Клэр Донелли - Catch As Cat Can

The timer bleeped, and a moment later the microwave joined in, not exactly in harmony. Sunny took one more look at the chops and then began moving things onto plates.

Mike immediately attacked his chop with knife and fork, putting a bite into his mouth. “Nice,” he declared after he’d chewed and swallowed. “Do you think His Nibs over there will approve of your breath after this?”

Sunny shrugged, mashing some potato under her fork. “Jane Rigsdale tells me some folks use ginger when a cat or dog has an upset stomach.”

“Well, she ought to know, being a vet.” He glanced over at Shadow, who still sat regarding them. “Should we have given him that when he tried to eat that frog?”

Sunny shuddered at the memory of that epic disaster. “Only if he ate the ginger instead of the frog,” she said. Slicing off a bit of pork, she asked, “How was your day?”

Mike shrugged. “Pretty quiet. Went up to outlet-land and got in my walk, ran a few errands, and stopped in to say hello to Helena. That was a pretty weird visit. She and Abby seemed so distracted, I wondered if they’d had a few drinks with lunch.”

Probably no lunch, Sunny thought, although they had a lot to chew over mentally.

But that was nothing to talk about. She’d promised both of the Martinsons she’d keep quiet about Abby’s little secret and asked them to do the same. Remembering her own lunchtime conversation with Will, she decided to try and steer the conversation in a new direction. “You know a lot of the fishermen around here, Dad. Did any of them get particularly friendly with Neil Garret?”

“Friendly?” Mike frowned in thought. “I wouldn’t go that far. A lot of guys were glad he opened that shop, though. Neil offered a better price than they’d been getting, and if a guy had a small catch, he could sell it all here and not have to hump it over to Portsmouth or one of the other big wholesale markets. Guys who managed to get a prime item would do deals with Neil before taking the rest of their catch elsewhere.”

“You make Neil sound like a big deal.”

“He was, to the guys still shipping out from here.” Mike’s frown deepened as he tried to explain. “Remember that movie, The Perfect Storm ?”

“Sure,” Sunny replied. “George Clooney going down with his ship.”

Mike nodded, his face grim. “The only thing worse for our local fishermen is that they didn’t drown. The story they based the movie on happened in 1997, and catches were falling even then. Foreign trawlers were coming into our fishing grounds, huge factory ships, and a lot of locals jumped in, upgrading their ships to compete. A lot of areas got overfished. And when there are no fish, that kills jobs for a lot of fishermen.”

He sat for a moment. “You know, years ago, before your mother and I talked about getting married, I thought I might go out on the fishing boats. It seemed a pretty manly way to make a living. Shows how much I knew.” Mike laughed, but there was a lot of bitterness in his voice.

“Instead, I went to work hauling salt—which turned out to be the better call. Every winter, it snows somewhere, and the folks need road salt.”

They both sat in silence for a moment. That might be true, but it meant that Mike was out of town when the ice storm of the century hit Kittery Harbor . . . and a fatal car accident took Sunny’s mom.

Mike cleared his throat. “Funny thing. The company started out providing salt to preserve all the fish coming out of the waters around here.”

“I know a lot of your buddies only do sportfishing now, or they find other ways to make money, like Ike Elkins and his floating tours,” Sunny said.

“A lot of fellas pay for their boats by acting as fishing guides,” Mike told her. “That’s okay during the tourist season, but nobody in their right mind pays to go out in the Gulf of Maine during wintertime. So the boat owners head down where the water is warm—Carolina, Florida—and take people fishing for bass. Pretty much everybody does that now.”

He frowned for a moment, going over a mental list. “The only guy who goes out regularly from these parts is Charlie Vane.”

“I don’t think you ever mentioned him among your fishing buddies,” Sunny said.

“He’s not a buddy. And for him, fishing is business, not pleasure. He’s the only fisherman who works the winter months around here. Of course, he’s a bit of a nut.” Mike shook his head. “Charlie claims to be a direct descendant of another Charles Vane, a pirate who got hanged about three hundred years ago. Maybe there is something to his claim, if stubbornness is something that sticks in people’s DNA.” Mike leaned forward, in storyteller’s mode. “Here’s something they don’t usually mention in those pirate movies. There was a point when the British government offered pardons for past bad behavior to the pirates operating out of their colonies, provided they knocked it off. The 1700s Charles Vane rejected the deal—and ended up at the end of a rope. Our Charlie Vane refuses to stop fishing, although from what I hear, he’s at the end of his rope, too—financially speaking.”

Sunny looked at her dad. “You don’t sound as though you’ve got much sympathy for him.”

“Oh, I have a little sympathy,” Mike protested. “Charlie’s family has fished these waters for generations. It’s not his fault, what’s happened to the business. But I don’t like what Charlie does to keep his head above water.”

“You’re not telling me he’s a pirate—are you?” Sunny asked in disbelief.

“No, that would be more honest. Charlie cuts any corners he can. Some areas have been declared off-limits to fishermen to let the fish population grow back again. But Charlie will sneak in to get a catch. Or he’ll finagle when he’s caught more than the allowable quota.” Mike scowled. “You’re supposed to dump any overcatch back into the water. But it’s not as though those fish are going to go swimming off, thinking, ‘Whew, that was a lucky break.’ They’re dead, and dumping them back isn’t going to make them alive again. It’s the law, though, and that’s what fishermen are supposed to do.”

“Sounds like a stupid kind of law, with so many people around here struggling to put something on the table,” Sunny argued.

Mike nodded. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. But that doesn’t make it right for someone to slide around the law because he’s supposed to be protecting his birthright as a fisherman.”

“So is that why you never mentioned Charlie Vane to me?” Sunny asked. “Because he’s a crook?”

“Not a crook.” Mike hesitated. “But he is crooked.”

“What’s the difference?” Sunny wanted to know.

Mike gave her a shrug and a grin. “I guess he hasn’t been caught yet.” He got a little more serious. “I have heard, though, that Charlie’s been thick as thieves with your friend Neil Garret.”

Sunny sat a little straighter. “You make it sound as if they’ve been up to something together.”

“Well, they’ve gotten in trouble together,” Mike said. “When Garret began cherry-picking local catches, he disrupted the usual way of doing business.”

“What was that?”

“Boats brought their catches to the wholesale fish market in Portsmouth, which is just a long-winded way of saying they dealt with Deke Sweeney.”

Sunny frowned. “So this Sweeney guy owns the operation?”

“No, but he might as well. Anyone who buys or sells fish in Portsmouth knows Sweeney. They call him the Shark of the Fish Market.”

Sunny laughed. “Nice nickname.” Then she got thoughtful. “You think this shark might have tried to take a bite out of Neil Garret?”