“You’re thinking that if I’d accepted your offer to help with the investigation, I wouldn’t be so overworked.”

“Mmm,” Hannah said, settling for the most noncommittal reply she could come up with on short notice.

“It’s not that I don’t want your help. I do. It’s just that I can’t ask for it. You know?”

“Not really.”

“Winnetka County Sheriff’s Department regulation four-eighteen, subsection B says, No civilian shall be recruited into an official investigation without insurance, bonding, compensation commensurate with duties, and deputization.”

“Is that a word?”

“Commensurate? Yeah, it means

”

“Not that,” Hannah interrupted him. “I know what commensurate means. I was talking about deputization. I don’t think it’s a word.”

“It must be a word. They used it in the official department regulations.”

Hannah bit her tongue rather than say what was on her mind. Mike had a lot to learn about regulations and the overworked secretaries who usually wrote them for their bosses. A mistake in word usage could multiply from county to county, and from state to state, until it was as rampant as gophers running wild on a golf course.

“I was really tempted to deputize you, but I thought it would be overstepping my bounds as acting sheriff.”

“You silver-tongued devil, you!” Hannah murmured under her breath, smiling despite herself. If Mike had deputized her, she would have worked her sleuthy fingers to the bone for him. But he hadn’t. And he’d only mentioned it because he was trying to sweet-talk her into giving him the information she’d gathered.

“So what did you find out?” Mike asked, validating Hannah’s conjecture.

“Not much,” Hannah said, but she knew she had to give him more than that so he’d give her something in return. “From what I’ve heard nobody liked Dean all that much.”

“Who do you like for the murder?”

“At first I liked Connor. He had a good motive, but it turns out that he couldn’t have done it. He wasn’t at Granny’s Attic that afternoon.”

“Right. His name isn’t on Frances’s list. Who else?”

Hannah drew a big breath of relief. Since Mike had eliminated Connor, he hadn’t bothered to run a background check. Connor’s prison days would remain his secret unless he chose to tell someone. “I thought maybe Sharyn had found out about Dean’s extracurricular activities and lowered the boom. I even entertained the thought that Tom Larchmont might have done away with Dean because he was a lousy husband for his niece, Sharyn.”

“Nope. I cleared them both. They alibi each other, and an independent third party swears they never left their chairs between takes.”