“Mr. MacKelvy, I’m not a hysterical widow trying to get financial restitution from the easiest possible source. I’m trying to find anyone who might have seen my cousin in the last minutes of his life. We’re talking about an open dock at ten in the morning. I can’t believe not a living soul saw him. I want to talk with the crew on the Bertha just to make sure.”

“Yeah, Gum? Yeah … yeah … Toledo on the sixteenth? How about the seventeenth? Can’t help ya, fella. Night of the sixteenth? Say two-three in the morning? … Okay, fella some other time.” He shook his head worriedly. “Business is rotten. The steel slump’s killing us and so are the thousand-footers. Thank God, Eudora’s still shipping with us.”

The constant interruptions were getting on my nerves. “I’m sure I can find the Bertha Krupnik, Mr. MacKelvy. I’m a private investigator and I’m used to tracking things down. An active ship on the Great Lakes can’t be that difficult to locate. I’m just asking you to make it easier.”

MacKelvy shrugged. “I’ll have to talk to Niels. He’s coming down here for lunch, Miss—who’d you say?—and I’ll check with him then. Stop back here around two. Right, Clayton?”

The phone rang again. “Who’s Niels?” I asked Phillips as we walked out of the office.

“Niels Grafalk. He owns Grafalk Steamship.”

“Want to give me a lift back to your office? I can pick up my car there and leave you to your meetings.”

His pale eyes were darting around the hall, as if looking for someone or trying to get help from someplace. “Uh, sure.”

We were in the front office, Phillips saying good-bye to the receptionist, when we heard a tremendous crash. I felt a shudder through the concrete floor and then the sound of glass breaking and metal screaming. The receptionist got out of her chair, startled.

“What was that?”

A couple of people came into the reception room from inside the building. “An earthquake?” “Sounds like a car crash.” “Was the building hit?” “Is the building falling over?”

I went to the outer door. Car crash? Maybe, but a damned big car. Maybe one of those semis they’d been loading?

Outside a large crowd was gathering. A siren in the distance grew louder. And at the north end of the pier a freighter stood, nose plowed into the side of the dock. Large chunks of concrete had broken in front of it like a metal road divider before a speeding car. Glass fragments broke loose from the sides of the ship as I moved with the crowd to gawk. A tall crane at the edge of the wharf twisted and slowly fell, crumpling on itself like a dying swan.