go with the idea that he was already dead, and that seemed to make everything fall into perspective. "I'm dead."
"That's the spirit," said Poe. He held the bucket against a wall, and a small portal opened and sucked the bucket in. Quinn would have sworn there hadn't been any seams in the wall to indicate there'd been an opening there.
"Hey," said Poynter, taking on the tone of the deeply offended, "now that you're dead, I've got a bone to pick with you about not bringing me my sandwich."
Quinn looked at the sharp features and narrowed eyes of the captain - who now seemed genuinely angry - and a shiver ran through his body that had nothing to do with the cold seawater running out of his hair. "Sorry," he said, shrugging as much as he could in the restraints.
"Damn it, how hard could that have been? You've got a Ph.D. for Christ's sake - you can't get a fucking pastrami on rye? I've got a good mind to chuck you out the anus."
"Shhhhhhhh, Cap," Poe said. "That was gonna be a surprise."
"Meep," said Skippy.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Missing Biscuit,
Flopping Tuna
"Bwana Clay, you seen the Snowy Biscuit?"
Clay and Clair sat on the lanai of Clay's bungalow drinking mai-tais and watching smoke roll out the vents of a Weber kettle barbecue. Kona had his long board tucked underneath his arm and was heading for his Maui cruiser, a lime Krylon-over-rust 1975 BMW 2002, with no windows and seats that were covered in ratty blankets.
Clay was two mai-tais south of lucid, but he could still talk, "She took Nate's truck into town this morning. Haven't seen her since."
"Sistah wanted me to teach her some surfing. Got some easy sets rolling on West Shore, good for that."
"Sorry," said Clay. "We're smoking a big hunk of ahi tuna if you'd like to join us."
"No," said Clair.
"Tanks, but I'm going down to Lahaina town and see if I can find that Snowy Biscuit. We going to work tomorrow?"
"Maybe," said Clay, trying to think through a rum cloud. They'd pulled the Always Confused up out of the bottom of the harbor, and the boatyard had said it would be a week or so before it was ready to float again, although even then it would need some major cleaning. Still, they had Nate's boat. He looked at Clair.
"You're not sitting home tomorrow whining to me about your hangover," Clair said. "You get out there on the water and be sick like a proper man." She'd revised her thoughts on Clay's staying off the water. He was who he was.
"Yeah, plan on going out if it's not too windy," Clay said. "Hey, we supposed to have wind?" It occurred to Clay that he hadn't checked the weather since Nate had disappeared.
"Calm morning, trades in the afternoon," Kona said. "We can work."
"Tell Amy when you see her, okay. Take my cell phone with you. Call me when you find her. You sure you won't have dinner with us?"
"No," said Clair.
"No," said Kona, grinning at Clair. "Auntie, you embarrassed that Kona seen you naked? You look fine, yeah."
Clair stood up. "You go ahead, call me 'Auntie' again, see if I don't snatch out the rest of those dreads and use them to make cat toys."
"Ease up, I'm going to find the Biscuit." And he loped to the Beemer, slid the long board in through the back window, hooked the skeg over the passenger seat to secure it, and then drove off to Lahaina to look for Amy.
It was two in the morning when the phone in Clay's bungalow rang. "Tell me you're not in jail," Clay said.
"Not in jail, Bwana Clay, but maybe you need to sit down."
"I'm in bed sleeping, Kona. What?"
"The truck, Bwana Nate's truck. It's here at the kayak rental in Lahaina. They say Amy rent a kayak this morning, about eleven."
"They're still there?"
"I waked the guy up."
"They don't know where she went? They let her go alone? He didn't call us when it got dark?"
"She said she was just using it to tow behind the boat, for research. He know she a whale researcher, so he didn't think nothing of it. Sometime they take kayaks two, three days."
"You checked? She's not on the boat?"
"You mean the not sunk one?"
"Yes, that would be the one."
"Yeah, I check. The boat in the slip. No kayak."
"Stay there. I'll be down in a few minutes. I have to get dressed and call the Coast Guard."
"This kayak guy