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loose board bangs in syncopated time. Something half buried in the hay gives me pause as I’m about to leave the love nest. Black and tangled—the first I think is a dead cat. I study it, and anger boils out of me.
    “Sager, get on the radio and see if Fenny talked to Cooper yet. We need them dogs
now
!”
    “What is it?”
    I look over my shoulder. Missus Haudesert holds a red sweater. Sager eyeballs me.
    “Sager, goddammit, move!” I climb down, find the barn floor.
    Fay Haudesert stands at the base of the ladder. “Wha’d you find?”
    “A coat. Was Gwen wearing pants this morning? Or a dress?”
    “Pants.”
    “Tell me what happened when you found Burt.”
    “Nothing. I came out and he was like that. I didn’t touch nothin’. Just ran to the house and called.”
    “When did Burt leave the house this morning?”
    “Around six, I s’pose. We had breakfast, and milking is always at six. Plus, he said he needed to look after Matilda.”
    “Who’s Matilda?”
    “Holstein going to drop a calf one of these days. I thought that was why he stayed in the barn after milking.”
    I fill in the blanks. In the barn, Gale and Gwen was fooling around. She removed her shoe and pulled one leg from her pants. Burt Haudesert heard his daughter’s giggles, maybe moans.
    “How old is Gwen?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “And Gale?”
    “Nineteen, twenty.”
    Three or four years. Ain’t a man alive doesn’t know his sixteen-year-old girl wants a man of her own. Hard to fathom a scene like this turning into a murder, and the weapon argues the events that unfolded in this barn weren’t planned.
    I know things about Burt Haudesert…a pair of dead men in his past. Dead men who had a lot of friends that knew Burt, and could’ve got in close. And Fay Haudesert’s concern for her missing daughter over her dead husband? She’s either constipation-tight or lying through her goddamn teeth.
    “It wasn’t any of them boys Burt’s been runnin’ with?”
    “What do you mean?” She looks away.
    “Them Militia boys.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Fay, I know this is tougher’n hog hide, but you got to level with me. Who else was out here today? What kind of argument did Burt have with the boys? Not seein’ eye to eye…”
    “They ain’t been no one out here save that G’Wain boy, and too much of him.”
    I look to the loft. Think again. Burt Haudesert heard a giggle and decided to investigate. Snow was light, maybe, and he didn’t see any footprints. He wouldn’t have expected to hear his daughter in the barn. Or maybe Gale spoke too loud. Whichever way it worked, Burt confronted Gale and wound up stuck with a fork. Gale and Gwen left the barn in a hurry.
    Fay Haudesert holds Guinevere’s coat over one arm and a sweater over the other. She brushes hay from the coat with the sweater hand while tears spill over her face.
    “She should have her coat, at least,” she says.
    Sager hollers from inside the Bronco, “Cooper’s on the way.”
    “You might see this,” Missus Haudesert says. She pulls a photo from under the sweater. A young man, awkward grin, hair blown over half his face.
    I’ve seen the face but can’t place it. “This Gale?”
    She nods. “Several year ago. Face is thinner now. Longer, maybe, like yours. And he don’t shave.”
    “Because he don’t want to? Or don’t need to?”
    “Don’t need to.”
    “He give this to Gwen?”
    Another nod. “He was sweet on her from day one.”
    “You approve of him and her?”
    “I never—”
    “Was there ever words between Burt and Gale? Was Gale welcome?”
    “There was words. But words won’t find my Gwen.”
    “Damn it, be straight! What kind of words?”
    “Two days ago, Gale asked for her hand.”
    “You saw it?”
    “I saw
of
it.”
    “What the hell’s that mean?”
    “I saw what happened after he asked. I saw Burt go crazy like to kill him. Run him off with his tail ’tween his legs.”
    Twenty-year-old boy asks