make perfect sense and still be completely wrong.”

Phoebe stared at him but saw her father’s face. “I told you, honey, when you’re dealing with human nature, the simple answer ain’t always the right one.”

She sighed. “But then who tried to run me down? And . . . and why? Who’s out in the woods taking pot shots at us?”

Old Pete called again. “So, ain’t none of you gonna help me with this jerk?”

Jerry stood up. He hollered, “I’m coming, Pete,” but before he left the porch he turned to Neil and said, “Listen, pup. Keep her here.” He gave Phoebe a measuring look, then turned and trotted across the yard. The moon again slid behind clouds.

Phoebe felt a wave of anger. “Keep me here?” she called after Jerry. “Wait! Why does Neil have to do that?” She turned to Neil and said, “Do you know what’s going on? I’m a good cop, and I’m a damn fine shot. Don’t even think about treating me like a helpless girl.”

Neil held up his hands. “Look, I’m just as clueless as you are, but I know Jerry. I don’t think he’s discounting you or your skills. It’s something else. You should trust him. You’re going to know everything in just a couple of minutes, I’m sure.”

Across the shadowy yard, Jerry disappeared into the wall of blackness that was the woods on the other side of the driveway. He emerged momentarily with an older man Phoebe had not met, but whom she assumed was Old Pete the hired hand at the Stevenson’s place. Between them they had a thin, average-sized man dressed in black who still wore a ski mask, and Phoebe could see well enough to know it was the same kind of mask as the driver of the SUV wore when he tried to kill her. This man hung between them, as if there had been a struggle, a fight maybe, and he had lost. Old Pete carried a high-powered rifle, and it glimmered when they passed under the security light. Then the moon, nearing full, escaped the clouds again and glinted off the metal of the rifle. Sight of that weapon triggered something in Phoebe. A chill ran down her spine. She knew that rifle, and, therefore, she knew who the masked man dressed in black was.

“I’ll kill him,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “I’ll kill that bastard.”

“Who is it?” Neil said, his arms around her waist and holding on tight. She started to struggle, and he quickly snarred both arms and pulled her back against his chest, holding her securely.

“It’s my ex-husband,” said Phoebe, fighting against Neil’s grip. “Bastard! Phil, you asshole,” she yelled, still trying to escape Neil’s hold.

“I don’t get it,” said Neil. “You divorced him. It didn’t sound like it was even contentious.”

Phoebe gave up trying to get loose. She twisted to look into Neil’s face. “It wasn’t. Not in the usual sense. I didn’t fight Phil on anything, except that rifle. He kept it, claiming it was a family heirloom from his side of the family. I gave back all the damn dresses, all the ugly jewelry when he demanded them. I didn’t make an issue about all the furniture we had bought together, much of it paid for from my mother’s estate. I didn’t even give him crap about the absurd rent he charged me for that apartment, but I wanted Dad’s rifle. It was never his. That was Zip’s favorite deer rifle because it had been Skip’s rifle. Phil even destroyed all my family photos so I couldn’t prove a history with the rifle. I hated him for doing that. He was determined I leave with nothing. But that even wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough that he got everything in the divorce, won every issue. I didn’t care about that. I was just glad to be shed of him. But that wasn’t enough.” Then something cleared in Phoebe’s mind, something she knew but had not yet considered. In a softened voice, she said, “I knew stuff. Of course I knew stuff. I knew more than anyone. I could tell people stuff about him, about how he lived and how he represented people, about how he treated me, how he treated others. I knew about his mistresses. Damn, I could write a goddamn book, and if I told even half the stuff he pulled, his shot at being governor would be over.”

“Why did you let him get away with all that then? You had leverage.”

Phoebe paused, shaking both with anger and emotion. Neil turned her in his arms. She looked up into his face. “He scared me. I knew how cruel he really was, how cruel he could be. He’d like to believe, and I’m sure he tells everyone, that he divorced me because I wasn’t suited for being a politician’s wife. The truth is I divorced him because he was such a nasty person and I’d had enough. Truth was I had no leverage because was scared. I thought by giving him everything he wanted in the divorce I kind of demonstrated that I’d keep quiet. I thought I’d convinced him. And I sure hadn’t thought he’d try to murder me. I feared he might try to ruin me, ruin my chances in life. He tried hard to convince me I was worthless without him, that I had no life away from him. I feared he’d try to ruin my changes at anything good. I thought that was why he left me essentially homeless and broke. I didn’t know he was being literal and didn’t want me to have any life at all. If he had intended to actually kill me, all of a sudden I can believe I wasn’t his first murder, either. Other people knew stuff about him, Carol Berg for sure. I remember a phone conversation he had after he fired her that seemed to indicate the need to ‘keep her quiet.’ I thought he might of meant a professional gag order.”

