Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1) by Peter Kirkland

Author:Peter Kirkland [Kirkland, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-25T16:00:00+00:00

That night, I took Squatter for a drive. He snoozed peacefully in his dog purse, which had a seat belt loop to keep him safely on the passenger seat. I sped down the causeway with the windows open, enjoying the racket and the salty air. I didn’t know what to make of Jackson’s unwillingness to confide in me, and I was hoping a drive might clear the cobwebs from my brain.

Since the marina wasn’t too far off, I turned toward it. As I rounded the last corner and headed down the marina road, Squatter barked in his sleep. There was nobody on the road. My headlights skimmed bushes and the trunks of trees. If they hit a white T-shirt, I thought, I’d know it was white. All those death metal shirts Jackson wore were black.

Down toward the end, the road forked: right to the old marina, and left to the new dock and clubhouse where the yacht charters moored. One of Blue Seas’ vessels was anchored there, a sleek white yacht with “Lady Jane” written on the side. I parked at the side of the road, eighty or a hundred yards short of the yacht, and got Squatter out to do his business. As he sniffed the bases of various palm trees, I watched a few uniformed men unloading barrels from some sort of opening in the side of the yacht. Waste barrels, maybe; they had biohazard symbols on the sides.

I realized I didn’t know how to describe what I was seeing. The correct nautical terms were not in my vocabulary. When I was growing up, any boat with room for more than two or three passengers was for rich people, as far as I was concerned. As a result, I had a mental block when it came to port and starboard and whatever else rich sailing men talked about. I figured I should learn about boats now, since Roy was having me do more work for Blue Seas. Heck, I should’ve started learning as soon as I found out that the murder scene in Jackson’s case was a speedboat.

There was an unpleasant, oily smell in the air. It had never smelled like this down here when I was a kid; all you could smell then was the water and, if you were close enough, the little bait hut that used to stand here, before the road was widened. Where the large dock and clubhouse now stood, there’d been tall rocks that we all liked to jump from. Henry’s company had brought more prosperity to Basking Rock, and I myself was starting to benefit from that. But I still wondered at what cost it had come.

Squatter finished his business and curled up on the asphalt. I figured it must still be warm from the long, scorching day. I scooped him up, turned back to my car, and was startled half to death to see a man looking at me from the grass a few yards past the passenger side. He had on what looked like the same uniform as the crew members unloading the barrels down by the dock.

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