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“Ben, I have a
great news tip for you.” Both hands on the clock in Mert’s truck pointed to twelve. Maybe midnight was late to be calling.

He sounded a bit sleepy when he answered the phone, but when I repeated the words “Crusaders for Racial Purity,” he was all ears.

“This coming Monday the Crusaders plan to hand out free CDs to kids in the Roma Middle School. A sympathetic local businessman who’s a school board member got permission. The CDs are packaged to look like harmless music, like what kids would listen to on the radio, but the songs are just hateful. Plus, they encourage kids to become warriors and fight for white supremacy. These CDs are designed to cause all sorts of problems.”

Ben sputtered, “You have to be kidding.”

“Nope. This has worked well in other towns. They’ve spent a lot of money getting these CDs produced and packaged, hoping to fly under the radar.”

“I’ll get one of our reporters right on this. We’ve got the perfect person for the job. She’ll be at the school first thing with a CD player and a photographer. The minute that first disk is pressed into a kid’s hand, we’ll post the news on our website. Then we’ll do an in-depth follow-up for our weekly addition. I’ll even call one of the local television affiliates to cover it. In fact, I’ll round up a lawyer I know. He’ll slap them with a hate-crimes suit so quickly their heads will spin.”

I smiled with relief. The publicity would put a quick halt to the Crusaders for Racial Purity’s planned infiltration of the Roma schools with ugly messages. It would also expose their accomplices, like the sympathetic school board member, to uncomfortable public scrutiny.

“Kiki, how do you know all this?”

“That prior engagement? I was at a barbecue in Roma with the local leader of the Crusaders for Racial Purity.”

“You were where?”

I repeated myself.

Finally, I asked, “You there? Hello?”

“Kiki, you sure know how to live life on the edge. I mean, I thought you were courageous, but this … this borders on …”

“Stupid?”

“Reckless. This isn’t the sort of thing a housewife should stick her nose into.”

Housewife? I didn’t remember exchanging vows with a building.

“You’re the person who said he admired me because I confronted my husband’s killer. And when I tracked down that person who caused the death of a woman at our crop!”

Ben sighed. “That was different. You were thrust into those circumstances. You can’t go chasing trouble. I can’t have my future wife involved in dangerous pastimes.”

“But you are sending out a female reporter!”

“She has a degree in journalism.”

Now I really saw red. I’d been a journalism student when I’d gotten pregnant and had to quit school. I sputtered and drove with one hand, weaving around on the highway. My lack of education was yet another sore spot on my bruised and battered body, and he’d landed on it with both feet.

“Kiki? Where are you?”

“On the road. About fifty miles outside of St. Louis. In Mert’s truck.”

“You need to get home! You can’t be out at all hours of the night! And putting yourself in situations like this! How can I protect you?”

“I don’t need protecting!” I yelled. “I’m not a child. I’m an adult!”

“Then act like one! Think about the consequences of your actions!”

I screamed into the phone, “You’re not the boss of me!” and then I hung up on him. I drove for forty more minutes spewing and stewing my way along life’s highway.

There goes the shortest engagement in the world, I thought. Shoot, I didn’t even get to toss the ring in his face. I ground my teeth and screamed some more as I drove along.

I did, however, have one more phone call to make. I dialed Detweiler. I’m not even sure what I said to him.

“I’ll be right there,” he promised.

I pulled into my driveway.

I waited for him. I must have put my head on my kitchen table and dozed off, because next thing I knew, I awakened to him banging on my back door. I ushered him in and told him where I’d been. A glance at the clock told me he must have set a new land speed record getting to my house.

Detweiler sank down onto a kitchen chair and blinked at me with bloodshot eyes the size of Frisbees. Gracie moaned and set her big head down on his lap. His hand idly worked the tender spot behind her ears.

“You do realize a woman from Oklahoma was shot in Louisiana because she asked to leave an Aryan initiation ceremony. Right? Her only crime was wanting to go home. She was an innocent guest.”

The words “unlike YOU” hung in the air. I didn’t respond.

He shook his head. “I couldn’t have heard you right. You couldn’t have said you attended a KKK gathering. Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.” I took a deep breath.

“Okay. No KKK rally. Good.”

“Huh uh. It was a meeting of the Crusaders for Racial Purity.”

“Good Lord! Are you all right? Did anyone follow you home?”

I explained the Gartners thought I worked for a campus newspaper. My mouth tasted like I’d licked the floormats of Mert’s truck. I pushed back my chair to start a pot of coffee. The Bextra and beer were wearing off. I winced in pain as I stood.

“Did they hurt you?” He grabbed my arm. I yelped because he’d pressed on a bruise. He pulled back to stare at me, looking me over, his face a swarm of conflicting emotions. I rubbed my upper arm tentatively. “Did they hurt you?” His voice was louder and angrier.

“I got run off the road by a car this afternoon.”

“Who did that to you? Did you get a license plate? Why didn’t you call me?”

“There wasn’t time. I soaked in a tub, but I needed to get going. Douglas Gartner was expecting me.” For emphasis I rolled back my sleeves and pulled up the jeans skirt to show off my bruises. It was a bad move. They’d colored up in the intervening hours, and I looked like I’d been dumped in a tie-dye vat and left to soak too long.

“That close call in Ladue …” his voice trailed off. “Someone is trying to kill you!”

“I didn’t see the plates. On either car. This time I was busy trying not to roll down the access road and onto Highway 40. Besides I had to get over to Roma. And I wasn’t in any real danger at the meeting. Hey, it was pretty much like any other barbecue.”

“What if someone you knew had been there?”

I shrugged. “Didn’t think about that.”

