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Hecky.”
    “Hmph,” he retorted, not much mollified.
    The shop was a combination art gallery and working studio that ordinarily smelled sweetly of oil paints and turpentine. But now the atmosphere in it soured further as Hecky glowered at me.
    “And he's got no business muckin’ about with Hayes nonsense. Damned fool violin and all that other old clattertrap.”
    He glanced around at the brightly colored water scenes and landscape portraits decorating the walls. Behind the counter the shop's proprietor, Jerome Wallace, worked on another one.
    “This”—Hecky jerked a gnarled fist at the paintings—“is what we show the folks from away, want to come and see the real downeast Maine as it oughta be. All bright an’ cheerful.”
    He frowned thunderously at me. “Not them old stories about murder and mayhem. Bad women”— wimmen —“an’ dark deeds such as ought to’ve stayed buried with the men who done ’em.”
    I tried not to look as curious as I felt; this was the first I’d heard of Hayes doing dark deeds or being associated with bad wimmen.
    From behind Hecky, one of the other men in the shop winked elaborately at me. Truman Daly was tall, wiry and white-bearded with a gleam in his eye that could turn to lightning if you got him riled. As courtly a gentleman now as forty years ago, lively and involved in everything that was interesting, he was Eastport's best-known citizen—welcome in the fanciest parlors and lowest saloons, though he visited the latter very infrequently and only for soft drinks—and he treated Hecky Wilmot as if Hecky were a younger, less diplomatic brother.
    Now Truman smoothed his long, white beard with one expressive hand and made a discreet yap-yap motion with the thumb and finger of the other, as he and the other men began edging toward the door of the shop.
    When Hecky got on a rant, the best thing was to leave him alone to it. As the little bell over the shop door jingled, I caught a sniff of wood smoke again, decided it was only the stove downdrafting.
    Hecky leaned toward me, his bushy white eyebrows beetling in sharp contrast to his dyed black hair.
    “ ’Twas a curse old Jared Hayes lived under,” he intoned, “and another as took ’im. I ain’t such a fool as to dabble in it, nor should you be, or anyone from away. Especially from away.”
    He glared around. “It oughta be let alone,” he declared, his old voice quavering with emotion, and with that he stomped out, leaving Ellie and me blinking at each other.
    “So much for helping Jonathan Raines get accepted in town,” Ellie said after a moment, laughing weakly.
    “Right,” I agreed, still a little shocked by the old man's fervor, “and we never even got the chance to tell our lies. Maybe we should’ve told Hecky that Raines was a literary agent.”
    “It sounds to me as if he's just jealous of his turf,” Ellie said, echoing my own thought. “With his book coming out and all.”
    “Do you think he's getting nervous? I mean, that somebody like Raines, with his supposed academic credentials, might decide to say that Hecky the hometown amateur has gotten it all wrong?”
    Jerome dragged his gaze away from his painting. “Hecky's pretty touchy lately about that book of his, all right,” he said. “Way he talks, it's going to set the whole town on its ear, what he's written. Truman Daly says he thinks maybe Hecky put in a few things he wishes now that he hadn’t.”
    “Huh.” Now, there was a thought worth pondering. It would be poetic justice if for once Hecky was worried about what other people were saying, instead of him doing all the saying himself. “Whose old skeletons has Hecky been rattling, do you suppose?”
    Ellie shrugged, spreading her hands. The smoke smell was stronger; not the woodstove, I realized. And now I heard sirens.
    “Something's put a bee in his bonnet,” Ellie agreed, peering out the storefront window.
    Across the street in the parking area by the fish pier, a small