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Not to a reporter any more than a PI. Not to anyone who’s not from around here. I mean, tell the press and you might as well just march up and tell the Flying Monkeys.”
    “The what?”
    I winced.
    “The Flying Monkeys,” I repeated. “It’s what we call the new security service. Someone started calling them stormtroopers, but then we all decided that was a little fraught and melodramatic, so we settled on Flying Monkeys. It’s the uniforms.”
    “I see.” His mouth was twitching.
    Muriel appeared, coffeepot in hand, and refilled his cup.
    “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat to her.
    Muriel was torn between responding to his courtesy and maintaining her righteous indignation. She settled for a curt nod.
    “I have to admit, this has been a humbling experience,” he said, as he added sugar to his new coffee.
    “Normally by now you’d have cracked the case?”
    “Not necessarily.” He took a swallow of the coffee and sighed with contentment. “What I mean—you see, it’s standard operating procedure for PIs to vet our clients before taking on a job. Make sure we’re not going to be aiding and abetting something illegal or unethical. This one seemed like a no-brainer—potential client has a squatter on their property and wants to figure out how to cut off his supplies so he’ll give up and come out. They showed me the legal documents. Seemed on the up and up. But the more I hang around this town…”
    He let his voice trail off, clearly trying to draw me out.
    My chili arrived.
    “Things aren’t always the way they seem at first glance.” I picked up my spoon and dug into the chili.
    “No, they’re not,” he said. “And I’m beginning to think maybe this time I’m not playing on the side of the angels.”
    “Good insight,” I said over my shoulder as I applied myself to my chili.
    A business card slid next to my bowl: Stanley Denton, private investigator; a P.O. box in Staunton, Virginia, and a phone number with a 540 area code.
    “If you think of anything that might persuade me I should quit this assignment and go home, I’d be happy to listen,” he said. “Have a good day.”
    I glanced up to see that he was tossing a few bills on the counter as he swallowed the last of his coffee.
    “Thank you, ma’am,” he called to Muriel.
    I heard several sighs of relief as the door closed behind him.
    “Overtipped me as usual,” Muriel growled.
    “Silly me,” I said. “I thought it was undertipping that you wanted made a capital offense.”
    “Thinks he can buy me with a few lousy dollars,” Muriel muttered as she cleaned off the place where Denton had been sitting. She shoved his dirty dishes through the hatch to the kitchen as if she’d rather toss them in the Dumpster, and scrubbed the entire vacant stretch of counter as if trying to eradicate all traces of some dire contagion.
    “What did he want?” Sammy Wendell, one of our local deputies, sat down to my right.
    “Just wants to cause trouble, that’s what he wants,” said a local farmer as he and his wife sat down to my left in the remaining empty seats at the counter.
    In about two minutes, the entire population of the diner had convened an impromptu town meeting to discuss the PI. From the sound of it, he hadn’t made too many friends during the several weeks he’d been in Caerphilly.
    I ate my chili in silence, pondering our brief conversation. Was he just trying to gain my confidence? Or was he really starting to have reservations about working for the Evil Lender? And if so, what did he know that we needed to know? Because as much as I disliked the Evil Lender, I hadn’t thought they were doing anything actually illegal. If they were—
    He had said illegal or unethical. Unethical wouldn’t help us. And for all I knew he could have just been trying to run some kind of scam on me.
    I was still pondering that as I left the diner and headed back toward the town square.
    I had plenty of time before my