CHAPTER NINETEEN
The nor'easter rolled in three days later, the second real storm of the season, and Cormorant Cove battened down with the practiced efficiency of a town that had been doing this for three hundred years — plywood over the shop windows on the exposed side of Wharf Street, boats hauled up out of the marina's half-finished berths, the harbor patrol's radio crackling with small craft warnings on a steady, ominous loop.
Marin closed the Inkwell & Anchor early, checking the storm shutters twice, moving Dewey's food and water bowls away from the front window on Priya's insistence, who had strong and specific opinions about cat safety during weather events and was not shy about sharing them.
"You're doing the face," Priya said, taping a final strip along the window seam. "The one where you're thinking too hard about something you haven't told me yet."
"I keep thinking about what Oswald said last week. About the boathouse."
"The one nobody's supposed to go near until the demolition permits clear?" Priya's tape gun paused mid-strip. "Marin. We are not doing anything boathouse-related tonight. Tonight we are doing soup and candles and possibly watching Dewey be dramatic about the wind, like normal storm-prep people."
"I know. I agree. I'm just saying it's on my mind."
"Everything about this case is on your mind, permanently, we've established this.
" Priya finished the last window and surveyed her work with satisfaction.
"Go home. Lock your door. Let Reyes do the boathouse-adjacent worrying, that's literally his job description now that you two are — whatever you two currently are. "
"We're not anything yet."
"Sure," Priya said, entirely unconvinced, and was gathering her own coat when Marin's phone rang, and everything about the evening changed at once.
and Marin was still gathering her own things to leave when Oswald called, his voice tight with an urgency she'd never heard from him before.
"I've been thinking about the letter," he said, without preamble.
"Denise's confession mentions a man who did odd work for Harold — boat repairs, other things.
I went back through the old harbor logs this afternoon, before the library closed for the storm, and found a name I should have connected sooner.
A dockhand named Curtis Aldrich, paid cash by Harold Vance the same autumn Danny died, for 'general maintenance.
' Aldrich died himself, years ago, so he can't tell us anything.
But he kept a personal logbook — dockhands did, back then, informal records of tides, repairs, whatever they'd done and to which boats.
Ruth mentioned once that some of Curtis's old effects ended up donated to the town, boxed up after his widow passed.
I believe they went to the old boathouse behind the marina site — the one slated for demolition once the project's approved.
If there's a physical record anywhere of what was actually done to the Sarah Jane, that's where it would be. "
"The boathouse is right in the middle of the construction site," Marin said slowly. "It's supposed to be locked up for the season."
"It is. Which is precisely why nobody's thought to look there in thirty years, and precisely why, if I were a man trying to make sure a very old, very inconvenient truth stayed buried permanently, I might finally get around to clearing it out — say, during a storm, when nobody would think twice about lights or activity down at a construction site. "
Marin felt something cold settle in her stomach. "You think Vance is going there tonight."
"I think, if there's anything left to find, tonight is exactly the night a guilty man would choose to make sure it disappears for good.
" Oswald's voice was grim. "I'm too old to be climbing over construction fencing in a nor'easter, Ms. Ashworth, whatever my knees might have to say about being left behind.
But I'd feel a great deal better if you called Detective Reyes before you did anything else. "
She was already reaching for her phone when she saw, through the shop's rain-streaked front window, a familiar figure moving quickly down the darkened, storm-emptied length of Wharf Street toward the marina site — not Reyes, not yet, but Ivy, soaked through, waving urgently for Marin to come outside.
"Priya just called me," Ivy shouted over the wind, the moment Marin got the door open.
"She was closing up the café and saw Vance's car heading down toward the marina, no lights on half the way, like he didn't want to be noticed.
She's trying to reach Reyes now but the storm's messing with the cell towers down by the water.
Marin, I think Oswald's right. I think he's going down there right now. "