“Alison?” Loushine asked.

I silenced him with an upraised hand. “Why did they want her found?” I asked Gretchen.

“Because …” Her voice was high and excited, but something stopped her. After a few moments of reflection, she said, “No, you’re right. They’re probably all angry enough to kill her, but my understanding is that the people she left in the Twin Cities needed her alive; they wanted to prove that she was alive and that they had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

I had come to the same conclusion the day before and revisited it several times since then. Nevertheless, it was comforting to hear it from someone else. Part of the reason I had returned to Kreel County was to prove that I had nothing to do with the assault on Michael Bettich—mostly to myself.

“Tell me about Alison,” I told Gretchen.

“Who the hell is Alison?” Loushine asked again.

Gretchen sucked in her breath and started talking with the exhale, talking so low that Loushine and I had to move to the foot of the bed to hear her. From where I stood, everything she told him was the truth—except maybe why Alison had left the Twin Cities in the first place. She seemed as unsure about that as I was.

Gretchen told us that Alison simply appeared on her doorstep late one night eight months ago with a battered suitcase and a fascinating if not altogether heroic tale. She was seeking asylum and anonymity, and Gretchen agreed to provide both. The deputy was delighted that her friend had come to her, and if Alison now insisted on being known as Michael Bettich, that was just swell as far as Gretchen was concerned—although she did confess that her police-officer mentality had compelled her to take a keen interest in the goings-on in Dakota County, Minnesota, until she was satisfied that her friend was not fleeing criminal charges.

Michael soon settled in and began building a new life for herself. Her brilliant mind impressed King Koehn so much that he gave her a job overseeing his investments after their first meeting; the fact that she was also pretty probably didn’t hurt, either—King liked pretty. And after dating around for several months, Michael settled on Sheriff Bobby Orman, moving in with him two months ago.

When Gretchen had finished, Loushine shook his head. “Nobody tells me anything,” he muttered.

“It didn’t bother you that Alison had left so many people in the Twin Cities holding the dirty end of the stick?” I asked Gretchen.

“The way Alison explained it to me, they all deserved it.”

“Probably did,” I agreed. Gretchen responded to my remark with a weak smile—she wasn’t sure about her friend, I concluded. After all this time helping to protect Alison, she still wasn’t sure. Hell, neither was I.

I smiled myself and removed a small notebook from my pocket and flipped it open. I read the names that I had written there the night before while sitting at Phyllis Bernelle’s kitchen table. “Who in Kreel County had motive to kill Michael?”

“You ask that like she’s dead,” Gretchen protested. “Michael is not dead. Stop talking like she is.”

Gretchen was right. From the beginning, I had been treating the case like a homicide investigation, when in fact there had not been a homicide—and saying so was like putting Alison’s photograph on the cover of Sports Illustrated: It was a jinx and lessened her chances for survival.

I rephrased the question. “Who wanted to hurt her?”

“Nobody,” Gretchen insisted.

“Nobody?!” I shouted, then checked myself. “Nobody,” I repeated in a softer voice, waving my notebook. “I’ve been in town for only a couple of hours, and I can name at least six suspects. How ’bout you?” I asked, turning toward Loushine.

“I only have one. Thilgen.”

Chip Thilgen looked good, I admitted; his was the first name on my list. But it bothered me that the car used in the shooting had been stolen out of town the day before Alison was shot. If the crime had been premeditated—as the theft would seem to indicate—it seemed damned unlikely that Thilgen would have announced his hatred for Michael one hour before shooting her. And if it wasn’t premeditated, why did he steal the car?

“Sure, there’s Thilgen,” I said. “But how ’bout Ingrid?”

Loushine demonstrated his lack of experience when he shook his head at the suggestion, eliminating the owner of The Height out of hand.

“She stands to lose business if The Harbor is a success,” I explained. “How many gourmet restaurants can this region support?”

Loushine still shook his head.

“How ’bout Charlie Otterness?” I asked.

Gretchen cringed at the sound of his name.

“Betrayed?” I continued. “Humiliated by the woman he loved?”

“That was before Michael became involved with Bobby Orman,” Gretchen interjected, as if that made all the difference in the world.

Loushine shook his head some more. “Charlie wouldn’t hurt a fly,” he said.

Unbelievable. According to these two, nobody in Kreel County was capable of murder.

“King Koehn,” I suggested.

Loushine held out his hand, wobbled it. “I suppose he’s worth looking into,” he agreed, bending just so slightly to the possibility.

Man, I thought. If they didn’t like those suggestions, they’re going to hate the final two names.

“Sheriff Orman?”

“Bullshit!” Loushine spit the word quickly and loudly.

“What motive would he have?” Gretchen queried.

“Did he know about Michael; that she was Alison?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I didn’t tell him.”

“Maybe he found out. Maybe he didn’t like it.”

“Bullshit,” Loushine repeated.

“He’s sure gone out of his way to botch the investigation, hasn’t he?” I reminded them.

The two deputies stared at me without speaking, but I could tell I’d struck a nerve. They looked at each other and then away.

“He just doesn’t understand how things work, that’s all,” Loushine said. But his words didn’t echo with the same vehemence as before.

“Who else?” Gretchen asked. “That’s five suspects on your silly little list. Who’s the sixth?”

I stepped next to the bed and showed her the name I had written last.

She read the name, blinking several times while reading it as if she feared her eyes were deceiving her. She was looking at Loushine, expecting him to say something, but he remained silent. He hadn’t seen my list and didn’t know the sixth name. Gretchen shook her head and closed her eyes more tightly than natural, then opened them quickly as if she expected me to disappear. I didn’t.

“Fuck you,” she said at last.

She was breathing hard through her nose; her mouth was clamped shut but only for a moment. When it opened again, she shouted, “How dare you?! Who do you think you are?”

She threw Nevada Barr’s book at me, but fortunately it was a paperback and easy to dodge.

“What?” a confused Loushine asked.

“It’s me!” Gretchen shouted. “I’m the sixth name!” Then to me: “Get outta here! Get outta my sight!”

I moved away from the hospital bed, ending up in the corner as far from her as I could get and still be in the same room. I studied her from my vantage point, my arms folded over my chest, pretending I could determine her guilt or innocence just by looking at her.

“What the hell, Taylor?” Loushine asked.

“Michael Bettich has no family, as you well know,” I reminded Gretchen. “So if she dies, what happens to The Harbor? Who collects the little gold mine she was building for herself? Her best friend, I bet.”

“You think I hired someone to shoot her so I could get her resort?” Gretchen demanded.

“People have been killed for less,” I told her.

“I’m a deputy!” she shouted at me. When that had no effect, she added, “I was shot!”

“How convenient,” I told her.

“You sonuvabitch,” she hissed at me. She flung the covers off and attempted to swing her legs over the edge of the bed to come after me. But Loushine stopped her and rolled her back in bed—he seemed excited to have physical contact with his fellow deputy.