Free Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron Page B

doesn’t begin to touch what more people inland do to the estuarine nurseries where so much of marine life begins. Some municipal sewage systems are so outdated that they dump twice as much untreated waste in the rivers as they do treated. Then there’s the phosphate factories, the pesticides and fertilizers from farms, the runoff from parking lots, developers cutting finger canals into the wetlands so every condo in every retirement village can have its own boat landing and—ah! Here it is.”
    He handed over a one-page statement which I read and signed.
    “Any progress on finding Andy’s killer?” I asked, using the prerogative of position to interrupt his environmental monologue. “Or why he was killed?”
    Quig Smith shook his head. “We keep asking around, of course, trying to piece together who else was out there around midday.”
    “That’s when he was killed?”
    “Between twelve and one, looks like, according to stomach contents. He had a Coke and Nabs at Cab’s around ten-thirty or eleven. They say he made a phone call and kept checking his watch before he left. We reckon if he went straight from the store, he was probably out on the shoal by noon. Jay Hadley saw him there around twelve-thirty. After that—” He shrugged.
    “Trouble is, it was Sunday. Lot of fishermen go to church, lot of sportsmen—strangers—head out through the channel that nobody ever saw before. And most people that live down here and have a boat, they’d have their own landing to go and come from.”
    “What about motive?”
    “Most people don’t get to be sixty without making a few enemies,” Smith said vaguely.
    “Was it something to do with his fish house, or because of the Alliance? Or was it personal?” I persisted.
    Smith rubbed his chin. “Well, you know, Judge, down here, messing with a man’s living’s about as personal as messing with his wife.”
    “And you don’t plan to tell me a damn thing, do you?”
    I smiled to show I wasn’t taking it personally and he rubbed his chin some more, then said, “We got somebody to come out with a underwater metal detector after you and Jay Hadley left.”
    “Oh?”
    “Well, I got to thinking how you said you and the Davis boy turned the body straight over without shifting it. So, figuring he fell straight forward, we did some measuring and some angle projections and we got lucky. ‘Long with some old rusty nails and a real nice little anchor, we found a new-looking slug. Sent it up to Raleigh to see what the SBI lab can tell us about it. Looked like a .22 to me, which won’t be a lot of help ‘cause half the county’s bought a .22 at one point or another and the other half’s stolen one or two.”
    “Jay Hadley had a .22 in her boat,” I reminded him.
    “Yeah. And somebody said they saw her shoot a gun while y’all were out there.”
    Lots of binoculars had probably swept the area once she’d radioed for help, so it didn’t surprise me to hear that we’d been observed. Nor to realize that Smith wanted to hear about the incident.
    “She said she saw a stingray.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Guess it’d make as good a reason as any if you were scared some hotshot lawman might notice you had a recently fired rifle on your boat,” I said blandly.
    He laughed. “Maybe I ought to sign you up to be a mosquito, too.”
•      •      •
    Afternoon court was more wildlife violations (the hunting season for tundra swans was long over and loons haven’t been in season since 1919). Worthless checks, minor drug possessions and an obscene phone caller carried us up to adjournment. At the recess, Chet Winberry knocked on my door while I was signing a show cause order for one of the attorneys.
    “Don’t let me interrupt,” he said. “Linville’s invited us to her party, too, and Barbara Jean said if you want to come by after court and freshen up at our place, we could go on over together.”
    It was a welcome invitation. I’d stuck a garment bag with