He played with a stray lock of my hair. “How do you feel about one-on-one meetings with parents who are convinced their offspring are being irreversibly damaged by what the school is teaching them?”

“Is that why you were working so late tonight?”

He grinned and even in the dim light I could see the gleam of his white teeth. “The final set of parents and I did eventually adjourn to a different location.”

I sniffed loudly. “Do I detect the scent of Hoppe’s Brewing?” Chilson’s first brewpub, owned by two sisters who rejoiced in the last name of Hoppe, had opened a few weeks ago. But since I wasn’t a huge fan of beer, I hadn’t made any effort to become a regular patron.

“They’re expanding the menu,” Rafe said. “You’re going to love the gnocchi with tomatoes and mozzarella.”

I made a mental note to try it as a take-out lunch. Then I sighed, because the trauma-induced conversation wasn’t over. “I didn’t text you everything about tonight. We figured out who he was.” There’d been a small nylon bag strapped under the bicycle’s seat. Deputy Nowlin had unzipped it and found a cell phone and a wallet.

Rafe’s arm tightened around my shoulders. “Anyone we know?”

I hadn’t, but I hadn’t been bred, born, and raised in Chilson like Rafe. I hesitated, not wanting to break bad news. “His name was Brown Bernier.”

“Brown?” Rafe’s arm went stiff. “You’re kidding!”

“Did you know him?”

“Level three, is all. But he’s been a three for years.”

“A what?”

Rafe sighed. “How can it be that you’ve never learned the levels of friendship?”

“Surely you’re not telling me I don’t know how to be a good friend.”

“Surely not. What I am telling you is any non-relative can be categorized into one of five different levels of friendship.”

“Five,” I said. “Why five?”

“Because that’s all there are. Level one is someone you meet once and probably never will again. Level two is a nodding acquaintance. Level threes are the ones you’d have a beer with if you ran into them. Level fours are people you make an effort to keep in touch with, and level-five friends are the people who know you inside and out.”

It all made sense, in a Rafe-like sort of way. I wondered how it was I’d never heard of his friendship levels before but decided to pursue that some other time. “How did you know Brown?”

“Through Tank.”

Tank, whose birth certificate read Cecil, was a high school friend of Rafe’s. He’d once been a roofer but now worked for Tonedagana County as maintenance staff. “How did Tank know him?”