Scully’s demeanor changed ever so slightly. “Looks like somebody might’ve had a little peek on the inside.”

“Oh? How do you mean?”

“I mean a little breaking and entering.”

“Was a lot of stuff taken?”

“What do you think might get taken from Eric Sutherland’s office?”

“Beats me. What’s he got in there?”

“Maps.”

Howell let the word sit right there.

“Tell me, John, you acquainted with a H. M. MacDonald?”

“H. M.? Don’t think so. Went to school with a Bob MacDonald. Don’t remember a MacDonald since. Local fellow?”

Scully shook his head. “Nope. Nobody around here by that name. Not a MacDonald in the county.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, Mr. Sutherland found a credit card from a store with that name on it, right at the door to his office. Card was bent, sort of. Looked like it might have been used to jimmy the lock. Tell me, what did you do after the Sutherland party the other night?”

“Came back here, cooked a steak, ate it, passed out pretty early. We had a lot to drink at Sutherland’s.”

“Scotty with you, then?”

“Yep, for dinner.”

“What about after dinner?”

“Is that an official question, Bo?”

“Not really.”

“None of your business, then.”

“Did you go out at all after you came back from the party?”

“Nope.”

“Take your boat out?”

“I just said I didn’t go out again.”

“Sorry, John, I don’t mean to make this sound like a third degree.”

Howell grinned slightly. “That’s just what it sounds like.”

Scully chuckled. “Yeah, I guess it does. Why did you want the maps?”

“Oh, I just got to looking out the window, there, a lot, and I wondered what was under the lake, that’s all. I’d about forgotten it until you brought it up.” Howell leaned forward. “What is under the lake, Bo?”

Scully threw back his head and laughed. “So that’s it, John. Well, you’re not the first. People seem to think that when a big lake like this gets built, there’s all sorts of stuff under it. There are still stories among the schoolkids around here about houses and farms and trees being down there. They used to say that when the lake got down low in the winter, when they were using a lot of water for power, then an old bridge and a church steeple would surface again. That the sort of thing you had in mind?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, let me tell you what they do when they build a lake, buddy. They tear down all the houses and sell what scrap they can; they cut all the trees for timber and pulp, and to keep ‘em from being hazards to navigation later, and they painstakingly demolish every standing thing in the whole area that’s going to be underwater. So if you want to know what’s under the lake, the answer is a plain, old-fashioned nothing.”

“What about the O’Coineen place?” How-ell asked, and watched Scully closely for his response.

The sheriff didn’t bat an eye. He shrugged. “Well, I guess that was a little different. By the time Mr. Sutherland and Donal O’Coineen had done their deal, the water had already risen against a roadbed that cut across his place. Right after that, before the crew could get in there to break the place up, the roadbed gave way, and the place was flooded.”

“That’s Sutherland’s story, is it?”

Scully blinked. “I never had any reason to doubt it. Do you?”

Howell leaned back in his chair and locked his fingers behind his head. “Well, let’s see, now,” he said. “O’Coineen, who’s held out bitterly against Sutherland for years, suddenly gives in and sells; his house vanishes under the lake, then he and his whole family disappear and are never heard from again. Come on, Bo, you’re a lawman; doesn’t that sound just a little too convenient?”

Scully looked at him in surprise. “But they were heard from again,” he said.

Howell sat up straight. “By whom?”

“By me, for one. Listen, I don’t know whether you knew this, but I was engaged to marry Donal O’Coineen’s oldest daughter.”

Howell sat back in his chair. “Joyce? The blind one?”

“That’s right. We went together since high school, then started making plans to marry after I got out of the service. I was working for the county by then – I was a deputy – and that meant Eric Sutherland to Donal O’Coineen. He was pretty much of a hard case. Anyway, the whole business about the lake started to get in our way. Old Donal looked at me as being on the other side, which I guess I was, technically, but I never went against him; I stayed out of it. Still, things got tenser and tenser, and finally, Joyce backed out of the engagement. I guess it got to the point where she figured she had to choose between her family and me, and she made her choice.”

“How long was this before O’Coineen finally sold out?”

“A couple or three weeks, I guess. Less than a month, anyway.”

“And you heard from them afterwards? Personally?”

“That’s right. A couple of weeks after they left the county I got a letter from Joyce – her little sister wrote it for her.”

“Kathleen?”

“That’s right. She was Joyce’s eyes in a lot of ways. Anyway, I got this letter from Joyce saying goodbye. It was postmarked in Nashville, and she said Donal was taking them further north, maybe Virginia or Kentucky, to look for some land, and we wouldn’t be seeing each other again. Donal had money in the bank here, of course. What Sutherland had paid him for the land. But Joyce said he was bitter and wouldn’t touch it. He’d drawn out just about everything else he had – and believe me, he was pretty well off – several months before he left. They’d stopped doing business in town, they took Kathleen out of school, and they just wouldn’t have anything to do with anybody local anymore.”

“And the money’s still in the bank, I hear.”

“So it is, and with a lot of interest on top of it. ”Course the bank don’t give a shit if Donal never turns up and asks for it. They got a nice, fat deposit, just sitting there.“

“Bo, is there any possibility that somebody else could have written the letter? I mean, since it wasn’t in Joyce’s handwriting, couldn’t somebody have forged it to make you think the family was still alive?”

“No, no. It was in Kathleen’s handwriting. She’d written all of Joyce’s letters to me when I was in Korea. There must have been a hundred of them. I’d know that handwriting anywhere.”

“Then there’s no chance at all that the O’Coineen family could have been drowned when the roadbed gave way and let the lake in?”

“Absolutely none. Look, John, now I see what all this interest in the maps was about. People like to think the worst, and that story has been making the rounds periodically for years, but I’m in a position to know the truth of things. First of all, I know the money’s in the bank; I’m a director of the bank. Second, Joyce communicated with me after the family left, and I know for a fact the communication was genuine. I was in a position to know; there was some personal stuff in that letter, stuff that only Joyce and me – and Kathleen – could have known.”

Howell felt badly deflated, and he must have looked it.

Scully leaned forward. “John, I can see how this tale of the O’Coineens must’ve looked pretty sexy – especially with somebody like Eric Sutherland being the villain. But there’s just nothing to it. Oh, Sutherland was the bad guy, all right, putting pressure on people to sell land they’d owned for generations, but he did it legally all the way, and at the end of it all, it’s meant a whole new world for the people who live here. And let me tell you something else. If I thought for a minute that Sutherland had been involved in something like a murder, I’d of had him long ago. I respect the man, but I don’t like him much, and I loved Joyce. I wouldn’t be a party to covering up her murder. I hope you believe me.”

Howell did believe him and said so. “I’m sorry, Bo, if I’ve ruffled feathers around here with all this, especially Sutherland’s. I know that can’t make life any easier for you.”