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dinner.”
    “I’m glad, but that’s not why I was calling.”
    “Oh.” She wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that he trusted her to take care of herself, or to feel bad that he wasn’t checking up on her.
    “Misty asked if you could come over to the ranch tonight, maybe in an hour or so. Is that convenient?”
    His tone was cool and distant, more appropriate for a business transaction than a personal request. “Aiden, what’s going on?”
    “They found another body. She’s from Henley, and her name is Ellen.”
    That was the name Wally mentioned. He’d said that Ellen was with David Welling. “A blonde?”
    “Yes.”
    She heard other voices in the background. They were arguing. “What else?”
    “The victim was wearing a gold, engraved wristwatch. It belongs to my sister.”
    The link to another murder was bad for Misty. Her story about the mystery gunman who grabbed her rifle and disappeared sounded even more flimsy. Tab didn’t know how she could help other than to offer moral support. Sometimes, that was enough. “I’ll be there.”

Chapter Five
    If Tab had gotten her way, she would have tucked her grandma into bed for a solid eight hours of sleep before she left. But Grandma really wanted to come along. She argued that Sylvia Gabriel was a very good friend of the family, and friends take care of friends. What Grandma didn’t say was that these murders were more exciting than anything that had happened since the fire at the casino in Crow Agency.
    Sitting in the passenger seat of Tab’s van, she fiddled with the wrist brace Tab had insisted that she wear. “The tribe should have jurisdiction. The dead girl was found on the rez.”
    Tab was tired of running through the logistical reasons why Joseph Lefthand couldn’t handle a complicated investigation. She jumped to the bottom line, which was something her grandma—who took part in tribal council—would understand. “It would be expensive. The tribe would have to hire a special coroner to do the autopsies.”
    “Are they going to cut that poor girl open?”
    Tab shot her a skeptical glance. With her long white braids, patterned wool jacket, long skirt and moccasins, Maria Spotted Bear was just a few head feathers short of playing a tribal elder at the annual reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand. Not an entirely true image. Grandma kept up with the times.
    “Don’t pretend that you don’t know about autopsies,” Tab said. “You’ve got television on satellite dish. You’ve watched police shows.”
    “And hospital shows to keep up with what you’re doing.” Slyly, she asked, “Are those shows truthful?”
    “Yeah, sure,” Tab muttered sarcastically. “Every doctor is gorgeous, and every case is fascinating.”
    “You see what I mean? I’ve heard about detectives, but I don’t know what they do.”
    Tab shrugged. “Neither do I. Not exactly.”
    “I can tell you one thing. To find a killer, you don’t need fancy equipment or autopsies. You need to be smart.” Grandma tapped the side of her head. “A real detective should have the instincts of a hunter.”
    “Do you think Joseph Lefthand has those instincts?”
    “Better him than Sheriff Steve.”
    Tab had met both men at the meeting in Crow Agency. Both seemed decent and hard-working. Both were deeply concerned about the young women who had gone missing. Tab wondered if she ought to be more worried since she and Grandma lived alone without any security other than the rifles they kept in the front closet.
    Her van jostled along the back roads between her grandma’s house and the Gabriel ranch. Though Tab hadn’t driven the route in years, she remembered the way. When she spent the summer at the ranch, she’d traveled back and forth many times. Later, on other visits to her grandma, she’d make a point of stopping by to see Misty…and maybe to catch a glimpse of Aiden.
    “When was the last time you came to the ranch?” her grandma asked.
    “It must have been two years