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tent section. One of the sites off the road, a back-in, one without any hookups. A truck and Coachmen from New Mexico.”
    She took a breath as Mary hurried around to her desk and picked up the phone to dial the number.
    â€œHe was an old man. Indian. The dog came with him.” She felt flushed, even though she hadn’t run a step.
    She stopped as Mary asked for the sheriff; then the office manager slid the receiver away from her mouth and raised her shoulders at Rose as if raising a question. “What I say to Sheriff Montgomery?” she finally asked.
    â€œTell him there’s been a murder,” she replied. “The man’s dead.”

FOUR
    â€œDid you touch everything in the trailer?” Sheriff Montgomery asked as he stepped over pots and pans, following Rose as she walked in front of him over to the dead body.
    He sighed as he looked around. Murders always made him cranky and tired. It hadn’t been too terribly long since the Franklin murder, and he’d just started to feel relaxed, when now this, another unexplained death, occurred down by the Mississippi River.
    â€œNo, I just pushed aside the table, pulled away that sheet, and tried to see if there was anything I could do,” she told him.
    She knew that the sheriff was still displeased with her from the first time they’d met. “I touched the sheet, of course,” she explained. “I thought maybe he wasn’t dead, that I could help.”
    When Rose first arrived at Shady Grove and heard about the death of Lawrence Franklin, a local funeral home owner, she became convinced that the sheriff was involved in foul play, that he was somehow partly to blame. She was wrong and had apologized, and they had seen each other lots of times in the past months, at town events, restaurants. They had been cordial to each other, but Rose thought the lawman still seemed to hold a grudge against her.
    She had mentioned it once to Thomas, told him that she thought Sheriff Montgomery didn’t like her. He told her the sheriff acted like that with everyone, that his hard edge was what helped him maintain his authority and that there was nothing unique in how he treated Rose. She had listened to what Thomas had said and tried to believe him, but she’d never fully accepted that Sheriff Montgomery didn’t have something against her.
    â€œTell me again how it is that you found the dead guy.” He had made his way to the body and was kneeling beside the traveler. He studied the man’s face. There was nothing odd about his features.
    Rose was close behind him. “I was out trying to find the late-night arrival. Somebody had left the money and Mary couldn’t find where he was camped. I was out searching for him.”
    The sheriff stood up and bumped into her. She quickly moved aside, trying to get out of his way.
    He yelled past Rose to the deputy standing outside the trailer. “Roy, get the coroner over here and make sure this area is secure. Close it off all the way to the driveway. And use the police-line tape this time, not the property markers.” The sheriff turned back to the body.
    â€œHe was strangled,” Rose said after waiting for him to finish his instructions. “There are bruises all along his neck.” She paused. “It seems like a terrible way to be killed,” she added, mostly to herself.
    â€œAll ways are terrible when it comes to being killed,” the sheriff replied, sounding particularly tired.
    â€œI thought Lucas didn’t have campers out here,” he added as he stepped around Rose.
    She leaned very far against the wall. “He doesn’t. I don’t know how the old man got over here.” She turned and looked again at the dead man’s face. “He’s Indian, don’t you think?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t know. Indian, Mexican. Who knows, coming from over there?”
    Sheriff Montgomery had also taken note of the license