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The rain of the night before was gone as if it had never existed, and Saturday morning was cool and bright and perfect, the trees up and down Park Avenue beginning to truly flaunt their fall foliage in shades of gold and amber and deep red. My Phoenix-bred eyes had never seen anything like it before — well, not in person, anyway — so I deliberately slowed my pace to drink it all in. The air had a hint of woodsmoke to it as well, and I guessed that quite a few people had decided to have a leisurely Saturday morning and enjoy a fire before venturing out to do whatever chores or errands or other activities they might have planned for their day.

Whereas I needed to get Copper State Cellars back open.

Roz was already there; she’d texted me to let me know she’d be coming in on her day off to make sure everything was ready to go. While I appreciated that, I hoped things would be quiet enough that she could go home and relax a little once she’d determined the bar met her usual high standards.

When I came inside, she was wiping fingerprint dust off the bar.

“Morning, Lorelei,” she said. Not too cheerful, not when something so terrible had happened here only thirty-six hours earlier, but brisk and matter-of-fact, as if cleaning fingerprint dust off the antique oak surface was no big deal.

“Morning,” I replied, and looked around. Nothing looked terribly out of order — the chairs weren’t stacked on the tables, and I didn’t know whether Roz had already taken them down or whether the forensics team had left them that way the whole time — but otherwise, the place seemed normal enough. “What do you need me to do?”

“Make sure the women’s restroom is ready to go,” she said. “The police opened the bar but not the men’s restroom, so we’ll have to be unisex for today until we can get that opened up. Can you make a sign for me?”

I’d noticed on the way in that she’d put together a hand-lettered sign for the front door that read, In Memory of Father Francis Brennan, and I supposed she hadn’t had enough time to get around to the bathroom sign.

“On it,” I told her, and headed into the office, where I found a Sharpie and some tape and stole a piece of paper out of the printer. In big block letters, I wrote, Closed Until Further Notice. Please Use Women’s Restroom.

Not fancy, but I figured it should do the trick.

I went to the men’s bathroom and taped the sign firmly to the door. In a way, I was almost glad that the police hadn’t cleared the room yet, just because I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk in there any time soon.

When I emerged, I saw that Marco had arrived. He was still looking a little shaky, and I supposed it had been hard for him to come back to Copper State. The whole tragedy had been very upsetting, and I hadn’t known Father Frank nearly as long as Marco had. I wasn’t a member of his congregation.

While Roz was busy with the taps, I took him aside for a moment.

“I just wanted to say thank you,” I told him.

“For what?” Marco asked, looking genuinely mystified.

“For being with me on Thursday night,” I replied. “For holding it together during that whole nightmare. I don’t — I don’t think I could have handled it on my own.”

To my surprise, he pulled me in for a quick hug. “It’s okay,” he said. “I mean, it’s not okay, but I’m glad we could be there for each other. If I’d been by myself….”

The words trailed off, and I could see a glint of tears in his dark eyes. He swallowed.

“It’s been rough,” he went on. “But let’s do this for Father Frank, okay?”

“For Frank,” I echoed.

I honestly hadn’t known what to expect that day. Part of me had thought the bar would be quiet, that people would want to stay away out of respect for the violent manner in which Father Frank had died.

That part of me would have been dead wrong…so to speak.

People were already waiting outside when Roz unlocked the front door at noon. It seemed as if they all wanted to talk, wanted to share stories about Father Frank, anecdotes about his generosity, about the good advice he’d given them or how he’d officiated at a daughter’s wedding or presided over a parent’s funeral.

All three of us were kept busy pouring wine and beer and mead — beer seemed to be winning out as the beverage of choice, but I thought that might change as the day went on — and as I hurried back and forth, I did my best to keep my ears open and see if I could learn anything useful.

Theories were being flung about wildly, but none of them seemed very plausible. Yes, the men’s restroom had a window, but it was small and high up in the wall, and the killer would have had to be a child or someone similarly small to even fit through. Other people postulated that the killer must have been lurking in the office and just waiting for the right time to attack. That made a little more sense, except that we kept the office locked when Roz wasn’t here, and she’d been long gone by the time the murder occurred.

In the midst of all this, I did my best to keep track of who was a regular and who was someone I’d never seen in Copper State Cellars before. One of those was a middle-aged man in a sports coat who introduced himself to me as Bob from the parish council and who said it was all a damn shame before he ordered a glass of tempranillo that he didn’t seem too interested in drinking. Instead, he sat at one of the tables and sipped from time to time in between chatting with people who stopped by to share more stories about Father Frank. Another man I didn’t recognize sat at the bar for more than an hour and didn’t seem inclined to talk to anyone. He looked like he was older than Frank, maybe in his early seventies, and he nursed an oatmeal stout the whole time as he stared off into space.

Through all of it, Father Frank stood to one side and watched the interactions of his parishioners and the people from the community, his expression morose. Every once in a while, his favorite bar stool would become empty, and he’d go sit there for a while until it looked as if someone else wanted his perch, and he’d flee before suffering the ignominy of someone actually sitting down on top of him.

I sent him a helpless glance now and then, but with the bar so busy, it wasn’t as if I could go over and talk to him. However, there was finally a lull a little before three, and I was able to steal a quick chat with him in the kitchen while I was putting together a charcuterie board.

“Sorry I couldn’t talk before now,” I said as I sliced manchego and white cheddar and Humboldt Fog. “It’s been absolutely nuts out there.”

He made a dismissive gesture, as if to tell me he knew it wasn’t my fault. “It’s fine,” he replied. “I’ve been watching everyone and trying to see if I can remember anything useful, but it all feels like a blank. I remember ordering the glass of Mangus, and I remember getting up to go to the restroom. But after that, nothing. The next thing I remember is standing in the corner of the bathroom and looking down at my body. Whatever happened at the moment of my death is simply…gone.”