“It’s a little much for my taste,” Andrea admitted, “but I guess Max had to do something with all the cow things that people gave him. That’s the trouble with collections. Once people know you’re collecting something, they give it to you for every occasion.”

There was a strange burning odor in the kitchen and Hannah noticed that the red light was glowing on the coffeemaker. She reached out to shut it off and realized that the pot was dry, just inky sludge that once had been coffee in the bottom. “Max left the coffee on.”

“Don’t run water in it,” Andrea warned. “I did that once and the carafe cracked.”

Hannah set the glass pot on one of Max’s burners to cool. Then she noticed a thermos on the counter, right next to a dishtowel with happy-looking bovines grazing across its green terrycloth surface. The thermos was empty and its cap was off. “Max must have planned to come back here. He made a pot of coffee so that he could fill his thermos. He probably wanted to take it with him for the drive.”

Andrea looked sick as she stared at the empty thermos, and Hannah knew she was thinking about what might have happened to Max. She grabbed her sister’s arm and propelled her past the cabinets with their cow-painted knobs and into the deserted living room.

Hannah flicked on the lights, but there was no sign that anyone had been here since Max had left early Wednesday morning. She glanced at her sister—that sick look was still on her face—and decided that she’d better do something fast. Andrea’s face was pale, her knees were shaking, and she looked as if she might faint.

“Andrea? I need you to help me out here,” Hannah ordered in the same tone of voice that Delores had used when she’d told them to clean their rooms. “Have you ever been in Max’s house before?”

Andrea blinked once, twice, and then she turned to Hannah. She looked disoriented and more than a little frightened. “What did you say?”

“Have you ever been in Max’s house before?”

Andrea nodded. A little color was beginning to come back to her cheeks, now that Hannah had given her something else to focus on. “Al sent me out with some papers last fall. Max bought some property over in Browerville and Al handled the paperwork for him.”

“Can you remember what the house looked like then?”

“Of course I can. I’m a real estate agent.” Andrea’s voice was less tentative. “Max even gave me a tour. It was right after he fixed it up and I wanted to see it. I thought he might want to put it up for sale later on and move to a bigger place in town.”

Hannah smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “I knew I could count on you. Just keep your eyes open for anything that looks out of place. How about this room? Does it look the same as it did then?”