The harbor was filled with charter fishing boats, modest pleasure craft, and an ancient tug anchored near a small barge. She drove down the ramp into a gravel parking lot bordered by a sign reading MUNICIPAL DOCKS. The two-lane main street—optimistically named Beachcomber Boulevard—held an assortment of stores, some weather-beaten, others spruced up with bright colors and kitschy window displays to attract the tourists—Jerry’s Trading Post, McKinley’s Market, some restaurants, a couple of fudge shops, a bank, and a fire station. Sandwich boards propped along the road advertised the services of fishing guides, and Jake’s Dive Shop invited visitors to “Explore Nearby Shipwrecks.”

Now that she was here, she had no idea where to go. She pulled into a parking lot next to a bar named The Sandpiper. Once she got inside, it wasn’t hard to pick out the locals from the sunburned tourists, who had the glazed look of people who’d squeezed too much into one day. While they clustered around the small wooden tables, the locals sat at the bar.

She approached the bartender, who eyed her suspiciously. “We card here.”

If she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, she’d have laughed. “Then how about a Sprite?”

When he brought her drink, she said, “I’m supposed to be staying at this guy’s place, but I lost his address. You know a dude named Panda?”

The locals looked up from their drinks.

“I might,” the bartender said. “How do you know him?”

“He … did some work for this friend of mine.”

“What kind of work?”

That was when she discovered Viper had no manners. “You know him or not?”

The bartender shrugged. “Seen him around sometimes.” He went off to help another customer.

Fortunately a couple of seniors seated at the other end of the bar were more garrulous. “He showed up here a couple of years ago and bought the old Remington place out on Goose Cove,” one said. “He’s not on the island. I know for a fact he didn’t come by plane, and if he’d been on the ferry or a charter, one of us would of heard about it.”

Finally a piece of luck. Maybe she could get her questions answered without having to see him again.

The old man rested his forearm on the bar. “He don’t talk much. Kind of standoffish. Never heard what he does for a living.”

“Yeah, that’s the way he is,” Viper said. “Is Goose Cove far from here?”

“Island’s only ten miles long,” his pal replied. “Nothing’s too far from here, although some places are harder to get to than others.”