“We checked with Illinois, and this kid you say you’re looking for, this August, he has one registered to his name.”

“You could be right,” I said politely. “I’ve never met him, so I know less about him than you seem to. Does Illinois believe those are his car’s tire tracks?”

“I know you think you’re the cleverest person to appear in Kansas since Dorothy and Toto came home, but we aren’t total idiots in law enforcement here. We’ve caught a lot of murderers who think they’re too smart for the law to get them.”

I hung my head, duly chastened. “Has your pathologist given you a cause of death for Ms. McKinnon yet?”

“Last I heard, you were not on any need-to-know list. Just because you discovered her the first time doesn’t give you—”

“The first time?” I interrupted. “Has there been a second time?”

“I meant in the first place. And basically you get to mind your own business, which has nothing to do with the cause of death.”

“What about the truck?” I asked. “Ms. McKinnon’s pickup?”

He was starting to shout me down when Baggetto repeated the question. “Do you have her truck?”

Gisborne hated having to answer while I was listening, but he snarled, “That’s missing as well. We’ve put out an APB. If it’s in the county, it’ll turn up.”

“What are we looking for?” Baggetto asked.

“A 2002 Dodge Ram. Came from the manufacturer in red, but neighbors tell me the paint was pretty much worn off by now. Of course, Warshawski here, she might just trip on it taking her dog for a walk down by the river.”

I didn’t like anything about this story. Gisborne knew I’d been walking Peppy along the river. Maybe it was a lucky guess—as he himself said, he wasn’t a lady or a PI who could rely on his hunches. But maybe he’d had a deputy in the Buick that was following me around yesterday.

Why would the Prius and the pickup both be missing? That didn’t make sense, unless Emerald and August had thought they could ditch the Prius and make a more anonymous escape from the county in McKinnon’s old truck. I refused to believe that Emerald or August could have attacked Doris McKinnon. I also didn’t like to think they’d stood idly by while someone else killed her. Maybe they’d been out, come back and seen her body, and realized that August would be the prime suspect.

Sonia Kiel had been on the land. Could she have had some kind of psychotic break and attacked McKinnon, thinking that the old woman had been responsible for her supposed lover’s death?