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“Sterling’s Funeral Home” elaborately etched on the side windows. We observed in silence as two officers emerged from behind the house, carrying a white body bag. They deposited it on a waiting stretcher, then helped the driver lift the stretcher and slide it into the hearse. Officer Braddock climbed intothe passenger seat and watched carefully in the side view mirror as the hearse backed down the drive, turned, and disappeared up the road. Dr. Chase followed in his own car. It would be a long ride from Pearson’s Corner to the State Medical Examiner’s Office up in Baltimore.
    “What did Dr. Chase say?” Connie asked Dennis when he reappeared at her side.
    “He thinks it’s a woman, but the body’s badly decomposed. It began to fall apart the minute we tried to move it.”
    I shuddered. “Was she murdered?”
    “Murdered? Well, I’m no expert, but people don’t usually shoot themselves in the head, then strap cinder blocks to their waists with baling wire before flinging themselves into wells.”
    Connie closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “Everyone thinks it’s Katie Dunbar.”
    “I don’t know, Connie, but if it is, I have a hunch we won’t have to look very far for her murderer. We did a thorough investigation when she disappeared back in ’90. That Lambert boy is going to have a lot of explaining to do.”
    Dennis touched Connie’s elbow and hurried us both up the drive. He unlocked the Taurus on the passenger side, opened both doors, and motioned us inside. “I’ll give you a lift home, but you’ll need to hurry. Unless I’m very much mistaken, that’s the Channel Thirteen Eyewitness News team just cresting the hill, and I’d rather not deal with them just now.”
    In one smooth motion, Dennis folded his long legs into the driver’s seat, pulled the seat belt across his chest, and started the engine. He turned to look at Connie. “You still make a mean cup of tea?”

chapter
    4
    We eluded the press by the simple expedient of taking Dennis’s unmarked Taurus and driving it hell-bent for leather in the opposite direction. We whizzed past the folks from Channel 13 as they rounded the curve near the pond, sending ducks and chickens squawking and flapping from the grassy berm and into the muddy water.
    Twenty minutes later I was standing in Connie’s kitchen, holding the lid on the teakettle with one finger while I poured hot water into Dennis’s cup. “What was that you were saying earlier about the Lambert boy?” He ignored my question, and Connie shot me a sudden sideways glance that said, plain as day, “Hannah, do shut up.”
    I tried to act grateful. Lieutenant Rutherford had, after all, saved me and my butt from a cold, hard plasticchair in the Chesapeake County Eastern District Police Station by deciding to interview us late that same afternoon in Connie’s bright kitchen, where the sun, low in the sky, slanted through the decorative shutters Paul had installed for her last winter.
    Connie served butter cookies out of a Tupperware container she kept on top of the refrigerator. Dennis held a cookie between this thumb and forefinger, dipped it into his cup, let it soak for a few seconds, shook it slightly to make sure it wouldn’t drip, then popped the cookie, whole, in his mouth.
    He watched me watching him and seemed amused. “I learned to drink tea in England,” he explained. “On a Fulbright scholarship.”
    I wrapped my hands around a mug of Earl Grey and watched while Dennis stirred milk into his tea. I like that in a man.
    The good lieutenant seemed in no hurry to leave.
    I repeated my story—I was getting good at it by now—while Dennis listened thoughtfully and jotted down bits of what I said in a pocket-size notebook.
    Dennis must have regretted his earlier burst of candor because he volunteered no more information about Lambert. In fact, he seemed more interested in what Connie could tell him about recent activity at the Nichols farm than anything I had