Free Homicide My Own by Anne Argula

billion souls come from? Unless it’s not one soul each. Maybe we all share the same soul matter, and share it with all living things.
    By the time I came out of the ladies, the lunch crowd was filling the cafe. More idle fishermen, more old Indians, some retirees in for the specials. Odd had given up our table and was standing at the end of the counter, talking to the old man who had remembered the Stauffers and the sundae thing.
    I was on my way to collar him, when I saw Frank wheel in Angie and head for the last vacant table, where Angie’s chair would replace one of the cafe’s. They didn’t recognize me until I was next to them.
    “Well, look at you,” squealed Angie. “Don’t you look cute? Now, you’re fitting right in, aren’t you?”
    “Where’s your…’partner’?” asked Frank. I was beginning to think a leer was his permanent facial pattern.
    “At the counter, makin’ friends.”
    They swiveled around and found Odd.
    “Oh, doesn’t he look good too? Isn’t he a hunk?” said Angie.
    “Old man Drinkwater,” said Frank. “He’ll talk your ear off. Have you had lunch? They have a killer tuna melt here. Join us.”
    “We already had something,” I said. “What’s the word on our cottage?”
    “Well, the word on your cottage is…it’s yours,” said Frank happily. “Go for it.”
    “There’s Molsons in the fridge and cotton sheets on the bed and the Bee Gees on the hi-fi, just so you don’t have to go into a strange and quiet place.”
    “Great. Listen, Frank, I’m curious. What kind of work were you in before you started running the cottages?”
    “Why, do I seem out of my element as an innkeeper?”
    “A little, I guess. I just had the feeling you once did something…outdoorsy.”
    “As outdoorsy as you can get, little lady. I fished crab for years in the Bering Sea, and lived to tell about it.”
    “He was a wild one, he was,” said Angie.
    My spine struck high C. Down the front ran the sweatworks again.
    “I laid away a nice nest egg, sold the boat, bought the cottages. Now you have the complete story of my life.”
    “Oh, you held back a few things,” said a devilish Angie.
    “You hush now.”
    “You had a boat?”
    “Oh, you can’t crab without a boat. Your arms get tired.”
    He and the missus cracked up. I could see the secret to their marriage.
    “Did your boat have a funny name?”
    “Only yachts have funny names. Fishin’ is deadly serious, and the boats are christened accordingly.”
    I was glad to learn that.
    Then he went on: “‘Northern Comfort’ could be ironic, I guess, but it wasn’t meant to be.”
    Woi Yesus. I’d already heard enough to know my life would never again be quite the same, the way it has to change once you’ve seen a ghost or a flying saucer or some other thing you know cannot exist. You wind up spending the rest of your life retelling the story, hoping someone will believe you, which is kind of what I’m doing right now, this keyboard on my lap, the snow falling outside my window.
    I went the extra fathom with Frank.
    “Did that boy, James Coyote, ever crew for you?”
    “Isn’t that something?” trilled Angie. She looked at the old skiper and clapped her hands once. “After you left, we started talking about that old murder…that awful tragedy.”
    “Yeah, and I remembered,” said Frank, “how James crewed for me one summer. He made big money for those days and bought himself a used Ford four-by, still in high school. He told me he wouldn’t be going out with me the next season. All he wanted to do was ride his four-by and chase after white girls.”
    “Oh, he didn’t say that either,” said Angie.
    “No, he said he couldn’t go out again ‘cause he was flat out scared to. There’s no shame in that. Every man who goes crabbing up there is scared but they weigh the risk against the reward and they go out anyway. I really expected James would too, but by the time the season rolled around again, somebody had