Rafe took my hand. “That was . . .” His voice trailed off. Rafe, rarely at a loss for words, had come up dry.

“Interesting,” I supplied. Because though uncomfortable in all ways, meeting John Pinnock had, in fact, been interesting. And it had given us a real suspect for Pug’s murder.

After the encounter with Mr. Pinnock, we biked slowly past Pug’s cottage, where a yellow and very expensive-looking car was parked in the driveway. Sylvia drove a silver-colored SUV, so I assumed the yellow car owner was some other relative. Rafe and I continued on a mile or so farther along the lakeshore, then headed inland, which meant up. And up. Then even more up. Part of me was enjoying the physical work, but the other part of me—the much larger part—was wondering why I’d ever thought this might be a good idea.

“You coming?” Rafe asked over his shoulder.

I gave him a Pinnock-category glare. He hadn’t even sounded out of breath. How could that be? I was no elite athlete, or any kind of athlete at all, but I got a decent amount of exercise. I went for walks. Lots of them. Did some biking. Some skiing. On occasion, I’d even been known to run. Unless Rafe was sneaking out at three in the morning for clandestine training, he got less exercise than I did. How was it I was the one sucking wind while he was zipping to the top of the hill as if he’d been doing this every day for months?

After we got home, I posed that exact question.

When I asked, Rafe had his head in the refrigerator, and I heard enough rattling noises to know that he was pushing various bottles and cans of beer around in search of the one that most closely fit his mood.

“What’s that?” he asked, emerging with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He popped the top and took a long swig.

I hadn’t realized we’d had any PBR in there, which made me wonder what else might be back there. One of these days we really needed to do a thorough cleaning of the fridge. Maybe next week. Or month.

“How is it,” I asked, “that even though you never work out and I get a reasonable amount of exercise, you can bike faster and longer than I can?”

Rafe lowered his beer. “You sure you want to know? Because you’re not going to like it.”

I braced myself for a lecture on body mass, muscle weight, testosterone, estrogen, and fast-twitch and slow-twitch fibers, something about which we both knew very little. I put on a look of eager anticipation. “Tell me.”