It was late afternoon when I parked the van inside the gate near the porte-cochere. The sun had not gone below the mountains yet but it would soon. Rose was on a chaise-lounge under an umbrella by the swiming pool and that looked good to me. But first I wanted to be wet. The swimming pool would take care of that. I walked towards the deep end, shedding clothing along the way. The pool looked a lot better now that the maintenance guy was back on schedule. On arrival, I curled my toes around the edge of the pool and dived in, bobbing up about a third of the length and swam slowly to the shallow end. The water was not cold, but it was a lot cooler than the air and felt really good. When I couldn't swim any farther, I walked out of the pool and towards the workshop with its cooler full of soda cans, wringing out my hair as I went.

"Want a soda, Rose?"

"No, thank you. I'm good for a while."

I got my soda and walked back to the shady area, arranged a chaise-lounge so that I could be in the shade and see Rose and stretched out on it. I could feel the air drying out my skin.

"I quit. The light is changing and I couldn't get the colors right any more. Did the lawyer have anything good to say?"

I told her the story, including the very well appointed secretary in the business suit that came with a matching air conditioner, the first line of defense for the lawyer. Her discretion, I was told, was on the level of a deaf-mute. "'I think the lawyer is safe. He's going to get us what he can about the car from the license plate. I feel like telling Edward how good it was writing down that number, but I don't want him playing private detective and get himself hurt. The lawyer said the people we're dealing with are dangerous, and might not stop with goat murder."

"They want the water, by the way, not just the land. The Indians use the water to grow beans. I think the bad guys want to grow money with it."

"Yeah, I can see that water out here is pretty valuable stuff.

Rose wasn't pleased to hear the results of my meeting with the lawyer. But why pick on Rose? I wasn't pleased either.

"So, we break into the car or we break into the car dealership. Is that the situation?"

Rose all over. No subtlety in her. But I didn't have any other ideas.

"The car might be easier. Even if we did get past the burglar alarms in the car dealership, where would we look? In the movies the hero runs directly to the desk, shuffles papers in the first drawer and finds exactly what he wants in the second drawer. He glances at the top sheet for one second, and puts the paper back in the drawer. He now knows exactly what he wanted to know."

"And usually gets shot in the next second, leaving his bleeding body for the innocent victim to find and be accused of the murder. I've seen that movie."

"Right. so I'm not fond of the getting shot idea either. So what do we do? I'm not very good at breaking into cars. The topic didn't come up very often in art school."

"Me either. So do you know any car thieves?"

"Probably, but I don't know who they are. I mean, I don't know which of my many friends and associates also steal cars. Could the tribal police loan us a car thief, just for the evening. We would promise to return him right away afterwards. And besides, we're not really stealing the car. We only want to look in the glove compartment for a piece of paper, and we don't even want to steal that, just look at it."

We sat in silence for a while, watching the sun advance towards the mountain tops. I was guessing how much more daylight we had. The shadows were advancing menacingly towards the garage door and I knew from experience that when they reached it, twilight would be upon us soon after. I had a crazy idea. I told Rose, mostly because I wanted her to assure me that I was nuts and that it wouldn't, couldn't work.

"Rose, what if we were called when the thugs came to the farm next time? Let's think like the thugs. They shot the goat. Now what will they do? Call the family, offer to buy. Then show up at the farm for another meeting. Would they tell the Indians they were coming, or just show up, I wonder? Either way, someone calls us and we come running. While they are inside the house, we break into the car and look at the papers. How's that? Crazy, isn't it?"

"Yes. Very crazy. First, we don't know when they are going to come, so we don't know when we have to go, so we have to be ready all the time from now on. Second, we don't know how to break into a car. Third, if we're caught, we're probably going to be shot. Other than that, it's a grand plan, Claire."

"Do I detect sarcasm in your voice? Well, it's well deserved. I never thought it was flawless."

That stopped the conversation again. The shadows advanced, in more ways than one.

The next morning at breakfast, a bit of clarity emerged. I'd like to say it occurred to me, but it was Rose who had the spark of brilliance.

"Claire, we're going about this all wrong. We're looking at the wrong clue. It isn't the car that holds the secrets, it's the castle. The creeps scaring the Indians lived here before you came. They must have, some of them anyway. The castle is where Edward deposited his dead goat. So how did that happen? Who rented the castle to the creeps?"

She answered herself. "The owner. So let's ask him."

"You're right about everything, Rose. But I don't want to ask him. He would have explained about the renovations if he had wanted to. He didn't. I don't think he wanted to tell me much of anything. He might have put me in here precisely because he thought I wasn't very smart and wouldn't cause trouble. He might even be the guy behind this business. But maybe I could talk to his wife."

"His wife? Why her?"

"She seemed very friendly and outgoing. She might be a lot more talkative than he is. Whatever is going on here, she probably doesn't know about it. But she might be able to tell us who was here before we were. I'll call her up to chat about something else and try to wiggle it out of her."