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Me: Think about it, there has to be a reason the grandmas are getting away with their shit. None of them have gotten arrested since Hawk took over after Eric. Someone is helping them.
Zeph: You think Hawk is in on it?
Me: Finding out. TTYL.
Zeph: BE CAREFUL!
I madesure to park farther down the road where there's a wide turnout so it's not obvious that someone's snooping around the county equipment shed. Now, I have to get from here to the shed without being noticed.
It's really been bugging me, how my grandmother and Alice have managed some of the big capers they've pulled off in the last couple of years.
Of course, there's also the question of how Mabel and Vera are managing their retaliation pranks. Last year they stole all the goats right out of my grandparents' barn while we were all in the house. I just don't see how two old women in their eighties could have done that on their own.
Zephyr's brother, Cane, has game cameras set up around the Hart property and one of them caught a frame of the backhoe that dug the new "pond."
It's not a pond. It's a pretty sizable hole about three feet deep that appeared overnight near the private drive that leads up to Mable Hart's house.
When Zephyr texted me the picture that her brother's camera caught of the backhoe, I realized it looked a lot like the tractor the county houses here in the equipment shed.
Moonshine Ridge is a mountain town and mountain towns need heavy equipment for all kinds of things, from plowing snow to clearing the occasional dead cow off the road.
For one, although a lot of people do have private equipment, the county loader is the only one I know of on the Ridge that big, and two, it's blue. It was bought in an auction from the O'Leary ranch down in Slow River and all their equipment is the same trademark blue.
Thing is, the photo from the game camera isn't great. It only shows a little bit of the tractor and, even though the night vision mode is pretty good, it's hard to make out a lot of details.
There's a possibility that the tractor in the photo isn't actually the same blue color as the county's, but it does have a weird spot on it where a decal has been scraped off.
All I have to do is sneak into the equipment shed and check the loader against the photo and I'll know for sure if it's the same one.
I just have a hard time believing our deputy is actually involved. Hawkins just isn't the kind of guy who gets his hands dirty, you know?
I sneak up to the shed. The big, metal building is set off the road in a clearing along with big piles of gravel and sand that they truck in every summer for road maintenance. There's a giant roll-up door on the front of the building that is never locked.
Mesa showed me how to work it once when I came out with him to get the smaller tractor. Since he works for the fire department, he's one of the people who has access to the shed and he needed the Bobcat for a job he was on.
That's how I know the big door is never kept locked, and that's how I know the trick to get the big counter-weighted flywheels to move without much effort.
Cringing as the door rises enough for me to crawl under, I glance around nervously.
Very little effort, but lots of noise. Oops.
No lights go on, the mountains around me remain pitch black in the January night. It's not even ten o'clock yet, but the mountains are already asleep.
I only raise the big door by a couple of feet. Not enough to draw attention if anyone does pass by on the road. The shed is built at an angle to the road to allow space for moving the trucks and tractors around, so it's not likely that anyone will notice.
Getting down on my hands and knees, the concrete foundation is so cold it bites through my jeans and freezes my ass when I lay down to shimmy under the door. Once inside, I have to use the flashlight on my phone to avoid tripping over anything.
Out in the distance, I hear a car going down the road.
I quickly shut the flashlight off and wait till the engine noise passes by.
Then I open up that photo Zephyr sent me and hold it up while I let the flashlight illuminate the back of the big loader.
It's definitely the same one.
I'm so busy staring at the tractor and running through the implications, that I don't even notice that the car must have doubled back until headlights light up the inside of the shed.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
