Devine was in his cottage the next day studying the satellite images that he’d received on his laptop from Campbell. He’d enlarged the pictures as much as possible on his computer.

Frustratingly, there was no detail of the other vehicle that stood out, and there was no image of the person driving it because the Palmers’ car was blocking it. Campbell had confirmed that this was the only picture of the two vehicles passing each other that the sat had captured. It had spun on to other sectors and left a mystery down on Earth.

But wait a minute.

As he looked more closely he could just make out what looked like a small dark pyramid on the door panel of the other car.

A pyramid? What could that be?

The Palmers’ vehicle was a Jeep, the shot of the license plate as it passed by was head-on, but there was nothing on the other car once it had cleared the Jeep because the satellite then spun and pointed in the direction the Palmers were heading, and its tracking path was narrow. If only the satellite had swiveled its electronic eyes a bit the plate of the other car might have been visible. Detection, like football, was indeed a game of the most minimal of distances, and the most slender margins of error.

The images of the man and woman in the Jeep were also relatively clear before it passed by. Facial recognition had been performed and had confirmed they were Steve and Valerie Palmer.

Devine peered as close as he could at their faces. They seemed to be looking at the car as they passed. Were their expressions surprised? Yes, they seemed to be. But they had found Alex after this interaction with the car. Only then would their suspicions have been aroused. But had something in the other driver’s expression given away what he had just done?

Devine was also convinced that the Palmers had known who the man was. If it had been a stranger, someone from outside of Putnam who had attacked Alex, they would surely have reported seeing the man in the vehicle fleeing the scene of a crime they were just about to discover. But they hadn’t. Had they tried to blackmail the man, as he had theorized? And gotten their house burned down with them in it as their reward?

He was heading to his SUV when he ran into Pat Kingman in the front of the inn. She looked upset.

“You okay?” he said.

“I heard about Earl.”

“It was a real tragedy.”

“I wish he had talked to me. I would have helped him, considering what he did for me.”

“What do you mean, did for you?” asked Devine curiously.

“You remember I told you about my husband’s boat going down in an accident a number of years back?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, Earl worked on that boat. Had for decades. As good a stern man as there ever was. Earl tried to save Wilbur, but he drowned. Rocked the whole town, I can tell you that. They recovered his body, and we had the funeral and all. And they held a ceremony out at sea for Wilbur, to honor him. I cried my eyes out for six months, it seemed like. And so did Earl. Poor thing. He was hanging on to some debris for hours in that cold water. Almost died. Hurt his neck and back. He couldn’t work after that. Now, I didn’t think I could get by without my Wilbur. But I used his life insurance proceeds to buy this place and fix it up. I mean, you have to go on living, right?”

“Yes, you do,” said Devine. “And I’m sure Wilbur would have wanted that.”

“Well, Earl and I really became close after that. I even gave him some of the insurance money, though he fought me tooth and nail over that. Now, Bertie and I had been friends for decades. We’d sit and clean barnacles off the cages before the new season started, put the new tags on, check the runners, repaint the buoys, and repair the hog rings. But after that I was friends with Earl, too. He was a real hero for what he tried to do, but he never talked about it. Just said he was lucky to be alive and that it should have been Wilbur who’d made it, not him.”

“I understand that,” said Devine, thinking about how the same philosophy worked in the military.

She said, “You’d think a man like that would be able to find some peace, that the Lord would grant him some solace. But instead he loses his son and daughter-in-law, and then his wife. And now this.”

“Life rarely works out the way we expect it to.”

“Though I was raised Catholic, I’m not a churchgoer. But I’m heading there today to say a prayer for his soul. See, taking your own life is a mortal sin. You’re not supposed to get into heaven with that hanging over your head. Or be buried in consecrated ground, or at least it used to be that way. My thinking is God should cut Earl some slack.” She gave Devine a raised eyebrow as she said, “I mean, we’re only human after all.”

“Yes, we are,” replied Devine.

Chapter 50

“What are you doing here?” asked Alex as she opened the door to her studio. There were paint smudges on her hands and a broad charcoal stroke on her nose.