It took Wade a second to understand, and when he did, it went into him like a fishhook. He opened his mouth, closed it.
"Nothing valuable," Mr. Tran went on. "That's why it's strange. My tools are there. Drill, saw, very expensive sander. A motor I'm fixing for Bud. Nobody touched them. They took paint."
"Paint."
"My green. The green on that stripe." He nodded at the gunwale. "I mix it myself, from marine enamel. Two gallons in cans with my writing on the top. Both gone. Also a brush and some thinner. That's all." He reached down, picked up a crab that had escaped the basket, and dropped it back in. "At first I think, kids, stupid kids, they want to paint a wall. Then yesterday you come with your paper and your paper says the stolen boat has a navy stripe. And I think—why would somebody want two gallons of green paint, a week before he steals a boat with a navy stripe?"
Wade felt the click again, the one from yesterday. Only this time it was not the satisfying click of a thing falling into place. It was the click of a lock opening on a door he hadn't known was there.
"So it doesn't match the report," he said slowly.
"So it doesn't match the report. You're looking for navy. Every policeman from here to Florida is looking for navy. Nobody is looking for green." Mr. Tran started the motor again and idled toward the next buoy. "And if somebody does see a white skiff with a green stripe, in a harbor where everybody knows a white skiff with a green stripe—what does he think?"
"He thinks it's yours."
"He thinks it's mine. Or he doesn't think at all, which is the same."
Wade gaffed the next buoy and hauled the line, and his hands did the work while his mind went the other way, back along the forty-one seconds of the recording. He's always there at five.
"The call," he said. "Somebody wanted me at the ramp at five o'clock. With you."
"Mm."
"Not at the marina. Not on the highway. Right here, under the lamp, arguing with you." He swung the trap aboard. "Whoever made it wanted every cop in town looking at that ramp at the exact time he was moving that boat somewhere else."