Arizona Homecoming. Pamela Tracy

though we’re pretty slow tonight.” Jane worked at the Miner’s Lamp, the rustic restaurant in town. It had been around even longer than the Lost Dutchman Ranch.

      “What do you want me to guess?”

      “I waited on a man tonight. He’s still here. He’s an EPA inspector out of Phoenix—don’t ask me what EPA stands for—who came to check some sort of levels at the Baer house.”

      “Okay...” Emily tried to figure why this was news. Since the groundbreaking, Donovan had had one inspector after another at the Baer place.

      “Well, I heard this guy on the phone. I guess the levels of something called radon gas were high.”

      “And that’s bad?” Emily queried.

      “Bad enough that when Donovan called Baer with the news, Baer apparently said to halt construction.”

      “For how long?”

      “Maybe for good,” Jane said. “The inspector was on the phone with his boss. He sounded a bit surprised. I’m wondering if Baer’s getting fed up. I mean first it’s you protesting, then it’s a skeleton and now this.”

      Emily should have felt elated, should have jumped for joy, but all she could picture was the brown-haired man who’d walked in the hot sun for hours picking up an old shoe and plenty of beer cans just because she’d asked him to.