The mystery authors working the frigid land and seas of Alaska may never outnumber those overrunning sunny Florida, but to the exalted ranks of Sue Henry, Dana Stabenow and John Straley readers should add Simpson. The author's second Liza Romero mystery (after 2000's Crow in Stolen Colors) whisks readers into treacherous seas and among even more treacherous humans. Liza runs a droll combination freight delivery and "book-mo-boat," the Salmon Eye, serving the islands south of Juneau and their isolated little communities. It's a harsh but not joyless life, in which the people who share the land learn to share their lives without sharing their secrets. The drowning of a wildlife protection agent, trouble with the whale population, a knife fight, the disappearance of a traumatized Vietnam vet and a murder or two all engage Liza's attention. Simpson offers a serviceable plot and characters that compel interest without resorting to overwrought flamboyance. Still, what she captures perfectly are the rigors of daily tasks: letting the dog out for a run, maneuvering a boat single-handedly in terrible weather, getting medical attention, surviving the cold. She also captures the great irony of people so protective of their privacy and independence being so terribly dependent on one another for survival. The settlers of this land, Simpson says, "acquire its characteristics like camouflage. Those who cannot hide never stay." Those who remain are well worth getting to know. (May 6) FYI: Berkley will issue a simultaneous mass-market edition ($6.50, ISBN 0-425-17944-3). Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Sound Tracks
Narrated by Stephanie Brush
Marcia SimpsonUnabridged — 8 hours, 30 minutes
Sound Tracks
Narrated by Stephanie Brush
Marcia SimpsonUnabridged — 8 hours, 30 minutes
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Overview
Editorial Reviews
...""to the exalted ranks of Sue Henry, Dana Stabenow, and John Straley, readers should add Simpson... The author's second Liza Romero mystery whisks readers into treacherous seas and among even more treacherous human beings...."" --Publishers Weekly
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940171353391 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Books in Motion |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2003 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
"I do not have to have a sea dog," Liza Romero told Sam. "If you roll in one more dead fish, you're history."
He grinned, tongue hanging to one side, and bounded over the next rocky ledge, disappearing from view so she couldn't continue to interfere with his significant pleasures.
At first light, the bay's green surface held a wind-carved spruce and snow on a distant peak. A breeze fussed over the reflection, making it shiver. The sun in early November was so far south it barely rose above the horizon. Liza couldn't see it from where she sat, but this was the first time in ten days the sun had poked through the ironclad sky. She dabbled her fingers at the edge of the tide and stared out over the bay. For the first time since early spring, she felt a surge of something she could almost call hope. She whistled for Sam, her big, copper-colored Lab/hound. Time to get going—she had to go to Labouchere Bay and Sea Otter Sound. The next day she'd go to No Name Bay, stay overnight at the dock, then up Duncan Canal.
Lying awake one fall evening after she bought the Salmon Eye, Liza had imagined a business that would allow her to take both freight and books to the roadless villages and logging camps of southeast Alaska. And she had done it forthwith. She'd resigned from the library and announced her business intentions to all the villages. She enjoyed the solitude, steering the boat through the passages and bays; she only had Sam for company, and he didn't speak very often.
The Salmon Eye was an old halibut schooner builtin the early 1900s, originally named Lituya Bay. It had first been a sailing vessel, then had a gasoline engine put in around 1908. The man from whom Liza had bought her had renamed her Salmon Eye, and had packed salmon from the fishermen to the canneries. The Salmon Eye was narrow-beamed and rolled heavily in steep seas, but Liza was used to it, letting her knees take the roll; Sam lay flat on the floor when the waves were high.
They'd used dories for longlining, a very slow way to do it because the dories could only handle short lengths of line. The dories were nested on the aft deck. The Salmon Eye had had eight dories—Liza had read that in the earliest log, which was still aboard. She had all the logs up until 1990, when the man from whom she had bought it failed to keep one. She had gone back to keeping a log, every day telling where she was going, what she was passing, where she anchored at night.
Last evening, she had delivered freight to Point Baker and had also brought hydrophones for Henry Sizemore. They'd gotten to be friends in Shoemaker Bay, had had dinner together several times, and he'd asked her specifically to bring those hydrophones to Point Baker. Henry was from the Alaska State Wildlife Protection Agency. He was their whale expert. Something was damaging the whales, the humpbacks and orcas; they were driving headlong onto reefs and shores, and some had propeller wounds.
Henry told Liza it might be noise that was doing it, and he'd requested hydrophones so he could hear underwater. Then, that very afternoon, he'd radioed her that he was on to something, would have to investigate before he could say for sure.
Point Baker was a tiny, roadless community on the northwest corner of Prince of Wales Island. There were a good many houses strung along the slopes above the inner bay, and in summer quite a few people resided there, but in winter the population dropped to less than a quarter of the summer people.
