“Beautiful couple,” I say.

He looks at the photograph. It’s a black-and-white that was hand-tinted by someone who knew what they were doing. Not clownish but subtle, with only enough color to bring the nuances of life to an already lovely image.

“You want to know what traumatic is?”

I don’t say anything. Behind his thick lenses, I can see dampness in his eyes.

“Losing her,” he says. “That guy must be in a world of hurt. There’s not much more painful than losing your wife. Real lonely too.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him as I make my way to the front door. “Winston is good company, I hope.”

“Winston?” he asks.

Mr. Bakker looks confused, so I bend down and rub the top of the dog’s head. “This guy, of course.”

His already knotted brow constricts a bit more. “That’s not Winston,” he says. “That pup’s been gone for years and years. This is Reggie.”

When I make my way back to the crime scene, I find Montrose and fill him in on the interview with Mr. Bakker. A little reluctantly, because older people get trashed all the time for being out of touch and confused when they don’t deserve it, I mention that the old man had told the dispatcher the wrong name of his dog.

“Kind of a small thing,” I say.

Montrose squints into the sun and takes off his glasses to remove a smudge. “Could be a big thing.”

He’s right. Other than Adam, Mr. Bakker’s the only witness to the crime.

CHAPTER FOUR

CONNOR

“Was that a cop?” I ask Kristen as she returns to the bedroom of the Lily, where I’ve been resting like pancaked roadkill since we arrived the night before. I thought I saw a uniform in the doorway when I fought my way to my knees on the bed to see who’d knocked but couldn’t stay there long enough to be sure. Every muscle in my body aches, and my head feels like it’s packed with a dozen loose ball bearings, all rolling around like the vintage pinball machine my dad bought us when my sister and I were kids.

“Yes,” Kristen says. “A woman went missing, and they’re looking for her.”

I try to right myself on a pair of down-filled pillows, but they are too squishy. I look at my phone. It’s after two in the afternoon. I plunge back into the cloud of linens and comforters, but manage to lift my head a little. “Missing from where?” I ask, now feeling a wave of nausea that I refuse to give in to. “Don’t follow you.”

“Staying in the first cabin,” she says. “Someone took her, I guess.”

It’s hard to process those words and repeat them. “Took her?”

“I don’t know much more than that. I told them you’ve been under the weather. We’ll need to make a statement later. No big deal. Our civic responsibility and all.”

I give her a slight nod. Kristen’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She’s blond and blue eyed and probably could have been a model if she’d wanted to be one. In fact, I’m sure of it. She could have been anything. She’s that smart. She’s thirty-nine and in line for a partnership at a Seattle law firm.