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Stung, I said, “Just because I don’t tell him everything I do every second of the day? I don’t need to know that much about him, and he doesn’t need to know that much about me.”

“Not every daily detail, no. But don’t you think the man who is renovating that house with your every need, want, and desire in mind deserves to know, at least in general, what you’re doing, and why?” When I didn’t answer, she said, “How would you feel if he was keeping something like this from you?”

I tried the idea on for size and didn’t like how I was feeling. At all. For a long minute, I sat there and didn’t say anything. “You’re right. I need to talk to him about this.”

“Excellent.” My aunt smiled, and that alone made me feel a teensy bit better. “Time for popcorn and treats, not necessarily in that order.” She stood, and before I could get any further in my thoughts than a repeated, But how do I tell him I’m trying to figure out who killed Rowan? He’s not going to like it, she was back.

“Three treats for you, since you’re such a good cat.” Aunt Frances dropped the bits on the blanket just underneath Eddie’s chin. “And here’s yours.” She handed over a comfortable-size bowl of buttered and salted popcorn, keeping a twin bowl for herself.

“Now,” she said, settling back down. “Ask me what you should do next. I’ll tell you exactly what to do without even knowing what the topic is.” She stuffed a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

“One size fits all advice?” I laughed. “How about some insider information instead?”

She grinned. “Oh, goody. You have suspects and you need me to dish the dirt again, don’t you?”

“Exactly. First is Sunny Scoles. About my age, runs that new Red House Café I went to this morning.”

Aunt Frances shook her head. “Don’t know her.”

“How about Baxter Tousely? Bax, he goes by. He graduated from Chilson High School four years ago and works for the city.”

“Don’t know him, either.”

I scowled. “You’re not being much help. How about Stewart Funston?”

“Him I know.” She tossed a piece of popcorn into the air and caught it in her mouth. “How far back do you want? As far as I know, for the last thirty years he’s been a model citizen.”

“All information has the possibility to be useful.”

“That has the possibility of being true.” Another popcorn piece went in with a perfect arc. Sometimes it was hard to believe we were blood relations. “Back when Stewart was in high school—he was a string bean of a lad, if you can believe it—the principal suspended him from the football team because he got a ticket for Driving Under the Influence. The weekend after he was kicked off the team, someone broke into the principal’s office and destroyed everything in it. And by destroyed, I mean books ripped to shreds and furniture reduced to kindling.”

“That’s . . . awful. And Stewart did it?”

She shrugged. “They couldn’t prove it, but everyone in town assumed so.”

I shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “Anger management issues, sounds like. But he grew out of that, right? I’ve never heard of him blowing up at anyone.”

Aunt Frances picked up another handful of popcorn. “It was a long time ago. But it was also a lot of damage.”

“Maybe it wasn’t him at all,” I said. “Besides, like you said, it was a long time ago.” And even though I’d seen Stewart with the Maple Staples sugar packet, that didn’t mean anything since they were apparently all over the place. “How about Hugh Novak?” I asked.

My aunt squished up her face. “He’s one of Those People.”

She’d clearly put capitals on Those People. “Which ones are those?”

“Every once in a while you run into someone you just can’t stand, can’t work with, don’t even want to be in the same room with because their personality is like fingernails on the chalkboard of your life. That’s what Hugh Novak is to me. He’s an arrogant jerk who thinks he’s the smartest person in the room, but half the time he’s dumber than a rock.”

I was laughing. “Don’t beat around the bush. Tell me what you really think.”

She held up a piece of popcorn and squeezed it flat. “Years ago, during a talk I was giving at a Rotary meeting about the benefits of vocational training, he said the only people who went into the trades were ones who couldn’t get into college.”

“Oh, geez.” Them were fighting words. “What did you—”

There was a knock on the front door, followed by the squeak of it opening. “Hello!” Otto called. “Does anyone want to share a bottle of wine?”

“Is there anything better,” Aunt Frances asked me, “than a man who brings wine without being asked?”

I nodded. “A man who brings advance reading copies of Tana French’s latest books.” My response was lost on her, though, because Otto had already shed his boots and was giving her a kiss.

So the evening ended happily, with laughter and a glass of what I was told was very good wine. It was only as I was drifting off to sleep that I realized I hadn’t asked her about my other suspect, the handyman Land Aprelle.

•   •   •

The next morning, Kelsey knocked firmly on the doorjamb of my office. “I hear you’re holding out on us,” she said.

I held up my index finger, finished typing an e-mail to the chair of the local arts committee about rotating out the current artwork displayed in the hallway, clicked the Send button, and looked up.

By this time, the number of staff in my doorway had gone from one to four, as Holly, Josh, and Donna all crowded into the space.

“Who’s up front?” I asked, frowning.

“Gareth stopped by,” Holly said. “He’s holding down the fort for a few minutes.”

My eyebrows went up. “Our maintenance guy is at the front desk?”

“No one’s in the building except us.” Josh folded his arms across his chest. “We need to know what’s going on with Graydon.”

Our boss was downstate for a couple of days, getting some training on the library’s software, a system he hadn’t been familiar with. I thought it was a good sign that he was willing to suffer through a two-day session when he could have claimed executive privilege and said he didn’t need to learn the system’s details. “What, you afraid he’s going to know more than you do about the system when he gets back?”

Josh gave me a look. “Funny.”

I’d thought so. I grinned and said, “You guys need to be a little more specific. What’s going on with Graydon in what way? Seems to me it’s going pretty well. He’s not making any drastic changes right off the bat, and he’s taking the time to learn about the culture of Chilson and the library. And he likes malt vinegar on his French fries.”

“That’s what we’re talking about,” Kelsey said. “The lunch. What was that all about?”

I suddenly felt the need for coffee. “Let’s adjourn to the break room. We shouldn’t leave Gareth out there by himself. At least from the break room we can keep an eye on the lobby.”

By the time we relocated down the hall, I’d collected my thoughts and figured out what to say. Sort of. “I’ve never had a boss ask me out to lunch,” I said. “That he feels the need to get to know us on a personal basis seems like a good thing.”

“What ‘us,’” Holly went on, “is involved with him taking just you to lunch?”

Clearly I hadn’t thought this all the way through.

“There’s potential for a lot of change,” Donna said. “And we’re not hearing anything about how things might fall out.”

“Exactly.” Kelsey nodded. “New boss, new board president, who knows what they might decide behind our backs.”

“Graydon seems okay,” Josh said, “but he’s going to do whatever the board tells him. He doesn’t have enough history here to stick up for any of us, or any of our programs.”

The front door opened and shut, and in spite of the vestibule that was intended to trap the coldest of the cold air, a chill whooshed in, whirled around the lobby, and slid into the break room.