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added as Ellie positioned the first post carefully atop a concrete block, forcing it tightly into the bolted-on metal frame.
    We’d had to shave the post ends a little to make them fit. “I know,” she replied. “You
don’t
see, Jacobia.
And
you don’t know the rest of the story.”
    She stuck a galvanized nail through one of the holes in the metal frame’s sides, banged it in, then did the rest
bing-bang-boom,
two nails per side for a total of eight. That fastened the wooden post to the concrete block. And we were using galvanized nails—that is, rust-proof ones—because the block would be underwater soon, if everything went right.
    “So, since you’re obviously not up on the background info, I’ll give you the high points,” she said. “First, based on who Bella’s friends are, if the runaway kid she’s so worried about is the one I think it is—”
    It was. Ellie was never wrong about things like this.
    “… his name’s Cory Trow. He had a court date this morning, supposed to show up at the courthouse in Machias. Whole town knew about it.”
    Except me. Between Sam’s drunken antics and a roof so leaky you could strain spaghetti through it, I’d had my hands full. So I hadn’t heard about all this.
    “And,” she continued briskly, “the court date he had was for a sentencing hearing.” Never a good thing. But I had a feeling worse was to come, and I was right.
    “Because he got convicted on a stalking charge. And the complainant… wait for it… was Walter Henderson’s daughter,” she finished.
    Ye gods. “So you think he took off. Blew off his sentencing hearing, which means he’ll get a… ”
    “A prison term, yes. If and when he ever does show up again. Alive,” she added darkly.
    Which was when I caught on. “But that’s not his big problem, is it?” I said slowly. “His problem is—”
    “Walter Henderson the hit man,” Ellie finished for me. “Bingo. Who is here in Eastport at all, I gather, because your pal Jemmy has a habit of coming up for air in your vicinity.”
    She gestured for me to help her hold the second post, then hammered the nails in just as she’d done with the first. Now we had two concrete cubes, each with a six-by-six wooden post sticking up from it about four feet.
    Too bad that at the moment the cubes were also sitting fifty yards from the water’s edge. And since docks are most usefully positioned
in
the water, not fifty yards from it…
    “And what do you want to bet our buddy Mr. Henderson’s going to feel like doing some
recreational
killing,” Ellie said, “when he finds out that the town boy who’s been bothering his daughter isn’t in court where he belongs?”
    She took a deep breath. “That instead Cory Trow’s on the run, maybe even planning to bother Mr. H’s precious little girl
again
?”
    The memory of Henderson conversing earlier that morning with police chief Bob Arnold popped into my mind. “Probably he already knows,” I said.
    It was what Henderson had been chewing Bob’s ear about, I was willing to bet. “How little is she, anyway?” I asked. “The daughter?”
    To move the huge concrete blocks, we’d invented a transport vehicle consisting of a wooden pallet, some styrofoam blocks I’d managed to beg from the guys out at the boat school, and the wheels from Ellie’s baby daughter Leonora’s stroller.
    It was a lovely little item with blue trim and white padding inside, and Ellie had adored it when Wade and I showed up with it as a gift for Lee’s first birthday. But Leonora hated it. She’d bawled when she was placed in it.
    So Ellie and I had cannibalized it. To keep it from rolling downhill uncontrollably, we’d tied a rope handle to the rear end and bolted a wagon handle to the front. The completed cart resembled one the Little Rascals would build, and we hadn’t had a test run.
    But our choice was between trying it or toppling the blocks end over end down to the water, a process we thought might bode ill