Neil nodded. “Yeah but gag orders can’t always be enforced, can they. Say, he got a bid for governor. If people like Carol spilled the beans to the press, he’d be screwed. Financials get checked all the time these days. Hush money shows up. In a lot of ways, if one can get past the moral issues, death is a lot more permanent and definitely cheaper than payoffs.”

Tears had come to Phoebe’s eyes. “If he’d succeeded in shooting me with that rifle . . .” She paused, then said, “That’s my dad’s rifle. How dare he try to kill me with my own father’s rifle. That’s just . . . it’s just wrong. But . . . but I don’t understand.”

“What?” said Neil.

“That’s a deadly accurate hunting rifle. That Kahlie scope is dead on. Dad used to rave about it, and Phil’s not a bad shot. He’s gone deer hunting every year I’ve known him and always gets his deer. The woods isn’t so far. That rifle’s accurate for three times that distance. I can’t believe he missed me.”

“Oh, we couldn’t let him hurt you, dear.” Aunt Emily had come out onto the porch.

Phoebe did a double take. Her aunt looked different yet again. Her poodle hair was messed up now, her glasses broken in one eye. Thin again, she had taken off the heavy, oversized Kevlar and wore the same housedress but in a size that fit her slim frame. One sleeve was torn at the shoulder. A big bruise marked her jaw on the left side, as if Dwuane actually had struck her with his gun. One eye was blackened, her lip was swollen and cut, and her exposed arm was bruised above the elbow. She winked at Phoebe. “Now I’m ready for the cops to come and the ambulance and a very revealing photo op at the hospital.”

Unlike the two previous victims of Jerry the Old Lady Killer, her aunt had to show that, though she lived through the ordeal, she wasn’t unharmed. Makeup wouldn’t stand up to a real doctor’s exam, but Phoebe figured, with all the careful planning this octogenarian team had already shown, spending a little time in the hospital wasn’t too hard to get through without discovery. And she knew her aunt was likely going to testify against Dwuane. She huffed a laugh. When he came up for trial, Emily would get another set of lines. The killer had little chance of escaping retribution. Something inside her began to relax.

She looked back at her ex-husband as he was shouldered across the lawn. Sadly, she said, “Why’d he’d have to go so drastic that he tried to shoot me to get rid of me?”

“You remember you talked about almost getting hit by an SUV the day you came here, the day you got your promotion,” her aunt said.

“Oh, yeah, but that was me. The wind took my hair and I stepped out too quickly. I guess I was just too excited.” But Phoebe’s mind was churning, wondering if that really was the truth.

“You mentioned another incident a few days later.”

Phoebe considered. “No, but that involved a bike and—” Twice with a black Ford Explorer nearly hitting her. She had taken it as coincidence, that the SUV had only came close to hitting her because it swerved away from the biker. But what if the biker had gotten in the way of the SUV and spoiled its changes of surprising her? This alternate logic of something else going on than what she had originally perceived was quickly falling into place. Was it Minnesota Nice that made her doubt that anyone was rotten enough to want her dead? Did people almost get hit by the same kind of vehicle in so close a time span? Could that be just coincidence?

She finally nodded. “Then, last night, he tried again, tried really hard and dropped any attempt at making it look like an accident. I mean he maybe was trying to make it look like a hit and run the two times before, but not last night. Last night was clearly just . . . an attempt to . . . to . . . kill me . . . and he still missed.”

Emily nodded and stroked Phoebe’s arm. “Your instincts were quick and in your favor, dear. Thank God for that. But he attempted to kill you three times, and the hit-and-run gambit clearly wasn’t working. He knew he had to switch gears.”

“No,” said Phoebe rather emphatically. “No. It wasn’t Phil who tried to run me down with his SUV. It was the doppleganger Dwuane. I saw him. I saw him in the lot when he came back after trying to run me down. He came back to finish the job.”

Jerry and Old Pete had piled Phil into the back of the BMW. His handcuffs were secured to the seatbelt latch.

