“Act as if we belong here and we’re just checking things out,” Curt said as they approached the padlocked gate. He knew that if anybody happened to be looking out the windows of the apartments across the street, they’d be seen. Although there were no streetlights, it wasn’t particularly dark. The night was crystal clear with a bright, gibbous moon poking in and out amid scudding clouds.

“Which truck are we taking?” Clark asked.

“I hope the pickup,” Curt said. “Depends on what’s in it.”

Clark’s question took Curt back to his and Steve’s reconnaissance to Sagamaunatuck the previous month. At that time they’d seen the same truck. When they’d checked it out parked on Main Street, there’d been pest control equipment attached in the bed, along with cylinders of compressed air. The driver was a friendly, ruddy-faced bearded man wearing a baseball hat with the Wouton wasp logo emblazoned above the visor. He’d just been into the local diner for lunch and was in an expansive mood.

“Yup, this here equipment is a sprayer,” the man had said in response to Curt’s question. Neither Curt nor Steve knew anything about pest control machinery. “Well, that’s not quite true,” the man corrected himself. “It’s really a duster, not a sprayer. It’s designed for powder, not liquids.”

“Looks impressive,” Curt commented while he winked at Steve. It was exactly what they were looking for, ending a weeklong search.

“You bet,” the man said. He gave the machinery a proud pat. “It’s the best on the market. It’s called a Power Row Crop Duster.”

“How does it work?” Curt asked.

“The pest control powder goes into this hopper.” The man pointed to a dark green metal box. Most of the apparatus was green, except for the nozzles, which were orange. “It’s got an agitator in there to fluff up the powder with the help of compressed air. After going through a metering device, the centrifugal fan powers the material along with air out the nozzles.”

“So it’s pretty effective?” Curt asked.

“It’s unbelievable,” the man said. “The fan can go up to twenty-two thousand RPMs, which can push out up to a thousand cubic feet of air a minute. At that speed the air leaving the nozzles is moving at close to a hundred miles an hour.”

Curt and Steve whistled in admiration and began plotting how to get the truck back to the city. The plan they’d conceived they were now executing.