Mary Jo shook her head. "He ain't like that, Ma. Anyway, I gotta know. I won't be gone long."
She slipped out the door before Ma could protest further. She saddled Ol' Ned and led him out of the barn. She mounted him and headed for the road. She'd exercised him later than this before.
The trip to the trailer was blissfully uneventful, but when she got to the trailer, Monroe's car wasn't there. Instead there was a car. She wasn't sure if it was the one he was driving the day of the accident. It looked a little like one she'd seen at the Hudson place once. Maybe Ma was wrong and Monroe was mixed up with the drug dealers.
She turned Ol' Ned to leave, but the trailer door opened. Monroe tossed some water from a wash basin and looked up at her.
"Mary Jo. Is something wrong? Why don't you come inside and talk?"
She shook her head. "I want to talk to you - alone."
He stepped back inside for a second and when he came back out, he didn't have the wash basin. He closed the door and descended the steps. At the bottom, he lifted his head to look at her as he walked over to join her. His gaze was troubled. "What's wrong?"
She dismounted and led the mule away from the trailer. Monroe followed, his expression perplexed. She stopped beneath a broad oak tree and leaned against the trunk, looking up at him. She never was any good at leading into a subject, so she simply blurted out what was troubling her.
"Ma says maybe you're an undercover detective."
He studied her face a little too long for anyone who might be surprised at her revelation. He slowly shook his head.
"No. I'm not a policeman. Why did she think that?"
His response did nothing to convince her that he was innocent. "I reckon because them policeman didn't ask her about the trespassing. They knew she was one of the owners."
He let out a long breath and placed a palm on the tree above her head. "I thought about that - and wondered why they would come out all this way to tell me I hadn't filed a report. How would they know unless they were already checking up on me?"
That made her feel better. "So, you have no idea why they came here?"
He grunted. "Oh, I have an idea, all right. Obviously Lester talked to them."
"So you think the police are involved in…whatever is going on up here."