“Ron came here with his mama, when he was a little kid. She was no better than she should be, if you know what I’m sayin’. She worked at the old Bootstrap Saloon. Place burned down in 1962, along with the movie theatre. Her old man got out of jail around that time, and she lit out with him. Ron stayed behind, lived with whoever’d take him in, for however long. Dropped out of school after the eighth grade.” Boomer found a bright spot in my dismal family history. “He got his GED, though. Did it to please Evie. He might have been good with computers, too, if he’d lived. Had an old TRS-80 he picked up someplace. Used to fiddle with it all the time.”

I almost wished I hadn’t asked about my grandparents.

The more I learned, the worse I felt.

I thanked Boomer, went back to my car and headed for Tucson.

Jolie wouldn’t be off work for hours yet, but I needed a hole to crawl into.

I drove to her place, a garden apartment in the university district, extracted the key from the fake rock on the back patio, and let myself in through the kitchen door. I was peering into the refrigerator when a low growl sounded behind me.

The hairs on my nape went rigid.

Big dog, in deadly earnest.

When had Jolie gotten a dog?

More importantly, why hadn’t she told me?

The growl deepened to a ferocious rumble.

“Don’t move,” I said, talking to both myself and the dog.

Slowly, very slowly, I straightened and turned my head just far enough to see the fiend half-crouched in the doorway between Jolie’s kitchen and living room. He looked like a cloning experiment gone terribly wrong, with his coarse brindled coat and his laid-back ears. I swear to God his eyes were yellow as candle flames, and he didn’t have teeth, he had fangs.

He lunged.

I scrambled up the shelves of Jolie’s refrigerator with a clatter and huddled on top, as close to the wall as I could get.

The hell-hound reared up on his hind legs and did his level best to get me, but I was maybe three inches out from his snarling, slobbering maw. When he finally exhausted himself, trying to tear off a chunk of any old part of my anatomy, he curled up in a big, quivering ball in front of the fridge.

My legs were going to sleep, so I shifted, sat Indian-style, like some kind of human cookie jar, and waited for my sister to come home.

My cell phone rang at least three separate times.

It might have been Tucker.

It might have been the nursing home, calling about Lillian.

It might have been another text message, threatening me with death.