LITMIR.BIZ

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stop by tomorrow. I’ll worry about you.”

      On tiptoe, I kissed him on the cheek and promised I would.

      Angelo was right. Fifteen minutes after I got home, I fell into bed and slept seven hours straight.

      The next morning, I waded through the cruise data at my office desk. I’d called Harvey who said she’d get back to me about Sarah—so making graphs was a welcome distraction. A few hours later, I finished a preliminary look at the temperature data. Someone knocked on the door.

      “It’s open!”

      My cousin, Gordy Maloy, stuck his head in. His ratty Maine Fishermen’s League cap shadowed intense blue eyes that didn’t miss a thing. “Doc, got a minute?”

      As with any native Mainer, this came out, “Gaut a minut?”

      “Always for you, Gordy.”

      Even though our mothers were sisters, Gordy’s upbringing was very different from mine. Bookish Bridget, my mom, became a marine scientist and married Carlos Tusconi, an oceanographer. Kate, Gordy’s mother, fell for an Irish lobsterman from Lubec. Gordy grew up in northern Maine around folks who made their living off the land and sea, while I spent my childhood around intellectuals like my parents.

      He pulled off his cap and tossed it on my desk. “Heard ’bout the cruise. Damn shame.”

      “What’s the buzz?”

      “One o’ yours died. Buoy accident.”

      I pointed to a chair. “Not why it happened?”

      “Ryan O’Shea was on the winch. Some’s sayin’ he’s accountable. That’s a load of bollocks.”

      I nodded. “Ryan’s a fine man.”

      “Got that right.” He looked down at his feet. “Um, boys in the League’s been pesterin’ me to ask ’bout the water temperature, but—”

      “I’m working through it now. Here’s some data from a station off Mount Desert, on the continental shelf.” I swung the monitor in his direction and pointed to a graph.

      He leaned forward for a better look. “I fished ’round there. So what’s this?”

      “Last year. Temperature down through the water.”

      He ran a finger across graying square-cut sideburns. “Gimme a sec. It’s from the surface down fifty feet, and, um, somethin’ like five degrees hotter at the surface.”

      “That’s it,” I said. “Last April, the surface water was six degrees Celsius, about forty-two Fahrenheit. The highest ever measured.”

      He whistled. “I didn’t know it was that high.”

      “For fishermen, what difference would that make?”

      Gordy stepped back. “Temperature’s everything. Take cod. If water’s too warm, their eggs’ll die. And where they go, so where we fish, depends on the temperature. Good fishin’s moving north, we know that. They’re off Georges Bank, we’re screwed.”

      I nodded. For over four hundred years, New England fishermen had pulled cod and halibut from George’s Bank’s fertile waters. Losing that fishery was unthinkable.

      “But that’s las’ year,” Gordy said. “What ’bout this year? That’s our bet.”

      I inserted the graph I’d made.

      Gordy leaned in and used his finger to draw the temperature profile in the air. It took a minute for his pursed lips to spread into a wide grin. “See? It’s back ta normal, jus’ like I said. Cousin, looks like you owe me a bottle of the best scotch they sell in Spruce Harbor.”

      “You’ll get the scotch. But it’s still early April. In a week or so, I expect the surface temperature will go right up. Like last year, just later.”

      He reached for his cap and yanked it on. “Ya know, warm water’s bad. But it’s almost like you want it to happen.”

      That was Gordy. Called it like he saw it. “It’s a problem with ecology research. As if we’re looking for disasters. I don’t want Maine waters to get warmer. But since everything points in that direction, we need the best data we can get to show what’s going on.”

      After Gordy left, I ran a finger over the keyboard. There was a lot riding on my assumption that springtime waters off Maine would be as warm, or even warmer, than the previous year. So far, the data didn’t show that. It was early days, I told myself. The buoys would continue churning out numbers for months.

      But Gordy was right. A repeat of last year’s high temperature could be bad for fish and fishermen. And here I was looking for it to happen. It was good he was around to remind me about that.

      I sighed and arched my back. A critical grant proposal date loomed, and mine centered on the idea that Maine’s spring ocean temperatures were regularly high. For researchers like me, getting grants was imperative. To study Gulf of Maine warming, I needed money to go to sea, buy equipment, and pay graduate students. That money came from sources like NOAA—the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. The NOAA proposal was due in a few weeks.

      I needed to begin writing it now, but if the buoy temperatures didn’t rise quickly I’d be in trouble.

      Two days ago, this realization would have devastated me. Now it was something I simply had to face. The same went for my Science Today paper. My prediction about even warmer water this spring might be wrong. I had to put that worry aside and figure out how to deal with it later.

      Funny how death puts things into perspective.

      I took the stairs down to the Biological Oceanography office and learned that Peter’s memorial service would probably be early the following week. Seymour wasn’t there. I grabbed a cup of coffee and left before he appeared.

      Back on the third floor, I was partly down the hallway when a plug of a woman in a plaid flannel shirt and army boots reached the top of the stairs. Betty Buttz—cantankerous, smart as a whip, emerita professor at MOI.

      I called out, “Betty. Got a minute?”

      Betty kept marching and threw a response over her shoulder. “What?”

      I didn’t mind. Betty was equally cranky with everyone.

      I caught up with her. “You heard what happened on Intrepid?”

      “’Course. It’s all around town.”

      “Can we talk?”

      Betty scrunched her mouth, as if about to say no. Instead, she invited me into her tiny office. The walls were lined top to bottom with thick books, some with faded titles. She motioned to a folding chair.

      “What is it?”

      I told her everything that had happened. “You’ve been around winches for a long time. What do you think?”

      Betty shook her head. “The winch freefalling like that. Suspicious, but hard to know.”

      “And MOI’s investigation? Any thoughts there?”

      She sat back and crossed her arms. “Think about it, honey. They’re gonna shift the blame to the winch manufacturer as fast as they can. Bad publicity, especially that kind, is a disaster for this institution. Oceanographic research is extremely expensive, donors skittish.”

      “MOI? You can’t mean they’d cover up wrongdoing.”

      “No, but they may not dig too far, if you get my meaning.”

      I let Betty’s words sink in. “How can we find out what happened?”

      “Damn arthritis.” She shifted her position and stretched her right leg. “If it was me, I’d investigate on my own. But not so anyone knew.”

      “Boy,

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