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ago. I was saving Evan from the sheet of water that swept away the collectible stones he was washing. Gran screamed from the bank amid several spectators as Evan slipped under the falls, briefly. A cop with big hands rescued us, and Evan was handed up through a line of good Samaritans, whining like any wet eight-year-old kid about his lost rocks. We got off that time with a big lecture after I took the blame for being much older—and supposedly wiser.
    In the hands of another cop, I had the same mixed feelings about being in any danger, and feeling once again that I had to take the blame for Evan. Would Dallas understand if I opened the trunk and confessed all? If he turned a blind eye to the theft of a young man with Asperger’s, would his new job be in jeopardy?
    My sudden attraction to Hot Stuff was threatening my comfort zone—and every other zone in my body. All my life, I had happily sacrificed for my diminishing family, guarding my heart against anything that could separate us. Said heart was feeling as brittle as a stale candy heart.
    We hung around the park for another hour or so, walking barefoot in the cool grass, and then sitting atop a dry picnic table, talking about his family back home, the crime and politics in Dallas, and why he wanted to settle down in a cooler climate—and a safer place to someday raise a family. He knew what he wanted, a decisive man of integrity. And when I felt him take my hand to play with my fingers, I was torn between showing him what was in my trunk or visualizing a future with him. I couldn’t imagine one would lead to the other. He was just too good to be true, and if I learned he liked me as much as I liked him, I could blow it all by confessing my guilt.
    Our clothes were dry by the time he drove me back home. Before we parted, he pointed out all the bells and whistles on his new Harley. “I always wanted one of these, never thought I’d find one in a boring little village like this.”
    “Boring, huh?”
    He pulled me close enough to show the moonlight gleam in his eyes. “Well, not everything here is boring.” He kissed me goodnight, pulling on my bottom lip and trailing kisses to a tender spot behind my ear.
    I wished we were still in my beetle with the console jabbing into my back.
    The putta-putta-putta of the cycle competed with the rev of my heart. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he promised, with a final, lazy grin before he veered off into the night.

Chapter Nine
    Tomorrow turned into several nail-biting days after I checked the trunk of my car and found Dutch boy missing! Only Dallas had access to my trunk, but when? And what could he have done with it? How could he kiss me like he did, thinking…? Well, I couldn’t be sure what he was thinking. Less sure about what he would do about it.
    Gran and I were stunned when the evening news on WTMJ Tuesday night featured a drug bust in Menomonee Falls. The historic stone barn next to the Koster home was now famous for housing a meth lab in an old storeroom. Three handcuffed men trying to avert the TV cameras were being herded into a police van. We didn’t recognize any of the cops in the coverage, except for Police Chief Burzinski, who only commented the site had been under surveillance for some time, and a local tip led to the arrests. A local tip?
    “Drug Bust in Menomonee Falls” made the front page of The Milwaukee Journal and the lead story in the village community paper, along with pictures of the old barn cordoned off with yellow police tape. Thomas Koster, the eighty-five-year-old widowed owner of the property, claimed he was unaware of the lab his nephews had been operating for five months.
    When I saw the picture of the Dutch Boy with the clever caption: “Garden Gnome Unearths Crime,” I sprayed the morning paper with the grape juice I’d been drinking. Thankfully, no mention was included of Evan or me, only that Dutch Boy was abetting the sale of drugs—by dispensing packets like a miniature