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of the group.
    “Hunh-uh, the old man is. Anyway, the dinner
is a charity thing, you know. Open to anyone with twenty-five bucks
and a complete disregard for his or her liver.”
    I thought about all this as we cut through
the park near a hot dog vendor. It smelled delicious. I motioned
Jimmy C to stop and fished some money out of my pocketbook. I
bought us a couple of dogs and sodas. I smeared mine with mustard
and relish. Jimmy ate his plain. It was a little before noon, so
the park wasn’t yet filled with hungry attorneys and clerks and
court reporters from the nearby court buildings, and we walked
without passing anyone else.
    “If Danny and Kevin set up the explosion, why
would they hang around, waiting for it to go off and then waiting
some more for your boys to show up? That’s idiotic.” I licked
relish off my hand and sipped my Dr. Pepper.
    “People have done stupider things. Last year
Mo and Mark Thompson poured about twenty gallons of gasoline on the
7-Eleven on Childs Avenue because they ran out of nacho sauce. The
fire department pulled up and found Mo standing there with an empty
gas can. Mark had gone back inside for gummy bears.”
    “The Thompsons still eat paste and find
booger jokes hilarious. I don’t see Danny and Kevin quite the same
way.”
    Jimmy C shrugged. “Maybe the explosion went
off before it was supposed to. It wasn’t on a timer, it was a
mechanical fuse. It could have malfunctioned, surprising them by
going off early. The county fire department is a block away, so
they probably didn’t have time to get away.”
    I thought about my brother’s Harley, and I
had no doubt they’d have had plenty of time, if they’d been guilty
and trying to escape.
    “Wait a minute,” I said, as a new thought
filtered through my brain. “What about Jenkins? What does he say?
Kevin told me Danny said Jenkins was the one who called him to go
out to the shop Saturday night.”
    Jimmy C nodded. “That’s what Danny told us,
also. Unfortunately, we still haven’t been able to locate Jenkins.
Which is not a good sign. He’s divorced, lives alone. But no one
has seen him. And we haven’t found his car.”
    Well, crap. I didn’t know what else to ask.
Finally, I said, “Did that Chambers guy have any enemies? Maybe
somebody just didn’t like him.”
    “I’m pretty sure everybody just didn’t like
him. Hell, he sold drugs to kids. But that doesn’t change the fact
that we have a whole passel of evidence here.”
    “A whole passel, hunh? Well, shit-howdy,
Jimmy C, that is convincing.”
    Jimmy C grinned and looked at his watch. I
took the hint and thanked him, and he disappeared up the stairs
into the courthouse. I walked back to the police station parking
lot, finishing my hotdog, feeling as frustrated as I had when I
arrived. I didn’t think Junior’s alibi sounded that convincing. The
Clampers dinners were crowded, alcohol-soaked affairs. Junior could
have been there and left and returned later, and no one would have
been the wiser. I smushed the hotdog wrapper into the ashtray and
started the car.
    When I pulled back into my driveway, Jack’s
truck was gone. I ambled up to the door and screamed when I almost
stepped on a dead mouse. It was hot enough to melt gummy bears
accidentally left in the car, so I guess it would be more accurate
to say I almost stepped on a dead, cooked mouse.
    I considered leaving the mouse on Debbie’s
porch, since her stupid cat had killed it. But that would
necessitate carrying the gruesome thing even farther, so instead I
went in the kitchen and got a Tupperware bowl and lid, donned a
pair of rubber dishwashing gloves and tied a bandana around my nose
and mouth. Call me crazy, but I knew for a fact that rodents carry
the plague. I was a little iffy about Ebola, but better safe than
sorry. I went to the porch and scooped the little body into the
bowl, using the lid as a shovel. Then I sealed the lid and, holding
the bowl as far away from my body as my arms