Bob, who was turning into a man of few words, nodded and didn’t say anything.

I smiled, but my mind was working furiously.

So. Not brother, but brother-in-law. And there was clearly tension between the two. How very interesting. Plus, Brown had been riding with a group of bicyclists and each one of them might have useful information.

The investigation was underway.

*   *   *

It wasn’t quite noon when I left Lindy and her brother-in-law. In the time I’d been inside, the clouds had multiplied and thickened and the wind speed had gone up a notch. I fast-walked to the car, which was where I’d left my jacket, started the engine, and flicked the heater to high.

September, in the land of Up North, was a mixed bag of weather. Some years it was nicer in September than it had been in August, but sometimes September felt more like November. You just never knew, and if you were sensible you prepared for a wide range of temperatures every time you walked out the door.

I backed out of Lindy’s driveway, wondering where I fell on the Sensible Scale. And also, where did I want to fall?

I thought about it all the way back to Chilson, and was still thinking about it as I snuck undetected through the library’s side door and tried to tiptoe into my office without being seen.

“Hey, Minnie!”

I looked at my office door, a mere five steps away. So close, yet so far. I turned. “Hey, Josh. What’s up?”

“Didn’t know you were scheduled to work today.”

“I’m not. I just needed to, um, pick up a book I wanted to read this weekend.” This was true. But I also wanted to use the library’s Internet access, which was far faster than the marina’s. The Internet at the house was almost as fast, but Rafe’s Saturday plans had a lot to do with noisy tools I wasn’t good at using, and which tended to interfere with the Wi-Fi connection. “Why are you here?”

“Stopped to check on an error message from one of the network switches.” He shrugged and shoved his hands in the pockets of his cargo pants. “Rebooted and it was fine.”

“And we pay you how much for that?”

He gave his stock response. “Not enough. It’s not the rebooting, it’s—”

“Knowing what to reboot. I know.” Having an in-house IT guy was expensive, but to my mind it was worth every penny in these days of increasing and ever-changing technologies. “How’s it going with Mia?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“She’s still undecided about moving in with you?”

He blew out a huge sigh. “Like I said before, she’s waffling on the whole thing. She was all excited at first, but now not so much. She doesn’t even want to talk about it any more.”