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a sign read, “Pacific Seafoods.” The nearest building to the parking lot was a restaurant.
    She decided to have breakfast there, but not before she took a walk down on the docks to see if her “inheritance” was actually there. If there really was an inheritance. “ The wealth of the wicked is laid up for the just ...” that phase was running through her mind again. Like a song she didn’t know all the words for, it had been running through her mind all night long.
    She was still checking things out. If there was even the slightest hint that it wasn’t legal, she wouldn’t take any of it. But at the very least, it would make a good follow-up story for the Wyngate articles. Something with a headline like: Dying Wyngate Whistle-blower Leaves Fortune to Charity.
    That was it! If there really was a fortune, she could establish something called the Peterson Foundation. It would dole out money to various charities. She would merely be the executer of it all. It would be a sort of tribute to Nelson Peterson for thinking of her in this way, when he realized things weren’t going to work out the way they had originally planned. Because it should have been the two of them coming down here next week instead of just Dee.
    Oh, how could things have gone this wrong when she was trying so hard to help him?
    A sudden memory of Scott Evans’s warning that “these people aren’t amateurs” flashed through her mind. But having begun her decent down the ramp to the docks at that moment, it left about as fast as it came. The time of reckoning was here, and she was about to find out if the wild story was true or simply one old man’s very elaborate fantasy.
    She felt a sudden fluttering sensation deep inside.
    According to Peterson, his fifty-six foot ketch Pandora should still be resting languidly in slip number forty-three, sorely rundown and neglected after the nearly five years he had been away from it. And in that boat, in a small box built into the back underside of a bookcase…was the key to safety deposit box 127.
    Most of the docks were rickety and in need of repair. The slips were crowded to capacity with more than just fishing boats. There were other types down there along the docks, too. The bigger ones were farthest down, so they could come and go in deep water. Slip number forty-three would be nearly at the end of “C” dock.
    Dee’s inner butterflies increased just walking all the way out there. But when she actually caught sight of the back end of an old-time, classic wooden ketch with the letters Pandora fanned across the stern, she had to stop, take a deep breath, and will herself to calm down. Flashing neon couldn’t have shocked her more.
    Up close, it looked anything but run down or neglected. Instead of weathered gray, the teak deck and rails shown with the dark hue of fresh oil. The brass ports were polished and gleaming and even the sail covers looked new. But that couldn’t be. According to Nels, the boat hadn’t been touched by anyone for years.
    Dee grabbed a stanchion and pulled herself aboard. The square cockpit was wide and roomy with an old fashioned pilot’s wheel. The deck barely swayed as she crossed to the hatch, where louvered doors swung open as easily as if they were used every day.
    After the bright light of outside, it was dark in there, and she climbed down the ladder more by feeling than sight. The only boats she had ever been on—other than small boats at the lake—were two cruise ships that sailed to the Caribbean. Dee had never seen anything like this. Her foot bumped into something halfway down and a teakettle clattered to the floor.
    By the time she picked it up her eyes had adjusted enough to reveal that she was standing in the center of a tiny kitchen. Everything one needed to cook was there; a stove, a small refrigerator, and even a deep stainless steel sink that gleamed at her from a smooth wooden counter. Why, a person could actually live down here!
    All at once, there