Maggie expected the men from Cliff’s crew to be there when she returned. The discreet black car at the end of her driveway, however, was unexpected. She discovered as she pulled alongside it that she wasn’t in the mood for visitors, not for neighbors calling to pay their respects or for curiosity-seekers. She wanted to be alone with the sander she’d rented from George Cooper.

As she stepped from the car, she spotted the rangy man with the salt-and-pepper hair crossing her front yard from the direction of the gully. And she recognized him.

“Miss Fitzgerald.”

“Good morning. Lieutenant Reiker, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

What was the accepted etiquette, Maggie wondered, when you came home and found a homicide detective on your doorstep? Maggie decided on the practical, marginally friendly approach. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I’m going to have to ask for your cooperation, Miss Fitzgerald.” The lieutenant kept his weight on one foot, as if his hips were troubling him. “I’m sure you’d like to get on with all your landscaping plans, but we want you to hold off on the pond a while longer.”

“I see.” She was afraid she did. “Can you tell me why?”

“We’ve received the medical examiner’s preliminary report. We’ll be investigating.”

It might’ve been easier not to ask, not to know. Maggie wasn’t certain she could live with herself if she took the coward’s way out that she was obviously being offered. “Lieutenant, I’m not sure how much you’re at liberty to tell me, but I do think I have a right to know certain things. This is my property.”

“You won’t be involved to any real extent, Miss Fitzgerald. This business goes back a long way.”

“As long as my land’s part of it, I’m involved.” She caught herself worrying the strap of her bag, much as Joyce had done on her visit. She forced her hands to be still. “It’d be easier for me, Lieutenant, if I knew what was going on.”

Reiker rubbed his hand over his face. The investigation was barely under way, and he already had a bad taste in his mouth. Maybe things that’d been dead and buried for ten years should just stay buried. Some things, he decided grimly. Yes, some things.

“The medical examiner determined that the remains belonged to a Caucasian male in his early fifties.”

Maggie swallowed. That made it too real. Much too real. “How long—” she began, but had to swallow again. “How long had he been there?”

“The examiner puts it at about ten years.”

“As long as the house has been empty,” she murmured. She brought herself back, telling herself that it wasn’t personal. Logically, practically, it had nothing to do with her. “I don’t suppose they could determine how he died?”

“Shot,” Reiker said flatly, and watched the horror fill her eyes. “Appears to’ve been a thirty-gauge shotgun, probably at close range.”

“Good God.” Murder. Yet hadn’t she known it, sensed it almost from the first instant? Maggie stared out into the woods and watched two squirrels race up the trunk of a tree. How could it have happened here? “After so many years—” she began, but had to swallow yet again. “After so many years, wouldn’t it be virtually impossible to identify the—him?”