I tucked my extra weapon under my sweater in the back of my jeans, went to the front door, and threw it open to see Deputy Max Coyote in a defensive stance partly behind the wall where the front walk led to the driveway. Another deputy I hadn’t met before stood by the white thorn acacia in the yard.

“It’s clear,” I said. “Someone was here, through the back door, but they’re gone now. Except I haven’t checked the perimeter.”

Without bothering to greet me, Max walked into the house with his very young partner, who he introduced as Deputy Eric Stamen. He placed a call for another unit to patrol the area around the neighborhood and walk the arroyo in back of the house to see if there was any sign of them coming over the fence, any footwear impressions in the arroyo beyond it, or in the gravel in the yard.

Gemma-Kate merged from the bedroom still gripping the phone as if that was her job and by God she was doing it. “I saw the blue-and-reds reflected on the bathroom window and figured it was okay to come out,” she said.

Max didn’t sit on his usual place on the couch with the pugs banking him on each side, where he would have gone another time. He ignored Al and Peg as they snuffled around his cuffs, trying to figure out where and when they’d smelled this guy before. For his part, Max stared at me with narrowed eyes. We had been friends once, a bit more than a year ago, but we weren’t anymore. He would probably tell a different story, but the short version is that I’d saved his life once and he never forgave me for it.

“What do we do next?” I asked, deferring to his position.

This time he was all business. He pulled out a computer tablet and said, “Take me around.”

I showed him the mark on the wall first, and he blinked without comment, revealing his lack of surprise. That was the first clue that our home wasn’t the first.

“You’ve seen this before,” I said.

He continued into the bedroom.

I said, “Okay, in here he pulled out some drawers and messed up the clothes.” I looked in the wooden box with the glass top on my dresser. “All that’s missing from here is some junk jewelry, like a random handful. See, here’s an emerald cocktail ring.”

“They didn’t take that?”

“No, it’s still there.” I gave the room another cursory glance, saw that Carlo’s bedside dresser drawer was cracked open.

“Anything missing from there?” Max asked.