Looking for the Aardvark

Denver-based interior designer and sometime amateur sleuth Jason Lynx is still in a funk following difficult discoveries about his own past when his old school friend Bruce Norman persuades him to go to Santa Fe and look into the murder of Bruce's half brother, Ernie Quivada.
A self-styled preacher and relentless evangelist, Ernie yearned to do good but could see only evil. His fanaticism and insensitivity had earned him more than a few enemies among all strata of the complex local society, any one of whom might have slit his throat in order to curtail his unwelcome religious exhortations. The diverse list of suspects might even include his own teenage daughter, who left home because she could no longer bear to live with him, and his lovely, repressed, and wonderfully talented wife, who arouses emotions in Jason that he simply can't ignore.
A side trip to Oklahoma, where the Quivadas once lived, turns up a likely pair of killers, and a second murder convinces Jason that he's got the case wrapped up. But then, back in Santa Fe, the search for Ernie's slayer takes a cruel twist, and Jason learns a bitter lesson about possessiveness, paranoia, and demented piety - and comes to understand that there are instances when homicide is justified, perhaps even a moral imperative.