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only place that carries the tiny ones Verline
     wants.”
    “How is Verline?” Rollie’s live-in, Verline, had given birth to their second child
     prematurely, right after I’d returned from Virginia. I’d made a care package. Okay,
     Hope had done all the work, but I’d delivered it to their trailer.
    A package neither Verline nor Rollie had acknowledged.
    Rollie rubbed his fingers over his jaw. “Verline is . . .” He sighed. “Ain’t no way
     to describe how she’s been actin’ lately. I volunteered to go on a diaper run. Now
     that I’m out of the house I don’t wanna go back.”
    “That doesn’t sound good. Trouble in paradise?”
    “Paradise.” He snorted. “Like hell most days. I’m too old for this cryin’-baby stuff,
     Mercy. I’m definitely too damn old to deal with a temperamental woman. Half the time
     I wanna throttle her.”
    I frowned.
    “She’s drivin’ me crazy, hey. Drivin’ me to drink.”
    “Like you’ve ever needed an excuse to drink. Besides, you’ve always said Verline makes
     you crazy. It’ll blow over.”
    His braids swayed when he shook his head. “Not this time.” He sipped his coffee. “What’s
     goin’ on with you and Dawson?”
    “You’d know the answer to that if you ever called me, kola .”
    He shrugged. “Been too busy dealing with my own stuff to worry about someone else’s.”
     His gaze dropped to my left hand. “You ain’t wearing his ring.”
    “I doubt you’ve dropped to one knee and proposed to Verline, and you’ve been with
     her longer than I’ve been with Dawson.”
    “Ain’t the same thing. I know he’s asked you.”
    No reason to lie. Dawson asked me to marry him every week. He just brought it up when
     the mood struck him. But I kept hedging. Not saying no, but more along the lines of, Can we talk about this later?
    “Mebbe the fact you ain’t said yes means he ain’t the man for you.”
    “As if I’ll take relationship advice from the old-timer who’s been divorced multiple
     times and is shacked up with a girl who can’t legally buy a six-pack.”
    “You got a mean streak, Mercy.”
    “Like that’s news. Besides, you’ve had issues with every man who’s ever been in my
     life, starting with my father.”
    That shut him down.
    Mitzi swung by with Rollie’s pie.
    “What’s goin’ on at the FBI?” he asked after a bite of lemon meringue.
    “Mostly procedural courses behind a conference table.”
    He lifted a dark brow so high it moved his PI hat up an inch. “That’s it? I heard
     Hoover’s henchmen are involved in the Shooting Star case.”
    Nothing stayed secret for long on the Eagle River Reservation. “Yeah.Didn’t take long for her to go from missing to dead.” I paused to sip water. “What
     do you know about it?”
    “Nothin’.”
    Bullshit. Rumor was Rollie was more aware of rez happenings than the tribal cops.
     I’d have to ply him with flattery to unlock his lips. “Come on. You’ve got your ear
     to the ground. What’s your take on this?”
    “I ain’t ever gonna snitch for the feds.”
    “If you don’t want to give information to the feds, then why are you talking to me?”
    Rollie’s gaze searched my face. “Mercy, we both know being a fed ain’t really you.
     How long you think you’ll last in the FBI?”
    I bristled. Why would he imply I’d fail after having the badge for only a few weeks?
     “So I’d be better off pulling taps at Clementine’s?”
    “Mebbe. At least when you were working for the winkte, you weren’t drinkin’ as much. And I guarantee what you see in this job will send
     you straight back to the bottle.”
    “How can it be worse than what I dealt with in the army?”
    He curled his hands around his coffee cup. “The feds in Indian Country deal with the
     bad stuff. The really bad stuff. Not just murders, but rapes. Child abuse. Sex crimes.
     All the sick stuff most people, even the cops, on the rez turn a blind eye to.”
    “Why is that kind of shit