‘If he did, our probabilities increase,’ Hardy said.

‘Why do you say that?… Oh, I see.’

‘Do you have a way to reach her, May Shinn? Find out right now.’

The shadows had lengthened, the breeze had died. Farris dug into his wallet and pulled out a square of white paper. ‘Emergency numbers. I don’t know why I never thought of May.’

Hardy walked back beside him as Farris punched numbers into his car phone. He squinted at the paper. Next to Shinn’s name, he had just enough light and distance to make out the numbers, just enough time to memorize them.

He thought he’d also have enough time to swing by the Marina on his way out to the Avenues. It wasn’t far out of the way. And if he could prove Owen had been on the ocean on Saturday, the day before a hand that might be his turned up inside a shark at the Steinhart, he thought he’d be on his way to having a case.

May Shintaka hadn’t been home – or she hadn’t answered her telephone. Ken Farris had gotten an answering machine and asked her to call him as soon as she could.

Now at full dusk, there was a traffic jam just outside the Marina Safeway. Hardy remembered. It was Wednesday, the night the Marina Safeway turned into a meat market, the yuppies picking up each other with clever lines about the freshness of the arugula or the relative merits of dried versus handmade pasta.

His Suzuki Samurai out of place in the row of Beemers and Miatas, Hardy waited in the line of traffic, feeling old – so much older than when he’d been a father the time before. He was really running late. He ought to call Frannie, or Moses, at the Shamrock. Let them know he was on his way.

Or else forget about stopping at the Marina. What did he expect to find on or around the Eloise that wouldn’t be there in the morning? Except that he was already here. He’d call the Shamrock from a pay phone. Frannie would be with her brother – it wouldn’t hurt the two of them to kill a little time together alone. He’d only be a minute or two looking at the boat.

The light changed and he got through it on the yellow, after which it was only two blocks to the Marina itself, two hundred craft along four long pontoons behind a jetty, the land side closed off with an eight-foot fence topped with barbed wire.

Hardy sometimes thought he must have been a sailor in an earlier life – he had a visceral reaction to anything nautical. He loved to fish, to scuba dive, to walk sharks -trying to will them to life as though he had a special bond with them.

Now the briny scent of the air pumped him up. Locke and Drysdale be damned – he felt in his bones he was onto something and he was going to pursue it.

The guardhouse was set in a manicured square of grass at the entrance to the boat area. Hardy knocked on the open door and walked in. The attendant was about nineteen, dressed in a green uniform with a name tag that read ‘Tom’. He stood up at his desk behind a low counter. ‘Help you?’

To Hardy’s right, he could see the boats through the picture window. Four strings of white Christmas lights glittered over the pontoons.

He showed the boy his D.A.‘s badge, which was not issued by the office and not officially condoned. Hardy had gotten his at a uniform store down the peninsula and knew it could come in handy, especially with people who perhaps couldn’t read but understood a badge. He asked the young man if they kept a log of boat departures.

‘We tried that,’ he said, ‘but most of the people here like to come and go as they please. Still, we generally have some idea who’s out.’

‘Is the Eloise here now?’

‘Sure.’ Tom looked out the window and pointed. ‘She’s that low forty-five-foot cruiser at the end of Two.’ In the fading light, the sailboat looked beautiful. ‘Last time she went out was Saturday.’

‘Saturday. Did Mr Nash take her out?’

Tom shrugged. ‘I suppose so, but I didn’t see him. She – the Eloise - was out when I came on.’

‘When was that?’

‘Around noon. I work twelve to eight.’

‘Does somebody else come on then, after eight?’

‘No. We close up till next morning at six. What’s all this about? Is Mr Nash in some trouble?’

Hardy gave him all he really had. ‘He’s missing. It’d be helpful to know who saw him last.’

Tom bit his cheek, thinking. ‘I don’t think you’ll have much luck here. José, the morning guy, said she was already out when he came on.’

‘At six in the morning?’

Tom shrugged, wanting to be helpful. Hardy could tell he was wrestling with something. ‘Sometimes José’ll be a little late,‘ he said finally. ’But when that happens, he always stays late and makes up the time.‘

Hardy fought down a shiver of frustration. ‘What time did he stay till on Saturday?’

Tom got a little evasive. ‘I don’t know exactly. Three, three-thirty, around there.’

‘So he wasn’t here until seven or seven-thirty?’ Another shrug. ‘I don’t know for sure. I wasn’t here, either.’ Hardy blew out a breath. ‘Okay, this isn’t about José anyway. Could I take a look on board the Eloise?

Grateful to abandon the discussion on José‘s tardiness, Tom bobbed his head. ’Sure. It’s pretty slow now anyway.‘

On their way out to the boat, Hardy learned that security wasn’t all it could be at the Marina. Though Tom had a ring of master keys for the boats and a key for the gate that opened through the fence, the reality was that people slipped through with other parties all the time and owners forgot to close the gate behind them, or even to lock their boats. Theft wasn’t rampant by any means, but neither was it unknown. But what could the attendants do? Tom and José tried, but they had no real authority. If the boat owners weren’t going to follow their own rules, whose fault was that?

Up close, the Eloise was even more impressive than it had looked from the guardhouse. With a wide boom, Hardy thought maybe twelve to fourteen feet, it was berthed perpendicular to the main pontoon, too big to maneuver into any of the slips. Technically, the boat was a ketch – two poles, one fore and one aft. The steering wheel was sunk into the deck so the aft boom would clear the head of a standing pilot.

Casting off under motor power, even at only five knots, Hardy figured it wouldn’t take three minutes on the straight shot to get out beyond the jetty.

‘You mind if we go aboard a minute?’

It was already too dark to see much on the deck, not that Hardy was looking for anything specific. Tom, meanwhile, walked forward to the cabin door. ‘See, this is what I mean.’

Hardy came up beside him.

‘They leave the door unlocked. What are we supposed to do?’

‘Anything get taken? Maybe you should check.’

It was so easy Hardy almost felt guilty, but not enough to stop himself from following Tom down the ladder into the cabin.

The boy turned on the lights and stopped. ‘No, everything looks okay,’ he said.

Hardy thought okay was a bit of an understatement. They were in a stateroom that was easily as large as Hardy’s living room. A zebra rug graced the polished hardwood floor. Original art – oils in heavy frames – hung along the walls. There was a black leather sofa and matching loveseat, an Eames chair or a good copy of one, a built-in entertainment center along an entire wall – two TVs, large speakers, VCR, tape deck, compact disc player.

Being aboard seemed to make Tom nervous – he fidgeted from foot to foot. ‘Maybe we better go back up, huh? Doesn’t look like anything’s gone.’

But Hardy was moving forward. ‘Might as well be sure,’ he said lightly. He was at the galley – tile floor, gas stove, full-size refrigerator. A glimpse at the wet bar -Glenfiddich, Paradis Cognac, Maker’s Mark Bourbon, top-shelf liquors.

He heard Tom coming up behind him and kept walking forward to where the bulkhead came down. A full bathroom, far too big to let it go as the ‘head.’ The master bedroom, up front, was as large as Rebecca’s new room, the queen-size bed neatly made. Two desks, one a rolltop, an exercycle and some dumbbells, more expensive knick-knacks.