And that was when full-blown panic set in.

CHAPTER 21

The next morning Tess was up early—first the coyotes and then the birds woke her. While she ran a wash she took her coffee and breakfast out on the porch and took notes on what had happened the day before.

The case was shifting. At first it had looked like a cartel hit—or some unaffiliated bad guy trying to act like one. Someone sending a message. You cross us and you’re dead. Not just dead, but we’ll torture you first.

But in this case, there was no message. She was pretty sure of that now.

Someone had tried to make it look like a hit.

Which meant someone knew what he was doing.

Steve Barkman had been obsessed with Hanley’s death. To be more accurate, Steve Barkman had been obsessed with the way Hanley died.

Multiple gunshots.

Tess had checked out George Hanley’s MacBook Pro from evidence. Maybe now she’d get some answers.

She spent an hour going through his files. There were very few. She went through his bookmarks on Firefox and his history. There was very little in history, mostly stuff that didn’t mean much. How to fix a leaky faucet. A few cop sites and a gun catalog. Cabela’s online.

There were a number of photos of places in southern Arizona. Many of them of buffelgrass and the volunteers. Pictures of Credo, some of the tours he led there. A few homes—maybe because he thought he’d be moving out of his apartment soon. One of them quite nice, up on a hill, with tall trees around it.

And there were photos of Adele.

Tess had a Mac, too. The first view in “Finder” was not of the photos themselves, except for little squares you couldn’t see to the right of the print, but letters and numbers: DSC120234.JPG through DSC120240.JPG. So at first Tess didn’t know what the photos would be, except for a brief description. But she figured “Adele” was a pretty good signpost.

Tess clicked through the photos of Adele. Pretty dog. One side of her face was colored brown. Her chest and legs were white. The rest of her was that blue-gray color populated with black spots. One of the spots looked a little like a bow tie.

There were times when her memory was a pain in the ass. Times when she didn’t want to remember the terrible things she saw. Like George Hanley’s desecrated body.

But this time, she was grateful for it. This time it made her job a whole hell of a lot easier.

Jaimie Wolfe stood in the center of the riding ring, shouting instructions to her students. When she saw Tess, she turned her back and ignored her.

That was fine with Tess.

The dogs came up. They milled around her, asking to be petted. Tess patted each one, rubbed their ears, let them sniff her hands, massaged their chests and rumps. Inundated with slavering tongues and wagging tails. She took a knee, the better to pat them, and let them surround her with doggy attention.

Jaimie glanced back at her once, then pointedly ignored her once again.

Tess rubbed her hands in the Australian shepherd’s luxurious coat. “Good Bandit,” she said. “Nice Bandit.” Jaimie Wolfe’s boy dog. Tess reached down and around the dog’s tummy. Slid her hands back, reveling in the soft, luxurious fur. Reached down and between the dog’s legs. She was gentle but thorough. “Good boy,” she said.

Jaimie glanced her way.

“Good boy!” But by that time, Tess knew Bandit wasn’t a boy at all.

It wasn’t even Bandit.

Back at the sheriff’s office, Tess pulled Jaimie Wolfe’s DL and put together a photo lineup. She chose five other women of approximately the same age and body type. All of them were photos from driver’s licenses. Then she took off for Animal Control and found Sally, the woman who had processed the dog’s adoption.

“Do you recognize any of these women?” Tess asked.

Sally pointed to the photograph of Jaimie. “That one. She was the one who adopted the dog you were asking about.”

“You’re sure?”

“I can look it up. But I’m sure. I remember, because I really like her hair.”

Yes, Jaimie Wolfe had glorious hair.

In the car, Tess had the SABEL list printout. One of the members of SABEL was a woman named Bernadette Colvin—the woman who supposedly adopted George Hanley’s dog, Adele.

Tess drove to her townhome and rang the bell.

It was the same as last time. The street was empty. The blinds pulled in the window. The garage door closed.

Tess was about to get back into her Tahoe when a car drove up the street and parked across the way. She hailed the woman when she got out.

“Do you know the woman who lives here?” she asked. “Bernadette Colvin?”

The woman saw her badge and her brow knitted. “Something wrong? I thought she was already gone.”

“Gone?”

“She’s in assisted living. Her family is putting the house up for sale.”

Tess said, “Do you know how I can contact her?”

“Her daughter used to come by here with her kids,” the woman said. “To see their grandma. But I honestly don’t know how you’d get in touch with her.”

“Anything you can tell me about her family?”

The woman thought for a minute. “One time they came over and the little girls were dressed to go riding.”

“Riding?”

“Boots, breeches. Like you see in the Olympics.”

The DeKoven family:

Tess started with what she knew: Michael was a financial advisor whose office was at the top of the highest building in the city. Jaimie was divorced and ran a riding school. The youngest, Brayden, was divorced with a little girl. She practiced real estate law and had put up her shingle at her home in Tucson. And the second youngest, Chad, lived in Laguna Beach, California.

Tess spent some time looking for and accessing a Tucson Lifestyle article on the DeKoven family from a couple of years ago. There had been stunning photographs of the ancestral home—Zinderneuf—named by the great-great-grandfather after the doomed fortress in P. C. Wren’s epic novel, Beau Geste. The house was Moorish, built in the 1940s at the height of the architectural style’s popularity, on a bench of land overlooking the Rincon Valley not far from the old and now-defunct Rita Ranch. Michael and his wife and two children lived there.

The article profiled the family in all its glory: the four heirs to the DeKoven dynasty.

Instead of bored kids standing out in the sun for a ribbon-cutting ceremony, these were polished adults, posing for the beautifully orchestrated family photo. Inside the exquisite Moorish house, the light from the picture window filtered in, catching them perfectly coifed and handsome.

A beautiful family, the DeKovens.

Tess’s gaze fell on Jaimie. Why would Jaimie take George Hanley’s dog and pass her off as one of her own?

The woman smiled vacuously into the camera.

Tess knew Jaimie enjoyed the game. And it was a game. She’d bird-dogged her own brother, sending Tess his way by telling her Michael was George Hanley’s financial advisor, when in fact he wasn’t. Tess got the feeling that Jaimie enjoyed playing people one against the other.

Tess found a few newspaper articles and accessed public records as she tried to put together a picture of the family.

The history of the DeKoven family was similar to other cattle baron/mining magnate/politicians who made a fortune in the state in the early part of the twentieth century: wrangling over land, water and mineral rights, Apache attacks (back in the 1890s), and various ventures in the new era, including aviation and moving pictures. The story was always colorful and sometimes heartbreaking, like the time DeKoven’s great-grandfather lost his daughter when she played in a creek during a thunderstorm and was swept away.