On Fire by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online

red face, the unusual level of aggravation, even for Lou Dorrman. “What else?”
    “What do you mean, what else?”
    “Something else is eating at you.”
    The sheriff huffed and gazed out at the water a moment. “I can’t find Emile.”
    “Hell.”
    “I checked his cottage, I checked the preserve. His boat’s gone, his car’s gone.” Dorrman shifted his back to Straker. “I don’t like it. A dead body turns up on Labreque Island one day, Emile disappears the next.”
    “Did you check inside his cottage?”
    “I can’t do that without a warrant.”
    Straker could. “Give me a lift?”
    Twenty minutes later, they put in at Emile’s dock. Straker didn’t wait for Dorrman. He headed up to the old man’s cottage, mounted the steps and tried the door. Locked. He held the doorknob, leaned his shoulder against the door and, putting his weight into it, pushed hard.
    The door came on the second push. Piece of cake.
    “Christ,” Dorrman said from the bottom of the stairs, “I don’t believe you.”
    “I’m his friend. This is what he’d expect. I’ll be out in two minutes.”
    Emile’s cottage was more cheap old man than world-famous oceanographer. He’d left most of his old life behind. The only remnants were copies of his books and documentaries on a shelf in the main room and a few pictures of his family aboard the Encounter. He’d taken out the trash, left a mug in the dish drainer, unplugged the coffeepot. Straker checked the downstairs bedroom. A tidy sailor to the last, Emile had made his bed, too.
    Straker took the steep, ladderlike stairs up to the loftand came across a red bra, size 34B, under a creaky twin bed. It provided no clues as to Emile and his whereabouts. It did, however, provide fresh insight into Riley. She’d never been neat, but Straker wouldn’t have expected her to favor red underwear.
    Best to keep his mind on the task at hand.
    He joined Dorrman back outside. “He cleared out.”
    “Kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
    “Not my job to wonder. I’m going to take a drive down to Boston.” A sudden wind gusted off the bay; he was thinking up his plan as he went along, knowing already he’d regret it. He should go back to Labreque Island and reheat his stew. “I’ll let you know if I run into him.”
    “You do that. Keep in touch.”
    “You want to bug my car, make sure I don’t take off to Alaska?”
    Dorrman sucked in a breath, controlling his irritation. “If it were up to me, Straker, you’d be hauling in lobsters with your old man. You’re not fit to be an officer of the law. Never have been.”
    “Does that mean if I’d been killed instead of wounded six months ago you wouldn’t have marched in my funeral parade?”
    Dorrman’s mouth stretched into a thin, mean grin. “There’d have been a fucking brawl over who got to lead that parade.”
    Straker took no offense. Louis Dorrman didn’t like him. A lot of people didn’t like him. But Straker had friends, and he had people he trusted—and he did his job. He’d never been the most popular guy around. Itdidn’t worry him. What worried him were the dead body Riley St. Joe had found on his island and where Emile had taken himself off to.
    The sheriff grudgingly gave him a ride back to the island and waited while Straker packed up, grabbed his car keys and rinsed out his stew bowl. He didn’t need to come back to find the place overrun with ants.
    He climbed back into Dorrman’s boat. “My car’s at my folks’ place.”
    “I know,” the sheriff said, as if to remind Straker he knew everything that went on in his town. He was the one who’d stayed, who hadn’t gone off and joined the FBI. Dorrman gunned the engine and sped across the bay.
     
    Riley picked up eggplant parmesan from her favorite Porter Square deli on her way home from work, where, mercifully, no one had heard about what had happened yesterday on Schoodic Peninsula. She kept the news to herself. When she’d left Mount Desert