Jolene desperately wanted to talk to someone about the murder story and bounce her theories off them. But the moment she saw Tinker’s face, she knew she wasn’t going to mention it to him.

“Hi, beautiful,” he said, brushing her cheek with a kiss. “You look good enough to eat.”

She smiled. “I take it the rodeos went well?” He was always in a good mood when he won the bigger purses.

“Well enough to buy you the best meal this side of Miles City.”

“You’re on, big spender,” she said as she took his arm and let him lead her toward the restaurant.

It startled Dulcie when Russell reached across the table and covered her hand.

“I can see this has you upset,” he said. “But aren’t you jumping to conclusions without any real basis? A lot of kids resemble each other and aren’t related.”

“Women have a God-given right to jump to conclusions without any basis. Comes with the genes,” she joked, hiding how serious this was for her.

He shook his head. “Not you.”

“And you base that on...?”

“Being around you a total of five minutes.”

She smiled. “Normally, you would be right. But in this case given these feelings I keep having—” She had to swallow the lump in her throat. It was one thing to let her mind run off in this direction, it was another to voice her suspicions.

“What feelings?” he asked as if seeing how upset this had her.

“When I first saw the house, actually when I saw the yellow curtains in the upstairs window, I had this sense of having been there before. In some other areas of the house, I got a horrible feeling of dread, followed almost at once by an irrational fear.”

He was studying her openly.

“I heard that Laura Beaumont’s daughter might have found her body,” Dulcie said, needing desperately to voice her worse fears. “What if she saw the killer?”

She had to take a sip of her wine to steady herself. She hadn’t even told Renada, her best friend, and here she was baring her soul to this cowboy she’d just met.

“That’s a lot of what ifs,” Russell said.

“There must have been evidence taken from the murder scene,” she said after a moment. “If there is any DNA to test...”

“You’re that afraid that you’re Angel Beaumont?”

“It’s the only thing that makes any sense. You understand now why I have to find out the truth one way or the other?”

He squeezed her hand. “I do. But if you’re right, then I’m sure your parents had a good reason for not telling you about this, and that it was done out of love.”