“She’s fine,” Kristen said. “She always looks like that when she’s holding out on me. Spill, Minnie Hamilton. What is it you’re not saying?”

I sighed. “Brown Bernier. We were assuming he had a heart attack, but that wasn’t it. He was murdered.”

Kristen sat down hard on a nearby stool. “Murdered? But that . . . that can’t be right. He’s the kind of guy who opened windows to let flies out.”

“I didn’t know you knew him.” Scruffy came to his bride’s side and gave her a hug.

“He and my dad played poker together, back in the day,” she said. “They were in the same high school class, along with their other poker cronies.”

I made a mental note to ask her about the other poker players. “Hal and I figure the car that almost hit the bookmobile was the killer speeding away.”

“Hark!” Trock put one hand to his ear. “Do I hear the sounds of a unified front with the sheriff’s office? That would be so unlike you, Minnie.”

“The only unusual thing,” I said, “is that Hal and I are on one side and Ash is on the other. He’s being weirdly stubborn about it, saying that lots of people speed on that stretch of road and spending a lot of time hunting down the driver isn’t the best use of resources.”

“You think he’s wrong?” Kristen pulled out of Scruffy’s embrace and faced me.

“Well, yes. I do.” Cars did speed on that road, but the odds of a random speeder, coinciding with the bookmobile, combined with a murder victim, all at roughly the same place and time, had to be far beyond what anyone could realistically calculate.

“Then,” Kristen said, looking at me hard, “you have two choices. Run your own side investigation. Or stop complaining about Ash.”

My mouth opened, then closed. Because she was right. Ash didn’t deserve my whining. And her late father had been a friend of Brown’s, which made the decision even easier.

“You’re right,” I said. “The side investigation starts tomorrow.”

Chapter 5

Saturday dawned bright and breezy, with big puffy clouds doing that scudding thing across the sky.

“Look at that,” I said to Eddie, nodding through the bedroom window. “I counted, and it took less than three seconds for that cloud, you know, the one that looks like a baby bunny, to get from one side of the window to the next. Wonder how long the next one will take.”