Crazy Like a Fox (Lil & Boris #3) (Lil & Boris Mysteries) by Shannon Hill Page A

around and onto the highway heading north. Leaving them in the snowy dust.
    I studied my list of questions. It had gotten longer.
    “Tuesday,” said Tom in a tiny voice, “we were getting anxious. That’s when Punk told Missy to stuff it, and talked to Missy’s kids, and you pretty much know it from there.”
    I hated myself for it, but I drawled meanly, “It took you 24 hours to get from Missy’s kids to the cabin?”
    Tom shrank, impossible as that seemed. Punk looked miserable. “Well, yes,” said Punk, and set his shoulders. He finally looked me square in the eye. “By the time we got the kids to talk, and then ran the plates, and narrowed it down to the ones that are registered within a couple hours’ drive of here…‌We couldn’t get Chief Danes to try those old logging roads in the dark. He figured he’d miss the landmarks, and we’d end up driving ourselves into more trouble. So…‌We waited for daylight.”
    I wasn’t being told something, and I knew I’d guessed it when I said, “Because you figured this was search-and-recovery by then, not search-and-rescue.”
    They both flinched.
    Great. They’d given me up for dead.
    “I hope to God one of you has Steven Clay’s number.”
    Punk produced a business card. I was pleased to see it had a cell phone number on it.
    “Any trace of the Chevy?”
    They both shook their heads. I sighed. Heavily. Then I clicked my tongue for Boris. There’s only one good way to settle my mind after something like that. I needed to prowl.

6.
    S ome people play computer solitaire to relax. I prowl.
    Crazy gives a lot of prowl for its size. The town itself is stretched out in a narrow valley between Elk Hill and Johns Mountain, over about a mile that starts at the mini-plaza where Bobbi’s salon is, and ends at the bridge over Elk Creek. From the vets’ office to the bridge, it’s called Main Street, but north of the bridge, it’s Madison Pike, and where the road veers east at a near-ninety-degree angle, it become Piedmont Road. It’s a pretty enough drive, with Elk Creek running just west of Main, at the foot of Johns Mountain, and a few small branches tumbling into it like pictures off a calendar. The town itself is crammed mostly on the side streets that run up Elk Hill, numbered First through Seventh, with Littlepage Road and Spottswood Lane added in. I also prowl Bare Road, which leads up the hollow between Bear and Johns mountains or Turner Gap Road. Mostly, I roam the town itself. For a cop anywhere else, it’s barely a beat, but we keep busy.
    Unless we feel like quiet, which I did.
    I started out at Elk Creek Apartments, technically outside my jurisdiction but left to me by the county boys. Then past the mini-plaza with the Food Mart, Green’s Pharmacy, Bobbi’s place, and a movie rental shop that survived against all odds. Past Junior’s Lawn and Garden, site of my favorite speed trap. The vets on the left, Shifflett’s Fuel and Service on the right as I hit the actual town limits. WCZY, Crazy’s own talk-news-and-country station. The weekly Gazetteer offices. The library, an imposing brick-and-pillar establishment about five times the size we’d ever needed. A little day care. Shiflet Realty. Hutchins Home Repair, Blue Quartz Pottery, the liquor store, the Hunt & Fish, Shiflet Hardware. The churches, the Emergicare and post office, the elementary school, not necessarily in that order. And lots of small empty lots and vacant buildings. Up Spottswood Lane past the McMansions my Eller relatives had built, even renaming the lower stretch of Turner Gap Road, which ran out past Turner Mountain Road and Aunt Marge’s place on Turner Mountain. Across the creek on Spottswood to Madison Pike, turn left, and repeat in the other direction.
    That day, I started prowling our numbered streets at a slow roll, on the off-chance I’d catch someone doing something I could arrest them for. All residential, tar-and-chip, no sidewalks. Lots of leafy trees and