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toward her, delivering the sad, appropriate, but curiously tinny phrase “I’m sorry for your loss.”
    “Would you like to have a seat?” Calvin asked, touching the edge of an armchair off to one side of the couch. “Or maybe a cup of coffee?”
    Gunther accepted the seat, saying, “No, thanks. Your son-in-law already offered. Nice guy.”
    Cutts resumed his seat next to his wife, who still didn’t seem to have noticed Joe’s arrival. “We’re very proud of Jeff. We and Linda both got lucky when he joined the family.”
    Joe smiled broadly. “Yeah. He told me the story. That must’ve been a little surprising when he and Linda got together.”
    But Cal shook his head pleasantly. “Most natural thing in the world. Didn’t surprise me in the least.”
    “Did me,” Marie said shortly, not moving her eyes.
    Both men hesitated, then Cal laughed carefully. “Well, I wasn’t bothered at all. You could tell they had eyes for each other from the moment he found us. Part of me wonders why it took as long as it did to surface. Guess they had to work out the ‘are we brother/sister or not?’ part first.”
    His wife snorted.
    Calvin looked a little tense. “After that, it didn’t take long. Anyhow, what can we do to help?”
    Joe was still thinking how best to approach them. For his purposes, this was hardly ideal—both of them together, tangled in grief and something older and more complicated that he knew nothing about. He wished he could find a way to split them up, preferably remaining with the man.
    “To begin with, I just wanted to repeat how sorry I am to be meeting under these circumstances. I and everyone involved in this case will do everything we can to move things along quickly.” He pulled a business card from his pocket and gave it to Calvin Cutts. “If anything comes up you’d like to talk about along the way, no matter how small, don’t hesitate to call.”
    The farmer slipped the card into his breast pocket after studying it politely for a moment. “Thank you. Don’t worry about us, though. You just do your job.”
    Joe nodded. “We will, and please tell your daughter the same thing—anything at all. Where is she, by the way? I sort of thought she’d be here with you, or with her husband.”
    “She went upstairs,” Cutts said without further explanation.
    “She all right?”
    Marie Cutts finally looked straight at him, her eyes narrow with anger. “Her brother was just burned to death. No, she’s not all right. Are you the idiot who’s supposed to catch who did this? God help us.”
    “Marie,” her husband cautioned.
    “I understand how you feel, Mrs. Cutts,” Joe began.
    “Oh, spare me,” she cut him off sharply. “And can the sympathy. You don’t know us from Adam’s off ox. This is your job, and if we’re lucky, your ambition will give us what we want, which is the son of a bitch who burned my son alive.”
    “Maybe you should check on Linda,” Cal suggested gently.
    “Check on her yourself,” came the quick reply. “This man wants answers. I’m going to give them to him.”
    Cutts looked at a loss, suddenly on the hooks of his own suggestion.
    “Go on,” she ordered him. “You’re wasting time.”
    Hesitantly, he rose to his feet, smiling awkwardly at Joe. “Maybe a good idea. She’s taken this pretty hard. I won’t be long.”
    His heart sinking, Joe conceded. “Take however long you need.”
    They both waited until Calvin had left the room.
    “What do you want to know?” Marie Cutts demanded.
    Joe took the direct route, hoping it might earn him some small amount of credit. “For one thing, I’d like to reconstruct the last hours of Bobby’s life—maybe find out why he was out there in the middle of the night.”
    “He went up to his room early, mooning about that tramp he was stuck on, and that’s the last we know.”
    “What made you aware the barn was on fire?”
    She made a sour face. “You think sixty cows and the barn they’re in burn