Ray ignored her. “We paddled to the Hollingsford Estate. I wanted to have a look around.”

“And?”

“I found the private family cemetery, just like Ma French told us. Of course, in the last few days with all the rain, the snow is gone.”

“Find anything?”

“ Nothing that shouldn’t have been there. Just sand and old headstones. I would have liked to look around the estate, but I was concerned about having enough light to get back to our put-in point. That, and a front seemed to be coming in faster than NOAA’d predicted.”

“But you and the Doc obviously made it without too much difficulty.”

Ray reflected on her tone a few moments before answering. “It was getting choppy. Hannah doesn’t seem to be bothered by weather, she likes to paddle in conditions. But something interesting did happen.” He told Sue about the Jet Ski.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“I’m still wondering. We didn’t hear or see anyone on the water on the way out. It was so rough on the way back; I only became aware of the Jet Ski when it was too damn close. That said, the operator must have been aware of us. He’d probably had his boat beached along the stream that empties from Lost Lake. And when he circled, he had a better view of us then we did of him. We were right down there in the wash—he was three feet or so above us. Anyway, I don’t think we looked like anything he was expecting.”

“Did you get his registration number?”

“It was dark. If it was there, I didn’t see it. When we get the Fox investigation under control, I want to go back and see if we can figure out what’s going on.”

Sue nodded and stood, picking up her coat and folding it over her arm. “I’ll get all the material organized. But as you know, there are no obvious leads.”

“So what do we know?” asked Ray, pulling down a whiteboard from the ceiling. He wrote motive in the first column on the left.

“There’s only one that we’ve identified,” said Sue. “Money.” She paused as Ray added the word with a blue marker. “What about the family? Possible inheritance…?”

“I don’t see it. No. It’s all about the pot of gold Fox put out there in his book or the cash he won at the casino.” Ray walked back to his desk and sipped at his coffee, thinking. “Last night I had trouble sleeping. I even got up at one point and tried to conjure a list of our known bad guys. No one fits.”

“I agree. I can’t put a face to this crime with anyone we know from the region.”

“How about the Watonda sisters?” asked Ray. “They were willing to do most anything for dope or money.”

“Or love,” said Sue, “Last I heard Darcy was in a slammer somewhere in the south, maybe Tennessee. She was caught bringing dope to her boyfriend on a jail visit.”

“I sort of remember that. How about her lovely twin, Marcy?

“Rumor has it she’s becoming a big porn star in Eastern Europe. Her newest flick, All the way with the NBA, is getting a lot of critical attention. Probably will be an award winner at Telluride and Sundance, maybe even TC.”

“Where do you get this stuff?”

“You need to go to yoga with me, or at least to the bar after. When one of the local gals or guys makes good, it’s something to talk about. And, according to my sources, the Watonda girls have been providing great gossip since they were in eighth grade.”

“Okay, getting back on task, can you think of any of the usual suspects that we should check out?”

“No, not a one. We’ve got our share of lowlifes, but I can’t paste this on any of them,” Sue answered. “But we’re living in such hard times. Maybe someone went over the edge. Maybe it’s someone new to the area.”

“We have to go back to the bookstore and library, see if Phillip or the librarian remember anything. I’d like to do that as soon as I get back from meeting with Fox’s daughter at the Medical Center. Anything else I should know about?”

Sue put her coat back on the chair. Simone immediately jumped up and scratched out a bed. Sue sighed. “Well, we’ve had another theft of produce from one of the CSAs.”

“What this time?” Ray got out a notebook.

“Potatoes and carrots from one of their storage units. Last week 500 pounds of potatoes went missing from Gourmet Boutique Farms. The Cedar County Gleaners has also reported some losses.”

“Remind me when this started exactly.”

“The first one was a few weeks before Halloween. A farmer near Inland Corners thought that he had some pumpkins stolen. I met with him and took a report. Let me get his name.” She slid into Ray’s desk chair. He waited as she keyed in a search command.

“John Dirker, an old guy, late 80s. I didn’t think much about it at the time. There were hundreds of pumpkins in fields, near the barn, and loaded in two trucks. He was a little fuzzy on how many were missing, but insisted that it was the small ones, the pie pumpkins and the Wee-Be-Little, that disappeared. Nice old man. I learned a lot about different pumpkin varieties.

“I asked him if he had an inventory system, or a count, some way he could determine numbers and estimate the value. Dirker couldn’t do it. Said he’d planted the Wee-Bees mostly for his great-grandkids and their friends, but he had a couple of commercial customers who’d also ordered several hundred, and he couldn’t fill the order because most had gone missing. He couldn’t tell me precisely when they disappeared. Could have been any one of several nights.”

“And that was the end of it?” asked Ray.

“I listened to him, wrote up a theft report, had him sign it. Yep, that was the end of the pumpkin caper. So that was October. Since then we’ve had several more reports of missing produce, primarily root vegetables, many that I’ve never heard of—things like celeriac, Swedes, and kohlrabi. The interesting thing is that the quantities are small, usually only a few hundred pounds. The thefts are either from unlocked buildings or open storage areas. I’ve been having Brett follow up on most of these: it’s more a show of concern about their loss. They know there’s little chance we’re going to recover a couple of gunny sacks full of carrots.”

“And it’s always produce, yes? There have been no reports of livestock being…?

“None. No pigs or steers, not even a chicken or a duck. There’s some poaching going on. That’s usual. And the road kill, the deer, disappear before they cool off.” She looked at Ray and rattled her empty coffee mug. “So what are you thinking?”

“I don’t think it is just hungry people helping themselves. And even if it were…. There seems to be a pattern. We just have to figure out who’s involved.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to get down to the Medical Center. Can we pick this up again in the late afternoon?

“Absolutely.”

“Here’s some reading for you, Fox’s book. Won’t take you long. And you’ll like the section on where Capone’s gold is stashed.”

“There’s one more thing we need to talk about, Ray. The 911 phantom has struck again. We’ve had three more incidents in the last week. Same MO. Weekend nights, usually after midnight, always in the central sector. The location is out in some field where the responder has to leave their car and walk around with a flashlight.”

“Teenagers,” said Ray, “sitting at a safe distance, watching the spectacle, sharing a joint, a few beers, or both. I’m sure it’s a good laugh.”

“Ray, a lot of downstate departments have stopped responding to these. Should we consider that?”

He pondered the question before answering. “Not yet. I keep worrying about a real emergency situation where we don’t respond and should have. Let’s look at this on a month-to-month basis. When the summer people come back and we’re stretched to our limits, maybe then we will have to stop responding. The kids will have to find another source of amusement.”

“How about digging for buried treasure by moonlight?”

“Or maybe we can teach them about snipe hunts.”