Tomasetti peeks his head in. “Guy wants to know if you sell Cherry Berry ice cream.”

“No.”

He looks at me and raises his brows. “They get it?”

The woman gives a phlegmy cough. “I got it,” she says. “Guy’s name is Scott Barbereaux. Expiration date December next year.”

Twenty minutes later, I’m sitting behind my desk, mentally sorting through my growing list of suspects. The newest addition is Scott Barbereaux. Of course, the bottle I found isn’t incriminating in itself. All it does is place him at Miller’s Pond near the date that Mary Plank was there with her mystery lover. It’s a nebulous connection. But combined with the diary and his link to the shop where Mary worked, it’s worth pursuing. I’ve been around long enough to know those kinds of coincidences don’t happen without a reason.

But why would a man like Barbereaux risk everything to be with a fifteen-year-old Amish girl? He’s good-looking, relatively successful and financially established. The kind of man who could have his choice of females. Why would he choose Mary Plank?

That makes me think about motive. If Barbereaux was involved in an illicit relationship with a minor female, he would have a lot to lose if the relationship ever became public, especially if she turned up pregnant or appeared in pornographic photos. If she’d told her parents and they threatened to take the information to the police, he would be facing time in prison. But is that enough motive to wipe out an entire family? And what about the torture aspect?

I remind myself that Barbereaux has an alibi. But lovers have been known to lie to protect the one they love. I decide Glenda Patterson is the next stop on my list. I also make a mental note to check Barbereaux’s finances. A lot can be learned by the money people take in and spend.

I can’t shake the feeling that I’m missing something important. It’s there, floating around somewhere in my subconscious. But all I can see at the moment is white noise. My brain is tired and distracted. This case has reawakened some personal baggage I don’t want to deal with. Maybe because I see too much of my own past in some of the choices Mary Plank made, and that’s skewing my objectivity.

“What am I missing?” I say aloud.

This isn’t the first case that’s stumped me. Experience tells me when that happens to go back to the beginning. Look at the evidence again. Try to see it in a new light, regain an objective perspective. Pulling a fresh legal pad from my pencil drawer, I begin a stream-of-consciousness dump