Free Misery Bay: A Mystery by Chris Angus Page B

she saw me, she galumphed back inside like she was afraid I might contaminate her.”
    Sarah sipped her drink and stared out at the islands. A fishing boat was coming in on the late afternoon tide, its engine chugging in a slow, repetitive thrum. The boat turned around Dougal’s Island and angled obliquely toward them.
    “Christ!” Ingrid swore, sitting up. “Here he comes again. Looking for an eyeful.” She jumped out of her chair. “Well, I’ll give him one.”
    She jumped up, went to the deck railing and tore off her bikini top. She put her hands above her head and did the bump and grind.
    The boat was now less than thirty yards out and Sarah could clearly see Roland at the wheel. He had a pair of binoculars up to his eyes.
    “Oh, come on, Ingrid,” Sarah said. “You’re just encouraging him.”
    “No, I’m pissing him off,” she replied, still bobbling her large breasts. “He’d rather see Grace doing this, so I’m just irritating him.”
    Grace got up and went over beside Ingrid. For a moment Sarah thought she was going to take her top off too. But she just put her hands on her hips and glared out at the boat. After a moment, Roland put down the eyeglasses and turned the boat around the little headland that separated them from the wharf.
    “Guess he didn’t like the show,” said Ingrid, putting her top back on. “What an asshole.”
    Sarah wasn’t sure she cared for the show either. She finished her drink, made her excuses and left. She hadn’t realized how tense the whole relationship between Roland and his neighbors had become. She made a mental note to tell Garrett to get to work on the generator issue soon or there was going to be real trouble.

11
    L ONNIE BACKUS WAS GARRETT’S COUSIN. One of more than a dozen, not counting second cousins. They’d grown up together, hung out since they were kids, and gotten into trouble as teenagers. They once set fire to an abandoned barn in the winter, then drove a Ski-Doo far out onto the frozen bay and watched it burn to the ground. The two boys had never been caught for any of their escapades, which was fortunate, since if they had, it would likely have preempted any career in law enforcement for Garrett.
    Both of them had gone into enforcement, of a sort. Lonnie was a longshoreman on the docks in Dartmouth and had become an enforcer for the unions. Strong-arm stuff, though generally all anyone had to do was look at Lonnie and they’d do whatever he said. He was six-foot-four and solid muscle with a bull neck that emerged from his shirt collar like a wedge of oak.
    When Garrett entered the military, Lonnie tagged along, because, he said, he had nothing better to do. In the army, he was the go-to guy, the strongest and most reliable. Garrett once saw him strike a member of the Taliban, a giant of a man in his own right, so hard during close hand-to-hand combat that he killed the man. Another time, in a dispute with a member of their unit who had a black belt in karate, he watched Lonnie simply stand and take every blow the guy could throw at him. He hadn’t even grunted. Then he picked the guy up and threw him twenty feet. That was the end of the fight.
    They served together in the same unit and fought in the mountains around Kandahar. It was Lonnie who fashioned a tourniquet and cradled Garrett’s head after his foot was blown off. Ever since, the big man had helped Garrett out whenever possible. Everything from chiding him over his phantom pain to offering backup when Garrett got in over his head with the RCMP and needed to stretch the legal limits.
    So it was hardly surprising that once again Lonnie had offered to go along on a legal-limit-stretching bit of after-dark sleuthing.
    Garrett had decided to try a different tack with Madame Liu’s Lulus. Instead of confronting Ms. Liu directly, they staked out the brothel, which was located in an upscale part of Bedford Basin. Set back on extensive grounds, the house fronted on the basin, which was