“Karly? Are you home? It’s Jane.”

The place was as neat as a pin. Only small things indicated anyone lived here at all: a jean jacket hung on a peg by the front door; a book on surviving abuse sitting on a table next to the sofa; two pink dog dishes on the kitchen floor. But no sign of Karly or her dog.

The bed was made. The bathroom was spotless. The kitchen was sparkling.

Jane let herself out the back door and into the small fenced yard. The grass needed mowing. A small round metal table and two chairs sat on the tiny concrete patio. A huge geranium Jane had taken from her own garden and potted sat on the table-a housewarming gift Karly had loved.

Gardening was part of her therapy. It was a calming hobby and a chance to tend to something and see a positive result. Nursing plants to full flourishing health was also a metaphor for the women’s own lives. They should care for themselves, tend to their own needs, with the goal of coming into their own full potential.

The newly opened geranium flowers were a vibrant, cheerful red, but the plant needed deadheading and the leaves were starting to brown and curl. The soil was dry and hard to the touch. The plant hadn’t been watered in days.

Out of habit, Jane picked up the watering can from the table and went to the faucet at the side of the cottage near a small potting shed.

Her mind was spinning. Over and over, she kept hearing her assistant’s voice: There’s been a murder…

A low rumble sounded behind her as she bent to turn the faucet on. A warning growl. Jane turned slowly toward the potting shed. The door of the shed was ajar.

“Petal?” she asked. “Is that you?”

Her answer was another low growl.

“Petal?”

She took a half step toward the shed, trying to peer inside. The slim mest sliver of sunlight penetrated the dark interior. At the base of that line of light, she could see one white paw, then the tip of a black nose.

“Petal? It’s me, your auntie Jane. You’re okay. Come out and get a cookie, sweetheart. Come on.”

Inch by inch more of the dog became visible. She crawled along on her belly until Jane could see her face. “Forlorn” was the only word to describe the look.

There’s been a murder…

Jane crouched down and fished a dog cookie out of the patch pocket of her denim gardening shirt.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she whispered, tears rising in her eyes.

Karly would never have abandoned Petal. If there had been a family emergency, she would have called Jane to look after the dog. Even if she had gone somewhere she shouldn’t have, she would have gotten word to somebody to take care of Petal.

Of all the dogs in the county animal shelter, Karly had chosen a thin, beaten-down female pit bull, saying they would understand each other. The dog had been the best therapy the girl could ever have had.

Jane held out the cookie, her hand trembling a little, not from fear of the dog, but from fear of what may have happened to the owner. Petal the pit bull inched closer, whimpering.

She looked thinner than the last time Jane had seen her, and she had some nasty scratches on her as if she might have gotten into a fight or had been living rough. Locked out of the house, she didn’t have her cushy dog bed or her pink bowl filled with kibble; she didn’t have her person to look out for her.

The dog finally, cautiously, stretched her neck out as far as she possibly could, just touching the cookie with the very tip of her tongue. Two tears tumbled over the rims of Jane’s green eyes and slid down her cheeks.

There’s been a murder…

“Mom’s a piece of work,” Mendez said as the teacher came back into the conference room. “Wound a little too tight, huh?”

She frowned, glancing back toward the door. “A little. When I took Tommy home yesterday she was furious he had missed his piano lesson.”

“And what will the neighbors think now?” Mendez asked, settling in his chair. “Her kid fell on a corpse.”

“What would the neighbors think if they knew she was doping him up to make him sleep?”

“A little antihistamine is nothing,” Mendez said. “When I was in a uniform in Bakersfield, I saw mothers get their kids drunk, make them smoke crack-”

“That’s horrible.”

“Makes Mrs. Crane look like the Mother of the Year.”

Anne Navarre rolled her eyes as she turned away from him and walked toward the bank of windows. “She probably already has that plaque on her wall, along with Realtor of the Year, Volunteer of the Year, Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year.”

“Image is everything,” Mendez said.

He was happy to see she sided with the kids, and the kids liked her. There might be a chance they would confide something to her that they might not tell their parents or him. Provided they had anything to tell anyone.

Peter Crane was probably right in assuming the killer had been long gone by the time the kids had come across his handiwork. On the other hand, Vince Leone, one of his instructors at the National Academy and one of the pioneers of criminal profiling at the Bureau, had talked about killers who returned to the crime scene either to relive the experience or to watch the police investigation.

Some of them got an ego boost by watching the cops and believing they were superior to the dumb clods trying to figure it out. Some of them got sexual gratification revisiting the scene. Sick bastards.

“Tell me about Tommy.”

“Tommy?” Anne Navarre turned her back to the windows, leaned back against the credenza, and crossed her arms-but not as tightly as before. A step in the right direction. “He’s very bright, conscientious, quiet, sweet.”

“He has a crush on you.”

She made a little face and shook her head.

“Yes, he does,” Mendez insisted. “He watched you almost the whole time.”

“He watched everyone. That’s what he does. He takes in everything then decides what to do. He probably watched me more because he feels safe with me.”

Mendez chuckled. “Trust me. You might know kids’ heads, but I was a ten-year-old boy once.”

“I suppose I can’t argue with that.”

“Why do you think he didn’t tell us the Farman kid touched the corpse?”

“Fear of retribution. Dennis Farman is a bully.”

A quick knock sounded on the door to the outer office and a uniformed deputy stepped in.

“Farman’s not coming.”

“The hell he’s not,” Mendez said.

“He’s not coming. He said he’ll take his kid’s statement himself. He said it was a waste of everybody’s time to come in here and talk to you.”

“The fuck!” Mendez caught himself too late and glanced over at Anne Navarre. “Sorry.”

“I could call Mrs. Farman,” the teacher offered. “Maybe she would come in with Dennis.”

“You’ve got to go now anyway,” the deputy said. “Some woman came into the office to report a missing person. Could be our victim.”

The woman waiting in Sheriff Dixon’s office was in her early forties, tall and slender, and dressed in jeans with dirty knees and a bright green T-shirt with an oversize denim shirt thrown over it and left open. Her long blonde hair was scraped back into a messy ponytail with strands falling loose to frame her pale oval face. She stood in front of the visitor’s chair with her arms wrapped around herself. She looked worried.

Cal Dixon was sitting against the front edge of his desk, head down, speaking quietly to the woman when Mendez walked in.

Dixon looked up. “Tony, I’m glad you made it back. I want you to meet Jane Thomas from the Thomas Center for Women. Ms. Thomas, this is Detective Mendez. He’s my lead investigator on this case.”

Mendez reached out and shook her hand.

“Jane is concerned the murder victim may be someone she knows.”

“One of our clients,” she said. “Karly Vickers. No one has seen or heard from her since last Thursday night.”