The conversation was wrapping up, so I jumped in with my last question. “Someone told me you’re related to Pug Mattock. I was so sorry to hear about his death.”

“Distant cousin,” she said, “but thanks. Sylvia and Pug are more like an aunt and uncle to me. When we were kids, we spent a lot of time at the Mattock cottage. All those summers is why I ended up moving here.”

“What do you think is going to happen to the cottage?” I asked. “Is Sylvia going to keep it going? I know Pug wanted to move up here full time.”

“No idea.” Melinda sighed. “I hope she does. Probably too early to say. But I hope so. Last thing I want is for Charlie to get his hands on that place so soon.”

“Charlie?” I asked tentatively.

“Well, we’re supposed to call him Charles now, but it’s hard to remember. Charlie is Pug’s nephew and is next in line to inherit the cottage. But last summer I overheard him talking to his wife. The first thing he’ll do is redo the kitchen. And then the bathroom. And then he’ll remodel the screen porch into a glassed-in three-season porch. Right now it’s all original, every square inch of it.”

“That’s, um, bad?”

“It would change the cottage forever,” she said vehemently. “It’s fine the way it is. Perfectly fine. Why change something for the sake of change?”

I made soothing noises, though I was thinking that an original bathroom might need an upgrade, and there was no way an old kitchen functioned the way people lived now.

“Charlie’s nothing but a bully,” she went on, “and bullies sure seem to get their own way. I mean, take that car of his. I know his wife wanted something for the whole family, but no, he goes and buys that bright yellow thing. Barely a back seat at all. Does that make any sense?”

A stray piece of memory surfaced. “Yellow?” That day Rafe and I were out biking, we’d seen a yellow car parked in Pug’s driveway.

“Yeah,” she said. “Some kind of Mercedes. Cost more than my first house did.”

I eventually edged her back to library programming and extracted a promise that she would contact the Airbnb owners about the puppeteer. But when I hung up, I was thinking about Charlie Seller, trying not to jump to conclusions and failing spectacularly. Why was Charlie at the family cottage just days after Pug’s death? Was the need to control the family cottage a strong enough desire to be a motive for murder?

Surely not. But . . . maybe. There was always a maybe.

*   *   *