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.

Lucy raised the camera and looked through the viewfinder, snapping a photo of Barney staring down into the water. From the official way he was standing, she knew this was no marine creature that had washed up. “I guess it’s not a pilot whale?” she asked, checking the image in the little screen.

Harry shook his head.

“It’s a person, right?” said Dave. “It’s Old Dan, isn’t it?”

Lucy’s fingers tightened on the camera. There was a big difference between jumping to a conclusion and learning it was true, a big difference between an unidentified body and one with a name you knew.

“I’m not supposed to say,” said Harry.