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wobbling and bouncing on it.
    “Jake! Get out of the way!”
    “I’m trying… .” Scrambling aside as the murderously heavy vehicle rumbled past, missing me by centimeters, I landed in what had once been a thicket of old elderberry bushes. We’d cut them down the previous summer so that someday we could stack kayaks and canoes on the spot.
    Now the whole area with the cut stems jutting up from it was about as comfortable as a bed of nails. Also our cart was still rolling, jouncing, and bumping while we sat staring.
    At the water’s edge it bounced gaily over a boulder, two wheels exploding outward, their spokes and plastic parts flying in all directions, concrete block still perched miraculously atop the platform. And…
    And then it
soared
. Out over the water it hung in thin air for a moment while Ellie and I watched openmouthed. Next with a dramatic
splat!
it splashed flat onto the lake’s surface, bobbled a bit…
    And
floated
. The top-heavy post tipped the pallet platform precariously. But the block’s weight prevailed and the post at last straightened as the platform steadied itself bravely, small waves rippling around it.
    “The styrofoam worked!” I cried, jumping up to dance around deliriously while Ellie still frowned at the thing.
    “Genius!” I exulted, heedless of the cuts and scratches on my hands and arms and the many bruises, unseen but certainly not unfelt, in the process of developing on my legs.
    “I am a genius,” I chanted as the pallet platform proceeded out onto the lake. Because the idea for the wheels had been Ellie’s, and she had supplied them. But the floating element of the project had been mine.
    All mine. And it worked. I just stood watching it, grinning and reciting: “I am ab-so-lutely, a complete and thorough… ”
    “Jake,” Ellie said as the pallet went on floating away from the shore with our post and block on top of it. “Don’t you think we’d better… ?”
    Suddenly I stopped chanting. Dancing, too. Because Ellie was correct. The thing was floating, all right.
    Just as I’d hoped. But it was also moving fast, captured by a sudden offshore breeze whose force sent it speedily across the waves right out into the middle of the lake.
    Where it flipped over and sank.
     
Chapter 4
     

     
    “Maybe I should try talking to Henderson,” I said. “Before he gets a chance to do something to Jemmy.”
    It was midafternoon and we were on our way home from the cottage, Ellie at the wheel again as we zipped hair-raisingly down Route 1 toward Eastport.
    We’d already stopped at the gas station near the turnoff to the lake so she could call Bella. The conversation had confirmed her suspicions about who the missing boy was.
    Now Ellie spoke as if she hadn’t heard me. “If Cory Trow doesn’t show up on his own and
we
don’t find him, Walt Henderson might. And if Jemmy’s right about what Henderson’s like, he
might
kill him.”
    After the sinking incident we’d hauled a pair of kayaks out, paddled to where we thought the cart had gone under, and dropped a buoy attached to a weighted line over it to mark the spot.
    Then Jemmy had returned with the pickup truck’s bed full of his purchases—including three six-packs of imported beer, a gasoline generator, and a portable TV—have I mentioned he was a city boy?—and once he arrived Ellie made it plain that she wanted to get out of there pronto.
    “If something bad happens to her friend’s kid and we haven’t even tried to stop it, Bella will blame you,” she pointed out now.
    Yes, and after that Bella would develop such a housecleaning mania, we’d all be lucky to escape with our skins. But for all I knew, Cory Trow might’ve returned home by now, ready to face the music.
    Besides, Cory wasn’t my big problem. Jemmy was. And while we’d struggled with the cart I’d had plenty of time to absorb the true precariousness of his situation.
    “Maybe Henderson didn’t see Jemmy downtown this morning,” I said.