“Sorry.” Just breathing in and out made my head spin, and the shards of sunlight bouncing off the water stabbed my eyes.

  “Yeah, me too,” he said, “but we’re getting out of here.”

  In the next instant I got flung up and over his shoulder like a sack of flour, with my feet hanging down his front, my arms hanging down his back, and my mouth wide open in a yell they could probably hear in Canada.

  But everyone on the dock and the parking lot could hear it, too, and from their faces it was clear they thought I was being (1) murdered, or (2) kidnapped so I could be murdered later.

  Near the Fiat, Hudson set me down again and I clung to his arm, managing to stay upright. People were still staring but at least nobody had a phone out, yet.

  “Okay,” I muttered, and then I began to scold him loudly, using words like stunt, show-off, and my personal favorite, complete jackass.

  All of this Hudson absorbed very contritely until we got to the Fiat, and got in. “Did they buy it?” he asked from behind the wheel; no way could I drive.

  I glanced back; everyone seemed to have lost interest in us. “Yup.” I handed him the key. “You drive a stick?”

  He looked at me, then started the Fiat like he’d been doing it all his life and peeled us out of there at a speed that had the dock folks staring again.

  “Yeah, I guess you can,” I conceded. When we got to the open road, he drove even faster than I had.

  “So what do you think?” he asked when we were zipping down the twisty two-lane.

  “I think we just barely got out of there. I had no idea he would be—”

  “What, lying in wait? Drugged drinks ready in advance for whoever shows up asking questions?” It seemed so improbable.

  Nevertheless, my insides all shifted uncomfortably as Hudson swung through the S-turns. “He knew you and Ellie are nosing around about Coates?”

  I nodded; the movement only made my gut lurch twice, so I figured I was improving. But just then Hudson glanced at me and what he saw made him pull the car to the side of the road.

  Ten minutes later, bent over a grassy ditch, I was pretty sure I’d just upchucked everything I’d ever eaten in my life.

  Hudson handed me a half-empty water bottle he’d found under one of the car seats; I rinsed and spat.

  “Look,” I said when I’d straightened, “I started out this morning thinking that somebody took my grandson for some reason connected to Paul Coates and his [expletive deleted] gold coin.”

  I got back in the car and we took off again. “And now I think it’s maybe to trade him for the Coates’s gold piece.”

  Hudson’s lips pursed. “One problem. Well, two, actually.”

  I was already nodding. “Yeah. How’d they get him out of the house? We have two big dogs and neither of them let out a peep.”

  I might not have heard them, but Bella would have. If, I mean, Ephraim hadn’t simply gotten out of bed, wandered outside in his sleep as he already had a history of doing, and run into any number of possible hazards.

  Water, for instance: Around here if you go far enough in any direction you’ll hit it, sometimes by walking straight into it, other times by tumbling off a cliff.

  But you’ll get there. “Let’s just assume someone did get in and out of your house unnoticed, though,” said Hudson.

  He drove easily and well. “Right. That brings us to problem number two,” I said.

  He downshifted for the exit lane off Route 1, braked at the yield sign, and gunned it heading east on 191 to Pleasant Point, where we slowed for the speed limit. Then:

  “But we don’t have the coin,” he pointed out.

  We accelerated onto the causeway. “Precisely,” I replied.

  At Carrying Place Cove, a blue heron was lowering itself on wings spread massively out like a parasail, its sticklike legs reaching down for the sand and small stones at the water’s edge.

  “Unless,” I said slowly, the taste of lemonade filling my mouth again as I remembered, “we do.”

  Hudson shook his head. “I don’t know, Jake.” His sunglasses were the mirrored kind, so when you looked at him you only saw yourself.

  “You’re pretty far into the speculation department with that idea.” Also, it was the first time he’d called me that.

  I changed the subject. “Why do you think Waldron tried to drug us? What would’ve been the point? And are you going to let him get away with it?”

  At even the hint of feeling worse than I already did, I’d have asked Hudson to aim us straight at the Calais Hospital emergency room. But instead the driving and fresh air seemed to be clearing my head, and I wasn’t about to sideline myself from the search for Ephraim unless I had to.

