“I don’t think she was high—she’d be crazy to do that with her dad around,” Loming said, “but she was definitely worked up. Whatever they were talking about, neither of them was happy.”

In the quadrant of my brain that churns out theories, a raw but meaty idea started to form. “I need you to be honest with me, Mr. Loming.” I softened my gaze as I said it, and hoped he’d interpret the act as assurance that I was on his side; I was looking for intel, nothing else. “You and Brett both arrived at the drive-in alone. You both made a habit of parking away from the crowd. I already know Brett met a woman at the movie. What I’m trying to understand is what brought you there.”

Loming said nothing.

“You had two kids at home and a shift job at the factory, yet you’re telling me you didn’t care about recouping two hundred dollars. That just doesn’t sound plausible to me. Everyone has their vices, Mr. Loming,” I said. “For Brett, it was gambling. I’d like to know yours. If you’re holding something back that’s pertinent to this homicide investigation, I should warn you that I’ll have to charge you with obstruction of justice.”

“Brett didn’t gamble.”

“What?”

Loming’s shoulders sank again, and this time the belly I now realized he’d been trying to play down strained against the belt of his robe. “We didn’t go to Montreal to gamble. Well, we did at first,” he said, “but that didn’t pan out too well. Brett was in the hole to a bunch of fellas he worked with here in town. He couldn’t even pay his mortgage for a while. Then we met some people up there.”

“What kind of people?”

“Two guys—guys just like us, with wives and kids. They started telling us they made thousands in extra cash a month. So they invite us to this booze can,” he said. “Brett talks to them for a couple of hours, and next thing I know our trips across the border don’t have anything to do with playing cards anymore.”

Cards. The word set off alarm bells, but I was too preoccupied with Loming’s admission to pay it any mind. He and Brett had frequented illegal after-hours clubs in Montreal, smuggled their drugs across the border, and sold them to Swanton teens. “You ran an international drug operation?”

Loming blanched. “No! No, it was nothing like that. We sold a little pot and hash to college kids in Burlington, and we were lucky if we split a grand a month between us. I don’t know how anyone around here got wind of it, but one day a local kid from the high school came up to Brett wearing this big grin, and next thing we’re setting up shop at the drive-in. We were nervous—it’s a small town, and we both had kids at the school—but some people were dumb enough to pay double what the stuff was worth.” He gave a helpless shrug as if to suggest anyone would have done the same thing.