Free Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) by Keith McCafferty

hanging on the porch besides those that Willoughby had taken off.
    â€œPolly Sorenson was the pilot fish this year. He came on the twenty-second, beat me by a week. He’s in town today. The core membership arrives tomorrow. It sounds like I’m talking about a committee, but these are my best friends. We’re all disciples of Sparse Grey Hackle in a sense. By which I mean men who understand that how many you catch is not nearly so important as who you sit around the fire with after. Speaking of which, would you so terribly mind if we took our drinks to the hearth? I’ve been on my feet about as long as I can today.” He tapped his right thigh. “I took a bad spill this spring. I wish I could say I slipped in a trout stream, but it was the front step of my house. Hairline fracture of the femur. Apparently I inherited a chemical deficiency that did not allow the bones to properly knit. My doctor made me promise that I would fish from the bank and not attempt to wade the Madison.”
    â€œWhen I saw you, you were wearing waders,” Stranahan pointed out.
    â€œWas I?”
    â€œI seemed to notice they were wet, too.”
    â€œJust freeing a snag, my dear man. I didn’t want to lose the fly.” Willoughby winked, then settled himself into one of the stuffed chairs and heaved a sigh of contentment.
    Sean looked at him, smiling, and for just a second Willoughby looked away, the quick dipping of the eyes that Sean had noticed when they met. He frowned inwardly. Patrick Willoughby seemed to have stepped from the pages of a book. A fox-eared book of the history of American fly fishing in which Catskill anglers who were only a few generations removed from the clubs of London fished bamboo rods in rivers with names like Neversink and Beaverkill, using flies called Hendrickson and Cahill. He had the manner cold: the self-assured, self-deprecating patter, the diction and enunciation that belonged more to a Yorkshire chalk stream than a Montana freestone river. It was a pat performance, but Sean suspected it was still a performance.
    He sat down opposite Willoughby, wondering when the man intended to hand over the fly box, which he had made no further reference to. He decided to test the waters of his suspicion.
    â€œMr. Willoughby?”
    â€œPatrick to you.”
    â€œPatrick, I don’t want to make you get out of your chair, but I drove down here from Bridger and lifted about a thousand tufts of grass looking for a fly box that I have yet to see. I’m beginning to wonder if it actually exists.”
    â€œMy dear man, if you would look in the second drawer of the desk over there, the left-hand side.”
    Sean returned with a vintage Wheatley fly box with a pewter surface. Maybe he had been wrong about Willoughby.
    â€œTake a close look at the flies, Sean. How would you characterize them?”
    Sean reached into the breast pocket of his fishing shirt and removed a pair of half-glasses with a 3X magnifying lens that he used to knot Griffiths gnats and other will-of-the-wisp flies to his leader tippet. He carried the box to the fly-tying table and found the switch for a goosenecked lamp. He peered through the clear lids of the spring-loaded compartments, where the dry flies stood at attention on their hackle tips. He took the glasses off.
    â€œThey’re exquisite. I had no idea that Kenneth Winston—that’s the name of the man who lost the box—was such a talented tier. He’s a black man who runs a hair salon in the South. Seems an unlikely candidate. You don’t see too many black fly fishermen in Montana, or anywhere for that matter.”
    â€œKenneth Winston is in the upper tier of the best fly tiers in the United States.” Willoughby announced it as a fact.
    Sean smiled. So he had been right. He said, “Mr. Winston didn’t lose this fly box on the river, did he? That was just the excuse to have me come down here to meet you.” He