Chapter 2

The meeting was at one o'clock in the big room, and Liza ran it like a deposition.

Dot brought the ledger because it was hers, and because she wasn't going to have it taken off her like the keys. Oilcloth cover, water-stained, every gallon of diesel and every box of screws since 1995 in her own ballpoint.

Pruitt, the trust accountant from Portland, sat at the end of the table with his laptop open and his glasses pushed up on his head.

Liza had the foundry invoice flat on the table. She turned it so everyone could see. "Order placed June twelfth. By D. Quimby. Pattern number four, on file."

"That's right."

"You had the foundry cast a fifth name."

"I had the foundry use the pattern Mr. Sibley told me to use."

"Show me where he told you."

Dot opened the ledger to the inside back cover. Six lines in fountain pen, dark and slanted, dated August 1998.

The dock plate carries five names. Pattern on file at Treat & Sons, Rockland. Leave it.

"Every other line in that book is ballpoint," Dot said. "Mine. That isn't."

Liza didn't look down. "You had twenty-six years to learn his hand."

"I did. I use it on Christmas cards."

Margaret laughed - a short, unhappy sound - and stopped.

"Effective immediately, you're released," Liza said. "Three months' severance if you sign a statement that you altered the order."

"No."

"Then no severance."

Dot's duffel went over on the two-ten boat. Emmett carried it down the ramp for her, which Liza watched from the porch and said nothing about.

At the dock he said, "You're not getting on the four-forty."

"No."

"Good," he said, and went back up the hill.

Dot waited until the boat was out past the reach, then walked into the boathouse and dialed Rockland from the wall phone. It took her three tries to get a person. His name was Dean, and he'd been at the foundry since 1991.

"Treat and Sons."

"Dean, this is Dot Quimby, Sibley's Reach. The ferry landing plate."

"Picked up Friday."

"Was that fifth line chiseled in after the fact?"

"Chiseled?" He snorted. "Ma'am, that's a casting. All five lines came out of the mold together."

"Which mold."

"Number four."

"When was number four made?"

Papers moved on his end. "August of ninety-eight. Order says, 'Hold for pickup, A. Sibley.'"

Dot put her hand flat on the shelf.

"Never picked up," Dean said. "It's been sitting in our pattern box twenty-six years."