I nodded. “And a very strange conversation it was. We started with a detailed history of their house, including the dates of the original purchase—no, don’t laugh, I am not making this up. And after we got through all that, he wanted some advice on . . .”

My voice trailed off. We’d just walked past the bike shop, and a number of puzzle pieces suddenly rearranged themselves in my head.

“Advice on what?” Rafe prompted.

“Planning for retirement,” I said vaguely. “Weird, you know?”

Rafe agreed that it was weird, but my thoughts had already moved in a completely different direction.

Because what if the tie between Brown and Emily was more than biking? What if it had something to do with retirement? Both of them were recently retired from their jobs. Could that be a connection? And if so, were there other just-retired bike club members? Were they, too, about to become murder victims?

“Hello, are you in there?” Rafe squeezed my hand.

“Sorry, just thinking.”

“About what?”

“Is this the time to talk about how we’re going to settle on paying for the house?”

“Not even close,” my beloved said cheerfully.

“Rafe . . .”

“Nope, not going there,” he said. “We’ll work it out, don’t worry.”

“But I do. Worry, I mean. Not a lot,” I hastened to add, because I was doing my best to be more like Aunt Frances, who worried the least of any person I’d ever met in my life. She was also the most content person I’d ever met, and I was pretty sure the two things were linked. “We need to work this out before I move in.”

“And we will.” Rafe gave me a one-armed hug. “I’m just really busy right now. How about this. We’ll sit down next weekend and do a spreadsheet.”

“That should work,” I said. “But I’d like to communicate my displeasure that you’ve taken so long to do this. We started talking about it right after we got engaged, and—”

“Well, hey!” Rafe called to a large man in baggy sweatpants and sweatshirt who’d just come around the corner. “How are you doing these days?”

I sighed. This was a side effect of the assistant librarian pairing up with the middle school principal. No matter where we went, one of us ran into someone we knew. This happened anywhere in Tonedagana County. It also happened throughout northwest lower Michigan, downstate, and, during a drive to Canada on the long Labor Day weekend, also managed to happen in the tiny town of Wawa.

“Mr. Niswander,” said the man, shaking hands with Rafe. “And Minnie Hamilton, correct?”

“Isaac.” I nodded, finally placing him in an office wearing office-type clothes. “From the city.”

“For my sins.” He laughed jovially, his round face managing to get even rounder in the process. “And I have a lot of them, don’t I?”