Free Berried to the Hilt by Karen MacInerney Page B

have extra mouths to feed—namely, the detectives in my dining room. I added a few cookies to the tray, along with some cups, cream, and milk, and pushed through the door to the dining room.
    “He was waving the cutlass around,” Audrey was saying as I pushed through the door. “Told Gerald he was nothing better than a pirate. Then he threatened to kill him!” Her eyes were bloodshot, and her face puffy from crying, but her voice was venomous.
    I moved quietly, hoping they would continue to talk, but the detectives broke off the interrogation as I set down the tea tray.
    “I’m sorry to interrupt, but will you be staying for dinner?” I asked.
    “Would that be possible?” asked the younger of the two, a rather nice-looking young man. “We’d be sure to reimburse you for the expense. Not a lot of restaurants on the island.”
    “Of course,” I said, mentally adding two to the tally. I was hoping they’d continue the interrogation as I laid out the tea things, but not another word was spoken until I was back in the kitchen.
    I glanced up at the clock; I had two hours before dinner, and I was dying to talk with Tom Lockhart. John, I knew, was going to be busy with the investigation—but since the menu was fairly simple, Gwen would be able to do most of the prep work. I hated to leave Claudette, but I was sure she’d understand.
    I made a few phone calls, and within ten minutes, everything was arranged. Gwen, who had just finished cleaning the upstairs rooms, set to work chopping vegetables for the salad, and a few minutes later, Charlene arrived in her battered pickup truck. Visitors were always a bit surprised when Charlene stepped out of the hunk of 1950s-era steel she drove around the island. The truck, whose original color was indeterminable, gave the general impression of a junkyard refugee held together by duct tape. In contrast, Charlene usually looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine. Today, she wore a hot pink trench coat that hugged her curves, and her hair was swept back in a stylish updo.
    “Ready?” she asked.
    “Let me just finish loading this container, and we’ll be out.” I tucked three more frozen cookies into a big plastic tote and snapped the lid shut. Charlene snagged one of the cookies—double chocolate chip, her favorite—and pulled Claudette into a warm hug.
    “How are you doing, sweetheart?” she asked.
    “I’ve been better,” the older woman said, still looking shell-shocked. She declined my offer of a cookie—despite her bulk, she was a strict advocate of a sugar-free regimen—and let Charlene lead her out to the driveway. In no time at all, the three of us were packed into the truck’s front bench seat, jouncing up the road toward town.
    _____
    The town pier looked as it always did, the weathered dock lined with stacks of lobster pots, the long, low building that housed the island’s tourist shops stretched along the wooden walkway. The plate glass windows of Spurrell’s Lobster Pound were dark this time of year, but lights still shone in Island Artists, where one of John’s driftwood sculptures was on display: a dolphin leaping from the sea. To the left were a few of the brightly painted toy boats he built every winter; they were snapped up by the dozens in summer, by the tourists who day-tripped to the island on the mail boat. In the next window, a sea glass mobile dangled, the gray-blue shards of cloudy glass mirroring the sullen sky.
    Charlene dropped me off just past the pier, in front of a low-slung building, its walls covered in colorful, weathered buoys: the Cranberry Island lobster co-op.
    “Half the island’s in there,” she said, “and the other half is at the store, swapping gossip.”
    “Let me know if you hear anything good.”
    “Don’t I always?”
    “And find out anything you can about Ingrid’s son,” I added.
    “You think he might be involved?”
    “Evan’s the one who called Iliad in the first place,” I