Mallets Aforethought by Sarah Graves Page B

okay at the boat basin?” I asked instead. “And the boats, are they all right?”
    Wade nodded. “Guys were prepared. Scallop season coming, no one wants to be out of action during the earning time.”
    But despite my precautions, Tommy had overheard plenty. And not for him the indirect angle when full-bore would serve. “Is George in trouble about Mr. Gosling?” he wanted to know.
    Wade answered him frankly. “George could end up in trouble if he doesn’t come up with a good explanation of where he’s been and what he’s been doing for the past couple of days. But he just doesn’t want to, and unfortunately that’s probably going to make them suspect him.”
    Wade believes that the truth shall make you free, while I tend more toward the well-balanced portfolio, healthy cash flow, and a decent credit record as instruments of liberation.
    A shadow passed over Tommy’s face, replaced by indignation. “That’s nuts,” he declared. “George wouldn’t—”
    “All this will be straightened out soon,” I assured him.
    “Yeah.” But he didn’t sound the least bit convinced. Then, “Hey, you know what?” He made a show of looking at his watch. “I gotta go. I just remembered I told my mom I’d help her, uh, clean out the refrigerator.”
    Sure, that was it. The phone rang, diverting me from what I had been about to reply: that Tommy shouldn’t flimflam me, that I’d been flimflammed by the best and could see it coming a mile away. But later I was glad I hadn’t said it.
    Because I couldn’t and didn’t.
     
     
    “A
search
warrant?” I repeated in disbelief. It was Ellie on the phone and she sounded more distressed than I’d ever heard her before. “Ellie, are you sure?”
    Wade frowned over to where I sat in the telephone alcove.
    “But I thought . . .” I went on.
    What?
he mouthed, and I waved him off.
    “So did I,” Ellie told me, her voice shaking. “That they were going to give George time. But with all the media attention—oh, God, there’s a satellite van outside the house—I guess they had to do it right away.”
    So much for Colgate’s help. I guessed the news vans and his bosses must’ve arrived simultaneously. And publicity plus bosses never spelled anything but C-Y-P.
    Cover Your Posterior. Thus the decision would’ve been taken out of Colgate’s hands. “They’re there now?”
    “Yes,” she said miserably. “Tearing through everything. They wanted to know where George has been working . . .”
    So they would come soon enough upon Cory Williams and his pigs. And the poison. “Listen,” I said, “call Clarissa Arnold and . . . no, wait, she’s probably out of town.”
    Clarissa had been a prosecutor before moving to Eastport and switching to the defense side of her profession, so she was good at quashing the high-handed notions of police bosses. But she was also married to our police chief, Bob Arnold, and would probably be in Kennebunk now helping tend to Bob’s sick mother.
    “Will tried her,” Ellie confirmed. “He’s here with George, thank God. But yes, her answering service says she’s away.”
    “We’ll find her,” I said. “Where else will they search?”
    “I’m not sure. The truck, definitely, because they wanted to know where it was. They’re going there, to the repair lot at the Mobil station, after they’ve finished in here and with the shed.”
    A mental picture of George’s inner sanctum rose in my mind: a trim little wood-frame structure behind his house, furnished with a pot-bellied stove, a workbench, and all his tools.
    “Are they going to impound the truck,” I asked, “or search it there?”
    “I don’t know,” she responded distractedly. Then her voice moved away. “Please, you don’t have to . . . Jake, it’s awful. Now they’re going through the baby’s things.”
    She was nearly in tears. I could only assume they had George outside, since otherwise he’d be after them with a brickbat.
    “Ellie, listen to me. You