“Come on,” I said, grabbing his hand and towing him outside, keeping my head down and so avoiding eye contact and subsequent conversations with whoever might be in the restaurant. A short walk later, we barged in the door of the Round Table. “Is Cookie back there?” I asked the young woman at the cash register, nodding at the kitchen.

“Sure, but you can’t—” She stopped. “Oh, hi, Mr. Niswander.”

“Hey, Hannah. How are you? Still taking classes at the community college?”

I released Rafe’s hand. Chatting with former students was one of his favorite things, and today it served as an excellent distraction. I pushed on the kitchen’s metal-covered door and poked my head inside. “Cookie? Can I ask you a quick question?”

He glanced up, then went back to flipping burgers on what must have been a searing-hot grill. “As long as I can keep working, sure.”

“Remember a week or two ago, you said Pug Mattock was in here, talking with a guy about buying a sculpture?”

“Sure. What about it?” He peeled cheese slices off the top of a tall stack and laid them atop the burgers.

“The other guy. Was it Ian Breece?”

“Could be.” Cookie shrugged. “Don’t know the guy.”

“What color hair did he have?”

Cookie reached for the cheese again and added a second round of dairy product to the burgers. “Red,” he said. “Really, really red. And he had one of those big voices. Like he didn’t have an inside voice, you know?”

I thanked him and left him to his work. Ian had been trying to sell a Conti sculpture to Pug? In what world did it make sense that Ian and Felicia owned an expensive modern sculpture? Unless . . . I stopped short, then hurried toward Rafe.

Because there was somewhere else we needed to go.

Right away.

Chapter 11

Rafe stood next to me on the front porch of Herb Valera’s cottage. Or, to be more specific, the cottage that had been in the Valera family since its construction. I’d never had reason to set foot inside, but bookmobile workers tended to learn where their regular patrons lived.

I’d dragged Rafe out here because I needed him to bolster my courage. And we’d had to do it straightaway, because if I’d stopped to think it through, I would have ignored my deep-down instincts and convinced myself it was silly and wholly unnecessary.

The Valera cottage was an old-style Up North place, with its exterior of logs and window screens that bulged out toward the bottom where small children and dogs had pushed against them for decades. The porch floor could have used a new coat of dark green paint two summers ago, and the screen door showed generations of wear from hands at various heights opening and closing it.

“This guy is a judge?” Rafe asked.

I heard his dubious tone. “Retired. This is a family place,” I explained. “Takes everyone agreeing to make any changes.”