The storage building is cavernous and cold, and it feels like I’m entering a mausoleum. Nate and I once traveled to Pompeii and Herculaneum, and this has that same haunting feeling. Things that were alive and vibrant now entombed. Boats are lined up, one after the other. Some are fully covered and encased, some sit open and empty, all ghost ships waiting for life.

“Hello?” I call, my voice echoing back.

Sonny barks. And then barks again, thinking his echo is another dog barking.

I head toward the back, where I find a door with a name plaque on it that reads: CAPTAIN. I May Not Walk on Water, But I Can Land on It!

There are blinds—bent and falling—over the window on the door. I angle my head to look through one of the slats, and there is a man sleeping on a cot.

I knock, and he jumps.

I can hear him clear his throat as he walks to the door. “Hello?” he asks, more like an inquisition than a question. The man does, indeed, look like a sea captain—silver, windblown hair, unkempt gray beard and lined face set atop a cowl neck sweater—an actor someone has hired from Central Casting to portray Ernest Hemingway.

“Hi, yes, sorry to bother you...”

“What makes you think you were bothering me?”

I think briefly about busting him, but decide against it. “I’m Adie Lou Kruger...Clarke...Adeleine Clarke,” I say.

“Can’t make up your mind today?” he asks.

I can feel my pulse race and the blood rise in my face. I inhale deeply and slowly, and the scent of the lavender I used earlier slows my heart rate.

“I have a boat in storage here, and I’d like someone to take a look at it,” I explain. “It’s a 1940 Chris-Craft that I’d like to get back in shipshape.” I smile at my little joke.

“Good one,” the man says. He begins to cough, violently, and then proceeds to cough up what sounds like a boatload of phlegm. He walks back into his office, grabs an empty bottle of beer and spits into it.

I nearly pass out.

“Pretty fancy boat,” he says, a rivulet of spittle dangling from his mouth. “Husband must do all right.”

My pulse instantly quickens.

“It’s my boat,” I say. “No husband.”

He holds his hands up as if I were Capone himself. “Okay, lady,” he says.

“It’s not lady,” I say. “It’s Miss Kruger.”