“Bob and I went to school together.” Cliff watched a big black crow swoop over the trees. He was remembering the look on Maggie’s face the moment before she’d begun to scream. “He ended up marrying one of my cousins a couple of years ago.”

Bending over, she plucked a wildflower and began to shred it. “You have a lot of cousins.”

He shrugged. The crow landed and was still. “Enough.”

“A few Morgans.”

That caught his attention. “A few,” he said slowly. “Why?”

“I wondered if it was your connection with them that made you resent my having this land.”

Cliff wondered why, when he normally respected candor, it annoyed him from her. “No.”

“But you did resent it,” Maggie insisted. “You resented me before you even saw me.”

He had, and perhaps the resentment had grown since he’d had a taste of her. “Joyce had the right to sell this property whenever, and to whomever, she wanted.”

Maggie nodded, looking down to where the puppy scrambled in the new dirt. “Is Joyce a cousin, too?”

“What are you getting at?”

Lifting her head, Maggie met his impatient look. “I’m just trying to understand small towns. After all, I’m going to be living here.”

“Then the first thing you should learn is that people don’t like questions. They might volunteer more information than you want to hear, but they don’t like to be asked.”

Maggie acknowledged this with a lift of a brow. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Rather pleased that she’d annoyed him, Maggie turned to the trooper as he approached.

“They’re sending out a team.” He glanced from her to Cliff, then over his friend’s shoulder toward the gully. “Probably be here for a while, then take what they find with them.”

“What then?”

Bob brought his attention back to Maggie. “Good question.” He shifted his feet as he considered it. “To tell you the truth, I’ve never been in on anything like this before, but my guess would be they’d ship everything off to the medical examiner in Baltimore. He’d have to check the, ah, everything out before they could start an investigation.”

“Investigation?” she repeated, and felt something tighten in her throat. “What kind of investigation?”

The trooper ran his thumb and forefinger down his nose. “Well, ma’am, as far as I can see, there’s no reason for anything like that to be buried down in that gully unless—”

“Unless someone buried it there,” Cliff finished.

Maggie stared out into the peaceful spread of greening wood across the lane. “I think we could all use some coffee,” she murmured. Without waiting for an acknowledgment, she went back toward the house.

Bob took off his hat and wiped at the sweat on his forehead. “This is one for the books.”

Cliff followed his friend’s long look at the woman climbing the rickety front steps. “Which? Her or that?” With one hand he gestured toward the gully.

“Both.” Bob took out a pack of gum and carefully unwrapped a piece. “First place, what’s a woman like her, a celebrity, doing holed up here in the woods?”