“I wanted to let you know that the yacht Hotshot has just left the marina here for the start of the race, and the Stone twins are not aboard. And I haven’t been able to find them anywhere in the village. I’ve had all our people on the lookout for them, and they are not here.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Young said.

“One more thing: Two young men answering their description left here in a small, private airplane yesterday afternoon. There was no flight plan filed, and I don’t have a tail number, but the airplane departed to the northeast, in the direction of Provincetown. That’s consistent with a flight to the Maine coast.”

“Do you know what kind of airplane?”

“It was a Cessna, nobody could identify the model, but it was not based on Nantucket.”

“Do you know if it refueled at your airport?”

“No, it did not refuel; otherwise, we’d have the tail number.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

YOUNG CLOSED HIS CELL phone and turned his car in the direction of Dick Stone’s house.

STONE WATCHED AS Ginny came down the stairs, clutching the diary and several sheets of paper.

“I’ve got something,” she said. She spread her papers and the diary out on the coffee table and sat down beside it while everyone gathered around her. “I finally realized that I still hadn’t gone far enough back in the diary,” she said. “Then it occurred to me that Esme had been in London with her parents all winter, not here on the island, so what I was reading was mostly irrelevant, so I went back even further to last Labor Day.”

“And what did you find?” Stone asked.

“The pages were very messy, and the ink had faded or run, but I’ve written out what I could read. This one entry was a page and a half long, which was unusual for ESE; she ordinarily wrote a couple of paragraphs about her day. Here’s what I’ve got.” She picked up a sheet of paper and read:

“‘Day started blank.’ Where I couldn’t read a word, I just wrote down ‘blank.’ Then there are two or three paragraphs that are completely illegible, then this: ‘X and blank said blank blank’—several words unreadable—then ‘blank house, blank blank blank drinks. Z wanted blank blank go, so I said okay.’ Then more unreadable paragraphs down to the last one: ‘Z blank crying, me too. Blank blank Y laughing, drunk. Z threw blank, and I got her out blank blank.’ Then the only whole sentence I was able to get: ‘Z swore me to secrecy.’”

Lance spoke up. “I want to send the diary to Langley and see if they can recover more of those pages.”

“I think you should,” Ginny said. “I don’t think I can get any more of this particular incident.”

“Do you have an interpretation of all this, Ginny?” Stone asked.