I don’t believe you anymore. I think you’re making this all up.

The waffles with raspberry syrup the innkeeper prepared were actually heavenly. I thought of telling her so, in just that way, but decided against any sort of hijinks. She was clearly a decent person, and she might think that I was trying to tease her about religion. Which would have been unkind. Maybe it was my mood, however, but the eldritch nature of the whole place was enhanced by portraits of children, the same boy and girl, that hung all over the dining room walls, old-fashioned colorized photos.

“My kids,” she said affably.

“Grown up now?”

“Oh, no,” the woman replied. But there were no sounds of children, nor any bookbags or boots scattered near the door. The place was prim and clean as a vault.

By the time I’d eaten and changed clothes, it was time for me to see Pete Sunday. I told Sherri I’d be back later on and that I probably would stay the second night—a possibility I’d left open. I was still exhausted.

The detective and I had arranged to meet at a coffee shop on Pottawatomi Street, where I fortified myself with a double-shot latte. He walked in, wearing a slim-fitting blazer in a Prince of Wales check over charcoal trousers and a striped shirt. We shook hands. He looked unchanged. After he ordered his own coffee, he asked me to follow him to the public safety building, just a few blocks away. When we got there, he settled me comfortably in his office.

“Why do you work here?” I asked him.

“Why does anybody work anywhere?”

“You dress like you’d work in a big city.”

“Ah,” Sunday said, spinning his desk chair and sitting down to face me. “People tell me that all the time.” He went on to say that he’d recently applied for a transfer, to Dane County, and was starting to be afraid he’d actually get it. “I know that’s hardly a big city. I want the challenge but not the change. I’d miss it here. I’d miss the quiet and the lakes and the trees and my mom and dad and all my brothers. Speaking of that, I heard from one of them that you had a little scare last night. Big whistle.”

“That was your brother? You guys go all in for the fraternity of police stuff, huh?”

“No, that was my actual brother, Judson. Jud and Ross are both county sheriff’s deputies, Jud here, Ross in Marathon County. My other brother lives in town here, too. He’s a librarian at the university.”

“What do your kids think about moving away from these north woods?”

“No children yet,” he said. “No wife yet. Just small crimes and good suits.”

“Not all small crimes.”

“Mostly. Not all.” As if apropos, he pointed to the banker’s box on the floor beside him.