Jerry had heard Phoebe’s disbelief and came over. He said. “Sweetie, I believe you fell for a classic misdirection. Something a normal person might classify as a coincidence. You had just had a vehicle, a black SUV, try to smash you against a building. That had to be kinda traumatic, don’t you think? You recognized it as a Ford Explorer. All well and good. But think carefully now. The second SUV, still black, still an Explorer but with a different license number—”

Phoebe threw her arms wide. “He must have switched plates. But, I don’t get it. It was a black Explorer. I know that truck. My ex-husband has one. I know the shape of the lights, the taillights, everything. It was an Explorer. Not even when the vehicle was careening toward me with its brights on could I have misidentified it. Not in town with other lighting. And it wasn’t even dark out. Not entirely. Why was the alibi Dwuane looking in the lot for me if not to finish what he had started earlier? What other possible motive could he have? And he was looking for me. Searching. He got out of the Explorer and walked down the line of cars. He stopped at my car. He was looking for me.”

“Oh, I expect he was,” said Jerry. “But as to another motive . . . think. You had followed the fake Dwuane in your car just last Monday. I suspect he and the real Dwuane had just switched places. Real Dwuane had wanted fake Dwuane to drop off his stolen goods out at the Opole farm, but fake Dwuane spotted you and went to the Park Apartments instead. Chances are he’d called real Dwuane on the way, who met him behind the apartments and sent fake Dwuane back to the Red Carpet to take up the alibi again, while someone from the farm dropped of the second green Taurus with an identical studman license plate in the Mexican Village lot. That means . . .”

Phoebe struggled to understand. “So . . . he already knew my car because we’d followed him before . . . probably knew I was a cop, too. The two Dwuanes had shared information on me, knew my license number.”

Jerry was nodding. “If they didn’t by then, they weren’t on the ball, and we know these two aren’t lacking in smarts.”

Phoebe rubbed her head. “So last night Doppleganger Dwuane maybe spotted my car when we parked in the lot and was checking it out to see if I was waiting to follow him again?”

“Yup, except he might already have seen Neil and knew you’d follow him if you could. That’s why he wanted to see if you were hunkered down in your car or had slipped out and hid in another car, ready to run back and take up the chase.”

Slowly shaking her head, Phoebe said, “But I could have sworn it was the same SUV. It even had damage to the left . . .” Her dream flashed in her mind again. The damage switched from the left fender to the right. In a hushed voice, she said, “No, wait, it wasn’t the left fender. The SUV that tried to kill me smashed the left fender against the brinks. I’m sure of that. The left side was closest. The driver had hoped, I think, to get that side of the SUV enough into the recessed doorway to flatten me. But he hit the bricks instead. That stopped the vehicle. But the other SUV had damage to the right front fender. The doppleganger’s truck was damaged in the wrong fender.”

Jerry was nodding and grinning now. “Well, not damaged actually. The headlight was out, though. The right one. The real Dwuane had been pulled over earlier in the evening for it, too. I heard about that. That stop set off his cautions. So he called the other Dwuane, and they aborted the attack plans for the night. Dwuane went into the Red Carpet. Doppleganger was supposed to pick up the SUV and go home. All the doppleganger wanted when he came into the lot and you saw him was to make sure he could get the truck home without being followed. You didn’t notice that the license plate had changed?”

“No, I did. I gave that number to Neil. I thought he had switched plates.”

“Switched plates? So fast? The SUV that had struck at you had gone around the block. You and Neil weren’t five minutes behind him. Don’t you see how the mind fills in places that it can’t figure out?”

Phoebe forced her memory past the trauma of almost being killed. “I had seen the plates on the vehicle that tried to smash me into the buildings on Fifth. It started with a AEO, I’m sure of it. The second vehicle started with AGS.” Then Phoebe paused. “AEO . . . AEO . . .” Phoebe said, thinking. “Oh, God. You’re right. Phil’s big Explorer’s plates were AEO 449. Why hadn’t I connected that?”

“You were already convinced it was the other Dwuane.”

Anger again coursed through Phoebe. “It was Phil! The bastard. Phil tried to kill me. But that doesn’t explain why he came after me with Dad’s hunting rifle tonight.”

“No,” said Jerry. “It doesn’t. He was getting desperate, that’s for sure. I mean, three misses. Pretty frustrating. But he came after you tonight because of me. I’d finally figured it out. Well, mostly I’d figured out it wasn’t Dwuane or other Dwuane trying to run you down. The only logical choice left was Phil. So . . . I’ve been emailing him all evening about you going to the paper with what you know and that you’d pieced it together that he killed other women and tried to kill you.”

Phoebe’s eyes, already wide, nearly bulged out of her head. “Emailed him? He came because you emailed him? What, like on my account?”

“Yup.”

“Why would you do that?”

“To put him in an environment I controlled. To catch him and end his tyrany.”

Phoebe stared at him in disbelief.

