“Did Pete have another partner?”

“We all work alone. Most of the time we’re competition. Pete just focused on meth, so he and I got along well. Even though I knew him as a kid, he would have never told me the specifics about his business. Not a smart thing to do in our field.”

I said, “He talk to anyone a lot the past few weeks?”

“The only person he started to talk to on a regular basis in the last few weeks was a cop.”

“A cop? Which cop?”

“The guy who arrested me, Mike Tharpe.”

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

MY GUT WAS telling me that Mike Tharpe had something to do with the murder of Pete Stahl. Whether he had pulled the trigger himself or if there were others involved was still a mystery. I found a coffee shop, not a Starbucks but a mom-and-pop place. I always supported family businesses, because I hated the muted taste of anything that came out of a corporate restaurant. But what I really wanted was a Wi-Fi connection to make my phone that much faster as I signed into my LexisNexis account. My teenage cousin, Bailey Mae, had talked me into getting one so that my private investigation business could run a little smoother. That’s how I had found Mrs. Ledbetter’s daughter near Philadelphia so easily.

After a few minutes on my smartphone, I found the house where Mike Tharpe lived. Or at least the address where he paid the electric bills. The house was in an area called Little Britain, southwest of the Stewart Airport, a few miles from downtown Newburgh, but far enough away from the chaos to make a cop feel secure when he got home.

It didn’t take long to find the comfortable two-story on Station Street. It looked like the kind of place where people dreamed about setting up a life. Quiet, safe, and convenient to a bigger city like Newburgh.

The house was dark and I was out of time. I was also running short on common sense and good judgment. Somehow, the idea of breaking into a cop’s house didn’t even rank as the dumbest thing I had done all week. I’d chased an armed man for the sake of this case, after all.

I took a minute to survey the house from where I had parked up the street. It was completely dark and the next-door neighbors only had a porch light on. If I was going to do something this stupid, now would be the time. I walked casually up the sidewalk, trying to look as natural as possible. People in neighborhoods like this were generally not too suspicious. At least not of a clean-cut guy.