Nimec looked thoughtful.

"Word got around," he said.

"Uh-huh," Ricci said. "When you're talking about a stake that's worth serious cash, and men who are having a hard time feeding their families, it's a volatile combination. There are resentments toward people from away that go back a long, long time and are maybe even a little justified. Back around the turn of the century, rich out-of-towners started buying up acres and acres of bay-front land around their summer mansions as privacy buffers against the fishermen and clam diggers they thought of as white trash. Stuck 'No Trespassing' signs up everywhere, restricting their access to the water that was their livelihood."

"Somebody twist the locals' arms to sell?" Megan said.

Ricci gave her a sharp look.

"Either you've never been poor, or you've forgotten what that can be like," he said brusquely. "Watch your kids starve through a Maine winter, and you won't need any other kind of arm-twisting."

She sat there in the brittle silence that followed, wondering if his reaction had made her feel guiltier about her remark than she should have.

"Dex and the warden cut some kind of deal?" Nimec said. The last thing he wanted was to get sidetracked.

Ricci turned his coffee cup in his hands, seeming to concentrate on the steam wisping up from it.

"Let's get back to whether it's usually me who drives the catch to market," he said at last. "I've been working with Dex for over a year and never went there without him before today. Guy likes wheeling and dealing, likes to get the wholesalers bidding. The whole thing from soup to nuts, you know?" He paused. "He also looks forward to having his cash in hand. But this morning he tells me something about needing to rush home to watch his kids after school. Said his wife had to work late and there was nobody else. The minute we pull the boat in, he's up and away."

"Happens when you're a parent," Nimec said, thinking he could have cited any number of comparable situations from when his own children were young and his wife was not yet his ex-wife.

Ricci shook his head.

"You don't know Dex," he said. "Ask him to recommend a local bar, he'll rattle off the names of two dozen watering holes from here to New Brunswick and tell you every kind of beer they have on tap. Ask him his kids' birthdays, he'd be stumped."

"So you think he arranged for you to be driving by yourself when you got stopped," Nimec said.

Ricci turned his coffee cup but said nothing.

Nimec sighed. "Was it the warden who pulled you over?"

"Yeah. Cobbs is one of those down-easters I told you about resents outsiders ... and just about everybody and everything else besides, but that's just his endearing personality. I move here from Boston, earn a decent buck, it's like I'm taking something away from him. Add that I'm a cop ... an ex-cop... and he gets even more bothered."