Daisy’s car was in the drive when I arrived at the house. I’d returned the key to its hiding place beneath the flowerpot. Rather than walk in unannounced, I rang the bell politely and waited on the porch until she opened the door. I took one look at her and knew something was wrong. She was still wearing her work clothes. The pallor in her complexion had shifted to the gray end of the spectrum and her eyes were pinched with tension. I didn’t think she’d been weeping, but she’d suffered a shock.

“What is it?”

She put a hand against her mouth and shook her head. Like a sleepwalker, she crossed to an upholstered chair and sank down on the edge. I closed the front door behind me. I moved to the sofa and sat down with my knees nearly touching hers. “Can you tell me what it is?”

She nodded, but said nothing. I had to wait her out. Whatever it was, she’d been hit hard. A minute passed and she sighed. Was her father dead?

Another minute passed.

When she finally spoke, her voice was so low I had to lean close to hear. “Detective Nichols was here. He left a few minutes ago, and when you rang the bell, I thought he’d come back.”

“Bad news?”

She nodded and fell silent again. “They found two brown paper bags filled with my mother’s clothes in the trunk. It’s clear she was leaving us or at least she believed she was.”

“You must have guessed as much,” I said.

“That’s not it.”

I put a hand on her arm. “Take your time. It’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.”

“He said if there was any way to avoid telling me he would, but he was worried word would leak out and he didn’t want me to hear it from anyone else.”

I waited.

“The techs went over the car.”

I waited.

She took a deep breath and exhaled with an audible sound. “When the pathologist peeled the curtain away her body, they realized my mother’s hands were bound behind her back. They think she was alive for some time. It looks like the dog was killed with a shovel they found in the bottom of the hole once they got the car out. It’s possible the guy knocked her out and he put her in the car, thinking she was dead. At some point she must have come to and realized what was going on.”

She stopped, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue. She blew her nose. “Even tied up, she’d tried to claw her way free. Her fingernails were broken off and some were caught in the upholstery fabric. There were tiny shards of glass embedded in the bones of her heels. She managed to kick out the window, but by then he must have started filling in the hole.”