“It’s only a theory,” I said. “We shouldn’t judge too hastily.”

“Sounds like a good theory to me,” Sandie said. She smiled, but it was the kind of smile I’d have if I saw something really awful about to happen to my worst enemy.

“We may not know until Karen turns up,” I said. “If she succeeded in finding Jasper, she might be the last person who did. And I’m wondering if maybe she found his body, knew people would suspect her of killing him, and decided to disappear until she could figure out how to clear herself.”

At least I hoped that’s what she was doing.

“What do you figure he came back for?” Sandie asked.

“No idea,” I said. “And it’s possible he was trying to keep out of sight—his next-door neighbor hadn’t seen him.”

“Next-door neighbor?” Sandie said. “What neighbor? I mean, from what Karen said, Jasper’s uncle’s place was in the back of beyond.”

“Aubrey Hamilton,” I said. “Owner of the bird farm next door.”

“Aubrey? I thought she was still summering in Maine.”

“No, when I went out there—wait a minute—she? The Aubrey I talked to was a guy. Twenty-something. Silly little goatee.”

“I don’t know who you talked to, but it sure wasn’t Aubrey Hamilton,” Sandie said. “She’s an older lady—older’n I am, anyway, late forties or maybe fifties. She and her husband used to raise poodles, but after he died, she gave it up. Just keeps a couple as pets. And every Memorial Day, like clockwork, she packs up the poodles and heads off to someplace in Maine, where she grew up.”

“Then who the hell did I talk to at her house yesterday?”

“Maybe she hired someone to look after the place while she was gone.”

“He didn’t correct me when I mistook him for Aubrey.”

“Maybe he figured if you didn’t know Aubrey any better than that, you didn’t have much business knowing she wasn’t around.”

I bit back a sharp comment. Yes, that was definitely how some of the natives would react to a nosy outsider asking questions.

And the guy with the silly goatee was definitely a native. He’d had the typical old Caerphilly County accent, blending the round vowels of a Tidewater accent with just a hint of the twang that became more pronounced as you moved west toward the Shenandoah. My own voice, with a hint of Tidewater buried in the rather generic Mid-Atlantic accent I’d picked up from radio and television, instantly signaled to the natives that I was not from around here.

“Does Aubrey Hamilton have family in Caerphilly?” I asked.

“No. Well, maybe some by marriage,” Sandie said. “I don’t really know her. But I did hear about how she can’t take the summers and has to go north every year—everyone knows that.”

She sounded rather condescending. I thought Aubrey’s plan sounded quite sensible—if you didn’t like Virginia’s hot, sticky summers, why stay around and whine if you had the means to avoid them?