Page 32 of Presumed Dead

He went up the cabin steps and onto the cockpit deck.

The clean Pyrex dish was on the engine cover. He'd put it there last night after washing it so he'd remember to return it to Catherine today.

He stood at the gunwale for a count of about three breaths and looked across the channel at her houseboat. The deck light was off. He looked at the Pyrex and the note she'd written to him when she left it.

The handwriting was the handwriting of an older woman who’d been writing notes for a long time and was no longer interested in being legible to anyone who wasn’t paying attention. He paid attention.

Tuna noodle. Enjoy. Bring the dish back when you’re done. — C.

He had enjoyed it. It was likely loaded with all things that did terrible things to a person's waistline, but it was delicious. It had been put together with too much of every ingredient she’d reached for, which was the cooking a woman did when she’d decided her affection was going to be measured in cheese, and Ethan ate the plate standing at the dinette and noticed, somewhere in the middle of it, that this was the first home-cooked meal he’d eaten in three years that hadn’t been served at a Shadow Ops table.

He'd take it to her in a little while. Then he went back up and got to work on the manifold.

By nine-thirty, he had the manifold sleeve seated, and the bolts torqued and the work-side of his morning done, and he washed his hands at the slip hose and went below for the Pyrex.

The towel that had been with it had a small monogram in the corner he hadn’t seen yesterday because it had been facing the engine cover. C P, in faded blue thread, in the stitching done by a woman who’d been monogramming her household linens since her wedding.

He carried the Pyrex and towel up the cabin steps.

Pier Two was a hundred yards by water and a five-minute walk by dock.

Doyle Pruitt was on the Bertram. The Bertram was on her cleats, and Doyle was on her transom with a rag and a bottle of teak cleaner, watching Ethan stride along the boardwalk to Pier Two with the casserole dish in his hands. Ethan tipped him two fingers.

“Morning, Doyle.”

“Morning, Vale.”

“Catherine fed me.”

“She does that. She’ll fix you a dish a week if you let her.”

“Returning the dish.”

“Smart man.”

Ethan kept walking. The smart man landed without inflection. Doyle Pruitt, leaning on the transom of his Bertram with a rag in his hand at nine-thirty on a Wednesday morning, had given him three pieces of information in eight words: Catherine fed the dock on a regular cycle, Doyle knew her cycle, and Doyle was paying enough attention to Pier Three to have clocked which neighbors were on Catherine’s list.

He kept walking.

Pier Two ran out directly behind the marina, and the houseboat in slip six was the first slip on the pier. Catherine’s deck light was off. The blue caftan was on a hook by her deck chair. Her paperback was on the small folding table beside the chair, spine out, with a yellow Post-it sticking out at the page she’d stopped at.

He knocked on the cabin door.

Catherine opened it inside the count of four breaths, which was the time it took an older woman to come up from below in her own boat, and she was in a different caftan than yesterday—this one was deep green—her glasses were on a chain around her neck, and she had a mug of coffee in her left hand.

“Ethan.”

“I brought your dish back.”

“I see you did.”

“It was a remarkable casserole.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you, Catherine.”

“You're welcome. I'm glad you liked it.”