he had a daughter in college, he couldn’t afford to turn down any overtime shifts offered to him. Not like he had much of a choice. The Shepherd’s Bay Police Department employed only five full-time officers, one of them being the chief, and Harry rarely worked overnight unless absolutely necessary. Steve Needham had called in sick earlier with the flu, and none of the other officers could fill in on such short notice.
He was pouring his third cup of station coffee when the call came in from Isla Eaves. It had never made any sense for the station to keep a drip coffeemaker when they could have owned one of those fancy new machines where all you did was insert the plastic cup of your choice, press POWER, and voilà!
He donned his cap and headed out with coffee in hand. Normally, he would have welcomed a call at 3:33 a.m. But not this one. Not from Isla Eaves. And especially not when he’d been working to find that missing rich kid, Dakota James, by marking up all the areas on the town map that had not yet been searched. It puzzled him how a kid could practically disappear into thin air, especially a kid from such a wealthy part of town.
A warm breeze stirred as he headed out to his car. It was late June, and summer was in full swing. The older he got, the more he hated summers in Shepherd’s Bay. Not the weather, per se, but how this Maine town had transformed into something completely different from what it used to be. There had always been the swell of the summer crowd, monied and boozy, but now that more rich folks had moved in, it seemed the asshole ratio had increased significantly. Many of them had come from New York and Massachusetts, had moved away from their overcrowded and overpriced state. They’d come here to enjoy small-town life and all the natural beauty the place had to offer. That demographic shift had created an entirely different set of problems, pitting the rich outsiders against the working locals.
But they had brought good things, too. Better restaurants and high-end coffee shops. A microbrewery and a fantastic gelateria. A state-of-the-art boatyard that employed a dozen locals. The effect was to put more money into the town’s coffers and create much-needed jobs. All in all, he thought their presence in town had been a positive development.
He drove through the dark streets with urgency, and yet at the same time feeling highly ambivalent about seeing the woman he’d fallen hard for back in high school. Although he’d gotten married and divorced since that time and had a kid, he’d always carried a torch for Isla. Too bad she had married that loser, Swisher Eaves.
The early morning blackness flew past him. He sipped his bitter brew as he guided the cruiser down the two-lane road. The surrounding trees rustled in the wind, convincing him that this call would be a false alarm. Regardless, he had an obligation to check on the matter, despite the fact that crime in this part of town was practically nonexistent.
He turned onto the road leading to the Eaveses’ home. Tall pine trees lined either side of the driveway. His thoughts wandered as he reflected on all the time and energy he’d put into searching for Dakota James. He felt his eyelids closing and his head falling ever so briefly on his chest before he snapped his head up to keep from nodding off.
What the hell had happened to that James kid? Maybe he’d run away from an abusive home. He was the scion of Massachusetts tech wealth that had fled the Boston area for a simpler life in Shepherd’s Bay.
Funny how he had never viewed his hometown as anything special. The rugged ocean and nearby mountains he’d taken for granted. He had grown up poor and as a kid had worried more about surviving than having fun. Nowadays, leisure seemed to be the new norm in this town, and he had landed on the short end of that coveted American dream. But material things had never given him much pleasure, anyway.
He parked in front of the house. A light shone in the kitchen. The chirp of crickets pierced the humid air as he made his way out of the cruiser. A cursory glance around the grounds convinced him that no break-in had occurred. And yet Isla was no pushover. If she called the police for help, she really