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to Roanoke to deliver the bodies.
    Dr. Lauter picked up her interrupted thought. “You can’t be thinking Jake Hollinger did this, not over a few feet of fence?”
    “That kind of thing matters, Gretchen. And Jake had a legitimate grievance.” Some primal instinct stirred the blood when property was threatened and boundaries disregarded. “How many No Trespassing signs did you pass on your way out here? And how many of them said trespassers would be shot?”
    Dr. Lauter gave a humorless laugh. “Good point. I saw one that was hand-painted, with ‘That means your damned dog too’added at the bottom.”
    Frowning, Tom swept his gaze over the stand of evergreens along one section of the fence between the two properties. Jake Hollinger could have come through the trees to avoid being seen near the Kelly farm in his truck.
    Dr. Lauter walked over to retrieve her medical bag from the bottom step. “I don’t want to think Jake Hollinger’s capable of doing something like this. I’d rather believe some random nut job came through here and killed these people.”
    “If that’s the case, we’ll probably never catch the shooter. Unless this turns out to be part of a killing spree. You know as well as I do what the odds are against that. It’s a lot more likely the Kellys were murdered by somebody they knew. Somebody with a personal motive.”
    Tom’s thoughts returned to the unsigned Packard Resorts contract on the kitchen table, pinned down by a knife. Had Lincoln stabbed the papers in a fit of rage at the people who were trying to take his land? Where did the contract place the disputed property line? Tom wanted the prosecutor’s legal opinion on it. He wanted to question Jake Hollinger too. But first he had to find phone numbers for the Kellys’ son and daughter and notify them that their parents had been murdered.

Chapter Five
    All the way home to the farm where she and Tom lived, Rachel listened to the dog in the backseat whine and paw the window glass. Letting Bonnie stick her head out might distract her, but Rachel didn’t dare lower the window and risk the dog making a break for freedom.
    “It’s okay, Bonnie,” Rachel crooned over and over. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
    For God’s sake, I’m lying to a dog, she thought.Bonnie ignored her and scrambled back and forth between the windows, her whines escalating.Rachel hoped the Kellys’ son or daughter would take alltheir parents’pets, but she doubted either would provide the doting care that Bonnie was used to. An older dog, deeply bonded with her owners, Bonnie was also a victim of today’s monstrous act.
    In her rearview mirror Rachel saw Joanna’s Jeep Cherokee keeping a steady pace three car-lengths behind. Now that the Kellys were gone, with their property presumably willed to their absent offspring, how would the situation change? Joanna was probably thinking about the possibilities already and wanted to enlist Rachel’s help in some way.
    A fight over the Packard project had been brewing in the county for weeks, and Rachel sensed it was about to erupt into a nasty public battle.On Saturday afternoon, in a little over twenty-four hours, a Packard representative would speak at an open community meeting, and after that the lines would be clearly drawn between proponents and opponents. Rachel was determined to stay out of it, at least publicly. Privately, she would offer Joanna moral support, but any active opposition to the resort would cause trouble for Tom, who had been elected sheriff less than three weeks before and now had a double murder to worry about.
    She wished her friend Ben Hern were here to take up Joanna’s cause. Ben was a well-known artist and cartoonist, a big landowner and taxpayer in Mason County who wasn’t afraid to stand up to local politicians or big companies. But he happened to be in Europe and wouldn’t return for more than a week.
    The dog stuck her head between the seats and yelped. Rachel scratched