  Entering Eastport, we zipped between the airport and the RV campgrounds; to our right, a small,white Cessna was taking off into the blue sky.

  “For now,” Hudson said, “I’m not going to do anything, and neither are you.” He glanced at me. “It’s better if Waldron goes on believing people trust him.”

  I couldn’t disagree; it echoed what I’d thought about Sally Coates. Still, “Waldron’s got an alibi for the night Coates went missing,” I said. “He was in Julio’s all evening.”

  “Yeah, well, nobody said anybody did this whatever it is without help,” Hudson replied. “And people don’t go around dosing people’s lemonade for no reason. If he did, that is.”

  Rounding the last long curve into town past the Mobil station and the hair salon, I felt my anxiety over Ephraim come roaring back.

  Hudson sensed the change. “We’re going to find him,” he said, turning into my driveway.

  Ellie was with Sam on the back porch. Mika sat on the step below. I practically flew out of the car, dodging a wheelbarrow full of mixed concrete and the shovels leaning against it.

  The builders were at work again, the sound of hammers and circular saws filling the air. I didn’t care.

  “What’s happened?” I gasped. “Is Ephraim—?”

  Ellie shook her head. Mika wept silently into her hands.

  “Sam?” Behind me, Hudson was crossing the driveway toward us. “Sam, what’s going on?”

  My son’s face looked the way it had on the day long ago when I took him out of the city: confused, angry, frightened. He shoved an envelope at me and went on to sit with Mika.

  In the envelope was a color photograph. In it, a worried-looking Ephraim sat on a bench of some kind, holding up the front page of Eastport’s newspaper, the Quoddy Tides, which had just come out the day before.

  Ephraim didn’t look hurt or in distress. He was not in a hole full of water or at the bottom of a cliff. So I felt better on that account, anyway.

  About knowing for sure, though, that someone had taken him?

  Yeah, not so much.

  * * *

  An hour later, after the state cops and the sheriff’s deputies had seen the photograph and asked a lot of questions and gone away again, Ellie and I went back to the Moose. Ellie went straight to the test batches of scones she’d been working on and sent Lee home, not forgetting to pay her.

  “It worked out pretty well that we told them we’re amateur sleuths,” Ellie said of the police when the girl had gone.

  She was trying to talk me down from my state of red-alert anxiety, not to mention flat-out terror.

  “Once someone’s sure you’re a silly little woman—”

  The cops hadn’t said that in so many words, but we’d both caught the drift.

  “—they’re probably not going to bug you much more,” she finished.

  I wasn’t so sure. They’d had a lot of questions, many of which we hadn’t been able to answer. But it was true that we didn’t need official scrutiny while we were doing things like breaking into houses and finding murder victims in them.

  Or searching for Ephraim in places they’d probably not approve of our going, like sinking barges. Ellie picked up the mixing spoon.

  “And if I could figure out how to get some pizzazz into these scones, I could think about what we should do next,” she said.

  I had no doubt that she was already thinking about it. Deep in her brain, wheels were turning; they always were.

  And that was a good thing because I was fresh out of ideas. So I was sitting there still feeling hungover from that glass of doped lemonade I’d drunk, when the bell over the door jingled and the owner of the candy store next door to our own shop came in.

  “Hello, girls,” said Janetta Cline. “Any biscotti today?”

  Janetta was tall, blond, and slender, dressed in a white smock and black slacks with a silver pinstripe in them. And we did have biscotti—chocolate, with ginger bits—so Ellie went to wait on her while I took over the scone dough.

  “Okay,” said Ellie when she returned, “so maybe Waldron killed Coates to get the coin, but it turned out Coates didn’t have it? So now for some reason Waldron thinks we have it?”

  I’d told her about my visit with Hudson to Lubec and the Consuelo on our way down here.

  “Maybe Coates told Waldron about the coin because he knew Waldron had been shark-hunting in Florida, in the area where the coin was found?” I floated the notion.

  “Bailey Lyman was a diver in Florida,” I pointed out. “Why not ask him instead of some guy Coates just met recently?”