The Point Baker store, restaurant, sometimes functional bar, post office and telephone were strung out along the dock; boats were tied up on the outside of it. In the summer there were a lot of fancy yachts that fastened up for days or weeks at a time, but in the fall and winter, not many boats came into Point Baker. There was anchorage for only a few boats on the inner bay.
Henry's boat was tied at the dock and Liza moored the Salmon Eye ahead of it. There was a large black longliner coming in behind her; they went to the inner harbor, turned around, and came back to tie up facing the Salmon Eye. She unloaded her freight, whistled for Sam, then went to Henry's boat and pounded on the door, shouting, "Henry? Anybody aboard?"
She waited a minute and pounded again. No answer. Probably in the bar, she thought. Or the restaurant. It was pitch dark—in November the sun was down by four, and she'd gotten there around nine.
"Henry Sizemore?" she asked the bartender.
"He was here this afternoon," the bartender said. "But I haven't seen him since then."
"He was supposed to meet me here and pick up some hydrophones."
"Ahh, he'll be back," the bartender said. "Might have just gone out in the inflatable, looking for whales or something."
She ordered a beer, and sat there on the stool, sipping it. When her beer was gone, she said good-bye to the bartender and went out on the dock. Sam had been shut out of the bar and restaurant, and was overjoyed when Liza rejoined him, leaping and bounding around her, tail thudding against Henry's boat, his ears flying. She pounded on Henry's door again. "Henry? Anybody aboard?"
She went back to her boat, wrote him a note telling him the hydrophones were here and to contact her on the Salmon Eye. She got the Scotch tape, went back to Henry's boat, and taped the note to the door.
Then she noticed something. The inflatable was on the roof of the cabin. So he hadn't gone out in the inflatable and he wasn't in the restaurant or the bar. Where had he gone?
She went to bed at eleven. She had left Wrangell at five that morning and gone to Coffman Cove with freight, then to Kashevarof, then clear out to Point Baker. In the middle of the night Sam barked and Liza roused. She heard a roar as a big outboard started up. Sam barked again, but Liza listened no more.
In the morning, the longliner, as well as Henry's boat, was gone. He'd come back and gotten it—maybe that was the outboard she'd heard. Why hadn't he taken the hydrophones? She'd come all the way out there with them and now his boat was gone and he'd left the hydrophones on the Salmon Eye. She was extremely annoyed, furious at him, actually—why hadn't he picked them up? She'd left him a note, too.
She wrote in her log: November 5, Tuesday, 7:00 a.m. Henry's boat gone from Point Baker. Angry at him—I left a note on his door and he didn't pick up the hydrophones. What am I supposed to do with them?
* * *
The entrance to Point Baker was tortuous, with foul ground on either side, but Liza was accustomed to it and steered the Salmon Eye out through the narrow channel. She turned to port between Helm Rock and Mariposa Reef, and headed south from there.
She had just pushed the throttle up when something struck the hull. The wheel was yanked from her hands, the boat creaked and shuddered, and Sam was thrown against the binnacle holding the compass. He scrambled to his feet, barking, while Liza fought the wheel to center, adrenaline racing through her veins. Unmarked rocks? A deadhead? A sunken vessel?
She charged from the wheelhouse to the foredeck where the sun, firing darts off the water, blinded her. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she made out a geyser close to starboard; then tail flukes wider than the boat's beam. A humpback. From its dive, the whale erupted, fins extended like wings as it flew through the air.
Suspended above the boat, the huge animal was so close Liza could see barnacles on its corrugated jaw and smell its fetid odor. She held her breath—it was going to crash on the foredeck. But at the last instant it arched forward, hit the water on its side and sank from sight. Once more it breached. Then it rolled alongside and stared up at her with its great, inquiring eye.
"Hello," she called over the rail. The whale spouted again, a roaring volcano of glittering spray, then dove, silvery flukes poised like a waving fan.
Liza's whole body still reeled from the force of the impact. She put the engine in gear and turned out from the reef. They'd been carried far closer to the jagged rocks than she'd intended. As far as she could tell, though, the Salmon Eye had suffered no serious damage. No increased vibration from the propeller—the boat wasn't listing—no water poured through smashed planks.
Making her way south, she puzzled over the collision. In summer, humpbacks cruised the narrow straits of the Panhandle for krill, heading back to their breeding grounds in Hawaii in November and December. Sometimes they became entangled in the miles of drift nets that crisscrossed the North Pacific, but rarely if ever did they run into things they could hear. They disliked engine noise and were known to change course to avoid the huge oil tankers that hugged the coast. Why had that whale run into the Salmon Eye?
Sam had bayed his weird hound's wail when he saw a forty-ton bird soar over the rail. Now he stood pressed against the door of the wheelhouse, staring up. "It's okay, Sam," she told him, rubbing his silky ears. "Everyone lived." She turned to stare out the window, remembering those times when some had not.
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