When we’d exhausted small talk about the GPS, Manfred asked me about the case we’d been on before we’d come to Dallas. “Fill me in on your last few days” was the way he put it. “You know this shooting is related to something you’ve done recently. I don’t see how the Carolina case can be related.”

I agreed with him. Since Manfred was a colleague, I explained to him about what had happened at Pioneer Rest Cemetery. I wouldn’t have broken my unwritten bond with the Joyces, but I’d come to believe they were probably involved in what was happening. More importantly, I knew Manfred would keep it to himself.

“So there are two ways you can go with that,” he said. “You can pursue the missing baby, which one of the men you met may have fathered—though I guess that kid isn’t a baby anymore, it’d be in school—or you can pursue the possibility one of them threw the rattlesnake at Rich Joyce, startling him into a heart attack.”

“There are those two possibilities,” I said, relieved to be talking about the whole situation. “And there’s the fact that Tolliver’s father has shown back up, and he’s trying to reconnect with Tolliver. And the girls. And there’s the weird thing that after all these years, someone’s reported a Cameron sighting.”

I filled Manfred in on our family business.

“So this might have to do with your little sisters, somehow. Or with your missing sister. What if this has something to do with Cameron?”

I was startled. “Why would it?”

“There’s a caller claiming to have seen Cameron. Then another caller threatens you. Two anonymous phone calls. Those sure might be linked, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, considering it for the first time. “Yes, of course they could.” If I hadn’t put this together before, blame it on the fact that people near me kept getting shot. “So this might have to do with Cameron.”

“Or with the caller knowing this was the surest way to get you away from Tolliver. Maybe he thought you would leave, go to Texarkana. He couldn’t have counted on the police being willing to show you the tape at the police station.” There was silence for a long minute. “Uh, Harper,” Manfred said. “You sure—for real—that the woman you saw in the tape wasn’t your sister?”

“I’m sure,” I said. “Her jaw was different, and the way she walked was different. True, she was blond and she seemed the right height. True, I don’t know why anyone would claim to have seen her when the case is cold and no one’s looking anymore.”

“You’re . . . I guess you’ve always been convinced that Cameron is dead?”