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lie detector or something?”
    “It couldn’t hurt.”
    “I dunno. There’s a lot going on right now.” Then again, tagging along with Sam might give me an excuse to avoid the company at Richard’s house. Again, I shrugged. “Call me,” I said, leaving the acceptance of the invitation open.
    “I’ll do that.” Sam grabbed his wallet, left a five on the bar, and gathered his envelopes. “Talk to you soon.”
    I watched him leave, and then picked up the money, put it in the till, and gave myself the change as a tip. I had a feeling that chump change would be a small price for Sam to pay for whatever we learned about Jack Morrow, since I had a feeling that that information wasn’t going to be good.
    I grabbed a damp rag and wiped down the bar, thinking about the envelope that had given me a jolt. Why had I thought about Da-Marr when touching it?
    Jack Morrow had been a felon. Was Da-Marr destined to walk a similar path?
    At that moment, I didn’t doubt it.

Chapter 5
    Autumn had settled itself upon Western New York. The days were already getting a lot shorter. The lackluster sun came up at 7:18, but Richard found himself up hours before that. He’d slipped out of bed, leaving his sleeping wife, dressed, and tip-toed down to the kitchen where he’d read every section of the
Buffalo News
and was on his third cup of coffee when the phone rang. Everyone else in the house was still sound asleep, so he practically broke the Olympic long jump record to snatch the landline before it could ring again.
    “Hello?”
    “Richard Alpert?”
    “Speaking.”
    “This is Frank Murray, manager of Sundowner’s Marina. I’m sorry to disturb you so early, but I thought you should know that we’ve had some trouble here at the marina. Vandalism.”
    “My boat’s been vandalized?”
    “I’m afraid so. The lock on the sliding glass door was broken, and someone got inside and trashed the salon. The seats have been slashed — with all the stuffing taken out of them — likewise all the life jackets. Every cupboard was emptied, too, their contents smashed and scattered.”
    Richard swallowed hard. “How many other boats were ransacked?” he asked, his voice tight.
    “Just yours, sir. I’m terribly sorry. We do have a security guard, but he didn’t see anything or anyone unusual. We’ll check our video cameras to see if they captured anything suspicious and turn it over to the police. You did have insurance on the boat, right?”
    “Yeah, it’s fully insured,” Richard said, feeling sick at heart.
    “Will you be coming in to assess the damage?”
    “Yeah. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
    “We’ve called the police and they said they’d send someone over as soon as possible. I’m really sorry about this, sir. We haven’t had any vandalism in quite some time.”
    “Yeah. Thanks for calling.”
    Richard hung up the phone, stared into his cooling coffee, and wondered if Jeff would be up to going with him. He didn’t think he wanted to do it alone, and he sure as hell didn’t want Brenda to find out about it — at least not while Evelyn was in residence. He could almost hear her not-so-subtle rebuke. Brenda had too much on her mind to worry about his folly. And right now, that’s just what owning the boat looked like.
    A dark silhouette blocked my path.
    “Hey, dude, got some spare change?” The hefty teen stepped into the lamplight, grabbed my jacket, jolting me.
    Another figure emerged from the darkened doorway of a closed deli. This one held a baseball bat. “Give us your money.”
    The big guy grabbed my arm in a vise grip.
    I handed over what I had.
    It wasn’t enough.
    The smaller one whacked the bat against his open palm. “Reggie wants to teach you a lesson.”
    In one swift move, I kicked the little guy in the nuts. He went down hard.
    His bigger friend snatched the bat, heading for me like a killing machine.
    My arm went up to shield my head. The bat came down and cracked my ulna.
    Before I