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“That’s a wonderful costume,” she said.
“It’s not a costume,” Jo told her, retrieving the picture from profaning hands as soon as was polite. “It’s authentic. It belonged to De
“Did he go down on one of the ships?” Sandra asked.
“No. He lives in Florida. He owns a chain of laundromats there, I think. Or did.”
“This picture was taken a while back,” A
“In 1981.”
“Did De
“He must’ve. Why?” Jo and Sandra were looking at A
A
“Probably at Mother Gilma’s,” Jo replied coldly. “He left a lot of things in his mom’s attic.” As she replaced the picture in the album, the sleeve of her blouse fell away from her arm and A
The pathology of humanity, coupled with the smell of decaying food in the kitchen, suddenly threatened to overwhelm. Muttering half-listened-to excuses, A
Ralph Pilcher could teach her by example. In less than twenty-four hours she would be do
TEN
Amygdaloid dock looked like suburbia on a Saturday afternoon. The pier was lined on both sides by boats and one was tethered crosswise at the end. Half a dozen hibachis smoked on the rough planking. Clothes and towels hung from rigging. Beer-bellied men sat in webbed lawn chairs. Two teenage boys played a delicate game of Frisbee over the heads of an unimpressed audience. A little girl tossed bits of hot dog bun to Knucklehead, the camp fox.
A
A couple of fishermen from Two Harbors jumped up from their lawn chairs to tether the Belle’s lines to the dock. They were good boaters, the kind the Park Service could count on to bail out their less qualified brethren. A
The 3rd Sister was moored near the end of the dock, her deck piled with diving gear. Hawk sat on the bow staring into the water. A
Holly, her dark hair curling close around her face, was bent over a grill all but hidden by inch-thick steaks. Three men, all of an age and dressed alike enough to have come off the same page in an Eddie Bauer catalogue, drank Leinenkugels and got in her way.
Despite De
A
“How’s it going, Hawk?” she asked when she reached the 3rd Sister. His eyes left the water briefly, flicked over her face, and returned to whatever had held them before. “Okay,” A
Holly turned the last of the steaks and looked up. “Hawk’s being a jerk,” she said with a touch of genuine malice A
At a loss for words, A
“No, thanks,” A
She left them under their dark cloud and walked back into the sunlit picnic that had spread its blanket over the remainder of the dock. She spent a few minutes sitting on the edge of the pier talking with the child who’d been feeding the fox, explaining that Knucklehead had kits hidden in the woods and she needed to teach them to hunt. If they learned only to beg for hot dog buns, come winter, when the bun market crashed, the kits would starve.
It was only a half-truth, but A
“Keeping the faith?” It was Hawk. He watched the girl meandering back toward her home barbecue. “She’s probably going for a fresh supply of hot dog buns.”
“Probably.”
“You’re patient,” Hawk said.
“On the second offense I shoot them.”
Hawk was supposed to laugh but he didn’t. “Sorry I was a jerk. Since De
“I know what you mean.” A
“Can I buy you a beer?” Hawk asked.
“Let me slip into something less governmental and you’re on.”
“Meet you at the ranger station,” Hawk said. Finally he smiled.
Midas’s touch turned both the smile and the man to gold. A