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we set off to try to locate him there. But he wasn’t in the diner, or the hardware store, or the five-and-dime. He wasn’t at a table in the Happy Landings Café or on a barstool at La Sardina, East-port's Mexican restaurant.
    “We really need him,” Ellie said. “Right now he's out there somewhere doing the opposite of what we wanted. In Eastport Hecky and his big mouth can fix it so that not only will people refuse to help Raines, they won’t even look at him.”
    “I know,” I said, frustrated. Ellie's plan had actually started seeming possible to me. But an hour after we’d begun we were back where we’d started, at the art gallery.
    Suddenly a heavy thwap-thwapping sound filled the air and an aircraft swooped low over Passamaquoddy Bay. It was the Coast Guard helicopter, its red markings clearly visible on its chunky white body as it beat its way north.
    “What in the world is going on out there?” Ellie said. The smell of smoke had never really gone away and grew stronger again now, hanging over the town in a pale haze; not a woodstove or anything like it. Something around here was burning like hell.
    Jerome Wallace came outside. He was a big, rawboned man with faraway blue eyes, a thatch of greying hair, and a quiet manner, his clothes habitually paint-smeared.
    “Just talked to the dispatcher,” he said. “Some guy went off those high bluffs up at North End, into the water. No one seems to know who he is and they’re all out there trying to find the body.”
    Ellie and I looked at each other.
    “Some guy,” Jerome finished, “from away.”
    That night, Jonathan Raines sat cheerfully un-drowned at one end of the dinner table, and George Valentine sat at the other. George was chief of Eastport's volunteer fire department as well as its unofficial man of all work, so he knew the whole story of what had happened at North End.
    “From away,” he repeated, forking up some of the bay-scallop casserole that Ellie and I had prepared. With it we were having steamed endive vinaigrette, cheese biscuits, and some of the new baby potatoes that Ellie had dug that morning, with fresh parsley and butter.
    “It doesn’t matter that he was somebody from away,” I said, and George looked up kindly at me.
    “Course it doesn’t, Jacobia. But it's all we know about him so far, ’cause the car he drove has come up on a stolen list in Massachusetts. Must’ve had his wallet, ID and all, on him when he went over. Keys, too, if he had ’em.”
    Also with us at the table were Sam and his friend Maggie Altvater. The two of them were taking advanced scuba lessons this summer and had gotten in just in time for dinner.
    “How do you know for sure he went over at all?” Maggie asked reasonably. “I mean, just because the car is there and he's not. If it's stolen, maybe he just abandoned it.”
    In the candlelight her creamy complexion glowed with health, her hazel eyes bright with good humor and quick intelligence. And her honey-colored hair was a wonder, falling in masses to the middle of her back.
    Unfortunately, it was her habit to spoil the effect with plaid flannel shirts, baggy jeans, and thick-soled hiking boots, none of which did anything to flatter her ample figure.
    An unhappy picture of Jill Frey flashed before my eyes: slim as a switchblade and dressed fit to kill. Maggie was a wonderful girl, accomplished and mature; on top of everything else, she was a volunteer emergency medical technician complete with a scanner and a cherry beacon on the dash of her pickup. But Sam treated her like a comfortable old shoe, partly on account of her always presenting herself as if she were one.
    “Wonderful library you’ve got here in town,” Raines said, apropos of nothing. “I saw it this afternoon,” he added with an odd, intent look at me.
    Meanwhile, Sam took another forkful of scallop casserole and chewed happily; at eighteen, he was as strong and good-looking as a healthy young horse, and as stubborn.
    “To