Genevieve Martel parked the rented Subaru in the gravel lot at Gable's Marina and shut off the engine. She pocketed the keys and walked toward the service shed, where a man in a gray work jacket bent over an outboard motor. A hand-painted board near the shed read PRIVATE BOAT WORK. NO TRESPASSING BEYOND THIS POINT.
A scratched red Craftsman toolbox sat open at the man's feet. A Buffalo Bills bumper sticker was peeling from the shed door. The low sun off Seneca Lake made the lettering on the sign hard to read.
She stopped a few feet from the motor. "Excuse me. I'm looking for Sam Gable."
"Help you?" he said without looking up.
"I'm Genevieve Martel. I'm settling Elspeth Finch's estate on Elm Street." She kept her voice level. "I hoped you could answer a question about the old Croft boat."
Sam picked up a socket wrench and turned it over in his hands. "Don't know anything about it."
"That's not what I heard."
"Then you heard wrong."
"I'm not accusing anyone of anything." She pulled a folded paper from her jacket, a photocopy of the marina quilt block with the boat's name enlarged. "I'm trying to understand a quilt Elspeth left behind. It shows a boat named the Wanderer docked here."
Sam's hand stilled on the wrench. He squinted at the photocopy. "Quilt, huh?"
"Elspeth was a quilter. Did you know her?"
"Everybody knew Elspeth." He wiped his hands on a red rag tucked into his belt. "Doesn't mean I know about that boat."
"David Chen said you run the marina. The boat was found in this lake."
Sam finally looked at her. "What's your interest?"
"The quilt places the Wanderer at your dock. I need to know if that's accurate."
"I already told you. It was a wreck. Hauled off for scrap metal more than twenty years ago."
Genna waited a beat. "Who hauled it?"
"Don't remember."
He picked up a rag and wiped the same clean patch of metal. Genna asked, "Do you have any records?"
"No."
"Will you tell me where the scrap yard is?"
Sam turned back to the motor. "Can't help you."
Genna waited. A cold edge had come into the air off the water. A killdeer called from the rocks along the shore.
"Miss," Sam said. "I've got work."
"I can see that." She folded the photocopy and returned it to her pocket. "Thank you for your time."
He didn't answer.
Back at 12 Elm Street, she made a supper of buttered toast and tomato soup. The kitchen radio was set to a classical station out of Rochester. She had left the marina with no new facts, only the certainty that Sam Gable did not want anyone asking questions. That was information in itself.
That evening, the doorbell rang. David Chen stood on the porch holding a stack of flat cardboard boxes.
"Genna, it's David," he called.
She opened the door. "Come in."
David hefted the boxes. "Your specialty boxes came in on the delivery truck this afternoon. Acid-free, reinforced corners."
"Thank you. I didn't expect you to deliver them yourself."
"Was headed up Elm Street anyway. Mabel Henderson bought half my stock of furnace filters."
"There's coffee. I made a pot."
"I won't say no."
She poured coffee into two heavy diner mugs. David sat at the kitchen table, near the window that faced the lake.
"Did you get out to the marina?" he asked.
"I did. Sam Gable was about as helpful as a locked gate."
"That sounds like Sam."
"He told me the boat was scrapped more than two decades ago. No records, no scrap yard, no memory."
David wrapped both hands around the mug. "The Wanderer was in rough shape when they pulled it in."
"You've seen the case file?"
"Some of it. I was with the state police in Geneva before I bought the store. I read the report once, years later. The file went inactive fast. One interview with Sam, one with Franklin Croft, one with Beatrice Cole. No body, no crime."
"Sam was the one who found Julian's boat?"
"He was. Early morning, lake was flat. He towed it in."
"You said 'they pulled it in.'"
"Sam and a couple of marina hands."
"What do you make of him?" Genna asked.
"Sam's a man of few words. Has been for years, especially since that day. Finding an empty boat drifting on the lake will do that."
"Does he still keep records here at the marina?"
"Fuel logs. Slip rentals. You'd need a court order to see any of it."
"I just want to know when the boat left his dock."
David set the mug down. "Why?"
"Because the quilt shows it tied up at Gable's Marina. If the boat was already gone from the water, then Elspeth made an error. Elspeth didn't make errors."
"Elspeth wasn't careless. But be careful. Sam doesn't like questions."
"People keep telling me that."
After David left, Genevieve Martel locked the door and turned off the porch light. She went to the studio and spread the story quilt across the long table. The marina block sat near the lower border, stitched in deep blue and brown thread. She had studied it that afternoon before driving south, but she had focused on the boat's name.
Now she did what she had been trained to do: she looked at what was not meant to be seen. She set her magnifier over the binding along the dock line. The binding was thick, folded over twice and stitched with the same dark knot used in the border. She worked from left to right.
Then she stopped. Tucked into the binding, just below the stitched pilings, a tiny shape lay flat against the fabric. It was worked in a single strand of gray silk, no longer than a thumbnail. A key.
She sat back. The shape had been deliberately hidden in the fold of the binding, where only someone looking for an alteration would find it.
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