  “That’s why,” Ellie replied promptly. “Coates knew his half brother was a bad actor. He didn’t know anything about Waldron except that Waldron was smart and talked a good game.”

  “Which he does,” Ellie agreed, sliding the bowl of scone dough into the refrigerator. “Cheery little guy, too.”

  Right, even when he’s serving you some spiked lemonade, and why would he do that, anyway?

  I still couldn’t figure it out. “So he kills Coates,” I went on thinking aloud, “after Coates has revealed the clever place where he hides the coin: in the sole of his shoe.”

  “But when he looked in the shoe after killing Coates, the coin wasn’t there,” Ellie said. “So now he’s looking for it?”

  “No. Not since Sally visited us and then took all her husband’s security equipment down and even got rid of the dog.”

  “And she did that because . . .” Ellie still looked puzzled.

  “To send a message,” I said. “Nothing here to safeguard. No treasure on the premises. No need for security measures.” I took a breath. “Or maybe you’re right and she just couldn’t afford it. But I’ll bet Waldron thinks Sally had the coin all along and gave it to us for safekeeping.”

  It explained why he might try to trade my grandson for it. Ephraim might even have been on the Consuelo; I’d seen no sign of him, but it was a big boat.

  “Waldron does seem like the kind of guy who a fellow like Coates might ask for advice,” Ellie conceded. “About the coin, valuing it and selling it and so on. Meanwhile”—she dragged her hand across her forehead—“it’s way too hot in here, and we haven’t had a customer except for Janetta in two hours.”

  She was putting away ingredients as she spoke; I got the mixing bowls, measuring cups, and baking sheets into the sink.

  “We need an awning,” she said, “to keep the afternoon sun from baking the customers. I think maybe word has gotten around that it’s not comfortable.”

  “And we need an air conditioner that actually blows cool air,” I said. The one we had still wheezed in the kitchen window, but it had ceased all meaningful cooling operations.

  “Fine,” said Ellie. “But for now we should go home. It’s almost closing time, anyway.”

  I stopped in the act of stowing the flour sifter back into its cabinet. For Ellie to suggest closing early was unheard of; the previous autumn she’d come to work in the nor’easter that blew the old Lubec dock right out into the ocean, never to be seen again.

  “You want to leave?” I asked. “To do what?”

  No answer from Ellie, but a faint smile played around her lips. She went on looking thoughtful while she turned to the rest of the dishes. I went out front to close the cash register, bag the cash, and turn off the card reader, the radio, the fan, and the lights, preparatory to our departure.

  “But what about the scones?” I asked as we hurried to the Fiat parked just outside. I wasn’t about to let her walk home in this heat, and for once she didn’t argue.

  “They’ve moved the conference back,” Ellie said. “Something about flights being delayed? Or canceled, I forget which.”

  It hardly mattered which, I thought as relief rushed through me, if it gave us more time.

  “Anyway, I need to think some more about them.” She sighed as we got into the Fiat. I backed out onto Water Street, heading for Ellie’s house at the north end of the island.

  As we drove, another surge of panic welled up in me, along with the impulse to weep. But I shoved it all back down again; as usual, neither of those things were going to do me any good whatsoever.

  I pulled the car over to the side of the road with a vacant lot on one side and a view all the way across the water to New Brunswick, Canada, on the other. Ellie had been silent since we began driving.

  “Speak,” I said, and she shook off whatever calculations she’d been doing in her head.

  “Okay,” she began, holding up an index finger. “First Sally wants us to find out what happened to Paul and get a coin back for her.”

  Deep breath, second finger. “Now Peter Waldron has somehow gotten the idea that we have the coin.”

  “Maybe,” I emphasized. “We don’t know that for sure.”

  It would leave a lot of explaining to do in the drugged-lemonade department, but maybe he was a regular user of whatever he’d given me, and had meant the doped glass for himself.

  Hey, stranger things had happened. “But we do know for sure that we don’t have it, so—wait.”

  Another thought occurred to me. “How do we know Bailey Lyman didn’t have it? Because otherwise, why—?”

