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“When are you going to get another dog? The place feels lonely without Boomer.”
    Our old boxer hadn’t made it through the winter, and my broken heart had barely scarred over. “Maybe later this spring, after brandings.”
    He smacked his lips. “A place needs a dog. Keeps the bad element at bay.”
    Right now, the worst element in my life was a suspicious county sheriff. A ranch dog wouldn’t chase him away.
    â€œHow’s Ted?” Robert asked. “Wait. Before you answer, let me hang up Carly’s phone and call you on mine. I need to get back to my own cows.”
    When Robert called back I gave him the medical assessment and left out the bit about Milo fixing to arrest Ted. I hoped I’d get that straightened out soon enough and wouldn’t have to bother anyone with it. All I needed was another suspect or two, to get Milo off Ted’s back.
    His pickup door slammed and the engine started. “You don’t know who shot them?”
    â€œNope.”
    The farm report blasted on the radio before he turned it down. “People are going to want to know why Eldon got shot and who did it. If you can’t come up with something to calm them down, they’re going to think a Charlie Starkweather is on the loose.”
    We didn’t need people getting all panicky and recalling Starkweather, Nebraska’s most infamous criminal, who went on a statewide random-killing spree in the late fifties. “I’m not the sheriff. Why would they ask me?”
    Robert guffawed. “Because they can’t ask Ted, for one. And because everyone knows you’re the brains of the Frog Creek outfit.”
    I needed to deflect Milo’s suspicions. With elections coming up, that kind of gossip wouldn’t do Ted any good.
    â€œSarah’s calling. Talk to you later.” Robert hung up.
    I liked Milo, had known him all my life, but he never struck me as a go-getter. I pictured him having coffee and sweet rolls with his cronies, more than chasing clues and hunting a murderer. Robert was right. If someone was going to sleuth out the real criminal, it was going to have to be me.
    Exhausted but wired, I slowed to idle through Hodgekiss and noticed Dad’s old Dodge pickup parked in front of the house, with no frost on the windows. I ought to get some sleep before I tackled the job of tracking Eldon’s killer, but Dad knew the history of Grand County—who had grudges and might wish Eldon harm. If I could get him to talk, it might expedite my search.
    Really, I just wanted the comfort of my parents’ warm kitchen. I pulled Elvis in front of the paint-challenged house by the side of the railroad tracks as the brittle April sun struggled to rise.
    Because the railroad depot was the first building in Hodgekiss, in 1889, and the main reason for the settlement, the town had grown up along the tracks. In Hodgekiss, there was no “wrong” side of the tracks.
    I dodged a tricycle, a faded plastic wagon, and other toys strewn by Fox grandkids. Even before I opened the door I nearly gagged on the smell of bacon. Guess maybe I wasn’t as immune to trauma as I thought. Instead of turning into a blubbering heap like Roxy, I fell apart intestinally. As I’d learned in Psych 101, stuffing feelings could lead to all kinds of gastric difficulties.
    I entered from the side door. Mom’s joke on herself was to decorate the kitchen like a sixties sitcom. As is typical in houses nearing their century mark, the kitchen was huge. Handmade cabinets, soft from countless layers of paint and currently a bright white, rose to the ceiling above red composite countertops that lined two of the walls. A recently installed island with a butcher-block top added more work space—something that was needed when all nine Fox kids, their spouses, and a gaggle of grandkids gathered.
    White curtains with red polka dots hung at the windows in the door and above the sink, but the