“So you know Mr. Bass?”

“No, but I got a friend to look him up at one of those online phone book sites.”

“And it never occurred to you to tell us what you’d found?”

“It never occurred to me that you didn’t already know where to find Jasper Walker if you wanted him,” I said. I really worked at keeping the exasperation I felt out of my voice. “All your officers are local. If I’d thought about it at all, I’d have assumed that one of them would have told you about the family connection between Jasper and the Basses.”

The chief actually growled, so I deduced none of them had. I foresaw a lively discussion about this back at the station.

“Did you notice anything when you came by here yesterday?”

I thought about it for a few seconds.

“It looked the same as today,” I said. “Well, the same as it did before you showed up,” I added, waving at the dozen law enforcement vehicles enlivening the quiet woods with their flashing lights and squawking radios.

“You didn’t see anyone?”

“Only the dog,” I said.

We both glanced over to where Scout was sitting in the back of the chief’s car. He wagged his tail when he saw we were looking at him.

“What happens to the dog?” I asked. “It’s Jasper’s dog, you know.”

“We’ll take care of the dog,” the chief said.

“Take care of him how?” I asked, with a frown.

“We’ll probably take him to the shelter,” the chief said. “Don’t worry: it’s a no-kill shelter. He’ll be fine. Friendly dog like that, someone’s bound to adopt him pretty soon.”

Scout wagged his tail as if to agree that yes, he was very friendly, and looked anxiously from the chief to me and then back again.

“Let’s get back to business,” the chief said. “So you had no idea the body was in there?”

“If I’d known there was a body in there, do you think I’d have gone in?” I asked.

Chief Burke looked as if he wouldn’t put it past me.

“I was just trying to find Karen,” I said. “I figured if Jasper was staying here, even if I couldn’t talk to him, maybe I could find something that would give me a clue to where she went. Instead, I found him.”

“Would have been nice if you’d found him yesterday,” the chief said.

“I know,” I said. “But it was just me and Timmy yesterday. I couldn’t very well leave him outside while I went into the house—he started crying whenever he lost sight of me. And it’s a damned good thing I didn’t take him in with me, isn’t it?”

I refrained from saying that most people would have given up after finding Jasper not at home the first time, and that the police would probably still be looking for Jasper if I hadn’t been nosy enough to come back and poke around some more. If you ask me, he was lucky I’d been the one looking for Jasper, but I suspected he wouldn’t quite see it that way.