Страница 39 из 70
The scrubbed deck caught the moonlight, held it like milk in a glass. A
A
As she turned it over she felt letters scratched into the plastic handle. Dive knives were all pretty similar. It wasn’t unusual for divers to mark their equipment. A
She didn’t realize she’d whispered the last half of the thought until Hawk said: “Casting spells by the light of the moon?”
He stood in the doorway, his dark hair falling over his forehead. The silvery light blessed him as the setting sun had done on Amygdaloid. Instead of bronze, his body shone like living granite.
“You’re a beautiful man,” A
He looked shy. “What’ve you got there?”
“Nothing. Jim’s dive knife. He gave it to me on the Kamloops dive and I forgot to give it back.” Because she could think of nothing else to do, she handed the clasp knife to Hawk.
He turned it in his well-made hands. “It’s a dive knife all right.” He sat down beside her, nude, perfect. “Would you take it wrong if I didn’t spend the night?”
“No,” A
He sat a moment longer. Finally he said: “You’re wearing my pants.”
Clad only in a long sweatshirt, A
Waking alone, the sensible light of day a square of gold overhead, A
Physically she felt terrific; relaxed and energized. She pulled on trousers-her own this time-and a red tee-shirt with “Frijole Fire” silkscreened across the front and a line drawing of El Capitan in West Texas. Her hair, incarcerated in two braids, reminiscent of a hundred drawings of Mi
Docking, she saw the Loon, the boat Jim Tattinger used, and was reminded of her last Rock Harbor chore: returning his knife.
Having secured the Bertram, she climbed back aboard. The knife was gone. In the finite space of cabin and bow, she knew she was not mistaken. The knife was gone. Hawk had taken it.
A
Had he pocketed it by accident? Force of habit? Doubtful, A
“No!” A
Time had come for a trip to the mainland. Talk with Christina and the lesbian community in Houghton. Pay a visit to Mother Castle in Duluth.
SIXTEEN
“The ‘d’A’: d’Artagnan.”
“Dartanyon?” Christina shook her head.
“The Three Musketeers,” A
“Yes!” Christina remembered. “Okay. D’Artagnan…?”
“Hawk, Holly, and De
“So, d’A-the knife was De
“Yes,” A
Christina looked at A
“There was a straplike bruise on De
“Like girdle marks.”
“Exactly.”
“De
“Maybe the tanks or the hoses were pulled around, dragged off him.”
“Then he was killed on the Kamloops! Down under all that water?”
“I think so. I think he was in full dive gear. I think he fought, somehow his tanks were jerked or something, and he dropped his knife. I think he was killed down there.”
“You said he wasn’t wearing dive gear,” Christina said, confused.
“No. When we found him, he wasn’t. He was dressed in this ship captain’s clothes, but when we were ascending bloody bubbles frothed out of his mouth from his lungs. That only happens if the body recovered was breathing compressed air. And I saw his diving gear-tank, fins, the whole nine yards-on the deck of the Third Sister.”
“Goodness.” Chris expelled a long breath. “Oh my goodness. This calls for serious sugar.”
As the two women picked at a shared slice of the cheesecake Christina kept in the freezer for such emergencies, Chris told her news. “Holly Bradshaw is not gay,” she said. “But whatever else Holly may be-Democrat, Sierra Club member, murderess-I can’t say. Maybe you’d better ask Hawk what was so fu
A
“She could be asexual,” Chris suggested hopefully.
A
“Mmm.” Christina scraped the last of the cheesecake up with the side of her fork and smeared it sensuously on her tongue. “So. She and De
“Maybe,” A
A