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anything looked like a possible.
    Aurora Newcastle was next up on my to-do list. A Google search yielded four brief items from the
Denver Post
society page about Eugene and Aurora Newcastle participating in various charity events and hosting the grand opening of the most recent in their chain of upscale wine stores, Purple Feet, in Castle Rock, a community between here and Denver. The accompanying photo was so grainy I couldn’t distinguish Aurora Newcastle from Mrs. Claus or Christie Brinkley. None of my databases yielded an address or phone number for the couple—one of the perks of being rich is being able to buy privacy—so I called Purple Feet, the flagship store in the LoDo area of Denver.
    “Purple Feet! We’ll im
press
you with our wine prices!” answered a young female voice.
    When I asked for Mrs. Newcastle, she said, “Oh, I’m sorry. Aurora won’t be back till tomorrow. Or is it the next day? No, I think it’s tomorrow.”
    “Back from where?”
    “The cruise. I think they’re in the Bahamas. Or is it the Caymans?”
    I thanked her, hung up, and tried to convince myself that I could legitimately bill Melissa Lloyd for a trip to the Cayman Islands to track down Aurora Newcastle. I had a new bikini I’d optimistically bought at the beginning of the summer and never gotten a chance to wear . . .
    The phone rang. An angry Brian Yukawa, owner of Buff Burgers, yelled on a crackly cell phone connection. Traffic noise in the background made it hard to hear. “Charlie! I just got a call from the police, something about a disturbance at my restaurant on Powers. My phone cut out before I could get it all. I’m stuck in traffic up in Denver and can’t get hold of my manager. The police were saying something about an ambulance and a private eye—”
    His cell phone went dead again. Not stopping to try to call him back, I grabbed my purse and bolted for the door, my mind conjuring awful images. An ambulance! Who was hurt? I’d given the gun back to Gigi Monday afternoon, telling her to take it home, lock it in a safe, and leave it there. Surely she couldn’t have taken it to Buff Burgers with her this morning? Maybe someone had wrestled it away from her and she’d been shot. A twinge of guilt goosed me into the car. I fought traffic up Academy Boulevard to Hwy 83 and turned right onto Briargate Parkway. Exceeding the speed limit by a hefty margin, I headed east until I hit Powers and then swung north to thenew shopping area where the Buff Burgers sat near a Target and a Petco.
    Chaos met my eyes. Traffic was snarled at the intersection as drivers gawked at the two police cars, one fire truck, and an ambulance blocking the drive-through lane of the Buff Burgers. Patrons roamed the parking lot. Black smoke roiled from the rear door and drive-through window. Firefighters played a hose over the building. The stench of burning rubber mixed strangely with the smell of french fries. A uniformed cop had a buffalo by the shoulder as an EMT tended to a nearby man stretched out under the shade of the only tree in sight. Pulling onto the median, I abandoned my car and forded the unmoving lanes of traffic.
    “Charlie!” the buffalo squawked.
    Oh. My. God. It was Gigi in the buffalo getup, beckoning me over with one hand—hoof? My steps dragged as I approached, and my anger mounted. Now that I knew she wasn’t shot or otherwise injured, I let fury rise up at the thought of lawsuits directed against Swift Investigations. I’d lose Brian’s business. The entire CSPD would be laughing at me.
    I showed my business card to the cop (since Colorado doesn’t license investigators, I had nothing more official to present), an Officer Venetti, and he said, “The buffalo says she’s working with you, ma’am?”
    “Bison,” Gigi said.
    When the cop and I gave her uncomprehending stares, she said, “I’m really a bison, not a buffalo.”
    I glared at her and asked the officer, “Is she being charged with