Ever Present Danger by Kathy Herman

for you guys.”

    “You must have us mixed up with someone else.” Pete glanced around the booth, an eyebrow raised, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You guys know him?”

    Reg and Denny shook their heads.

    Bill put his palms flat on the table, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “I used to buy you guys weed and angel dust. I put my neck on the line for you. There’s no way you don’t remember me.”

    Pete folded his arms across his chest. “We just said we didn’t.”

    “But they do,” Ivy said. “We all do.”

    Bill’s face suddenly looked pinker than Ivy’s sweater. “I knew it! You let me sit with you at lunch a few times. You said I was your friend.”

    “We lied,” Pete said. “We told every guy who bought us drugs that he was our friend.”

    “But there wasn’t anybody else. I was your main man.”

    “Okay, live with that illusion. Now maybe you could let us get back to our conversation?”

    Bill backed away from the booth, his bushy eyebrows scrunched. “Yeah, you do that.” He went over to his table and sat, his jaw set, his hands wrapped around a Styrofoam cup.

    Pete snickered. “Man, what a loser. Wait…” He put his hands to his forehead and closed his eyes. “It’s all coming back to me now…Icky Ziwicki, the walking zit.”

    Reg and Denny chortled.

    “Will you guys knock it off? He can hear you.” Ivy looked over at Bill and then at Pete. “Would it have killed you to be nice to him?”

    “Why, because he bought us drugs? Come on, Ivy, the guy sucked up to us because he was a nobody who wanted to be a somebody. That’s the only reason he’d do something that demeaning.”

    Yeah, well. He wasn’t the only one . Ivy slid out of the booth. “I hate to be a party pooper, but I need to get home. Thanks for the latte, boys.”

    “It was really good seeing you,” Denny said.

    Reg nodded. “Yeah, it was fun catching up. See you at the class reunion?”

    “Oh, she’ll be there,” Pete said. “I’ve already signed her up.” Ivy manufactured a smile and slipped on her ski jacket. “Well, there you have it. The mighty Pete Barton has spoken.”

    She caught a glimpse of Bill Ziwicki’s face as she walked to the exit and decided it was a good thing that Sheriff Carter wasn’t around on Saturday. At that moment, she’d gladly spill everything she knew about what had happened to Joe Hadley.

11

    SHERIFF FLINT CARTER sat in his office perusing Monday’s issue of the Tri-County Courier and sipping the to-go coffee he’d brought with him from Jewel’s.

    “Mornin’, Sheriff.” Lieutenant Bobby Knolls came in and sat in the chair next to the desk. “How was your weekend?”

    “Not bad. Hard to put the case out of my mind. So what’d the lab say?”

    “The keys we found were Joe Hadley’s, all right—house and the family Impala. Probably were in his pocket when he was buried.” Bobby blew a pink bubble, then sucked it into his mouth and popped it. “We’ve covered a lot of ground near the scene, but everything we’ve found relates only to Joe Hadley: bones, class ring, keys. Whoever buried that kid sure didn’t leave any evidence behind.”

    “Are you done looking?” Flint said.

    “Give me another day or two. But my gut tells me we’ve found everything we’re gonna find.”

    “How many people have you questioned so far?”

    “About twenty, give or take.” Bobby looked up and shook his head. “Sheriff, this case is as cold as it was ten years ago. There’s no motive. It just doesn’t seem like Joe Hadley had any enemies. Everyone loved the kid.”

    “Somebody didn’t.”

    “I don’t think we can discount the possibility this was a serial killing.”

    Flint looked out the window at the snowcapped San Juans on the other side of Phantom Hollow and took a sip of coffee. “I’m not. But the chance that a stranger could slip in and out of a town of five hundred—in the off-season, no less—without anyone noticing seems