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a Hatfields and McCoys thing, huh?” Brandon asked when they were in Tom’s cruiser, headed over to Jake Hollinger’s farm. Tom had left Dennis Murray in charge of the murder scene.
    “That’s an exaggeration. I wouldn’t call it a feud, just a running disagreement.”
    “We need to take precautions? I mean, what’re the chances Hollinger’s the shooter? What state of mind is he going to be in when he sees us coming?”
    “I can’t even guess,” Tom admitted. “Just stay alert.” A sick little knot had formed in his gut. He hoped this would be a routine visit, to give Hollinger a chance to provide a solid alibi for the time the Kellys were shot. He didn’t want to discover that Marie and Linc had died because of a petty dispute over a property line. But if Linc had torn the fence down in the last day or two, that might have pushed Hollinger to the breaking point. And Tom and Brandon could be walking into a confrontation with a man who had already killed two people today.
    Barely ten feet ahead of the car, three chocolate-brown sheep hopped over the narrow drainage ditch and landed in the road. Tom slammed on his brakes. When he tapped his horn, the ewes turned to regard the car with mild curiosity.
    “Are sheep as stupid as they look?” Brandon frowned in disgust at the animals blocking their way. “I never could figure out why anybody wants to bother with them. And what kind of sheep is brown, anyway?”
    “They’re Merinos. They must be from Jake Hollinger’s flock. He’s the only one around here who keeps Merinos. And yeah, sheep are a little dense. Dogs intimidate them, but they’re not afraid of people. Or cars, obviously.”
    “Why are they running around loose? They don’t have the good sense to look out for themselves. And they could cause an accident.”
    “Jake’s fence must be down,” Tom said.
    “You think Kelly and Hollinger might have had a fight about it this morning?”
    Tom didn’t answer as he inched the cruiser forward, encouraging the ewes to get out of the way. How long had they been loose? Why hadn’t Hollinger rounded them up yet?
    The three sheep, bunched together, seemed to have no plans to move. Tom shifted the car into park and got out to shoo them away. After balking long enough to make the point that they couldn’t be hurried, they turned in a leisurely fashion and ambled back to the side of the road, their hooves clacking on the pavement. One by one they jumped the ditch into the field.
    The Hollinger gate was another half-mile on. Both the Hollinger and Kelly farms, side by side, bordered the McKendrick horse farm. Joanna’s property dwarfed all of its neighbors. If this was the prime location for the proposed resort, Joanna’s land was the critical piece and would bring the biggest offer, but if the contract Tom had seen in the Kelly house was typical, the owners of adjacent properties could also sell for more money than they’d ever dreamed of having.
    Tom pulled into Hollinger’s driveway and parked behind his red pickup truck. The small brown-shingled house, with a screened porch on one side and an extra room tacked onto the other, looked neglected. Weeds choked the flowerbeds along the foundation, moss colored a patch of the roof dark green, and dead leaves had piled up in the gutters. Hollinger had apparently lost interest in keeping the place up after his wife died of cancer.
    “Back me up,” Tom said as he got out of the cruiser.
    Brandon stood in the yard while Tom mounted the front steps and knocked on the door. He got no response, and after three tries he gave up and rejoined Brandon.
    “He has to be here somewhere. Let’s walk.”
    They rounded the house into the backyard, where unraked leaves from a massive oak tree covered a scruffy patch of lawn. At the edge of the yard sat a large chicken coop with a fenced space for a flock of brown hens. A big vegetable garden, surrounded by high wire fencing to keep deer out, took up a broad clearing, and