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duty I didn’t bother.”
    My cell phone didn’t work at the farm. We finally got a new tower outside of Gateway City, then an ice storm took it out. Our region was next in line for repairs but technicians were in short supply.
    “Figured you would know right off who to get in touch with, Lottie.” It was a rather unreasonable, but mild reproach. I was used to it.
    “You can’t just let her lie there,” Josie said, her voice sharp. “This will be a terrible shock to someone.”
    Sam reached for his pipe and gave her a sour look.
    “I don’t know a thing about her family,” I said, “but there’s got to be some information in her purse.”
    First I flipped open the contact list on her cell phone to see if there was an ICE, In Case of Emergency, listing. There wasn’t. Then I started through her wallet, but the only identification was a single credit card and her driver’s license.
    “I would have sent these with you when you came over earlier, but I assumed since she was a state employee there would be information on the computer. I guess on a local level, her paperwork would be at her office in Copeland County.”
    “Her house is in Bidwell County,” Sam said.
    I checked the address book on her cell phone for any listings under Farnsworth, then “mom” and other likely nicknames and drew a blank there too. I went through the purse again. It contained some cosmetics in a cheap plastic pouch, a checkbook, a mending kit from a hotel, tissues, and Wal-Mart receipts.
    I dumped the contents of the plastic sack on the patio table. As I had first thought, she’d obviously planned to deliver these things after the service because she had a little hand drawn map enclosed and each item was listed on the back: aspirins for the Caldwell baby, a diabetic kit for Bertha Summers, wound dressings for Jim McAvoy, and antibiotic salve for Irma Johnson.
    “Sam, I’ll take her keys and go over to Copeland County right away and get her personnel file from the office. Then I’ll call her people. Want to ride along, Josie?”
    She got up and followed me into the house. “I thought you weren’t on duty.”
    “I’m not.” I glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. I had time to drive over and back before I had to check in. “I’m going over there as Mary’s friend. That way we won’t have to arouse Betty’s curiosity by Sam’s going off duty and me going on early. We’ve already made one switch today.”
    Sam continued to visit with Keith and would until I got back. No doubt he planned to accept Keith’s offer of home brew the moment I took over. But he couldn’t have known it was like moonshine; it varied considerably from bottle to bottle.
    ***
    Josie was solemn on the ride over to Copeland County. Drained. She had left Tosca with Keith. Her hands were tucked under her armpits like they were chilled. I turned on my scanner.
    “I can’t imagine having to go one hundred miles for an autopsy. What does law enforcement do out here if there’s been foul play?”
    “If it’s obviously that, we notify the KBI immediately and they send an agent to witness the autopsy.”
    “And if it’s not obvious?”
    “You watch too many crime shows.”
    She didn’t laugh.
    I used OnStar to call Dr. Joel Comstock, our district coroner, and told him we would have contact information to him soon.
    ***
    It was fully dark when we arrived in Dunkirk. The street was deserted. The town was smaller than Gateway by about six hundred persons. Even though Gateway City was the Carlton County seat and our population was only two thousand five hundred we were a metropolis compared to Dunkirk, the county seat of Copeland.
    Retail businesses have a hell of a time in both towns and most of them double up. Our computer guru sold an assortment of essential office products, vitamins, Malaluka Oil, and his mother-in-law’s crocheted doilies.
    Hardly any of our stores would have been considered normal in a large city.
    Mary Farnsworth monitored six