I park in a shady spot at the curb and shut down the engine. Concrete steps draw my eye to a railed front porch, where blooming geraniums and petunias spill from a dozen or so terra-cotta pots. A red Volkswagen sits in the driveway in front of a one-car detached garage, also painted yellow. It’s a pleasant-looking home with a cozy, welcoming countenance. I take the sidewalk to the door and ring the bell. When no one answers, I leave the porch and look in the garage, but there’s no one there. I’m on my way back to the Explorer, when I hear the sound of a chainsaw coming from the backyard. I take the narrow sidewalk that cuts between the house and the garage.

“Hello? Mr. and Mrs. Strackbein?” I call out. “It’s Chief of Police Kate Burkholder!”

I’ve just reached the chain-link gate, when a woman wearing a floppy straw hat peers around the corner of the house. “Oh. Hi. We’re back here.”

I open the gate and go through. “Sounds like someone’s doing some storm cleanup,” I say.

She takes off her hat and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. “I worry when he gets that chainsaw out, so I came out to supervise and make sure he doesn’t cut off his fingers. Almost as bad as when he gets up on that ladder. I swear the man is going to kill himself one of these days.” But she says the words with a generous helping of good humor.

As if realizing I’m not there to shoot the breeze, she cocks her head. “We’re not making too much noise with the chainsaw, are we?”

“No, ma’am. I wanted to ask you and your husband some questions about some property you own out on Gellerman Road.”

“We saw that the barn was down.” Nodding, she clucks her tongue. “It’s just crazy how a tornado picks and chooses what it does and doesn’t destroy.”

She’s a chatty, friendly woman with an amiable demeanor. But I know from experience that just because someone looks like your favorite aunt doesn’t mean she doesn’t have secrets.

“Can we help you?”

I look up at the sound of the male voice to see a sixty-something man approach. He’s wearing dark work trousers and a white T-shirt that’s damp with sweat at the chest and armpits.

“Mr. Strackbein?”

“That’s me.” He comes up behind his wife and sets his hand protectively on her shoulder. “What can we do for you?”

“I was just asking your wife about your property on Gellerman Road,” I tell him.

“Knew that barn was going to go down one day,” he says. “We inherited it from my mom when she passed in ’eighty-eight. Randy Smith leases it from us, puts in corn or soybeans every year.”

“There was a Boy Scout troop cleaning up out there, and a couple of boys discovered human remains in the crawl space of your barn.”

The man’s eyes widen. “What?”