“Not any in my circle—including me. I do grill a decent burger, but I’m a one-dish wonder. If I want a home-cooked meal or homemade dessert, I go to someone else’s home. In terms of the seedlike items, I’m curious what they are.”

“I am too. I debated over the weekend whether I should follow up on that question, and finally decided to close the loop by asking a botanist at the state university to see if he could identify them. I dropped one off there this morning as I passed by.” She pulled around a car tooling along at thirty miles an hour. Did no one but her have places to go on this Tuesday afternoon?

“Let me know what you find out. If my lead pans out, I may dig deeper on both cases. It couldn’t hurt to review the Fred Wilson file. I’m sure my counterpart in his county would share it.”

“I hate for you to waste your time on what could turn out to be nothing more than a weird coincidence.”

“I don’t put much stock in coincidences, and your rationale for being suspicious is sound.” A few seconds passed. “Well . . . I won’t distract you any further from your driving. Let’s talk again as soon as one of us has any new information. If you want to reach me, this is the best number.”

“Got it. The botanist thought he could get to this in the next few days, so you may hear from me by the end of the week. Early next week at the latest.”

“I’ll look forward to it. Take care.”

As he ended the call, a few drops of rain splattered on her windshield. Leaning forward, she scanned the horizon, where dark clouds had gathered. The thunderstorms the meteorologists had predicted appeared to be brewing.

Too bad she couldn’t hole up somewhere with a cup of coffee and a handsome man until the tempest blew over.

But duty called—so she was headed into the thick of it.

If her luck held, though, perhaps she’d be home safe and sound before the worst of the storms erupted and made the road ahead slippery . . . and dangerous.

Nate pulled into the feed and farm-equipment company lot, cruiser tires crunching on the gravel.

The MIAC had outdone itself.

Not only had the information analysis center narrowed down the list of possible matches from the partial license plate the reverend had provided, it had completed the task in record time.

End result? Four plates were connected to a dark sedan, and one of them was based in this county.

It belonged to nineteen-year-old Tyler Holmes—who was about to be visited by the county sheriff.

Nate set the brake and skimmed through the notes he’d taken after running the man’s plate and doing a background check.

Holmes lived in a small town not far from Mavis’s house and drove an older-model Mazda. He had a high school education, a spotty credit history, and a couple of speeding tickets. There were no outstanding warrants, but he’d had a few run-ins with the law as a juvenile.