The house had once been charming. The porch on the side was still wide and gracious, though it now sported a ripped screen and spiderwebs he could see from the middle of the yard. The windows boasted wide trim, though it was dirty gray now instead of white, and a lattice arbor over the front door was crisscrossed with ancient vines, now long dead. And there on the roof was the dormer window where Frank had seen Jay’s wife standing in the lamplight.

He never knew if the neighbor heard an actual scream or not, but Frank had thought about the woman, Jay’s wife, for a long time. He couldn’t believe he’d never even gotten her name. Rookie mistake. Jay had given a believable, entirely plausible story, but had Frank missed something? Was there more to the story? He wondered it a lot more after the man went missing, along with that boat he was so fond of.

Wonder where she is now? Frank thought. There was no telling.

He knocked on the door, though he sensed the house was long deserted, then knocked one more time for good measure. At a sound off to his left, he turned to see a young woman walking around the side of the house.

“There’s no one in there.” The woman pushed a lock of red hair out of her face. She carried a small notebook in her hand, a pen tucked behind her ear, and she was dressed smartly in a green blouse, slim black pants, and black heels. Altogether too dressy and businesslike for this far end of town.

“If you’re looking for Carl, he’s out back on his phone,” she continued as she stepped her way through the tall grass out toward her car parked on the street. He hadn’t noticed it when he’d arrived.

“Thank you.”

“No problem,” she called back.

Frank followed the dirt path around the side of the house. The grassy lawn where Jay had once painted his precious boat was now mostly dirt and weeds, all covered by drooping tree limbs and shaded by giant azalea bushes. The river swirled just on the other side of a line of reeds and oats. On the far side of the yard, a man—Carl, he assumed—stood in the shade holding a cell phone to his ear. He was deep in conversation, one arm gesturing wildly, his back to Frank.

Frank surveyed Little River before him. Hard to believe this was the same river that meandered through downtown Sugar Bend. Down there, it was often dotted with cheerful sailboats, ski boats pulling kids in tubes, and kayaks gliding through the early morning and late evening hours. But up here the river was eerily quiet. With the vivid blue sky and bright sunshine hidden behind the crown of trees, a fog seemed to hover over the water. Either there were no neighboring houses, no nearby docks, or they were lost in the green-gray gloom.

He walked down toward the river. According to the Facebook post, the boat had washed up under the dock, but Frank saw nothing there except dark water. He was almost at the river’s edge when the boat materialized out of the shadows on the sandy bank. The chill shivered down his arms again, and his hand tightened on the head of his cane.