“Good afternoon, Sheriff.”

“Afternoon. And can we make it Nate? I’m not into titles or formalities.”

Nice that he’d repeated the first-name request.

“Sure. Do you have news on the vandalism incident?” Why else would he be calling?

“I actually have two pieces of business to discuss. Are you anywhere close to the courthouse?”

“No.” Dang it. “I’m on my way to the morgue in the next county.” Far preferable to a funeral home for autopsies, but since most rural counties didn’t have a morgue and didn’t want to haul bodies halfway across the state to the closest one, mortuaries were her second home—much to the chagrin of her sisters.

“In that case, why don’t we talk by phone?”

Was there a touch of disappointment in his inflection? Or was that wishful thinking?

Put away the rose-colored glasses, Grace.

Check.

“That works for me.”

“I’ll start with the vandalism. I wish I had better news to report, but the Larktree chief didn’t have anything to offer in terms of suspects, and the prints I lifted at your house and from your car didn’t generate any hits in the database.”

She sighed. “Discouraging but not unexpected. At least my car should be almost good as new by the end of the week. I dropped it at a body shop yesterday. I’m in a loaner car as we speak.”

“I’ll continue to keep my ear to the ground. It’s possible we’ll get a lead on the vandalism.”

“I appreciate that.”

“The other piece of business relates to the Mavis Templeton case. We’ve had a tip from someone who saw a suspicious car leaving her property late on the night before her body was discovered. There’s a high probability it was the person who broke her window. I wanted to follow up on your comment from Saturday about a connection between her case and a previous autopsy. If my tip pans out, it could raise the odds your hunch has credibility.”

Grace tapped a finger against the steering wheel. “I don’t think a robbery—or attempted robbery—would have any relationship to the theory I’m playing with. There wasn’t any evidence of that sort of crime in the other case I researched.”

“So what made you connect the two?”

She pulled around a slow-moving tractor on the rural road and explained the unusual item she’d found in both stomachs, plus the further research she’d done over the weekend, trying to find other similarities. “Honestly, in the end I couldn’t see why anyone would want to harm these two people. Mavis had no apparent enemies, and I doubt Fred’s neighbor would kill him just to have a chance to acquire his property. Other than age, lack of family, and a rural address, there was no overlap between them.”

“The seedlike thing is strange, though—especially since there were also stomach irregularities.”

“I know. Whatever it is, it’s hard to imagine an older, Midwest bachelor farmer like Fred Wilson would venture far from a meat-and-potatoes menu in his cooking or eating. Not to stereotype anyone, you understand. I know many men are wonderful chefs.”