Repair to Her Grave by Sarah Graves Page B

skulduggery behind such events; for a while, people in town had begun joking that Ellie's nose actually twitched at the smell of blood. Recently, however, things had quieted down.
    Or they’d quieted down until now. I wasn’t happy at the thought of an unidentified man, driving a stolen car, coming to Eastport and then immediately falling off a cliff.
    Still, no one was calling it murder. “Mostly we were just in the right place at the right time,” I said to Raines.
    He found a roll of plastic wrap and covered the casserole. “I’ve heard of that,” he said. “But I’ve got a feeling it's not going to happen to me. Not here.”
    Also, he put the butter, salt and pepper, and salad dressing away without anyone having to tell him where they went. Then, knocking my socks off, he found the dog biscuits in the cookie tin on top of the refrigerator, opened it, and fed one to Monday.
    “Jared Hayes's story would make a wonderful Ph.D. dissertation,” he said. “It would make up for my being late with it, I’m sure. Something fascinating, not dry like so much academic writing is. A real man, a talented composer, with real secrets and real…”
    He paused, as if thinking perhaps he’d said too much, and I agreed; while he was talking the lights had dimmed briefly, but he hadn’t seemed to notice. And of course it could simply have been a power dip; out here on the island, you could get a hefty brownout if the PTA scheduled a food sale and everyone decided to bake cookies on the same night.
    Still, a prickle went over the little hairs on my arms.
    “Even after one day I can tell I’m not going to get anywhere with Hayes,” Jonathan Raines went on. “Eastport people seem warm and friendly,” he allowed. “Really charming, not fake at all. But I’m a stranger here, and of course they think I’ve come because I want something. That I’m using them, or that I’m trying to.”
    He finished wrapping the leftover cabbage rolls and put them in the refrigerator, right next to the jug of cabbage juice, which resembled purple ink.
    “Not,” he added with a chagrined little laugh that didn’t sound happy, “that I’m having any success at that, either.”
    It was what I thought, too, that he was using us. And reports of his activities around town had only hardened my heart on the matter: that Raines, dressed in a many-pocketed fishing vest like some mad angler trolling for information, had been spotted trying to interrogate Eastport's dourest citizen, Elmore Luddy, actually chasing the old man across his own lawn before Luddy slammed the porch door in Raines's face.
    That he’d visited the Waco Diner, where the vest would have been about as popular as a red flag in a bull ring. The fishermen who ate in the Waco wore plain rubber boots and sweatshirts from the discount store and disdained hats until the gale warning had been up for twenty-four hours. A fancy fishing outfit bought from the Orvis catalog was the kiss of death to the guys in the Waco.
    But according to Ellie, who heard everything that went on in town, Raines had stood out at the end of the fish pier in that vest, too, where everybody downtown could see him in it, and in a pair of silly yellow Wellington boots.
    And of course he’d met Hecky Wilmot, antagonizing him with talk of writing and of old, unsavory Eastport secrets, both of these being Hecky's private property in Hecky's opinion.
    So, as Raines himself suspected, in the snooping department he’d screwed up royally. And too late he seemed to have realized this, so crestfallen that I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. I could confront him later, I decided, turning from his harmless, suddenly boyish-looking face.
    Sam was putting the wineglasses away on the top shelf of the cupboard, while Maggie rinsed the sink. “Want to get our gear ready for tomorrow before we check the bidding on the Schweppes jug?” she asked, wringing out the sponge.
    The suits, gloves, and other insulating garments