Jerry waved his hand dismissively at her. “We had him under surveilance. And Brad got you here and safe before he arrived.”

“Safe? He shot at me. And that rifle’s deadly accurate. What if he hadn’t missed?”

Emily examined her nails as if they were massively important. “It seems your ex-husband recently hired a truly exceptional cook he occasionally invited in to treat his guests to French cuisine. She clued us into his next plan to kill you by testing the accuracy of the rifle before his guests arrived.”

“Emogene! You slipped Emogene into his house as a spy! But he missed . . . he shot at me and missed. How is that related to Emogene . . . how?”

“Oh, Emogene isn’t just a cook any more than Jerry is just a gardener—”

“Or your aunt is just a sweet older woman,” offered Jerry.

Emily smirked at him. “Even before she went to France to study classic cuisine, Gene had been a nurse in Afganistan, and learned a great deal about weapons . . . and how to disarm them. I don’t know if you’re ready to hear this, dear, but maybe you must. She knew your brother, Skip. Was in . . . well, maybe she should tell that part of the story. She knew your brother. It was Skip who taught her about weapons, both how to use them and how, somewhat secretly, to disarm them.”

Phoebe’s mind was reeling. She was beginning to believe she’d stepped through the Looking Glass somewhere that evening. Her mouth suddenly went completely dry. “Emogene knew Skip? Really? How is that even possible?”

Emily’s smug expression fell away. With great gentleness and sympathy she said, “She was the nurse who held him as he died, Phoebe dear. And as he was dying, he told her to tweak the scope on his hunting rifle just enough to skew a shot without tipping off the shooter that something was wrong. She didn’t know why he told her that. It seemed like a particularly odd thing to tell anyone on a deathbed. She believed he was getting delirious, but she filed that information away anyway, if for no other reason than it seemed so important to Skip. He’d taught her how to misalign scopes, but as he lay dying he’d made her repeat the procedure over and over. Not until two days ago did she begin to understand any reason for that. Then she saw Phil practicing with the rifle, a kind of weapon fairly common in deer season in the fall but of absolutely no use in May unless someone was intending a different kind of prey. She didn’t know he was intending to use it on you, of course. We pieced that together only today. We had placed Emogene in Phil’s house because of Neil’s fiancee and Carol Berg, but when she had a moment, Gene tweaked the scope just a tad so the rifle would hit too high. Just like Skip had taught her so many years ago.”

“You suspected Phil in the deaths of Neil’s girlfriend and the assistant district attorney? Why?”

“They were both killed in hit-and-runs. That’s kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?” Jerry said. “And the little witnesses could tell about what happened was that it was a black SUV. You said Neil made mention of Nancy working for Phil. That info was easy to verify. We figured if we could find a connect between Carol Berg and your ex we could make a case for his being involved in both hit-and-runs.”

“Was there a connection?” asked Phoebe.

Jerry nodded. “Seems Carol was part of his legal staff in the early days of your divorce, but she saw what he was doing to you and objected, suggesting a more moderate settlement. She was fired on the spot, maybe as a warning to the other attorneys. Nancy had been on his legal arm for a couple of years. She simply knew too much about him.”

Phoebe was shocked.

“We’re looking into a few other hit-and-run deaths,” said Jerry.

Phoebe’s knees had gone rubbery as she worked to sort everything, but it seemed almost more than her brain could take in. She sat on the garden wall. She watched as the Stevenson boys finished loading up silver and boxes of other stuff being used to establish Dwuane Schultz’s guilt into the SUV. Then Fynn hopped into the driver’s seat, started up the truck and pulled out of the yard. Neil’s squad car came into the front drive right then, driven by Brad, who, just because he could, hit the lights and sirens for a couple of seconds. Neil swore and ran over to admonish him. Phil was transferred to the back of the squad and the deer rifle put in the trunk in an evidence bag.

Phoebe watched. “Neil is going to bring him in?”

“Someone has to have arrested him,” said Jerry. “Might as well be Neil. But first he’s going to call 911 to get an ambulance for Emily and send a bunch of deputies out to the Opal farm. County will handle the Dwuanes. But, here, with some of us as witnesses, the rifle as evidence, it’s pretty much a slam dunk against Phil. With the repair record we’ve obtained for Stuart’s SUV and the kind of damage to his Explorer now, we’ve got him for the attempt on your life, and we’re pretty sure we can connect him to Nancy’s and Carol’s deaths as well. We’ll see on that score. There’s always the hope he’ll confess. County’s going to get some of the credit in capturing the Old Lady Killer and his accomplices, even if the two of you did most of the work for them, but Em will testify, and that’s nails in their coffins.”

