J.D. tried to pay attention, but his mind strayed. To Tiffany and her kids. There was more trouble in that house than she was willing to admit. Stephen was well on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent. J.D. could read the signs—the same signs that he’d displayed as a youth. As for Christina, the imp had woken up in the middle of the night wailing and sobbing. Through the floorboards J.D. had heard Tiffany’s hurried footsteps and soft voice as she’d run to her daughter’s room and whispered words of comfort.

Yep, she had her problems at the old apartment house. There were four tenants besides himself. Mrs. Ellingsworth, whom he’d already met, occupied one basement unit, an art student lived in the other, and a recently married couple resided on the main floor of the carriage house. The upper story was empty, recently vacated by a man named Lafferty.

He’d learned all this from Max Crenshaw as they’d driven from one place to the next. The Realtor seemed to know everything that happened in Bittersweet.

“Now, I’m gonna show you something that I don’t have listed yet—well, no one does, but it’s part of our latest local mystery and since we’re driving by anyway . . .” Crenshaw braked at a run-down old ranch with a small cabin near the front of the property, a couple of sheds and an imposing barn at the back. Vast, untended acres stretched behind the house.

“Weird deal, this,” Max said as he nosed the Cadillac into the drive, shoved the gearshift into Park and let the car idle. “You mind?” he asked as he rummaged in his breast pocket and came up with a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

“No.”

“Good. I’m tryin’ to cut back, but, hell, you know how it is.” He shook out a cigarette, offered one to J.D. and punched in the lighter.

“No, thanks.”

“Ever smoke?”

“Years ago.”

“Wish I could quit. Anyway, this place belongs—or belonged, depending upon what you want to believe—to a guy by the name of Isaac Wells.”

“Did it?” J.D. was suddenly more interested in the dilapidated cabin and desolate acres.