The three of us pondered. It hadn’t always been this way. Once upon a time, we’d been able to walk into the Round Table and order anything we wanted.

“Summer before last I ordered a ham and cheese on rye,” Rafe said. “No way would she let me have that now.”

Ash started to say something, but I pointed my index finger at him and cut him off. “Later. I want to know about Max’s friends.”

He looked at me, but it was a sideways kind of look, and I suddenly knew exactly what he was going to say.

“Fred Hallenius,” Ash said, “had a long history of heart disease and died of congestive heart failure. The medical examiner had no questions about the cause of death and there was no autopsy.” Before I could say anything, he went on. “David Olivarez had a number of health issues, many of them respiratory, and he had an underlying kidney disease. Pneumonia was the stated cause of death, and again the medical examiner had no cause-of-death questions and there was no autopsy.”

It was pretty much what I’d expected. I squinted at Ash. “Why did you not want to tell me that?” An awkward phrasing, but he seemed to catch my point, because he shrugged.

Annoyance flashed. “You think I wanted them to be murder victims? Do you think I imagine killers are lurking behind every tree in the county? Do you think—”

“Here.” Sabrina plopped three plates of breakfast on the table. “Eat. Then yell at him. No doubt he deserves it, but it can wait until after you get food in you.”

In silence, we started on the fried eggs, hash browns, and sausage patties (Rafe and Ash) and cinnamon pancakes with bacon (Minnie). Ash polished off all his eggs and half the sausage and said, “It wasn’t you, Minnie; it was your friend Max. I know you have to tell him all this and I know it won’t be easy for you or him. So I’m sorry.”

My mild anger had deflated three bites into the bacon. “It’s okay. I jumped to a conclusion I shouldn’t have. So I’m sorry, too.”

Rafe reached for the Tabasco sauce. “It’s got to be hard for Max,” he said, adding a disturbing amount of hot sauce to his hash browns, which he’d already doused with the stuff. “Having two friends die so close to each other can’t be the easiest thing to deal with, no matter how old you are.”

“Fred wasn’t a friend friend,” I said. “He and Max were coworkers. They both worked for the road commission.”

Ash took the Tabasco bottle from Rafe. “David Olivarez worked there, too. Hallenius was a driver and Olivarez was an engineer.”

I was touched that Ash had spent so much time on what was essentially a favor for me. “Thanks for looking into this. I really do appreciate it.”