Connor was usually a truthful man. Hannah knew that. He said he hadn’t known Keith Branson when she’d shown him the photo, but perhaps that was true. You didn’t have to know someone to get into a fight with him. And the evidence certainly pointed to the fact that Keith had stolen Winnie’s pie. Was that enough to make Connor hit Keith so hard that he caused an intracranial hemorrhage?

Something had made Connor absolutely furious and Hannah didn’t think that the theft of Winnie’s pie would do it. He would be angry, but not that angry. She stood there in her sunny living room, trying to think of what would make Connor fighting mad. When she couldn’t think of anything, she decided to go after her scenario from another angle. What was a pimp like Keith Branson from Minneapolis doing in Lake Eden? Was he coming after Honey, the girl who’d run away from his stable?

It all began to fall in place when Hannah realized that there was only one new girl in town and that girl was Loretta’s long-lost daughter, Jennifer. What if Keith had come here for Jennifer and Jennifer’s street name was Honey? Winnie’s ranch bordered Loretta’s farm, and Keith had worked a brief time for Winnie. Jennifer had lived right next door and Keith could have met her that summer. Winnie had mentioned that Keith had slipped away to spend time with the local kids at the swimming hole. It was one of the reasons she’d fired him. What if Keith had met Jennifer there and convinced her to run away with him?

Hannah’s mind spun with the possibilities. If she was right and Jennifer had run away with Keith, he knew where she lived. What if Keith had come back to Lake Eden, found Jennifer, and was dragging her back to his car when Connor rode up on Diablo? Carly had said something about Jennifer falling down in the woods and hurting herself, but what if those scratches and bruises were from her efforts to resist Keith?

Connor would have fought for Jennifer. Hannah was sure of that. Connor was a good man and he would have done his best to rescue Jennifer from Keith.

“This ring goes with me,” Hannah said out loud. Perhaps she was indulging in a wild flight of fancy, pulling assumptions and connections out of thin air. But perhaps she wasn’t. This could be Connor’s grandfather’s ring from a high school that no longer existed. That would explain why they hadn’t been able to find the seal on the Internet.