“No helmet,” I said, trying not to take offense at the implication that I’d neglected to tell him something so important. “And no bike. I’ve been wondering how that might have happened, but the only thing I’ve come up with is he had a flat tire somewhere and was walking home.” Although that scenario didn’t answer the question of how he’d ended up lying in the middle of the road.

“We’ll look into it.”

He sounded confident in his use of the “we” pronoun and I smiled at him fondly. It was obvious the poor boy had no idea that Detective Hal Inwood and detective-in-training Deputy Ash Wolverson would take his report and he’d never again be part of the investigation.

Then I remembered something I had, in fact, neglected to tell him. “The car.” I whirled around to face the direction it had gone.

“What car, ma’am?”

I gazed into the dark, trying to summon the details from the eternity of an hour earlier. “A few miles before we . . . found the victim. A car came toward us around a curve, swinging so wide it almost hit us. I’m sure he was speeding.” Thoughts and theories tumbled around in my head. “There were no other oncoming vehicles. He had to have seen our victim. Why didn’t he stop? Or did he hit him, and that’s how he died?”

The deputy was already reaching for his notebook. “What can you tell me about the vehicle?”

“It was dark,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “Or almost. And I was more focused on avoiding a collision than reading license plates.”

“Yes, ma’am. But any information would be helpful. Was it an SUV or a sedan? Were the headlights square? Round? Those bluish ones? Was a headlight aimed high or low?”

I eyed him with an increased measure of respect. The kid was good. Unfortunately, I wasn’t. At least not with car stuff. “Sorry, I don’t remember. But Julia might.”

At that exact moment, Julia’s stage voice, the one that had easily carried to the back seats in the top balcony, pierced the night. “Eddie! Stop! Minnie, he’s doing it again!”

“Rotten cat,” I muttered as I hurried over, visualizing the events. Julia had let Eddie out of his carrier because she felt sorry for him being cooped up. Eddie, who typically stayed inside the bookmobile as long as people were on board, had decided he’d been in there long enough and had trotted outside.

Normally, this meant a short game of Eddie-hide-and-Minnie-seek, but this was different. We were on the side of a road. And it was dark. Really dark. The moon hadn’t risen, and the closest streetlight was ten miles away.