“You didn’t find anything you took away with you or buried in the grounds or something, did you?”

“Your crew patted me down, Sheriff, and they could search my car—assuming they had a warrant, of course.”

The pat-down had been part of the confusion around the law’s arrival on the scene: when there’s a dead body and a live person, the first impulse is to connect the two. It’s usually a correct impulse, so I didn’t hold it against them. The thumb drive I’d picked up was wedged deep in my jeans and they’d missed it. They must have assumed the La Perla belonged to me.

“Yep. The judge figured we might want to take a look.”

I got up, forgetting I was controlling my anger: he’d consulted a judge, gotten a warrant. “Then I’d better check on my dog.”

There was a uniformed deputy in the room who looked as though he wanted to block my exit. It was just as well that the sheriff nodded at him to step aside—my self-control was in shreds, and I would have slugged him if he’d tried to stop me.

They hadn’t forced the locks—they apparently had one of those devices that can open cars electronically—but they hadn’t relocked the car either. Peppy wasn’t happy: strangers in the car made her uneasy. I put my arms around her, petted her, calmed her and myself.

The deputy tapped my shoulder through the open door. “Sheriff Gisborne has a couple more questions.”

I leashed up Peppy and took her in with me. The sheriff’s questions were time markers, just to show he was in charge, but he didn’t try to challenge my having my dog with me.

Why was I in Kansas? Why had I gone to the McKinnon farm? Why had I gone into the house? Nothing else was relevant, but Gisborne also wanted to know why it was I who’d found Sonia Kiel, what I’d said to Randy Marx at St. Rafe’s—

“Sheriff,” I interrupted. “Do you or any of your team drive a Buick Enclave?”

He compressed his lips in annoyance. “I want to know what you and Randy Marx were talking about.”

I smiled—not to be conciliatory, just to remind myself I was too far from my support systems to bait someone who could put me in jail. “A Buick Enclave has been showing up around me off and on today. I wondered how you knew I’d been to see Mr. Marx, so I thought perhaps you were following me.”