Deadly Jewels by Jeannette de Beauvoir Page A

killed when I’d decided to “assist the police with their inquiries” into some murders in Montréal the summer before. And my flippant “murders aren’t good PR” hadn’t gone over too well with my husband then, either. I reached out and touched his wrist. “This is completely different. If anything happened, it happened so long ago that nobody will care.”
    His eyebrows went up. “Right. Like investigating something that happened in the Duplessis years,” he said, then raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I know that look. Just be careful. Your extracurricular activities make me nervous sometimes.”
    â€œYou said it yourself. You just don’t want the bother of shopping for a newer model.”
    â€œThe shopping isn’t the problem. The price tag is.”
    I swatted at him halfheartedly and we settled companionably down to our evening. After all, Orphan Black was on television.
    It was the next day that we found the body.
    *   *   *
    They’d put a mattress on top of the securities crates in the captain’s day room, and that was where Alex was sleeping.
    If one could call it sleeping.
    Every time the Emerald pitched or rolled—and he had no idea which was which—he was dumped onto the floor. He considered simply putting the mattress down there, but there was scarcely room, and the space was needed frequently.
    Just as well: it got him on his feet in time to go and get sick again.
    The gale blew on and the captain dismissed the destroyers. “I’m not leaving us sitting in the middle of the ocean, not with this kind of cargo,” he told Alex. The convoy steamed eastward and they stood in the wheelhouse watching it go, seeing the lights disappear into the rain. “On our own, now,” said Captain Flynn cheerfully.
    Alex looked at him. “You sound elated,” he said, curious.
    â€œI am, laddie, I am. Best way to be, on our own. We’ll show them a thing or two!” He turned to the officer of the deck. “Increase speed to twenty-two knots,” he instructed.
    â€œTwenty-two knots, aye, sir.”
    The captain was doing everything but rubbing his hands together in glee. “Now we’ll show them what we’ve got.”
    And it must have worked, because the next day the gale died down and the sun came out. Alex felt like Noah when the dove returned with the branch: not only did he finally believe that he might actually live through the ordeal, he found that he now actually wanted to.
    He mentioned it to Captain Flynn, and the other man smiled. “Sunday service tomorrow,” he said. “Time to show your gratitude.”
    Alex grinned. They might well play darts and sing hymns, he thought; but he’d never seen anything like the men he met on the Emerald . “They signal action stations every time there’s a U-boat in the vicinity,” he wrote in a letter to his wife once the seas were calm enough for him to manage a pen. “Every time, no matter what a man is doing, he’s at his battle station. Immediately. Quietly and without drama. We bankers could take a page from their book.”
    And so, quietly and without drama, the Emerald entered the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was time to unload.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
    Patricia handed me the headlamp. “You attach it to your helmet,” she said.
    I looked at her dubiously. I already was wearing more foreign objects than I’d ever even seen on a single person: chest waders (now there’s a fashion statement), climbing equipment, ropes slung casually over my shoulder, a tool belt with portable spotlights, and now a headlamp.
    And none of it particularly light to wear or carry.
    Patricia, on the other hand, seemed completely comfortable with the equipment. And the process. “What we do is, we mark it on Google Maps,” she’d explained to me that morning when we met for coffee in