“Thanks, but it’s not like that. It’s . . .” He shook his head and pulled a notepad and pen from his shirt pocket. “Never mind. You didn’t stop by to talk about my personal life. As I recall, you have information about Pug Mattock’s murder.”

Clearly, he wanted the Ash-and-Chelsea conversation to be over. Since we were friends, I moved on. For the time being. “What I said was that maybe I have information.” Which I could have given him over the phone, but I’d wanted to talk to him about Chelsea. “It’s just that Pug had come north weeks earlier than he normally did.”

Ash’s pen didn’t move. “And?”

“That’s pretty much it. No, don’t go all Hal Inwood on me,” I said, because his face was starting to take on the distant and disinterested look of his superior officer. “Listen. You know how it is up here in the winter on most lakefront properties. Hardly any of those places are lived in all year long. What if Pug, by coming up earlier than he ever had, saw something he shouldn’t have? Or someone.”

The pen continued its imitation of an immovable object. “Give me five examples.”

I held up my index finger. “He saw a vehicle in a driveway, a vehicle owned by someone robbing an empty house. The owners are still south, so they don’t even know they’ve been robbed.”

Finger number two went up. “He saw an illegal drug sale.”

Number three. “Without knowing it, he saw evidence of human trafficking.”

Four. “He saw two people who shouldn’t have been together, say, CEOs of two companies that are in the middle of a merger and aren’t supposed to be exchanging information.”

And five. “Um . . . he saw someone hauling beer into a house when the guy had sworn to his wife that he’d never touch the stuff again.”

Ash’s eyebrows went up. “And you think any of those scenarios could have incited someone to commit murder?”

I leaned back and crossed my arms. “Anyone can be a murderer. It just takes a certain set of circumstances.”

He sort of smiled. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were quoting Hal.”

“She is.”

In the doorway was Detective Hal Inwood himself, sixtyish, tall and lanky, and devoid of any charm whatsoever. How he and his perpetually happy wife, Tabitha, had managed to make their marriage such a long-lasting one was a complete mystery.

“What brings you to the sheriff’s office this morning?” the detective asked. “No, let me guess. You have ideas on how we should conduct our investigation into the murder of Pug Mattock.”