“Good morning to you,” Bobo said, putting his e-reader down reluctantly. “I’m on number twenty-seven, which happens to be Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.”

Olivia was not in the mood for Bobo’s cleverness. “What. Is. Going. On?” she demanded.

“Yes,” said Joe, coming in the front door just in time to hear her question. “What?”

“I stood out there and listened for a minute. Manfred’s been accused of being a jewel thief, and it’s been hinted that he killed the old lady,” Bobo said. “You should know more about it than I do, since I hear you were on the spot.” He gave Olivia a very level look.

“I had nothing to do with Manfred’s situation,” she said immediately. “Who’s accused him? Of stealing what?”

Bobo said, “I only know what I overheard the reporters saying when I put my trash can out at the curb. And I’ve told you that.”

Joe said, “I don’t believe it for a second. Manfred? Nahhh.”

Olivia fumed, though she kept it under a tight lid. She was smart enough about herself to know that she felt strongest and most effective in situations in which she could take control and take action. Not always the same thing . . . but often enough. “He didn’t do it,” she said.

“I agree with both of you,” Bobo said. “He’s an honest man in a charlatan’s job. I don’t think he had any more to do with that than he did the murder/suicide the same weekend. In the same hotel.”

There was a substantial silence.

Olivia scowled. She did not exactly feel guilty. But she didn’t feel happy, either. And she hated the proximity of the newspeople. The new proprietors of the hotel were bad enough. One reason she’d settled in Midnight was to avoid scrutiny . . . and because the place felt right. “I want this to go away,” she said, and she thought, I miss Lem.

Bobo nodded. “Sure,” he said. “I do, too.”

Olivia threw herself into a chair, a violently flowered padded rocker. Furniture that landed in the pawnshop tended to stay there. “So you’re seriously worried that he might be arrested?”