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and Louie, hey?” Howland said.
    “There's a third one we call Huey,” Elizabeth said. “I've forgotten their real names.”
    Elizabeth leaned the broom against the door and dusted off her hands. “That's that.”
    “I doubt it.” Howland watched the kids move as slowly as they could toward the sailboat. A crew member on the stern of the boat held a line, prepared to jump ashore and tie it off as the boat backed into the slip.
    “Lazy bastards,” Howland said of the kids, who were still too far away from the sailboat to help. “They need Domingo to get after them. New York cop meets Island bumpkins.”
    “Even Domingo can't handle the kids. 'You can't touch me; my father is . ..' “ Elizabeth mimicked the teenager, high voice and a wiggle of slim hips. “I almost feel sorry for Domingo.” She straightened papers on the desk. “My grandmother thinks Domingo is wonderful, courtly, considerate, charming.”
    “He is, to her.”
    “Victoria flirts with him as if she were a girl.” Elizabeth smiled. “She admits he might be difficult to work for. That's not exactly how I'd put it. 'Impossible' is more like it, much as I love the job and respect him.” Elizabeth set the two chairs outside on the deck, then swept the sand into a heap mixed with paper scraps, dust balls, and twisted paper clips. “At times, I get fed up with the way he wants me to document every teensy-weensy thing. I go to the bathroom. 'Document it,' he says.”
    “Really?”
    “Almost. And those dock attendants! If I had anything to say about it, I'd fire every single one of them. All they do all day long is show off for one another, boys flexing muscles, girls tossing their snaky hair.”
    She opened a lower desk drawer, took out a piece of cardboard, and swept the dirt pile onto it. “Every one of them is related to someone—a selectman's niece, a Harbor Advisory Committee member's girlfriend's son's girlfriend. Honestly, you can't say anything around here. It's as if we're surrounded by a pack of kid spies.” She slid the pile of dirt off the cardboard and into the trash, then stepped out the door and slapped the cardboard on the railing, shaking off the remaining dust. A breeze eddied around the shack, flicking a cat's-paw of disturbed water across the harbor, rocking sailboats on their moorings.
    For a few minutes, Elizabeth remained on the deck. She leaned her elbows on the railing and watched the wind on the water. Then she went back into the shack and swept vigorously.
    Howland sneezed, then sneezed again. He reached into his pocket for his handkerchief.
    “And to think”—he gestured around the small shack— “instead of all this, you could be gardening and taking care of Victoria.”
    “Victoria does not need taking care of,” Elizabeth said. “She thinks she's taking care of me, and she's right.” She changed the subject abruptly. “How did Domingo ever talk you into designing a harbor-management program?” She nodded at the computer.
    “He's trying to convince me I can sell the program for a million dollars.” Howland put his handkerchief back into his pocket. “He's wrong, of course, and he knows it. It's a game he plays. I'm simply using off-the-shelf software and adapting it to the harbor.” Howland leaned back against the desk and crossed his right leg over his left, half-sitting. He was wearing worn boat shoes with no socks, and Elizabeth could see the big toe of his right foot through the broken stitching at the seam.
    “He tells me it's a challenge, which it is, a challenge to design a simple, foolproof program that deals with a lot of variables.”
    “He's not thinking about you, though, is he.” Elizabeth made it a statement, not a question. “He thinks there are leaks in the money-handling system, and he wants you to seal them off.”
    “Exactly,” Howland said. “He's convinced that someone has been skimming money from the harbor receipts, a hundred thousand dollars or more a season.”
    “From