Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron Read Free Book Online Page A

sense. So many other interests are pulling at Core Sound now—developers, pier owners, the motels that cater to sportsmen, all those upstate surf fishers who say that trawling and netting interfere with their fun and then those Dare County millionaires with their pet legislators’ve got into it...” She shook her head in exasperation. “But Andy can—
could
—see all sides and most people on all sides would at least listen to him. I don’t know who’s going to take his place.”
    “Jay Hadley?” I asked.
    Barbara Jean snorted. “A
woman?
Honey, you’re talking the last bastion of male supremacy here. My daddy’s been dead twelve years but they still call my company Wash Neville’s plant.”
    I savored a final spoonful of soup. “The Hadley woman seemed pretty much in control when she came roaring out there yesterday with a .22 to see who was messing ‘round their leased bottom. And what about that Alliance you mentioned?”
    “Independent Fishers Alliance. That was Andy’s idea. Most watermen work alone or in one-or two-man operations unless it’s an established family business. I guess you’d call us a bit independent down here.”
    “Independent?” Chet shook his head as he began to divvy up the huge plate of oysters the waitress had set down in front of him. “Prickly as sea urchins and suspicious as hermit crabs.”
    “But Andy got us all together and gave us a coastal version of Abraham Lincoln,” said Barbara Jean. “A boat divided against itself could not sail: united we might float, divided we’d surely drown. Jay Hadley did a lot of the secretarial work when it was getting started a few years back; and I think she still goes in a few times a week to pick up the slack when Andy’s away. She’s bright, Jay is. If she could’ve gone to college, no telling where she’d be now. Her husband started out like a lot of the old-timer proggers—”
    “Proggers?” I’d occasionally heard the word over the years but never given it much thought.
    “That’s another of those Elizabethan remnants of speech,” said Chet. “Means folks who forage around the water’s edge, poking, or ‘progging’ at things.”
    Barbara Jean nodded. “That was Jay’s husband all right—a traditional independent fisherman who thought he’d fish the cycle like his daddy and his granddaddy before him. It’s taken her five years to convince Heston Hadley that leased bottoms could work, but she finally talked him into selling his big boat two years ago and putting the money into seed clams and mesh bags. They’re going to make twice the money with half the effort if things keep going the way they have.”
    The oysters had arrived in sizzling perfection—crisp on the outside, plump and meltingly tender on the inside—and the next few minutes were devoted to a proper appreciation of Core Sound’s continuing bounty.
    “They’re growing oysters on leased bottoms, too,” Barbara Jean said between mouthfuls. “On ladders.”
    She was prepared to go into more details, but I didn’t want to hear. “Will your Alliance continue without Bynum?”
    She considered. “Who knows? Short-term? Maybe. Long-term? Till somebody’s oars don’t reach the water and Andy’s not here to lift the ocean for them. Till all commercial fishing gets pushed slam out of the sound and off the banks, or the trawlers hear that they have to keep using turtle excluders and shrimpers don’t. Jay can do the paperwork and maybe keep up with all the rules and regulations that keep rolling in till they can find some man to sit in Andy’s chair, but finding someone that everybody trusts—”
    Barbara Jean’s words trailed off as her attention was diverted. I turned to see a stocky male stride through the crowded restaurant, jostling tables and diners and nearly causing a waitress to drop her tray. It was the same man who’d almost barreled me over at the Clerk of Court’s office and he seemed even angrier now than he had earlier as he