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has some appeal with the newcomers moving into Dona Ana. Let me run some numbers and then I can give you a good idea what you could get and how long it’d take. There are lots of cabins in T or C for sale, some dirt cheap and some very expensive. Did you have a price range?”
    “Once I see what I can get for the old homestead I can make a better estimate of what I’d want to spend. Max mentioned something about an old cabin his dad used to own. Said he’d sold it to some guy in Oklahoma years ago—maybe fifteen or more years back. Said they were allowed to use it to compensate his dad for some upkeep he did, but then once his dad died they lost contact with the Oklahoma guy. Maybe you could do some research and see if that might be something I’d be interested in?”
    “Sounds like it could be a dump by now. Let me check the records, see what Max’s dad used to own up there, and then track down the current owner. Give me a couple days, and I’ll see what I can do.”
    “Okay. Thanks, Chuck.”

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
    Waking up on the small sofa in his home office was less than comfortable. Joe’s head hurt and he was cold. On the other hand, there was one real benefit—he hadn’t had to deal with Liz. He’d heard her and the kids in the kitchen while he remained in the office, hoping she wouldn’t come in and start one of her lectures about his shortcomings. After a while he’d heard the garage door open and close. Feeling a little guilty about hiding out until they left, he also felt a sense of relief that he didn’t have to start his day off with more confrontation. He headed toward the kitchen, looking for coffee and aspirin.
    Joe called in to the office and told Lucille, his office manager, that he was meeting with Mike again this morning and would be in the office about noon. Lucille didn’t say anything. “Hello, did you hear what I said, Lucille?”
    “I heard you, Mr. Meadows. You’ll be in about noon.”
    “Thanks, Lucille.”
    What a pain in the butt she was. Joe had thought about firing her hundreds of times, but she was just too good at what she did to let her go. She was the best bookkeeper and organizer Joe had ever seen. But in her world there were the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys went to church, didn’t drink, didn’t dance, didn’t cuss, didn’t... well, just about everything they didn’t do, including and especially anything to do with sex. How children came about in Lucille’s world, he wasn’t sure. Joe and most of his clients were the bad guys in her Bible Belt concept of reality. So Joe just put up with her thinly veiled disapproval—one more person damning him to hell probably didn’t make a whole lot of difference.
    After a little coffee and some toast, with the aspirin starting to kick in, Joe was beginning to feel more human. His depression wouldn’t leave him alone, though. Some days were worse than others. Just for a while this morning he’d felt like he couldn’t go on any more. But the feeling passed. He knew he wasn’t suicidal, although if he’d told someone about his feelings they might have thought that was exactly what he was. He didn’t want to be dead, what he really wanted was to be someone else. With a coffee go-cup in hand, he headed out to see Mike and maybe find out about the mystery key.
    “This is for a bank lock box.” Mike’s key guy, Fred, looked even worse than Joe felt.
My gracious, this guy looks like he slept in a dumpster.
But Mike seemed to think he knew what he was talking about and they sure didn’t know anyone else who might be a key expert.
    “These guys have a unique design. They have special security measures to make it difficult to duplicate the keys, and if they’re not inserted along with the bank’s key, they can break off in the lock. I used to work on these for some banks in town—well, before my little slip.”
    Joe’d heard that Fred’s “little slip” involved theft, followed by four years in