Dying Echo A Grim Reaper Mystery - By Judy Clemens Page 0,94

idea of living. She was sure there would be information about Cyrus’ old workplace that she could use.

“I thought they went out of business, and that’s why Cyrus lost his job.”

“No, Wayne said he was laid off, but I don’t think it was because they closed down. Maybe they just couldn’t afford his services anymore. His expertise made him expensive.”

“So why wouldn’t he just lower his rates?”

“I don’t know. Made him feel taken advantage of?”

“This from a guy who wouldn’t accept charity? You’d think he’d be glad to have a job at all.”

“These were the nineties, remember. Not today, when folks will take anything they can get. But maybe it was something else. Supposedly, like people have told us, he just wanted to be his own boss and had trouble working for someone else. He wouldn’t be the first person fired for not playing well with others.”

Signs for Galveston Bay began decorating the side of the road, and Eric followed them across the flat, marshy land toward the coast. The GPS on Eric’s iPad took them south of the bay, as far as a marina, before saying they were at their destination.

“This is it?”

Casey understood Eric’s confusion. The Gulf sparkled under the sun, and extended as far as she could see, into the horizon. Beautiful. Amazing. But the marina itself, tucked into a marshy inlet, was not the hub of busyness they had expected. A floating dock bobbed on the water alongside several old fishing boats and a pontoon. One old houseboat was moored to a different, permanent dock, and looked like it had seen better days. Many of them. Casey didn’t see anyone out and about, except on the other side of the inlet, too far in the distance to recognize faces, or even genders.

A low but large building with two over-sized garage doors, made for accommodating boats, sat far enough off the water it wouldn’t get hit by incoming tides. Weeds had grown up around it, and all three of the visible windows were broken, with tell-tale holes in the panes where someone had thrown a rock or a heavy seashell. A sign hung crookedly on a post, one of its chains broken and trailing as the sign swung with the breeze. The sign said, “Harbor Houseboats,” although the paint was so faded it was hard to tell. No vehicles sat in the parking lot, which would have been a surprise at that point if there had been any. Casey ignored the sinking feeling in her stomach and got out of the car.

“Where are you going?” Eric came after her.

She picked her way across the weedy bank up onto the parking lot and peered through one of the busted windows. “I guess they’re out of business now. Let’s see if we can get in.”

The side door was easy to open, since the building had apparently been broken into long before they’d gotten there. Casey stepped into the muggy space, which had been the front office. An old metal desk sat in the middle of the room, along with an office chair that had been home to more than a receptionist in the past few years. The walls held faded photos of houseboats in spotted wooden frames, and a curling, yellowed calendar from 2007 hung to the left of the desk.

Eric worked at the top desk drawer to get it open. “Old envelopes, all empty, some letterhead, bunch of paperclips…” He went through the rest of the drawers, but found nothing more interesting than outdated phone books and a broken model of a houseboat.

Behind the desk was a doorway, and Casey stepped through it into a large workspace. She ducked as something flew down from the rafters, wings beating a hasty retreat.

“What was that?” Eric came in behind her.

“Bird of some kind. There’s nests all around.” Other things, too, by the look of it. Including people, although all that was left was the trash they left behind. Beer cans, food wrappers, probably syringes and who knew what else. Casey didn’t want to get any closer to find out.

The large room was fronted by the first of the two huge rolling doors. Hoists were attached to the ceiling, and workbenches, littered with refuse, lined the walls. The shell of a houseboat lay lopsided on the cement floor, as if someone had taken one of its legs out from under it. It was the flat style, so the windows to the house were at eye level. Casey walked around it, looking