Free Death by Marriage by Blair Bancroft Page A

bridgekeeper’s little hut, because the red light turned green, and the crossing gates began to rise. The long line-up of cars started across the bridge, setting off the distinctive rumbling of the cross-hatched center section. I sucked in a breath as a small plane skimmed the tops of the cars as it came in for a landing. Ten seconds later it was wheels down on the outer end of the runway. Student pilot?
    We’d had two flight schools in Golden Beach, but there was only one now. Brand new. That’s what happens when, however innocently, you train people like Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi to fly. That’s right. It happened right here in paradise. A stain the town will never live down. Compared to 9/11, the possible murder of Martin Kellerman seemed pretty tame. Yet there was nothing I could do about the attacks on the World Trade Center, but maybe I could help shut down the rumors about Martin’s death.
    That thought had a nice ring to it, like some fairytale I’d spin for Boone Talbot if he asked me why I was sticking my nose in his business. But was scotching rumors what I really wanted?
    Truth was, I had this gut feeling that Martin’s death wasn’t an accident. Maybe I was catching Crystal’s empathic talents by propinquity, because sleuth just wasn’t part of my job description. I’d given up jigsaw puzzles for a sketch pad by the time I was ten. Yet here I was on my way to Jeb Brannigan’s mooring in Golden Beach Inlet when I should be home, ready to pick up the pieces after Scott confessed to Mom.
    I was shirking my family duty. Just plain-old escaping. At this moment, Jeb Brannigan was definitely preferable to 100 Royal Palm Drive.
     
    When I was growing up in Golden Beach, there was always a long, sleek, white Coast Guard cutter with a mounted 50 millimeter stationed just north of the jetties, the only access between the Intracoastal and the Gulf for twenty miles in either direction. And then one day the Powers That Be, in their infinite wisdom, sold what we considered “our” Coast Guard cutter to Georgia. No, not the state, the country. The one Russia invaded a few years back. Frankly, I don’t think the Golden Beach cutter was much protection against the Russian army.
    Since the local police boat mostly operates on weekends, tagging drunks and speeders, Scott and Jeb had more responsibility than you might imagi ne for boats in trouble in the G ulf. After the loss of the Coast Guard cutter, Mayor Randy Ellis persuaded the marina nearest the jetties to shoe-horn a space for a rescue boat at the upper end of the line-up of multi-masted sailboats and million-dollar cruisers. Since Joshua Brannigan was still Chief of Police when Jeb decided to muscle his way into the rescue business a few years later, the marina knuckled under a second time without much argument. Scott and Jeb pay peppercorn rents, while the fatcat boaters pay premium prices for berths with instant access to both the Intracoastal and the Gulf of Mexico.
    Scott’s Sea Tow had the end slot, right next to the marine gas pump, while Jeb’s Sea Rescue was wedged between Scott and a double-masted sailboat whose elegant lines, mirror-polished teak deck and gleaming brasswork made the rescue boats look like well-worn children’s toys. Both boats were moored stern in to the parking lot, ready to roll.
    Sea Tow lay quiet and unattended. No surprise there. Jeb was lounging in a fishing chair fixed to the stern well of Sea Rescue , feet up on a bait box, catching some rays. The only thing he was wearing was a pair of khaki shorts, worn street-gang low, plus what was probably a St. Christopher medal on a chain around his neck. Hair that was once a shaggy sun-streaked brown now sported a military cut. Muscles rippled along his body-builder’s arms and broad shoulders as he sensed my presence and sat up, giving me a slow appraisal that was probably meant to be complimentary but made me want to throw something at him.
    I’d dressed conservatively