"What did you just say?" Anderson asked, leaning forward in his chair.

I pushed the manilla envelope across my desk. "My uncle is Snowbird."

Anderson didn't touch the envelope. Instead, he stretched back in the chair and kicked his feet out. "This I have to hear."

"What?" I inched the envelope closer.

He waved a hand toward me. "The evidence. Lay it out for me."

"Oh, well." I cleared my throat. Before he arrived, I had gone over a little speech in my head, but now I lost all the good stuff.

It wasn't because Anderson intimidated me but because my uncle was a cool guy. He'd been there my entire life. Just because I had a mountain of evidence that he wanted his own Scarface movie didn't mean I really believed it. My brain abhorred the idea that he was doing something wrong, and that I'd be the one to bring his crimes to light.

But I also hadn't slept well in three days.

The knowledge of his misdeeds and not doing anything about it would slowly tear me apart. His crime wasn't victimless. Drugs ruined lives.

"Vonnie, the facts."

"Oh, right?" I tapped my fingers on the desk and then pulled out the photos from the envelope.

I kept them face down until I got to that point in the story. No point in giving away the good stuff early. The black thumb drive fell out beside the pictures and I slid it to the side. The writeup from Spencer, detailing how they cracked the code and discovered addresses and transactions from local sellers, stayed in the envelope. Anderson would find it later.

"I wouldn't have guessed it at first. It wasn't until other clues came to light that I put the past pieces together. In January I lost a red mitten."

"Tragic," Anderson deadpanned.

I rolled my eyes. "I lost it running in the woods away from... a situation." Anderson didn't need to know the details.

"The point is that later the mitten showed up at my office. An office that I just opened and only a few people knew about. One of them being my uncle."

Anderson tapped his chin. "You think your uncle is a crime lord because he returned a mitten?"

"No, shhh. I'm putting together my case." I tapped my fingers against the desk again. "Then it was the... package sent to my house."

I didn't want to mention what was in the package-a dead bird. Anderson and I both know what was in the box. We didn't need to rehash all the details.

"Who knew I'd moved into Katy's old place? Only my family."

Most of the town hadn't even heard by then. But Snowbird found out? There weren't many ways that would have happened without him having some kind of insider knowledge. Who else knew I was looking into the drug connection so hard in the town? My family.

How did Snowbird have all this knowledge without a special connection to me? It had to be someone local. Super local. Blood local.

Did he have a better lock on this town than Katy and me? No. We knew everything that went on here. If we didn't learn it ourselves, someone else posted it to the Facebook group. We had an entire network.

"That's it?" Anderson asked. "I have to be honest, Vonnie. This is..."

I tapped my foot on the carpeted floor. "It's not much. I know."

"It's nothing," he said and started to stand.

"Sit down. That's only the first bit." I flipped over the photos, and Anderson leaned over to see as he sat again, but I covered them. I wasn't ready to share yet. "A few days ago, my aunt came to me and asked me to track my uncle because she thought he was cheating."

I flipped over the pictures of Richard handing out the black backpacks.

"He wasn't meeting a woman."

Anderson took the top photos from me. "Who are these people?"

"His sellers? Dealers? I'm not totally up on the lingo."

He flipped through the photos. "Are you sure?"

"Definitely."

Anderson narrowed his eyes at me, creating tiny lines in his forehead. "How?"

"I bought a baggie of coke from Emma Richards in that overgrown park outside of town."

He choked. His eyes bugged, and he put his hand over his mouth as he leaned over, coughing. "You did what? Does Broadrick know?"

"Focus, Anderson. That's not important." I tossed him a picture of my uncle with Emma.

He rested his head in his hands. "Broadrick doesn't know."

"He knows. We don't keep secrets." Mostly. A few secrets were healthy for a couple. Probably. "Emma told me she buys from some old guy. Who does that sound like?"

"Half of Pelican Bay," he answered.

I didn't like his attitude. Here I was throwing my beloved family member under the bus, and he wanted to make jokes.

"I wasn't sure either, so I wanted more evidence." My foot tapped the bag at my feet.

Anderson tossed the photos on my desk. "Did you find it?"

Oh, I found it.

I grabbed the black backpack and tossed it across the desk into Anderson's lap.

He grunted as he caught it in his lap.

"You're going to want gloves." I tossed him a pair of bright yellow dish gloves from my kitchen.

Anderson let them fall on the desk.

"That's all I had." Broadrick hadn't even asked me about them when I stole them before dropping Mr. Jasper at my parents' house. "Beggars can't be choosers."

"I'm not a beggar," he said and pulled a pair of black leather gloves from his pocket. "I always come prepared."

Whatever.

I waited as Anderson yanked on the bag's zipper and pulled open the flaps to check the contents. "Shit."

"Yeah." I'd said basically the same thing when I stole the bag from my uncle's van and saw what he had in it. I suspected, but seeing the evidence with my eyes hit hard. It also sealed my decision.

The backpack had at least fifty small baggies full of white powder crammed inside the main compartment. I bet he wasn't selling baking soda. I stopped counting at thirty but didn't get anywhere near the bottom.

"This is bad, Vonnie."

I tapped my foot on the floor in rapid succession. "Yeah."

What else could I say? I'd been through all the options in my head, but there weren't any other conclusions. My uncle was a drug lord.

My aunt was going to be so mad.

"Where did you find this? Are you sure it belongs to your uncle?"

I nodded. "I found it in his vehicle tonight while he was at dinner with my aunt."

"There's just one giant problem now," he said and zipped up the backpack, leaving it in his lap. "You've tainted the evidence."

He thought so little of me. "I'm not an amateur."

Okay, actually, I was, but we didn't need to remember that minor detail.

"He has three more in the backseat of his van that's currently..." I checked my GPS tracker. "Sitting in his driveway. Get a warrant and they're yours."

"And exactly how do I tell the judge I know about this honeypot?" he asked, dropping the bag at his feet and removing his gloves.

I shrugged. Did I have to do his entire job for him? "I'll be your anonymous informant."

Anderson leaned back in his seat, and the edges of his lips almost tipped up. I took it as his way of saying "Good Job, Vonnie. You're a credit to PIs everywhere."

"This is big."

I nodded, and my foot tapped faster. "Enormous."

It would shatter my family. I'd almost cracked by having the evidence and not sharing, but now that I was totally sure, I had to tell. My aunt gave me the final push.

I had to do the right thing.

Even if that meant turning in my uncle for a prison sentence.

"I'm going to talk to finance. There's a chance I can get you cash for this. We have a fund for informants sometimes."

My forehead did that creasy thing that was going to give me wrinkles. They had a budget for informants? I'd solved full murder cases for him, but turn in my uncle and now he wants to pay me for it?

I waved a hand at him, half in disgust at the suggestion. "No, I can't take money for getting my uncle thrown in prison."

It wouldn't be right. The money would be tainted.

"You did a good job gathering all the evidence, even if your methods aren't traditional."

My foot tapping slowed. "That's what makes me unique."

"Yes, well," he said, folding his hands on his lap. "There's one point you didn't hit on."

"Hmm." The foot tapping increased. I thought I'd included everything.

"Why'd he do it?" Anderson asked.