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what I mean. She wasn’t anything like your mother.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You have your mother. I had my grandmother.”
    The food came.
    “Looks good,” Jenny said. They’d both ordered simple bacon, eggs, and toast. “I love breakfast.”
    “Yeah, me too.”
    “Do you think she knew her killer?” Jenny asked.
    Ogden felt like a phony, a fraud. Who was he to be playing investigator? He was just supposed to go through the woman’s papers. “I don’t know.”
    They sat without talking for a while and Ogden realized that he had nearly inhaled his food. He set his fork down. “I guess I was hungry,” he said.
    “I guess I wasn’t,” she said. She pushed at her eggs and then ate a bit of toast.
    “Robbins was your mother’s maiden name?”
    Jenny nodded.
    “Who is Lester G. Robbins?”
    Jenny thought. “Lester?”
    “The name was in your mother’s address book.”
    “Where does he live?” she asked.
    The waitress came and poured Ogden more coffee.
    “Where does he live?” she asked again.
    “I don’t know,” he said. “Just a name in her book.”
    It was nearly nine when they walked into the house. Ogden paused before closing the door just to look at how bright and clear the day was. The snow on the street had already become slushy, but the yards were still beautiful. Most of it would be gone by late afternoon. “It never lasts long,” he said.
    Jenny looked at him.
    “The snow. Around here, it falls and then the sun takes care of it pretty quickly.”
    Jenny sat at the desk and looked at the pile of papers. “Where do I start?”
    “I’ve been through it all,” he said. “I do have a couple of questions. I didn’t find any insurance policies. Do you know if she had any?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “And you’re the only child?”
    Jenny looked as if she was contemplating being offended by the question. “As far as I know.”
    “Then I guess you’re the new owner of a parcel of land ‘herein referred to as the southeast quarter of section 22, southwest quarter of Section 23, T16R71W in Plata County.’ ”
    “Oh yeah?”
    “Nearly a hundred acres as far as I can see from the deed.” Ogden handed the paper to her. “Can’t say I know where it is, from that description.’ ”
    “I guess that’s a good thing,” she said.
    “Maybe it’s a pretty place. Maybe there’s a house on it.” While she studied the document, Ogden slipped the address book into his jacket pocket. “I’ll get some wood for the fire while you look.” He walked through the house to the back and out the kitchen door. Ogden had had little interest in the old woman when she’d been alive, so he was amused at how much her death was affecting him. Perhaps it was as simple as a mystery to pass the time in a boring, sleepy village. Maybe it was some kind of sublimation for a stalled life, a life he was not pursuing. Or perhaps he just wanted to catch and stop a killer. Anyway, he thought he needed the address book.
    He took the wood back in and got the fire going. He sat on the sofa and glanced through a
People
magazine while Jenny sifted through the papers. He looked around the house at the tacky ­pictures on the walls, the assortment of knickknacks. Then it hit him. Everything in this house could be bought at the local roadside gift shops. He walked around the front rooms. Several cheap ceramic storytellers were scattered about. A couple of bad landscape paintings of the gorge and the mountains were on the walls. A couple of saddle blankets were tossed over the backs of chairs. There was nothing that made him think of the Pacific Northwest or Montana or any other place where the old woman had supposedly lived. He noticed a photo on the table on the other side of the room and went to it. There was the old lady, not much younger, recognizable, standing with a man of about fifty in front of a landscape that could have been local terrain, but also parts of California, Arizona, or Utah.
    “Excuse me,”