As I raked, I thought about the theoretical trap. “By the way, like Rafe said, we’d be happy to hear your trapping suggestions. Oh, you’d like a summary of the final suspects?” I asked, even though he hadn’t so much as twitched. “No problem. We have two—Ian Breece, farmer with a Conti, and John Pinnock, the cranky neighbor. I’m leaning toward the cranky neighbor. He keeps trying different ways to scare off Sylvia, so it just makes sense that. . . . What are you doing?”

Eddie ignored my question. He was intent on fishing something out from between two of the many fieldstones that created the raised flower beds. He was also making an odd snorking sound, the kind of sound that meant one of two things: he was about to hack up a hair ball, or he was about to hack up a piece of the grass he’d just eaten. On the plus side, he was outside, which meant the effort to clean up his mess would be minimal to nonexistent.

“Mrr!”

He batted a scrap of something in my direction, bounded up the back stairs, and sat with his back to me.

“Right,” I said, picking up his prize. “Thanks so much for finding this fine piece of”—I eyed the scrap of thin plastic—“former candy bar wrapper.” From the bit of writing I could make out, it was sour apple something or other. Laffy Taffy, maybe. Cats are so weird.

I shoved the scrap into my pants pocket and went back to rake wielding. “Anyway, like I was saying, John Pinnock is at the top of my suspect list and—”

“Mrr!”

“Well, sure, I’m trying not to be biased just because I don’t like the guy. That’s the whole reason for a trap. What we need is proof.”

“Mrr!”

Even my cat thought the idea was dumb. To some extent, I was inclined to agree, but the alternative was doing nothing, and Ryan was depending on us.

As I raked, something tickled the back of my brain. Someone had said . . . something. A something that hadn’t seemed important at the time. Who had it been? What had it been?

I closed my eyes and let my mind wander back and forth across the last few days, skipping about . . .

My eyes flew open. “Rake Man,” I said out loud, staring at the rake in my hands. Skyler’s neighbor. What exactly had he said about Skyler? That he’d never seen him go anywhere overnight. That didn’t mean that Skyler never ever went anywhere; Rake Man couldn’t see everything that Skyler did. But it did mean that Skyler might have lied to me about being in Chicago for that art gallery opening. And it did mean he might not have an alibi for the night of Pug’s murder.

We were back to three suspects.

Chapter 19