He took the French press from me and started measuring coffee. Gracie leaned against him, her eyes following his every move. Once he had the hot water in the pot, he squatted down and put his arms around her. He hugged my big dog so tightly she made a little “oof” sound.

Then I realized. He’d lost one person he cared about only a few days ago. Now he was thinking about what might have happened to me. I went over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Go sit down,” I said. I turned on the oven and popped open a Pillsbury tube of cinnamon rolls. When the timer went off, I was pretty well finished explaining how Danny Gartner had admitted poisoning his son’s mind against minorities.

“The rationale behind the Crusaders for Racial Purity is the natural physical superiority of the non-Jewish white race. If you look up their teachings, you’ll see that abortion is considered a positive alternative to having a mixed-race child. Everything in Danny Gartner’s upbringing led up to his warning his son about how dangerous blacks are. Suffice it to say, Danny made Christopher scared of blacks and …”

“Other minorities,” volunteered Detweiler to spare me.

“Gays, too. On purpose. Danny sees this as building the next generation of white supremacists, but it was also a way to get back at his wife for leaving him.”

“Tough guy. Roughing up blacks and migrants. You’d think he’d go after meth labs. They ought to strip him of his badge.”

“Exactly what the world needs, another jerk posing as a cop. Which is kind of amusing, considering that George Lincoln Rockwell specifically praised police in one of his speeches.”

“Come again?”

“Never mind.” I really didn’t feel like going into the research I’d done. Downloading it made me nauseated. Cooties, it’s only cooties, I told myself as I looked up one anti-Semitic, venom-spewing site after another. This is worth it, I reminded myself, if it brings one of these bad boys wearing the Black Sun, another name for the Nazi swastika, to justice. When this was over, I planned to pay a computer expert to make sure I hadn’t picked up any cookies in my cyber travels. I also needed to take my bike in for repairs. Kiss that six grand goodbye, Kiki. Oh, well. As far as I was concerned, my foray into white supremacy was done and done.

“Did you see anything we can haul Gartner junior in for? Man, would I love to put him behind bars.”

I had anticipated this. I’d managed to listen very carefully as different groups of people chatted. I blended in by helping clean up the Gartner’s kitchen, which was a hub of activity. “They did say they were planning a big rally in Bloomington. The birthplace of George Lincoln Rockwell is now part of the campus of a hospital there. Every year a few of the faithful gather and put down a wreath. Typically the floral tribute disappears minutes after the crowd disperses. Understandably, the city and the hospital don’t want that sort of attention. This year the boys are planning to hang around all day to babysit the wreath. That could get ugly.”

“Rockwell? Isn’t he a painter?
The Saturday Evening Post
?” Detweiler scratched his head.

“That’s the uncle, Norman Rockwell. This Rockwell was the founder of the American Nazi Party. He’s still a central figure in white supremacy movements.”

“Maybe we can run him in.”

“He’s dead. He was assassinated years ago.”

“Promise you won’t ever contact these yahoos again. Please?” It was the pleading tone of his request that twisted my gut. That and the expression of concern in his face.

“Don’t worry. I have no desire to ever see any of them again. Ever. It was … creepy.”

“And if one of them calls you, you let me know pronto. Meanwhile, I’ll double-check Danny’s and his father’s alibis.”

That was easy. I promised. We both had a couple of rolls and a cup of coffee.

The sky was lightening up when he stood to go. “We can take it from here. Boy, can you imagine what old Danny thought when his wife took up with a black guy?”

I didn’t want to think about it. It was too ugly.

My come-uppance for cheating
death and partying with white supremacists came a few hours later when my alarm went off on Monday morning. I was so sore from my biking accident that I couldn’t lift my legs without pain. The muscles in my shoulder and upper back felt frozen, and I could barely turn my head. Mert let herself in the back door. She’d stopped by to trade my BMW for her pickup truck.

“You look like crap,” she said conversationally.

“Thanks,” I answered. “Got any drugs?”

She palmed me a Bextra. We were sitting at my kitchen table sipping coffee when my cell phone rang. I got up slowly and tripped over Gracie’s tail. She gave me an indignant look, but didn’t move.

“You—”and then the curses started. It was Danny Gartner screaming in my ear. “I had a friend in the campus police check you out. I’ve a half a mind to drive on up there to La-Jew and come teach you—” I stood stunned, unable to move. He was hurling insults and threats to my life into the phone.

Mert pushed past me and snatched the phone out of my hands, “Danny Gartner? That you? What kind of a Christian are you? Shame on you! Shame! This is Mert. You ever threaten my friend again and I’ll come ram my Tony Lama’s so far up your butt you’ll have to pick your eyeballs up off the ground. You hear me? Now you back off ’fore I call your mama on you. This here lady’s a Christian and whiter’n your undies on wash day.”

Then she hung up on him.

I was speechless.

“You mean you know him? I mean, really know him?”

“Used to babysit the ugly snot. I’m only a couple years older’n him, but still. His mama didn’t trust him to stay home alone. Not a lick of common sense. Heck, his stupid pit bulls got more brains than he does, and they’re dumber than a box full of night crawlers.”

Mert gave me a long appraising look. “You okay? Still sore from your biking accident? I’ll leave you another couple of Bextras. If you’re worried about Danny, don’t be. I got me a squirrel gun. You can borrow it. Durn squirrels kept chewing through the electric lines to my hot tub.”

“And you take a gun to them? Isn’t that a tad drastic?”

“First I tried trapping ’em.”

“And?”

“All I caught was two bunny rabbits and the neighbor’s cat. She was mighty huffy about it.”

“‘She’ being the cat or the neighbor?”

“Both of ’em. That’s when I bought me a squirrel gun. I’ll show you how to use it. I wouldn’t recommend shooting old Danny, but you can put a scare into him.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll just call Detweiler instead.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”