And on the
Surface Die
And on the
Surface Die
A Holly Martin Mystery
by Lou Allin
Text © 2008 by Lou Allin
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, digital, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior consent of the publisher.
Cover design by Vasiliki Lenis/Emma Dolan
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts
for our publishing program.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.
RendezVous Crime
An imprint of Napoleon & Company
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Printed in Canada on FSC standard recycled stock.
12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Allin, Lou, date-
And on the surface die / Lou Allin.
ISBN 978-1-894917-74-2
I. Title.
PS8551.L5564A64 2008 C813'.6 C2008-905620-5
To Nikon, who saw his women safely to Vancouver
Island before joining Freya at Rainbow Bridge.
He was a prince among dogs,
and his sense of ethics amazed us.
The Kraken
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light;
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber’d and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
-Alfred Tennyson
Table of Contents
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Epilogue
The sea spread satiny glass across the sheltered bay. Amid lazy undulations, a blue heron rode his kelp-bed carpet and peered for minnows. White meringue clouds watched their reflections, overweighted galleons on a cerulean mirror floating towards the Olympic Mountains of Washington State. Up poked the mustachioed face of an acrobatic seal, which flipped in a lazy pose to warm its belly in the September sun. Deep below, a red rock crab found something to its liking. Soft tissue gave way as it inched along propelled by large nippers, using smaller chelipads close to the head to urge meaty delicacies into its eager maw. Then a fickle current swept the meal away, and the hapless crab dropped over a shelf to the deeper sea floor, where it was seized by an opportune Dungeness cousin.
Trailing a frothy cloud of bubbles, a snorkeler angled down for a peek at a host of purple sea urchins. Carrying an underwater camera, he feathered his fins through the heavy tendrils of bull kelp, bulbous at one end, fat whips which bobbed on the tides until tossed ashore. The man paused to admire a cluster of whelks and a nervous school of sculpins, then took a few grab shots of a sea cucumber. A forest of leathery brown rockweed, clinging to the slippy basalt with its disc-like holdfasts, drifted into his path, then the dark crimson blades of Turkish towel seaweed. Carefully he pushed it aside, startling a juvenile octopus, which had scuttled from a mollusk- mounded crevice. He checked his watch. Ten o’clock already. He should be getting back to the car. Monica was meeting him for brunch at Point No Point. With his appetite fueled by the cold water and exertion, he could almost taste their luscious cheese scones.
Then something large glided into his peripheral vision, and he turned, moving his legs to stabilize himself. Whales were common around the island, but they didn’t usually come so close to shore...unless they were sick or injured.
