“How long have you known him?”

“Just a couple of weeks. He transferred in from Carnegie Mellon the beginning of the semester. Why?”

It was my turn to shrug. “No reason. I just wondered how long he’s been in town. That kind of thing.”

“Not long enough to have killed Holly White,” Shannon said.

“I wasn’t really thinking that.” Or maybe I was. He was the right age to have known her. Same age as Brandon Thomas, more or less: a couple of years older than the others. Same age as Lionel Kenefick and Denise. “Are you sure?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Shannon said. “This is my second year at Barnham. It’s a small school. He didn’t attend last year, or I’d have seen him.”

“Why did he choose to come here? From Carnegie Mellon? Had he been to Waterfield before? Does he have family here?”

“Not as far as I know,” Shannon said, folding cloth napkins into precise triangles and setting them upright on every plate. “If he does, he hasn’t mentioned it. I don’t know why he chose to come here. Maybe someone told him about Barnham.”

“Have you asked?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, I haven’t. Why would I? I don’t care why he chose to come here. We have students from all over the country, and some from abroad, too. I just assumed he had heard about it at some point and decided he’d like to go to school in a small town in Maine. Pittsburgh ’s a big city, right?”

“I guess.”

“If you’re so interested,” Shannon said, folding another napkin, “why don’t you ask him?”

I shrugged. Maybe I would.

Josh and Ricky came back a little before six, trailed by Wayne in the police car. A couple of minutes later, Derek pulled to the curb outside. I excused myself from the hubbub and went out to greet him. I hadn’t seen him since that morning, and then only for a few minutes; so much had happened today that it felt like an eternity ago.

Derek looked as tired as I felt, with lines bracketing his mouth. “Hi, Tink.” His voice was hoarse, and there were shadows in his eyes. He held out his arms, and I stepped in. For a minute, we just stood intertwined without talking, his nose buried in my hair and my cheek against his chest. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I felt the tightness seep out of my muscles. Then Derek stepped back and dropped his hands to my arms, blue eyes searching my face. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine.” I smiled bravely. “I’m still sore, and I’ll probably have bruises for a week, but considering how much worse off I could be, I won’t complain.”

He put an arm around my shoulders to lead me up the garden path to the front of the inn. “Did Peter tell you he thought someone had tampered with the brakes?”

I nodded. “Have you told Wayne? He’s inside.”

“Oh, I’ll tell him,” Derek said grimly. “I know he’s got his hands full with the two dead bodies he’s already found, but if whoever did this tries again, you and I could turn into two more, and I’d like to avoid that if I can.”

“You and me both.” I snuggled a little closer to his side as we walked up to the wraparound porch. His arm tightened, although he didn’t speak.

Everyone else was already seated at the table when we came in, passing bowls of stew and mashed potatoes around. Wayne looked up. “Derek. Have a seat. What did the Cortinos say?”

Derek held my chair while he repeated what Peter had told me earlier, with some additional technical details that went right over my head, but which all the men seemed to understand. A lively conversation ensued between bites of Irish stew as they debated what had happened, how it could have happened, and what might have happened if I hadn’t driven the truck into the ditch. I lifted the napkin that hid the basket of soda bread while I listened, and I fished out a fragrant, moist slice.

Ricky wasn’t as active in the conversation as the rest of the men, I noticed. Maybe Pittsburgh, like New York, was a big enough city that he hadn’t needed to drive before he came to Waterfield. Maybe he, like me, was less knowledgeable about cars and what made them tick than the native Mainers, who had been driving since they were fifteen or sixteen. Or maybe he was just shy and preferred listening to talking. I smiled at him across the table.

“I’ve never been to Pittsburgh. Is it like New York, where you don’t need a car? Or is it more like Los Angeles, where you can’t get around without one?”

I added, in an aside to Kate and Shannon, “My mom’s always lived in New York, too-well, she grew up in Portland, actually, but she moved to New York when she married my dad-and now she’s remarried and living in California. She says it’s very different.”

Kate nodded. Shannon opened her mouth to say something then glanced at Ricky and closed it again.

“Never been to California,” Ricky said. “ Pittsburgh ’s a big city. There are buses and inclines and the T.”

“The T?”

“Trolley. Light-rail. Subway.”

“Sounds like New York,” I said. “Without the inclines, of course. And the trolleys. But we have a ferry to Staten Island.”

Ricky shook his head. “No ferries in Pittsburgh. The rivers are small. There are bridges and tunnels instead.”

Enticed out of his shell, Ricky turned out to be almost eloquent, at least on the subject of his hometown. It sounded like a nice place, not at all like its rather unfortunate name, and Ricky sounded like he had enjoyed his life there.

“What made you come here?” I asked. “There are colleges in Pittsburgh, aren’t there?”

Ricky’s face seemed to shut down, and he ducked his head. “Lots. I went to Carnegie Mellon last year. Guess I wanted a change of pace.”

“How come? Have you always lived there?”

For a second, I wasn’t sure he would answer, and I waited for him to challenge my right to question him. “Pretty much,” he said eventually. “Since before I started elementary school.”

“So Waterfield must be quite a change. What made you decide this was where you wanted to be?” As far as I knew, Barnham College didn’t have any courses he couldn’t have found somewhere else. Especially a school like Carnegie Mellon.

Ricky hesitated. “Someone told me about it,” he said eventually. When I didn’t speak, he added, “My aunt Laurie.”

“Did she go to Barnham?”

He shook his head. “No, but her sister did. Excuse me.” He nodded to Kate and Shannon and got up from the table.

“Third door on the left down the hall,” Kate called after him. Ricky vanished.

As soon as he was out of sight, Shannon turned accu satory eyes on me.

“Sorry,” I said. “Guess I upset him.”

“I guess you did. Why were you being so pushy?”

“I didn’t realize I was being pushy. It’s not unreasonable to wonder why someone from Pittsburgh would move to Maine to go to school. Or why someone would leave Carnegie Mellon to attend Barnham College. There’s no reason why he’d have a problem telling me. Is there?”

The rest of the table had fallen silent now, too, and everyone was looking at me.

“He’s kind of private,” Josh said. “Never talks much about his family or what made him decide to come to Maine. Mostly, when he talks, it’s about computers. I’ve never heard him talk as much about himself as he just did.”

“He talks to Paige, though,” Shannon added. “I think.”

“He’d have to,” I said, with a smile. Paige isn’t exactly what I’d call loquacious, either. Shannon smiled back.

“Paige talks. You just have to get to know her. And I guess Ricky does, too, when it’s about something he cares about.”

Like his hometown. “I wonder why he stopped. Maybe it was something I said.”

I thought back, but couldn’t really put my finger on anything that might have upset Ricky.

“Avery and I spoke to Denise Robertson this afternoon,” Kate changed the subject. “She lives on Becklea and was Holly’s best friend growing up.”

This was directed at Wayne, who asked, “You told her about Holly? Did she say anything I need to know about?”