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Hawk held the close-up of the scratches so the sunlight illuminated it clearly. “Maybe the marks could have been made with a chain or a wire. Somebody fishing through the hole, fishing something out of the cabin.”
“What could they be after in the captain’s quarters?” Holly asked. “I mean, there’s the usual trinkets, but nobody dives the Kamloops for trinkets. Too dangerous. All I saw anywhere near the porthole were some busted-up wooden crates and pieces of broken crockery.”
A
“You’re barking up the wrong list,” Holly said. “If whoever’s stealing artifacts is fiddling around the captain’s cabin, my guess is they’re looking for personal effects.”
“Gold doubloons,” Hawk said with an exaggerated air of mystery.
“Wrong century,” Holly retorted.
“Wrong sea,” A
“Right touch of glamour,” he offered.
“Captains of freighters weren’t rich,” A
“Maybe,” Holly agreed. “What was contraband in 1927?”
“We are close enough to Chicago. There was that whole gangster thing. Maybe dirty money, drugs-” A
“Guys in cement overcoats,” Hawk interjected.
The women ignored him.
“Stocks, bonds, stolen goods: jewelry, gold, silver-”
“Hooch,” Hawk added unhelpfully.
“Do you want to go out and play?” Holly asked. Despite her preoccupation, A
“I’ll be good,” he promised.
“Whatever it is, it had to be small enough to get through a porthole, close enough to the porthole it could be fished out, and worth a lot to somebody,” A
“You forgot easy,” Hawk said, finally serious. “There’s no time down there. It’s too cold for much in the way of decompression stops. A bounce dive is about it. Maybe twenty minutes max if you know what you’re doing. You’d have to grab the thing and get back to the surface in a short space of time.”
“Or things,” A
“Me too,” Holly said. “Stanton’s been asking questions on the mainland-both at the Voyageur Marina and in Grand Marais. The locals are begi
“Better than losing your boat,” A
“Without it we won’t need the boat.”
A
“I wish I hadn’t been so scared when I went down,” A
“That’s true of almost everybody on a deep dive,” Holly reassured her.
“Particularly squirrels,” Hawk added.
“I think I liked you better depressed,” A
“Like gather nuts for the winter?” Hawk asked.
A
That evening, as most evenings when the tourist trade had died down and the dock had grown quiet, A
Christina’s letter, still unread, was folded in her pocket. A
Piedmont. A
Knucklehead’s kits were old enough to leave the den. Several times A
Beside A
There was so much information and no one piece of it seemed to co
“Not bloody likely,” A
De
The careful, professional De
De
De
The sound of a scuffle interrupted A