Fiji had not met the sheriff, but she recognized him from his campaign posters. Arthur Smith, with his thick chest and shoulders and large eyes, reminded Fiji of a bull. His short curly hair, though mostly still a pale blond, had a heavy sprinkling of silver. She’d voted for him, last election; more accurately, she’d voted against his opponent, a known bully. It was a measure of the previous sheriff’s unpopularity that Smith, not a native Texan, had won the contest.

Sheriff Smith was calm, businesslike, and in charge; there were no two ways about that.

“Fiji Cavanaugh?” he asked, when he emerged from his car. Fiji raised her hand like a schoolgirl.

“Where’s the body?” When Fiji pointed down from the right point at the cliff edge, he sent two deputies scrambling down, laden with cameras and other paraphernalia.

After that, having looked over the people at the site, one by one, he began by talking to Fiji. She pegged him for about forty-five and automatically noted that his wedding ring finger was bare. He didn’t have any obvious signs that screamed “bachelor,” though; he was absolutely trimmed, pressed, shaven, and starched.

“I remember reading your name in the report when Mr. Winthrop first said his girlfriend was missing. You found the body, Ms. Cavanaugh?” he said. His accent was softer than the local one, from much farther east, though still south of the Mason-Dixon.

“Yes, we all came out here for a picnic, and I was just walking along the cliff.”

“And what drew it to your attention?”

“The smell,” she said bluntly.

“And who do you think this is, here on the slope?”

Fiji stared at him. “The shoes are Aubrey Hamilton’s,” she said finally. “And what’s left of the hair is the right color to be Aubrey’s.”

“So,” he said, “Ms. Hamilton vanished after Mr. Winthrop spent the night in Dallas?”

“During the time he spent in Dallas,” she corrected him.

“And did you see Ms. Hamilton after he left? For this business trip?”

“He’d gone to meet with some friends of his in the pawn business. They’d talked online and they wanted to meet face to face. So he drove over to Dallas.”

“Did you see her after the time he’d left?”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

“Did you see her in the pawnshop?”

“No,” she said, without even thinking about it. She’d never dropped into Midnight Pawn after Aubrey was in residence. Never. She could feel her face become tighter, as all her muscles hummed with tension.

“Then where?”

“I saw her come out of the door,” she said. “She came out of the side door—not the pawnshop door, the door to the landing, where the stairs lead up to Bobo’s apartment and down to Olivia’s.” She did not mention Lemuel.

“To get to the apartments, you don’t have to go through the store.”