Free Deadly Welcome by John D. MacDonald

up on the beach and caught two more of the same size before the disturbance was over.
    “Welcome to two of those if you can use ’em,” Alex said. “One will do me. Mackerel. Good eating. They don’t so often work in this close.”
    “You got them so quickly!”
    “When they’re working, you get them quick.”
    “Can I see that thing they bit on?” He held the lure so she could inspect it. “I will take the fish, and thank you very much, Mr. Doyle.” She looked at him dubiously, uncertainly. “I … I wonder if you would do me a great favor, Mr. Doyle.”
    “Anything I can, ma’am.”
    “I have been trying to get my brother to take an interest in something. I thought fishing might be good for him. Neither of us knows anything about it. I bought a pole and things, and we fished with frozen shrimp, but it was all very boring. We got some nasty little catfish, and one horrible looking flat thing, and some little things with prickers all over them. But what you were doing looks as if my brother might enjoy it. The pole and reel I bought are much, much heavier than that thing you use. Is it hard to use?”
    “No ma’am. It’s easy.”
    “And it wouldn’t be a … physical strain, I mean to catch something big?”
    “Anything too big will just bust loose.”
    “If I give you the money, could you buy the same sort of outfit for the colonel? How much would it cost?”
    “Less than twenty dollars for all he’ll need. I can get it and you can pay me later when I bring it around.”
    “Well … all right. And then could you show my brother how to operate it? I don’t really know if he
will
take any interest in it, but he does need some hobby. You see, he’s never really had a hobby. Except all those model airplanes when we were little. I used to helphim. We’re twins. Then, when he was in school he worked. We both did. He didn’t work when he was at the Point, of course. He has always been such a … dedicated man. So diligent. There was no room in his life for the things other men did. The fishing and the sports. Oh, he always kept himself in wonderful physical condition through exercise, so he could better accomplish his work. I sometimes wish he’d had more … desire and opportunity to play. Then maybe he wouldn’t have been so vulnerable when she … Anyway, now that he can’t work he has nothing to fill his time. I don’t want to trouble you, Mr. Doyle, but I would … be most grateful to you.”
    “Glad to do it,” he said.
    “If you could find time to come around tomorrow with the fishing things? About this same time. He naps in the afternoon.”
    She thanked him again and put the two mackerel in the aluminum pot on top of the coquinas, the long slim mackerel tails protruding over the rim, rigid in death. He walked back toward the cottage with the single fish. Thus far it was all too easy. And would continue to be easy, very probably. It sometimes seemed terrifying to him that it was so utterly easy to disarm people by lying to them. People seemed so recklessly anxious to take you at your face value. They would believe what they wanted to believe, and you need only to guide their thinking in a gentle and unobtrusive way. It had worked so many times before, and it would work again. The fishing had been a lucky accident. But if it had not been the fishing, it would be something else. Celia M’Gann was obviously lonely. Once her suspicions had been quieted, she would have responded to casual friendliness. And, inevitably, he would have met the colonel. And, inevitably, made the chance to be alone with him. This fishing gambit did not alter anything. It merely accelerated things.
    He cleaned and fried the mackerel and ate it for lunch. He thought of going in to see the Larkin boat yard. And see Betty again. But it seemed too soon. He had accomplished one decisive step in the mission. And now it was waiting time until he could walk up the beach tomorrow with the new tackle.
    He