She said what might have been “Sounds good,” but also might have been something in French, so I left her to it and headed home.

When I got there, Rafe and Eddie were in the kitchen, starting supper. More specifically, Rafe was heating water in a big pot on the cooktop and Eddie was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, watching Rafe’s every move.

“Is he helping or criticizing?” I asked, sitting next to my cat and patting his head.

Rafe looked over his shoulder. “Give you two guesses, and the first one doesn’t count.”

“Mrr!”

I laughed and told Rafe about Kristen’s interpretation of light work. “And then she accused me of not knowing the difference between a good recipe idea and a bad one. Can you believe it?”

“Yes,” my beloved said. “Also not sure you’d recognize a real recipe from a fake one.”

If he hadn’t been so completely correct, I might have been annoyed. But then something rearranged in my brain. “Say,” I said slowly, “you know how we think the Conti statues have something to do with Pug’s death? I just thought of a way to draw the killer out of hiding.”

Rafe dropped a huge handful of spaghetti into the pot of water. “Yeah, what’s that?”

“What if we come up with a Conti ourselves? A fake one, I mean. See if that tempts somebody.”

“Mrr.” Eddie butted my arm with the top of his head.

“Sorry,” I said. “Didn’t mean to stop petting you.”

“I don’t know, Minnie,” Rafe said, stirring the spaghetti. “That pottery class wasn’t exactly a success, was it? And your brother told me about the coffee mug you made for your dad.”

My chin went up. “It was a pencil holder. And I was only six. Besides, I’m not saying to actually make a sculpture. Just try to, I don’t know, maybe sell one.”

“Mrr!”

Clearly I wasn’t petting Eddie the right way. Cats were sooo critical. “All Detective Inwood wants to do is find Ryan and arrest him,” I said. “He hardly paid any attention to the suspect possibilities I told him about this morning. Let’s see if we can think up a solid plan.”

Rafe put down the pasta fork and looked at me. “Okay. But if we can’t figure out a safe way to do this, you give up the idea, right?”

“Promise,” I said.

But we’d find a way. I wouldn’t rest until we did.

Chapter 14

Thursday morning I stood in the library parking lot, hugging myself tight against a gusting northwest wind that was chilling me to the bone, and watched Hunter zip through the preflight checklist from top to bottom.

“Shipshape, Captain,” he said, standing tall and giving me a crisp salute.

I saluted back. “Carry on, First Mate. You know the schedule.”