“You could try staying sober,” said Lucy.

All three looked at her as if she were crazy.

“Or find another bar,” she added.

“The others don’t open ’til noon,” said Brian. “Town bylaw.”

“Old Dan has a special dispensation?” she asked.

The others laughed. “You could say that,” said Dave, with a bit of an edge in his voice. “He sure doesn’t play by the same rules as the rest of us.”

“Special permission. That’s good,” said Brian.

“Yeah, like from the pope,” said Frank, slapping his thigh. “I’ll have to tell that one to Father Ed.” He checked his watch. “Come to think of it, I wonder where he is? He usually stops in around now.”

My goodness, thought Lucy, echoing her great-grandmother who had been a staunch member of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. She knew there was a lot of drinking in Tinker’s Cove, especially in the winter, when the boats sat idle. Some joker had even printed up bumper stickers proclaiming: “Tinker’s Cove: A quaint little drinking village with a fishing problem,” when government regulators had started placing tight restrictions on what kind of fish and how much of it they could catch and when they could catch it. She’d laughed when she first saw the sticker on a battered old pickup truck. After all, she wasn’t above pouring herself a glass of wine to sip while she cooked supper. She certainly wasn’t a teetotaler, but her Puritan soul certainly didn’t approve of drinking in the morning.

The laughter stopped, however, when they heard a siren blast, and the birds at the end of the pier rose in a cloud, then settled back down.

“Something washed up,” said Lucy, by way of explanation. “Probably a pilot whale.”

The others nodded, listening as the siren grew louder and a police car sped into the parking lot, screeching to a halt at the end of the pier. The birds rose again, and this time they flapped off, settling on the roof of the fish-packing shed.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” said Dave. “Real bad.”

He took off, running across the parking lot, followed by Brian and Frank. Lucy stood for a minute, watching them and considering the facts. First, Old Dan was missing, and second, a carcass had turned up in the harbor. She hurried after them but was stopped with the others at the dock by Harry, who wasn’t allowing anyone to pass. At the end of the pier, she could see her friend Officer Barney Culpepper peering down into the icy water.

“I know Barney,” she told Harry as she pulled her camera out of her bag. “He won’t mind.”

“He said I shouldn’t let anybody by,” insisted Harry, tilting his head in Barney’s direction.