Dana Stabenow - Dead in the Water

The shark grinned, employing every tooth back to and including all four wisdoms. A lesser woman might have felt like Little Red Riding Hood but Kate never had intimidated well. "All this and she can cook, too?

Honey, you're the answer to a red-blooded American male's prayer. Harry, old buddy, you've been holding out on me."

Kate set both plates down on the empty chart table, contriving to step on the blanket on the way and expose a corner of the suitcase. Aluminum, shiny, silvery bright.

She grinned back at the shark and wrinkled her nose at him. "My name's not honey, either, handsome," she said, and left the room, swaggering, as the shark gave forth with a long, drawn-out howl.

Harry slammed the door closed behind her and her grin vanished. So that was it. That was the connection.

And Ned and Seth were in it up to their ears. No wonder the three of them were so blas'e about their paychecks.

Their paychecks for fishing, that is. It was a safe bet the extracurricular cash they were pulling down more than covered any losses they took from the crab. She returned to the galley and dished up her own breakfast. She was in a hurry to get to Jack but Kate never neglected her stomach.

"The fact that Harry could find his way between all those reefs off Anua, in the dark tells me he didn't just start doing it yesterday."

"What happened to Alcala and Brown?" Jack asked bluntly.

"I don't know," Kate said impatiently. "Don't you see, it doesn't matter. We can use this to nail them. Gault and the rest of them are-"

He interrupted her without apology. "The hell it doesn't matter. They are why you were hired on the Avilda in the first place. Their families and the board of Alaska Ventures want to know what happened to them, not to mention two law enforcement agencies and three insurance companies. They don't care about somebody dealing a little dope."

"It wasn't a little '-ope, it was a lot of dope!"

"Your first priority," Jack said, raising his voice to match hers, "is to discover the circumstances in which Alcala and Brown disappeared and, if possible, to recover their bodies."

"Their bodies are probably in a crab pot at the bottom of the Bering Sea, probably because they stumbled onto this business just like I did. I'm telling you, Jack, these guys are dealing dope wholesale. We got a chance here to cut their connection off at the knees. Get a warrant and search the boat. I'm pretty sure I know where he stashes the stuff, I saw the suitcase in the chart room, so why-"

Again he cut her off. " 'Pretty sure' isn't good enough in this case and you know it. You're only a hired gun, Kate, you aren't official. Besides, you know and I know that dope wasn't on the boat thirty minutes after it hit port." He regarded her, not unsympathetically. "Find out what happened to Alcala and Brown," he repeated, "and everything else will fall into line."

"I think I have!"

Jack folded his hands across his stomach with an air of humoring her that Kate wanted badly to puncture. "Prove it," he said simply.

"You mean I have to go back out again?" She remembered that Andy was still a member of the Avilda's crew.

With a sinking heart she realized that of course she had to go back out, if not for the reasons Jack was enumerating.

"Yes, you have to go back out again. Probably you're right, probably there was a falling out among thieves, probably this is why they disappeared. But we don't know, and the only people who do are on that boat. Sooner or later, one of them is going to slip, and when they do, you'll be there."

"For how long?" Kate inquired with awful patience.

"As long as it takes." He held up one hand. "And while you're on board they can't take off for Macao."

"Unless they decide to put me with Alcala and Brown," she pointed out.

"There is that," he agreed. "Better be careful."

What the hell happened to Kate's overprotective male watchdog, the one with his testosterone level tattooed on his forehead?

"In the meantime, I'll call in the troops. We'll plant somebody in every bar in this dump and watch for who'd you say?"

"I call him the shark." She described him, adding, "I don't know his name, Harry didn't introduce us."

"Wonderful. 'The shark.' That ought to narrow it down."

"You saw him," she said defensively. "He was trying to pick me up in the Shipwreck when you found me."

"There wasn't anybody in the Shipwreck that day who wasn't trying to pick you up. The entire Russian Merchant Marine was trying to pick you up. Anyway, you"-he pointed at her-"you get your ass back on the Avilda and keep an eye on Gault until we gather enough evidence to return an indictment. I don't want him getting wind of us and disappearing into the doughnut hole. It wouldn't be like it was the first time."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean those other names you found. There aren't any men attached to them." He saw her expression and held up a hand. "But wait, there's more. Southeast First Bank is looking for Henderson Gantry. Seems there's a little matter of overdue loan payments, amounting to something like half a million dollars. And they can't find the boats to repossess them." Again Jack forestalled Kate. "It gets better. I had an interesting conversation with the district attorney in San Diego, and they're looking for Harley Gruber. Seems Mr. Gruber subdivided a prime piece of property located, according to the surveyor's marks, somewhere a little to the west of the city, and sold the lots to an Eastern developer for a luxury hotel."

Kate's brow puckered. "Don't strain yourself," Jack said dryly, "to the west of San Diego is the Pacific Ocean. And it's legal. The buyers apparently didn't check beyond Gruber's references, which were above reproach, naturally, since they were forged, and nobody noticed until after the check cleared that the construction crew building this hotel was going to have to be fitted with scuba gear."

Kate grinned in spite of herself. "My, I do like style in a villain."

Jack didn't grin back. "This villain may be a murderer twice over. That we know of." He looked at the bundle of paper in his hand and estimated his chances of producing what he wanted before the turn of the century.

They weren't better than fifty-fifty, so he tossed the bundle on the table and quoted from memory. "I tried to trace some of those boats. So far, I know they worked the oil spill, but that's it. Except for one in dry dock in Valdez with a stoved-in hull, they seem to have vanished off the face of the earth. Oh, yes, and another interesting sidebar-the owner listed on the contract with the guy working on repairs is Harold Gunderson."

He paused. "I told the guy to stop working, that he probably wasn't going to get paid and that there were probably thirteen claims before his if he filed a lien, but I'm not sure he believed me." Jack shook his head, half in disbelief, half in admiration. "This Gault is some piece of work. When he embezzles, he embezzles down to the last dime. And now you tell me he's wholesaling cocaine."

"He's greedy," she pointed out. "He even shorted us on our crew shares. Not much, a couple hundred each, but he is greedy. Greedy people never get enough. What's coke retail for now? A hundred a gram?"

"More like a hundred twenty-five." him.She shrugged. "You see? It's easy money, or it has been so far. How can he resist?"

"I suppose you're right." He paused. "Can you stay for a while?"

She shook her head. "We're not leaving for another six hours, no, but I can't stay."

"Why not? Is Gault on to you? If-"

"No, it's not that. There's somebody I've got to see."

"In Dutch Harbor? What, are the Russians back?"

"You said we need a witness. I might have one for you.

Twenty minutes brisk walk brought her back to the little clapboard house on the edge of Unalaska village. The lights were on in the kitchen and Kate could see Olga sitting at the table, surrounded by the detritus of basket weaving. She stood still for a moment, watching through the window as the old woman's strong brown fingers attached another spoke with deft movements.