Rafe saw the puzzled look on Ryan’s face. “We wrote just enough to make it clear it was a Conti,” he explained. “And made it sound horrible enough that the only people who’d be interested would be people looking for a Conti.”

“But . . . there isn’t a Conti. Is there?” Ryan was still puzzled.

“No,” I said cheerfully. “That’s the beauty of this plan. All we want to know is who shows up. If one of our suspects is there, that’s the killer. We don’t even have to talk to him. We just identify who it is, tell the sheriff’s detectives what we’ve learned, and let them take care of the rest.”

“Okay,” Ryan said slowly. “I get it. This could work. Where are we meeting him?”

We? I blinked. “Um, we’ll take care of this. You don’t need to—”

“I’m going,” Ryan said.

His voice was so firm that I knew there’d be no budging him. I glanced at Rafe, who shrugged. “Okay,” I said. “I get it. There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?” Ryan asked.

“We haven’t decided where to have the meeting.”

Ryan stared at us. “What? That doesn’t make any sense. How can you get someone to show up if you don’t have a place to show up to?”

He was right, but the problem was that Rafe and I hadn’t been able to agree on a location. With the weekend’s weather looking to be perfect for morel hunting, we needed to arrange the meeting the next night, ahead of the hunting hordes. The problem was that Rafe had already promised to attend the middle school’s track meet, an away meet in a town two hours away. He wouldn’t be back until late.

“It has to be somewhere public,” he’d said then, and said again now. “This guy has killed already and I don’t want you out there by yourself in some lonely spot.”

“But I’m going,” Ryan said. “If you pick me up, I mean. My car’s in the barn at my house.”

“Perfect.” I nodded. “This will work out. Ryan will be with me, and there won’t be any danger, anyway, because we’re just going to wait there and see who shows up. Take pictures is all we’ll do.”

“Wait where?” Rafe asked, folding his arms.

“It has to be out of the way,” I said. “Whoever it is won’t want anyone else to see him show up, so it has to be quiet and secluded.”

“Sounds like something out of a horror movie,” Rafe muttered.

I turned to Ryan. “Do you have any ideas? I was thinking maybe the parking lot of that restaurant just past Dooley. You know, the one that’s been closed for years?”