“Excuse me?”

“Sorry. My cat burrowed himself into my backpack and is . . . no, my wallet is not a cat toy, so quit already, will you?”

Eddie squirreled out of my grasp and glared at me. “Mrr!” he said, and jumped to the floor.

Cats.

“Anyway,” I said. “It wasn’t anything specific, just some weirdness. Bob didn’t say much. Neither of them introduced him to me; I only figured out by accident who he was. But there was just an odd feeling in the room.”

“Hmm,” Tabitha said. “People are most often killed by someone they know.”

I half smiled. She’d sounded just like her husband. “Yes. I’ll add him to the list.”

“Anyone else? Because right now we’re pretty limited, suspect-wise.”

“Maybe.” I told her about the bike ride and how there’d been a new guy a few weeks back that Brown hadn’t been happy to see. “I asked around but didn’t get any consistent answer about what he looked like. Or even his name, other than that it might have started with an A.”

“Not much to go on,” Tabitha said, again sounding a lot like Hal.

Speaking of which, a question needed to be asked. “Are you going to talk to your husband about any of this?”

“Next question, please.”

I stifled a sudden concern for the state of the Inwood marriage. But they’d been married for decades, after all, and its internal machinations were none of my business. “How about developing a plan?”

“Let’s sleep on how to get more information about Ariella and where she might have been the night Brown was killed. Same thing with learning the identity of the mystery bicyclist.”

Serial yawns were threatening to unhinge my jaw. “Works for me.”

“So our very next step,” Tabitha said, “is to learn more about Brother Bob.”

“Agreed.”

And I knew exactly how to go about doing that very thing.

Well, at least sort of.

Chapter 8

The next day was another marathon bookmobile day. We were out on the road at first light and still on the road when the sun dropped below the other horizon. My initial post–bike ride morning stiffness rated a solid six on the one-to-ten pain scale, and Julia’s first greeting was “What on earth did you do to yourself? Are you sure you can drive?”

But I could, and did. Plus, one of the many benefits of being on the bookmobile was that, during stops, I was able to move around and loosen up. By the end of the long day, I’d almost forgotten I’d been sore.

Julia’s parting comment, back in Chilson, was a cheerful, “You only feel better because you’re young. Don’t expect to be able to feel the same way in a few more years.”

“Not me,” I called to her departing back. “I’m going to be the exception.”