‘Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know, I guess it p-probably is unsafe back there. Apparently – I m-m-mean, you can see, it’s so dense that it’s hard to even m-move through some of it. And it’s all a mess now; it’d take ages to m-maintain it. And I guess m-most people don’t come here to go hiking.’

‘Mm. You’re probably right,’ I say. I catch Ellis up on the week’s findings – namely, recounting the conversation I’d had with Henry. ‘And then – Frank. I had an epiphany.’

‘What do you m-mean?’

‘He said he found Roxy’s guitar, and the police report said the guitar was found Sunday morning. Right?’

‘Sure.’

‘Really early. The report said four in the morning. But what did Lenore say? What day would that have been?’

‘The Sunday before Labor Day.’

‘Yeah.’ And I’m eyeing Ellis because something about him changes, and then I see, he’s figured it out before I’ve told him but he wants me to ask him the question. ‘Ellis, what time do ferries normally leave on Labor Sunday?’

‘On holidays it’s usually noon.’

‘So what was our friend Frank doing out at the shore so early? Shit, Ellis, think about it. Maybe he needs to get rid of the guitar but he knows it’s light enough to get washed back up to shore … or, maybe, not even that. I don’t peg him as an especially clever guy. Maybe he wants to insert himself in the investigation to make him look like an innocent bystander. Right?’

‘Yeah, OK. Right.’

‘So, either way, he calls in this guitar, and it’s four in the morning –’

‘Why would it be in the m-morning two days after, though?’

‘Any number of things, I guess. Shock. Fear. Maybe he’d been trying to get rid of it in other ways. I mean, Ellis, we caught him out on his alibi. And he has a motive. Lenore literally said she thinks Roxy could have been blackmailing him.’

‘What do we do?’ Ellis asks.

I chew my thumb; confronting Frank again with this information seems unproductive at best and dangerous at worst.

This is when the siren blares and we both practically jump out of our skin – but I hide it better than Ellis, who’s trembling. It’s Booker who emerges from the police car.

‘Of course it’s you two,’ he says. ‘Jen at the post office calls me all distraught, says she thought she saw vandals out here. What the hell are you –’

‘Booker,’ I say, glancing at Ellis, ‘we need to tell you something.’

He shuts the car door behind him. ‘If it’s about what I think it is then I’m not interested.’

‘Or, what if it is the same genre as you think it is, but it’s more than you ever could have imagined?’