LITMIR.BIZ

      Annabelle hugged him when he stepped up onto the Isenors’ porch, and pulled him into the house. Charlie was sitting at the kitchen table, with a disassembled gearbox spread out in front of him on newspapers.

      “There’s our jailbird!” he shouted. “They let you out of the big house, did they?”

      Scarnum smiled. “I told them before we left that it wasn’t cocaine,” he said. “I put a bit of baking soda in a pillbox to use cleaning a winch on the Cerebus. I told them it weren’t cocaine but they didn’t believe me until we were down at the detachment.”

      “I told them!” said Annabelle, hugging Scarnum’s lean body against her generous bosom.

      “I told that maudite Québécoise constable that you weren’t the type to mess around with drugs.”

      “She gave her a good going-over,” said Charlie, giggling. “I didn’t understand a word, but it didn’t sound good.”

      “I told her!” said Annabelle. “The idea that Phillip could be mixed up with something like that! I told her she should be out catching real criminals, not locking up an honest boy.”

      Scarnum looked out the window at the empty mooring where the Kelly Lynn had been.

      “They took her away, did they?” he said.

      “Yes,” said Charlie. “They brought in Steve Oikle to tow it away. Wouldn’t even let him on the deck. Took it down to the town wharf. Gerald told me they got a Mountie sitting watch on it.”

      Scarnum nodded. “Terrible thing that happened to Jimmy Zinck,” he said. “Makes my skin crawl to think he might have been killed on the boat not long before I went through the ledges.”

      Charlie nodded at that. “Terrible thing,” he said. “Now, we don’t know the whole story, what he might have been mixed up in, but whatever it was, it sure didn’t end up too good for him. I wouldn’t be surprised to find there was drugs behind this.”

      Scarnum nodded. “Awful business,” he said. He looked out the window.

      “Well,” he said. “I guess I’d better go down there and see what kind of mess they made aboard Orion.”

      “I’ll walk down with you,” said Charlie.

      Scarnum gave Annabelle a hug and a kiss and the two men walked down to Scarnum’s boat.

      It was a mess inside, with all Scarnum’s sailing gear and tools pulled out of the drawers and cupboards where he’d stowed them.

      “Holy Christ,” said Charlie, surveying the mess. “Hard to believe you have this much shit on the boat. Want a hand cleaning it up?”

      “No thanks,” said Scarnum. “You wouldn’t know where anything goes.”

      Charlie laughed at that and turned to leave.

      Scarnum stopped him. “Charlie,” he said. “You remember last night when I said I was going out to have a look at the Kelly Lynn?”

      Charlie nodded.

      “In the end, I decided not to bother and I went to bed,” he said.

      Charlie looked him up and down. “I kinda thought that you might of decided not to go out and have a look,” he said.

      Scarnum looked away.

      “I’ll tell you something, Phillip,” said Charlie, suddenly speaking with a serious voice that Scarnum had never heard him use. “I’ve lived here my whole life, and I’ve managed to do that without getting mixed up with the kind of fucking people who settle their arguments with machine guns. I’d just as soon it stayed that way. Whoever killed that jackass Zinck wasn’t funning. What you’re doing is your business, and I don’t mean to stick my nose in it, but I can tell you Annabelle would be upset if you were to turn up full of holes.”

      He locked eyes with Scarnum for a moment, and Scarnum nodded.

      “And I’d lose one of my paying customers here,” Charlie said, and giggled, and left.