I hesitated, thinking. Everybody, he’d said. Hmm. It just so happened that I knew where “everybody” went on a Wednesday morning in early April. I made a personal U-turn, walked a couple of blocks, and went into the Round Table, local diner extraordinaire.

A uniformed waitress, her long gray hair wound up in a bun, coffeepot in hand, gave me a raised-eyebrow look as I slid into a back booth. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Nice to see you, too, Sabrina.” I turned over the mug that was sitting there waiting. “Just coffee, please.”

The pad that she’d been pulling out of her apron pocket slid back home. “You’ve had breakfast?”

“You realize you’re acting like my mother.”

She snorted and filled my mug. “You realize that you need one? Even if you had breakfast, it wasn’t enough to keep a bird alive. A blueberry muffin should be just about right.”

When Sabrina was in this kind of mood, it was best to accept the inevitable. “Sounds good,” I said.

“Anyone joining you?” she asked.

“Not as far as I know.” Since she didn’t move, which could only mean that she was waiting for an explanation, I added, “With Graydon gone this week, Kelsey’s been in early to make coffee. I’d really rather have yours.”

She smiled and nodded. Now my solo presence on a Wednesday morning made sense. All was right with the world. “I’ll bring you a to-go cup with the muffin.”

The muffin I didn’t want, didn’t need, but would enjoy to the last crumb. “Thanks!”

I busied myself with cream and spoon and tried to make myself invisible to the group at the nearby table. It was my theory that every small town had a place where men gathered in the morning to have breakfast and coffee and to pat one another on the back for how much better the world would be if only it would listen to them. In Chilson, this group gathered around the restaurant’s round table and was a blend of retired and not, farmers and not, locals and not. Given that I’d seen Pug, every once in a blue moon, sitting with this group of self-appointed wisdom dispensers, it stood to reason that his death would be a topic of discussion.

Of course, being men, they didn’t talk about Pug at all. They talked about the weather, the new city manager, the hockey playoffs, the upcoming baseball season, and circled back to the weather.

I dawdled over my coffee as long as I could, but there came a point when I had to abandon my plan and get to work. In theory it was possible for me to break into the conversation, but in practice I lacked the courage to breach the broad backs that faced me.