As for Philip Norton, it was true he’d been with the family for close to twenty years. He had accounts with the local market, hardware store, and fishmonger on the Sinclairs’ behalf, and when he wasn’t on the island he rented an apartment in a small complex in Alexandria Bay. Everything our witnesses said about their everyday lives looked to be accurate. Unfortunately for me, the real value lay in what they were keeping back.

“Your turn,” McIntyre said when she was through.

“God, where do I start? Jasper’s sister is sleeping with his brother’s lover, and they think Jasper caught on to the affair yesterday afternoon. Jasper’s brother has a history of treating him like garbage and busted his lip last night. Jasper planned to propose to his girlfriend, but his sister’s husband’s daughter has a thing for him that’s not exactly aboveboard for a teenage girl. We’ve got a terminally ill grandmother sitting on a fortune, and a longtime caretaker about to be out of a job. But right now my money’s on the siblings. They’re trying to save the family business, and Jasper’s due for a big inheritance when his grandma dies. If he’s not around, it could go to them instead.”

“So just your average open-and-shut case.” She snorted. “What does Tim think?”

The question made me hesitate. In the parlor, Tim had looked utterly at ease. Had nothing we’d learned over the course of the day changed his mind about the magnitude of Jasper’s disappearing act? “The blood indicates assault, but last I checked, Tim thinks Jasper left the island on his own.”

“Okay, what am I missing?” I could hear the confusion in McIntyre’s voice. It sounded much like my own.

“Bebe says Jasper gets a kick out of messing with her and Flynn. I guess it’s possible he could have staged this, but everything about that feels wrong. Tim’s hoping we’ll find him in Canada, or back in the city.”

“Tim’s always been the optimistic type,” said Mac. I got the sense she didn’t think the personality trait was all that useful. “For what it’s worth, I talked to the manager at Jasper’s building. He checked the apartment for me. All clear, no indication of anything unseemly.”

I nodded to myself. Figured as much.

“I called the hospitals, around here and in Kingston, too,” she said. “Jasper hasn’t turned up and they’ve got no John Does that fit his description, dead or alive. If he did leave on his own, he couldn’t get back to Tern now if he wanted to.”

The storm, she explained, had gotten worse. The National Weather Service was predicting it would rage all night, with gale-force winds and more flooding. Waves were breaking records, and there were fallen trees and downed power lines all over the mainland. An apartment building had caught fire, and the flooding displaced a half-dozen families from their homes. Since I last spoke with Mac, A-Bay had gone from a town quietly shouldering a bit of rough October weather to a community in full-on panic mode. With the trooper boat out of commission, she’d been working on another way to get help to the island. There were available patrol boats a couple towns over, but McIntyre hesitated to dispatch them in such rough waters.