Rafe held Eddie up by his front end, letting his back legs dangle. “You really think so?” he asked, moving Eddie from side to side.

“All I’m saying is it’s a possibility. And if we talk to your dad, if he knows Pinnock, maybe we’ll learn something important. I’m not saying he’ll know any specifics about how much John Pinnock knew Pug, but maybe he’ll know something useful about Pinnock himself.”

Eddie, his hind legs flowing back and forth, looked up at Rafe in apparent adoration. If I’d done the same thing to him, I would have ended up with burst eardrums and scratches up my arms. Life truly was not fair.

“Knock yourself out,” Rafe said. “But I bet you’re wasting your time. Sure, Pinnock didn’t want to see any year-round residents near him, but practically everyone feels the same way. If that was a motive for murder, there’d be a lot more deaths up here.”

I saw his point. But still. “He seemed so angry,” I said. “It practically vibrated off him.”

Rafe shrugged and continued his Eddie swings. “Some guys are just like that.”

Not just guys, I thought. There were women whose personalities twanged like a taut wire. “It’s one for and one against John Pinnock as a suspect. Eddie, we need a tiebreaker. What do you think?”

Midswing, Eddie rotated, stretched out his back legs, used Rafe’s belt as a launching pad, and jumped to Rafe’s shoulder. “Mrr!” he said, leaning against the side of Rafe’s head. “Mrr!”

Fantastic. The males in the house were ganging up against me. My future was bleak. But I was still going to talk to Rick. If we were going to find Ryan and salvage his reputation, we needed all the information we could get.

Chapter 8

Sure, I know John Pinnock,” Rick said.

I sat up straight. “Really? How well do you know him? What is he like? Someone you’d invite to dinner, or not? Do you think he’s a decent guy?” I ran out of breath before I ran out of questions, but in my pause to suck in air before I fainted dead away, Rafe’s dad spoke up.

“How about if I tell you what I remember, and then, if you still have questions, you go right ahead and ask.”

That seemed like a sensible plan, so I nodded at him to go ahead.

It was now Wednesday morning. I wasn’t scheduled to be at the library until noon, so I’d arranged for Rafe and me to meet Rick at the Round Table for breakfast. The only downside of this was he had to be in his office by seven, so here we were, digging into scrambled eggs, hash browns, and bacon at oh dark thirty.