“Perhaps y’all are forgetting, or just indulging in wishful thinking, but I placed a help-wanted ad, not a singles ad. Mr. Lewis is looking for work, not someone to put a smile on his face, light his beacon, or make a match for him,” Sarah reminded. “I am just thankful he happened through Pine Hill and saw my ad.”

“No one just happens through Pine Hill.”

Sarah frowned. Ruby was right. Pine Hill was off the beaten path.

“I should ask him how it was he ended up in our tiny neck of the woods,” she said.

“You definitely should. He could be a serial killer on the run,” Claudia suggested, tucking a loose strand of gray hair behind her ear.

Maybelle rolled her eyes. “He’s not.”

Something in the way Maybelle said the words so confidently had Sarah asking, “How do you know that?”

“I had Sheriff Roscoe run his tags,” Maybelle said matter-of-factly, as if it was no big deal.

“What?”

“You heard me.” Maybelle didn’t so much as bat an eyelash, just kept on sorting through the ornaments and placing the ones that passed inspection carefully into a box that would be stored until the day of the Christmas festival.

The woman never ceased to amaze Sarah. Outside of doing something illegal, Sarah couldn’t imagine Sheriff Roscoe, or anyone, ever telling Maybelle no. When the town matriarch said to jump, most people asked how high.

“Dare I even ask how you got his tag number?”

Maybelle glanced at Rosie who beamed with pride, rather than guilt.

Oh, good grief, what had they done?

She could just see them donning black clothes and ski masks, stalking Bodie. They could probably tell her his shoe size and what he’d had for breakfast, too.

Rosie’s chin tilted a little higher than usual as she said, “You might recall Lou had that fancy security system installed at the diner a few years ago. Seems his cameras pick up all kinds of things in his parking lot.”

They’d gotten Lou in on their investigative action? The big-hearted restaurateur didn’t seem the Sherlock Holmes type. Poor Lou. There was no telling what Rosie had done to get him involved.

Eyebrow arched, she asked, “Things like Bodie’s license plate?”

Rosie nodded. “Pulled the recordings right up on his phone and there it was, clear as a bell.”

“Why would Lou pay any attention to Bodie’s truck?” Sarah’s head spun as she processed what the women had been up to.

“When I mentioned our visitor, Lou told me he’d met him in the diner,” Rosie said. “He said he seemed like a nice enough fella, but didn’t stay long, just ate and left.”

“Lou figured he didn’t stick around because he had a dog with him that stayed in his truck while he was in the diner,” Ruby added.

“Harry,” Sarah filled in. At their confused looks, she clarified, “The dog. His name is Harry. Smartest dog I’ve ever met.”

“Okay, so Harry was in the truck.” Rosie looked at Sarah with a touch of annoyance that she’d interrupted for such a trivial detail. “Anyway, I had Lou pull up his security footage because I wanted another look, just wanting to make sure I didn’t see anything suspicious about your new handyman, of course.”