Phoebe stared a long moment down the driveway to the woods where Phil had hid to shoot her, then turned to Jerry and Emily. “The only thing I just don’t get is why my brother Skip, who never knew I would even exist, could have had a reason to give Emogene just the right information to save my life thirty-two years later at this exact moment in time.”

Emily giggled in her little girl way. “Don’t you watch the movies, dear? It happens all the time there. It seems that your older brother was protecting you from the grave. That’s a kind of love, long family love, that’ll make sure no eyes leave the theater dry.”

Epilogue

Phoebe, dressed in a fawn linen skirt and blazer and blousy, flowered shirt befitting the July weather, walked out of the courthouse with Neil McKenna, wearing a plain blue suit. Dozens of cameras clicked and a knot of reporters, microphones in hand, pressed in on them. All the major TV and radio stations were represented, as well as a dozen newspapers. The case of the Old Lady Killer had received national attention for weeks. Today Dwuane Schultz had been sentenced to consecutive life sentences for the three murders. He would never be free again.

Phoebe and Neil were caught in the throng, but they weren’t the focus of the reporters’ eagerness. Captain Johnson stepped up to the group of reporters, his tall frame tucked into a crisp uniform, perfect and professional from the polished brass on his collar to his spit-shined shoes. As he squared himself in front of the media, Neil and Phoebe were able to step off to the side.

“Captain Johnson,” one reporter said, shouting over the rest clammering to be heard. “What’s your reaction to the verdict?”

In his most formal tone, Captain Johnson cleared his throat and leaned to the microphones as cameras clicked wildly. He said, “Dwuane Schultz, as you know, was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Mrs. Elsa Plotman, Mrs. Sylvia Meyer, and his own grandmother, Mrs. Sadie Schultz. He also was convicted of twenty-one counts of grand theft and eighteen cases of assault. He just received the maximum sentence for each of these counts. There is no way, even with perfect behavior, that Dwuane Schultz will ever be a free man again.”

“And what of his accomplices?” asked another reporter, getting her question in quick, faster than the twenty others vying for the captain’s attention. “What’s happening with the Doppleganger who provided Schultz with such perfect alibis all this time and thwarted the efforts of the police and the people on the farm?”

“Steve Corrigan, the Doppleganger, as he’s come to be known, was charged with conspiracy and possession of stolen property. Others on the farm were charged with receiving stolen property, but Steve is the most guilty. While he was found guilty on many counts, the sentencing pronouncement for him will come in about a week. I don’t know how that will go, but I seriously doubt he will see the light of day for some time to come. Not with two murders added to the conspiracy charges because of what Schultz did. But to say he thwarted our efforts in solving this case is to miss the intense, dedicated service my officers and detectives have shown in exposing both the murders and the conspiracy surrounding them and effecting a solution to a most baffling case and a most cruel and determined killer whose hatred of his own grandmother for her culpability in the death of his twin brother led to this series of crimes. Corrigan, along with Schultz, was caught and convicted because of good police work, dedication, and a determination that our elderly citizens require this country’s very best and deserve to feel safe in their golden years.”

In the background, too far from the reporters or Captain Johnson to be heard, Neil chuckled and said, “He just skipped over the fact that County got most of the credit for solving the case. Pity this isn’t an election year, though. That last bit would have gotten him reelected in a nanosecond.”

Phoebe laughed, then said to Neil in a reporter’s dramatic question, her hand to her mouth as if she held a microphone, “And what of Phil Stuart, Captain Johnson?” She held her imaginary microphone out to him.

Neil smiled.

Phoebe brought her hand back to her own mouth, squared her shoulders like the captain and said in a dramatically officious whisper, “It seems Phil Stuart will not be a state senator or anything resembling a candidate for governor or the presidency of the United States. He gave up his bid for a place in political history when he brushed up against the Magillicutty family and the dedicated law enforcers associated with them. Phil is in jail after confessing to two counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of Nancy Broderick and Carol Berg, two former employees he felt might have too much information on him, and the four times he attempted to murder his ex-wife, Phoebe Magillicutty.”

Neil hugged her shoulders as they rounded the corner from the courthouse and strolled down a much quieter St. Germain Street. “The fool,” Neil said, “Phil Stuart thought he could cut down the best of the Magillicuttys, an officier with both dedication and tenacity and a double quotient of smarts—both gut and brains.”

“But not an epic screamer,” giggled Phoebe, “though I surely do know one.”

The End