Death Runs Adrift (The Gray Whale Inn Mysteries) by Karen MacInerney Page A

feast.
    My eyes drifted to the window, and the placid blue water beyond. Young Derek Morton would never enjoy another summer feast again. Who had taken his life?
    Biscuit meowed again, and I reached down to pet her smooth ginger fur. Normally I’d take pity on her and open a can of tuna, but the vet had told me she was getting a bit on the chunky side, and that I needed to cut back. Biscuit wasn’t the only one who needed to cut back, I thought, adjusting my T-shirt over my middle and opening the back door so she could go out and get some exercise. She gave me a disdainful look and padded over to the radiator under the window, where she curled up for an afternoon nap. So much for regular exercise.
    I pulled my recipe file out and flipped through to my grandmother’s steamed pudding recipe. John had brought up my coffee can of fresh blueberries; I knew Catherine wouldn’t share it with us, but I suspected both John and I could use some comfort food after the day’s grisly discovery. As I glanced over the list of ingredients, my thoughts strayed back to Derek. He had evidently been “talking big” recently. Had he told someone more than he was supposed to?
    And if his death was a warning, who was it for?
    I pulled out the metal pudding steamer my grandmother had given me—it looked like a little Bundt cake pan with a lid—and buttered it, then prepared the pot in which the pudding would cook. Like Boston Brown Bread, what made the pudding so moist and delicious was the steam treatment it received.
    While the pot of water was heating on the stove, I lined up the ingredients on the counter, including the rinsed berries I had picked that morning. As I creamed the butter, sugar, and eggs together in a mixer, I cast my mind back to the image of Derek, trying to remember the details. He’d been lying almost straight up-and-down in the bottom of the boat, with his feet toward the bow; if he’d fallen into that position, that meant he would have been standing in the bow, which is not usually where you stood in a skiff. I was guessing someone had placed him there.
    As I mixed the butter and sugar together, I found myself wondering how Tania was doing—and if she had some information that would point to why Derek had died. Adam evidently wasn’t the only one Detective Johnson was questioning, but it made me nervous that there was a link between Adam and Derek. I was also worried about having a murderer running loose on Cranberry Island. I poured the dry ingredients into a smaller bowl and stirred them with a whisk, then added them to the creamy butter and sugar in the mixing bowl and reached for the berries.
    When the blueberries had been folded into the creamy batter and I had poured it all into the pudding mold, I picked up the phone and called my best friend. She answered on the first ring, sounding less like her cheery self than normal.
    “How’s Tania holding up?” I asked as I fitted the lid onto the mold and slipped it into the pot on the stove, then added water to create a “bath” for the pudding.
    “Not great,” Charlene said. “But that’s to be expected.”
    “It’s hard to lose someone you care for.” I put the lid on the pot and adjusted the heat. “How long had they been seeing each other, again?”
    “Only a month or two. She was pretty into him, though.” She sighed. “You remember young love.”
    I much preferred older love, I thought as I flipped through my book until I found the recipe for foamy sauce. It was much more rational, and at least at the moment, very satisfying.
    “I wonder who would have wanted him dead?” I mused.
    “They’ve confirmed that, then?”
    “No,” I said, running my finger down the list of ingredients for foamy sauce. Lyle’s Golden Syrup, an English import my grandmother had introduced me to, was easy and good with steamed puddings, but I was out at the moment. Besides, foamy sauce, a sweet concoction made with butter, eggs, and cream, was even better.