Lucy nodded. She knew there was a lot of resentment toward those who had slips from those who didn’t. It was a nuisance to have to ferry yourself and your stuff and your crew out to a mooring in a dinghy. With a slip, you could just walk along the dock to the boat, untie it, and sail off. “So you think this will make everybody happy?” she asked. “What about environmental issues? I understand there will be some dredging.”

He didn’t answer. His gaze was riveted on something outside that had caught his attention. “Sorry, Lucy. There’s something I gotta check on,” he said, taking his jacket off a hook.

Lucy turned and looked outside, where a flock of gulls and crows had congregated at the end of the pier. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“The ice is breaking up. Something’s probably come to the surface.”

From the excited cries of the gulls, who were now arriving from all directions, she knew it must be something they considered a meal. A feast, in fact.

“Like a pilot whale?”

“Could be. Maybe a sea turtle, a dolphin even. Could be anything.”

“I’d better come,” she said, with a groan, reluctantly pulling a camera out of her bag.

“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said, shaking his head. “Whatever it is, it’s not going to be pretty, not this time of year. It could’ve been dead for months.”

“Oh, I’m used to it,” sighed Lucy, who had tasted plenty of bile photographing everything from slimy, half-rotted giant squid tentacles caught in fishing nets to bloated whale carcasses that washed up on the beach.

“Trust me. The stench alone…”

She was already beginning to feel queasy. “You’ve convinced me,” she said, guiltily replacing her camera. Any photo she took would probably be too disgusting to print, she rationalized, and she could call him later in the day and find out what it was. Meanwhile, her interest had been caught by a handful of people gathered outside the Bilge, on the landward side of the parking lot. Tucked in the basement beneath a block of stores that fronted Main Street, the Bilge was a Tinker’s Cove landmark—and a steady source of news. It was the very opposite of Hemingway’s “clean, well-lighted place,” but that didn’t bother the fishermen who packed the place. It may have been a dark and dingy dive, but the beer was cheap, and Old Dan never turned a paying customer away, not even if he was straight off the boat and stank of lobster bait.

Lucy checked her watch as she crossed the parking lot and discovered it was only a little past ten o’clock. Kind of early to start drinking, she thought, but the three men standing in front of the Bilge apparently thought otherwise.