Katie’s heart beat a little faster each time she read the short note. When she’d opened the hand-scrawled envelope yesterday, she’d been stunned. Was it a prank or had Isaac Wells really reached out to her? And why? Why not go to the police or just come home? What “circumstances” had prevented him from returning? If he’d been kidnapped, he surely wouldn’t have been allowed to write the missive. Was he running from the law? Or an old enemy? She pulled out a thick file and skimmed its contents—copies of police reports, the columns she’d dedicated to the Isaac Wells mystery, notes from interviews with what little there was of his family and friends.

What had happened to the old guy? Had there been foul play involved? Leaning back in her chair she tapped the eraser end of a pencil to her front teeth as she scanned her own articles for the millionth time.

Wells, who owned the ranch so close to Luke Gates’s property, had been a loner. Mason Lafferty and his sister, Patty, were his only relatives living in the vicinity.

He had resided in the area for over sixty years, but had kept to himself, wasn’t very friendly. Some people in town thought he was a miser, even a cheat. There was talk of him being involved in some kind of crime, but, as far as Katie could learn, it was all just gossip.

He’d never married, never fathered any children and had lived alone for most of his life. He’d gotten by meagerly, and had struggled for years to keep his scrap of a ranch afloat. But he’d had a passion for old cars and had owned a collection of classic and antique cars that he’d restored himself. He’d hunted once in a while, usually deer or elk. He hadn’t been a churchgoer, and had been a solitary man who didn’t talk much—a man whom no one, including the few members of his family, really knew. Despite local conjecture, he’d never been in serious trouble with the law.

Why would he take off?

Had he been coerced?

Had he been getting senile and just wandered away?

Or had he left on purpose?

No one, including the police, insurance-company investigators or his family, seemed to have much to go on.

Until now. Katie stared at the note with a jaundiced eye.

The letter certainly could be a hoax. The postmark was from Eureka, California, which was barely a hundred miles south. Anyone could have driven down the coast and sent it. His signature—the only part of the missive aside from the address on the envelope that was handwritten in ink—looked authentic, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to forge.

So, now, what to do?