Well, that and the fact that he was the only person who lived on that stretch of lakeshore all year-round. But those two points mushed together added up to a total of nothing that got us any closer to finding out who killed Pug, which was the only thing I could do that would rescue Ryan’s reputation. Because if we couldn’t do that, he would never find a job in this small world of northwest lower Michigan.

“Um, hello?” a quiet voice asked.

As I was doing a stint at the reference desk, I should have been prepared for people to come ask me questions, but it had been a slow day and other than a couple of queries about the location of the computer lab and restrooms, I’d had time to work on ordering new books with a side order of cogitating murder suspects.

“Hi,” I said, putting on a smile and looking up. “What can I do for . . . um . . . you?”

The woman standing in front of the desk was maybe my aunt Frances’s age, was about my height, and had dark red lipstick and hair so brightly gray it couldn’t have been natural. She wore a pink pea coat over a sweatshirt glittering with silver sequins, and the top few inches of her pants, which were all I could see over the reference desk, were orange. Extremely so.

I must have blinked, because she grinned. “A day like this”—she pointed at the tall windows, which had been letting in very little light due to the thick cloud cover—“needs some brightening up, don’t you think? I wanted to do my part, that’s all.”

Laughing, I nodded. “Absolutely. How can I help you?”

She introduced herself as Mary and said, “My grandmother was born in 1900 and grew up in San Francisco. She’s been gone for years, of course, and now my sister is suddenly claiming there was a newspaper picture of her in an article about the 1906 earthquake and fire. I did what I could at home, online, but couldn’t find anything.”

I shifted a bit. “So, um . . .”

“Do I want to prove my sister right, or do I want to prove her wrong?” She chuckled. “Didn’t know myself, at first. But after some thinking, what I really want is to find a picture of Nonna as a child. We don’t have any, not a single one.”

She sounded so sad that I silently vowed to dedicate the rest of my day to the needle-in-a-haystack job. “If it’s there,” I said firmly, “we’ll find it.”

And, three hours later, our necks and backs aching, we did.