Free Sunny Side Up (Lake Erie Mysteries Book 1) by Maureen K. Howard Page B

joined June, who was sitting at the picnic table on the dock in front of the boat.
    “So what was that all about? Did I do something to piss him off? I thought I was behaving. This is probably all my fault as usual.”
    “It is so not your fault!” I was confident of this at least. Something much bigger was eating Hamm, and by the end of the weekend, we would both know what it was. I was more than wide-awake now. Sleep didn’t seem to be an option in my immediate future.
    “It’s such a beautiful night. How about I open a bottle of wine and we can sit out here for a while? I should probably give Hamm some space right now. He doesn’t seem to want company.”
    “That’s an understatement. Are you sure he won’t get mad if we hang out for a while?”
    “June, he’s not mad at you, or at me for that matter. I’m sure he’ll tell me all about whatever happened to get him so upset it in the morning.”
    “Okay then, I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine.”
    I waited about five minutes before I quietly went aboard the boat to grab a bottle of wine, two glasses, and an opener. Hamm was snoring softly on the couch, still wearing his dirty, torn clothing and smelling like he had been roasting marshmallows at a campfire. He didn’t even stir, and I was back on the dock in no time.
    I opened the bottle and poured each of us a generous portion of Fandango. It was a red blend I hadn’t tried before, but my brother Jim, a wine merchant, gave it to me for my birthday in March, and since he knew what I liked, I was sure it would be nice. We weren’t disappointed.
    The bright moon was high in the sky, reflecting in the water and creating an otherworldly effect on our surroundings. We sat quietly in our own thoughts, sipping our drinks for a few minutes, but since girlfriends are not capable of extended periods of silence, unless they are fighting, June leaned over and whispered, “What do you think about all of the commotion earlier? I wonder where Clifton and the detective ended up. Did you think Sirena was acting kind of odd? And you’ve really got to be wondering what on earth happened to Hamm. I feel like we stepped into the Twilight Zone.”
    We hadn’t even been on the island for a full day, but it seemed like ages since that peaceful cruise across the lake. We must have talked for over an hour, replaying the events of the day until we had exhausted nearly every possible explanation, and the contents of our bottle as well.
    I had just stood up and picked up the empty bottle when the sound of a powerful outboard motor broke the peaceful atmosphere. “Quick, June, get down!”
    “What are you flipping out about, Francie? It’s just a boat.”
    I never did fill June in on the details of the strange request Hammond had received from Detective Morgan while we were inside Ruby’s Treasure Chest.
    “Just duck down and be quiet! See if you can see who’s driving the boat or any identifying numbers or information on the hull.”
    “What’s this all about, Francie? I feel like Harriet the Spy.”
    I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of the tale of the minnow bandits, and as soon as I stopped talking, I could see that she was in one hundred percent.
    “Let’s nail these greedy thieves. I’d love to get a first-hand interview and go home with two awesome articles. I might be able to take the rest of the summer off at this rate.”
    We crouched behind the picnic table, straining our eyes to make out any clues. The boat passed slowly right in front of us. Two men who couldn’t have been more than twenty were working their scam right before our eyes. The tall, skinny kid worked the hydraulic nets while his beefy partner in crime scooped hundreds of tiny, silver, squirming fish into rows of buckets. They had this fish-napping thing down to a science. We had to concentrate on all the details, trying to commit everything to memory since neither of us had our cameras or phones nearby. I didn’t even have a pencil or