Sunny held up a jumble of metal and plastic and nodded. “My father liked things organized. But it was my mother who did the organizing.”

Sam said, “To get back to visitors for a second, you have family close by? An aunt or an uncle or something? Do I have that right?”

Sunny raised her sandy eyebrows in a manner that everyone but Sam found comical. “Nice try, but dead end. Daddy loved his children but we didn’t get to use the cabin by ourselves. He didn’t even like Mom’s sister or her husband. There is no way that the Porters would have been granted a stay at this ranch. Sorry.”

“Your father and his sister-in-law didn’t get along?”

“You could say that. Abby, my aunt, drinks. It’s a problem. Daddy found her weak. Her husband, my Uncle Andrew, loved to tease Daddy. My father didn’t have much of a sense of humor, so Andrew’s act never went over well. Anyway, my aunt and uncle are in the middle of a divorce. It’s messy, a custody thing, you know?”

Craig Larsen stepped forward, his boot heels causing loud smacks on the wood floor. “Sunny, you said something about your father hunting a little while ago, didn’t you? Did your father keep guns up here?”

“I suppose he did. He has some he used for hunting. He didn’t keep any rifles down in Boulder. So he must have kept them here or in Aspen.”

Sam turned to me and mouthed, “Aspen?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

Nonchalantly, Craig asked, “Where would you think they would be? The playroom?”

Sunny giggled and said, “Game room. Game room. I suppose that’s where he would keep them. It’s down this way if you’d like to look.”

We followed her through the kitchen to a room similar in size to the living room. It was filled with Dead Ed’s toys and games. A corner bar had stools for six serious drinkers. I was looking around for an ostentatious gun rack, while Sam, Lucy, and Craig Larsen spotted the locked gun cabinet immediately.

Deputy Larsen tried keys off the ring that Sunny had produced, hoping to find one that fit the hefty lock on the cabinet.

Offhandedly, Sam asked, “Sunny, your folks own a place in Aspen, too? Like this one?”

“No, it’s a condominium, in town. My mom likes Aspen, the shops and things. It’s not country like this, though, and it’s much smaller.”

“Anyone been up there since your father died?”

“Not that I know of. There’s a management company there that looks after things. I’m sure we could have someone check it out with a phone call.”

Larsen finally found a key that opened the cabinet door. He rooted around inside before facing Sunny. He said, “The cabinet is empty. There’s room for half a dozen rifles or shotguns in here, and drawers for three handguns at least.” He stepped back so we could see the empty case. “See, no weapons.”

Sam asked, “Any ammunition?”

Larsen shook his head. “Sunny, you have any way of knowing what weapons should be in this cabinet?”

She shook her head. “Mom would know. But I’d rather not upset her.”

Lucy said, “Well, it appears we may have a crime now. I don’t especially like it when weapons are missing. How about we all start being a little more careful with what we touch.”

Larsen used the telephone to request some backup and some forensic help. When he was done, we took two cars, mine and the deputy’s, down the hill to the barn to check on the RV. On the way, I asked Sam what he thought was going on.

“It looks like Sunny might be right. Someone may indeed have been staying in the house without permission. It’s not a typical B and E. They don’t appear to have taken anything except the weapons, assuming the weapons were actually there in the first place. They didn’t do any damage. At this point, I don’t see that it’s much more than a security concern. I imagine the locals can handle it just fine.”

If I allowed myself the luxury of believing him, his opinion would be good news. Indulging myself, I smiled as I was driving. I had a fleeting image of lowering my head to my pillow in Boulder as the bedside clock signaled midnight.

But I didn’t believe what Sam was telling me. He was being uncharacteristically optimistic.

“Would you be saying the same thing, Sam, if you weren’t sure of Merritt’s whereabouts for the last few days?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if our suspicions are right and her friend Madison is hooked up in this thing with Merritt somehow? What if it was Madison and her boyfriend, the frat kid, who have been camping out in Dead Ed’s cabin?”

He waved me off as though he’d already run the idea through the mill and rejected it. “The place is too neat for a couple of teenagers on the run. That’s what I think. If it were a couple of teenagers camping out, they would have trashed the place. You know kids.”

“Maybe that’s the point. Maybe they tried to make it look like they weren’t there.”

“Couple of kids, Alan. They’d be sloppy.”

“They were sloppy. Sunny picked it up in a second.”

“Still, too neat for kids.”

“Don’t underestimate them, Sam. Merritt’s a kid, too. So far, it hasn’t proved to be much of a defense for her.”

With that, we arrived at the barn.

I admit that I’d barely paid any attention to the structure on the original drive up the hill. After all, the Not So Lazy Seven was a ranch, and the building was designed to look like a barn. But examining it more closely the second time, it was apparent that the barn had been built not to service the ranch or to shelter animals but, instead, for the primary or exclusive purpose of garaging the motor home that Edward Robilio had named Haldeman.

The entry doors to the barn were huge, at least fifteen feet tall, and the double doors to the ersatz hayloft were, on closer examination, an obvious facade. On one side of the building a lower section was attached to the main structure under a long shed roof.

Sunny stood next to a steel door on the shed side and said, “This is where you go in.” She waited. “Craig, I think you still have the keys.”

The cops were hesitating. Sam whispered something to Craig Larsen and Craig nodded twice while he whispered a reply. Lucy walked around to the side of the structure and peered through a dusty window. Sam said, “Alan, why don’t you take Sunny back to your car for a few minutes while we look around. We would like to be certain that none of those missing guns ended up down here.”

I was opening my mouth to reply when I saw an automatic in Sam’s right hand. I had no idea where it had come from. Lucy was almost next to him, and she was pulling a weapon from her purse. Beside her, Craig Larsen was unsnapping his holster.

All in all, it seemed like a good time to be cooperative. I said, “Of course. We’ll be in the car.”

Twenty-three

Once the three cops drew their guns, every solitary second seemed to linger like a summer cold.

Beside me on the passenger seat of my car, Sunny Hasan was breathing deeply through barely parted lips, her expelled air sounding like a breeze whistling through a narrow canyon. Her wide eyes were fixed on the barn door, and she hadn’t said a word to me since she had perched herself primly on the seat. If I gave her a tub of popcorn and a Pepsi she would appear to be somebody’s date caught up in Bruce Willis’s latest extravaganza at the drive-in.

CR-ACK.

My instinct told me that the shot came from the barn, but I was so stunned by the fierceness of the explosion that I couldn’t be sure.

Sunny screamed and turned toward me. Roughly, I forced her head to her knees and threw myself on top of her. I wondered if the cops were wearing bulletproof vests. I thought of Lucy’s Donna Karan and I knew she wasn’t. I thought of little Simon Purdy, and I hoped his daddy was.

My heart jumped as Sam’s voice creased the night. “Down! Everybody down!”