Repair to Her Grave Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ellie, then people would talk freely to him. And he would take, we hoped, new lines of investigation, ones we hadn’t even thought of.
    And later, I thought determinedly, I would pick his brain for whatever he’d found out: thoroughly, like a seagull cleaning the meat from a clamshell. Flim-flam me, would he?
    We’d just see about that. Meanwhile we’d tracked Hecky, the nearest thing Eastport had to a public address system, to an art gallery and studio on Water Street, overlooking the bay.
    Out on the waves, a couple of sailboats tacked against the breeze, making way for Deer Island which lay to the northeast in the whitecapped channel. Just off the dock's end, a flock of cormorants fished diligently, dipping and gulping with undulating movements of their long, curving black necks. The smoke from the earlier explosion on Campobello had dissipated, the Coast Guard cutter back at its mooring.
    “That's how we can get it around town the fastest,” Ellie finished. “By making Hecky think it shouldn’t get around at all.”
    It was the beginning of tourist season and the shops and cafés on the street all sparkled with fresh paint, clean windows, and planters full of red geraniums under flags proclaiming the shops to be OPEN!
    “But do we tell him what Raines is up to?” I asked. “About the violin?” In the fresh salt air, a hint of wood smoke mingled pungently with the smell of pine tar.
    “I don’t think so,” Ellie replied. We turned to go in just as Eastport's police chief, Bob Arnold, went by fast in the town squad car, heading for the north end of the island.
    Bob didn’t wave; Ellie's eyebrows went up curiously.
    “For one thing, Raines doesn’t know we know, so we shouldn’t mention it,” she added as the squad disappeared up Water Street. “Besides, I don’t think Hecky would like it.”
    This turned out to be an understatement. The little gallery had been a candy store in its previous incarnation; local boys had gathered there in the old days and many of them had not lost the habit. As we entered the shop, Hecky and half a dozen of his cronies were gathered around the little black woodstove in the corner, hashing over the latest news.
    Like him, they were smart, spry old men who would relish town gossip for as long as they had blood pressures, and they all looked glad to see us in case we’d brought interesting fodder.
    At first. But when he caught sight of us, Hecky scowled and the rest followed suit; in Eastport, Hecky was an opinion-maker.
    “Young feller's staying with you was in here a little while ago,” he said, fixing me in a severe gaze.
    “Yes, he's—”
    “Asking a lot of questions about Jared Hayes and his hidden Stradivarius,” Hecky went on accusingly.
    Straddy-varryus. Oh, damn Raines's eyes; couldn’t he see out of them, that when you went at a guy like Hecky you had to go by the circular route?
    But then I made a mistake that was just as bad. “Yes, because he is writing a dissertation on—”
    Ellie glanced sharply at me, but it was too late; I’d put my foot in it by mentioning writing, especially any that anyone but Hecky might be doing.
    “Just finished m’ book, y’know,” Hecky said darkly.
    “Yes, I know,” I began. It was about Eastport and he’d even managed to find a regional publisher for it; Downeast Deeds: An Eastport Story was due out any minute.
    “I’m looking forward to—”
    Reading it, I’d been about to say. But he stopped me. “Don’t see as there’ll be any need for another,” he said flatly.
    Of course not; the notion that someone else might trespass on his literary territory wouldn’t be welcome, especially now. Another local author's warmhearted Maine memoir, for instance, entitled Clyde Found Fruitflies in the Berries, had gotten the sharp side of Hecky's tongue on more than one occasion lately.
    “He's doing it for college,” I hastened to explain. “Raines, I mean. Like a term paper, not real writing like yours,