  “You think somebody killed him and then left the coin in his house instead of taking it?” Ellie looked skeptical.

  “Hmm. Well, they might’ve. If they couldn’t find it.”

  “But then why kill him at all?” she shot back. “If he’s the only one who knows where the thing is . . .”

  Yeah, on second thought bashing the poor guy’s brains out before discovering what they contained did seem shortsighted.

  “Anyway,” she said, “if someone had searched it, the house would’ve been a lot more trashed when we got there.”

  Drat, right again. “So you think somebody just got mad and clobbered him, basically?”

  Ellie gazed out at the view from the car: a grassy field baked yellow in the late-afternoon light, the blue water calm and hazy with gathering mist under a deepening sky, hills in the far distance.

  “Oh, no,” she said mildly, watching the schooner Martha’s red sails bellying gently toward home port.

  “No, I think he was in on all of this, somehow, and that’s why they killed him,” she said. “So he couldn’t tell anyone else what was going on.”

  Out on the water, the Martha’s red sails fluttered and dropped as she got into the shelter of the island where the breeze dropped off; they’d be motoring to the dock.

  “Well, that’s just great,” I said. “So now all we can do is keep bumbling around while we wait for a call asking for a—”

  A ransom, basically. We’ve got what they want, they want what we’ve got, easy-peasy.

  Only we didn’t have it. But Ellie seemed unfazed. “Jake, never mind Waldron for a minute. Just tell me this: If you were a piece of pirate gold, where would you be?”

  “On a pirate ship,” I answered promptly, not even having to think about it. Ephraim loved pirates and everything about them, even the hooks and eye-patches.

  Then I saw what she was getting at, and that it had nothing to do with Ephraim—except, I mean, for his probable location and that of the coin Paul Coates got killed for, too.

  “A sunken pirate ship,” I breathed as we got to the end of Water Street and turned onto her driveway. I stopped outside the small fenced pasture area where the goats grazed.

  Ellie was looking something up on her phone. “High tide’s right now,” she reported, which was not good news.

  To do what we both were thinking, we needed to be able to get close to a tiny point of rock sticking up out of the bay. On it was perched the tiniest, ricketiest, least comfy waterside villa in the world, home to the unlikeliest of witches.

  So we needed high water, and after right now we wouldn’t have any again for another twelve hours.

  “Tell me again why this is a good idea?” I said as I backed out of the driveway and aimed us toward downtown and the harbor.

  Ahead, a pickup truck with a trailer on it backed down the boat ramp behind Rosie’s Hot Dog Stand. By the time I’d parked the Fiat, the truck’s driver had backed the trailer down the ramp into the water and was quick-stepping out one of the finger piers to his boat, a sweet little vintage Chris-Craft runabout with red leatherette seats and more teak than a sauna.

  When we got to the Bayliner, he was driving the Chris-Craft unerringly from the water right up onto the trailer. I watched a little enviously—it’s not doing it that scares me, it’s doing it for the first time. I went down to the cabin to sort through our equipment and supplies while Ellie got ready to cast off.

  As I popped my head up out of the cabin, the pickup truck was pulling away into the golden late afternoon. Around us, men shouldered duffel bags, climbed off fishing boats, and headed for home.

  Suddenly a stab of fear shot through me. We ought to be cooking hot dogs outside on the grill right now, I thought. And Ephraim ought to be with us. But he’s not ...

  I looked up; Ellie was watching me. “Look,” she said quietly, “there’s enough volunteers out there to search this whole island ten times over, inch by inch.”

  The radio spat static; she turned the squelch knob. “And that’s what they’ll do. And there are enough cops of all different kinds to be sure all the possibilities get covered.”

  I bit my lip, which had begun trembling. “Maybe I’m wrong, maybe Waldron didn’t try to drug me. Maybe it was a mistake.”

  The electric motor that lowered the outboard engine into the water made a low whine that sounded loud in the boat basin’s watery hush. But when Ellie turned the key, all I heard was a low burble. I’d been expecting a roar, forgetting how quiet the new engine was.

 

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