Poisoned Prose (A Books by the Bay Mystery)

to hide away. If only for tonight.”
    Nodding in surrender, Rawlings took her hand and followed her inside.

Chapter 13
    And when I breathed, my breath was lightning.
    — B LACK E LK
    O livia woke before dawn. A splotch of pale pink hovering over the ocean hinted at daylight, but the world beyond her window was still hushed. The gulls hadn’t started crying, and the sandpipers had yet to emerge from their nests.
    Creeping downstairs, Olivia found Rawlings and Haviland already in the kitchen. Rawlings sat at the table with a cup of coffee and a pad of paper in front of him, and Olivia could see that he’d covered an entire page with notes. Haviland, who was stationed by his empty food bowl, glanced over his shoulder at her, doing his best to look deprived.
    “How long have you been up?” she asked Rawlings in a hushed voice.
    “An hour or so. I jerked awake and started thinking about the search warrants I’ll need and the teams I have to send to The Yellow Lady and to McNulty’s house. I want to get inside all of the storytellers’ cars too. I got the ball rolling on most of this stuff yesterday, but I have to do this by the book. No mistakes. And the time for polite chats over coffee is finished.”
    Olivia nodded. The storytellers had been told that they weren’t free to leave town, but Rawlings couldn’t keep them in Oyster Bay indefinitely. Eventually, he’d have to charge someone or let them all go. The clock was ticking. Olivia knew that Rawlings had to solve the riddle of Violetta’s murder and apprehend Lowell’s assailant soon or the killer might never be caught.
    Standing behind Rawlings’ chair, Olivia leaned over and wrapped her arms around him. She placed her smooth cheek against his rough one and closed her eyes. The two of them stayed that way for a moment, wordlessly strengthening and supporting each other. Then Rawlings capped his pen and got to his feet. He put his coffee cup in the sink and gave Haviland a parting scratch behind the ears.
    “It’s too early to visit Dixie,” he said, scooping his keys off the counter. “Will you go back to bed?”
    Olivia shook her head. “Michel wants to increase our shrimp order, so I’m heading to the docks. If I’m lucky, I’ll catch them before they leave for the day.”
    Rawlings stared down at the pad of paper in his hand. “I envy those men. They go out each day, casting a wide net into the water. They know exactly what they hope to catch. I feel like I’m fishing in the dark with an unbaited hook.”
    “Those guys aren’t so different from you,” she said. “They trap the wrong fish all the time and end up having to throw them back into the sea. It takes endless patience and perseverance for them to come home with a filled hull. And like you, they must pay attention to a hundred different factors. The wind, the weather, the tides, and most of all, their instincts.”
    Smiling, Rawlings opened the back door. “Well, I’m off to cast my net in the murky waters. But unlike your fisherman friends, I’m not looking for shrimp or grouper. I’m hunting a shark.”
    Thirty minutes later, Olivia pulled into a parking spot at the docks and let Haviland out of the car. The poodle grinned happily as he jogged on the rough wood jutting into the water like a thick arm, glancing this way and that. Olivia sensed that he hoped to locate the source of the tantalizing smells and be rewarded with a snack of fresh fish.
    “You’re going to be disappointed,” she told Haviland.
    Captain Fergusson was coiling a length of rope as Olivia approached
Clara Sue,
his trawler.
    “Permission to come aboard?” she asked.
    Fergusson made a noise of assent and offered her a scarred, calloused hand to help her up the wobbly gangplank. Once she had both feet on the deck, he removed his battered baseball cap and said, “Morning, Miss Olivia. You’re up mighty early today.”
    Olivia watched Haviland trot across the gangplank, his nose quivering in excitement. “I couldn’t sleep. Something about the pink sky made me think of you. So here I am.”
    “It’s a shrimp sky,” Fergusson said, lifting his weathered eyes to the horizon. “A good omen. We’ll bring home a fine haul today.”
    “That’s excellent news for my customers. They’ll be served the freshest fish in all of North Carolina tonight. Speaking of which, I’d like to add to my original order.”
    While she and the captain talked business, two other men prepped the boat for