Now what?
She had several other people to interview, but she was less than a block away from Coastal Fish. Instinct told her she should keep following up with the families, but her gut told her she already had her answer, and what could be a better next step than going directly to the source?
Knowing that working with a team meant being part of the team, and liking the feeling of connectedness, even if it came with Luke and their shared baggage, she pulled out her cell phone, intending to call and let him know what she’d discovered. But when she flipped open the unit, she saw the searching icon displayed.
No signal.
“Damn it.” She looked around, halfway thinking she’d head to her clinic and call from there, but the clinic phone was still down from the night before—it looked like Aztec had ripped the cable out of the exterior wall before he’d knocked on her clinic door…which was scary enough that she was trying not to think about it.
Besides, Rox thought, the reception was even worse out by the monastery, so Luke’s phone probably wasn’t receiving, either. Odds were it would be a wasted effort.
Deciding that her best bet was to obtain samples of the various catches before driving back to the monastery, she headed for Coastal Fish.
The shop front was the epitome of New England kitsch, decorated with netting, weather-beaten buoys, lobster traps and plastic lobsters. When she pushed through the swinging door, she found the air inside cool and faintly moist, carrying the good scent of fresh seafood. With racks of sauces and bread crumbs on two walls and the third dominated by a huge glass display case, the place was unpretentious but did a brisk business because the prices were good and the fish came straight off the boats, which literally docked at the back door of the shop.
The owner of Coastal Fish, Marvin Smith, stood behind the counter wearing a crisp white apron and a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. In his mid-sixties, stick-thin and balding, Smith had been the mainstay of the fishing community for many years until he’d retired to run the fish store. He was still the fishermen’s unofficial spokesman when things needed doing around town, which was both good news and bad for Rox.
The good news was that if the fishermen had noticed anything strange lately, he’d know. The bad news was that she wasn’t sure he’d tell her, because he’d find anything that threatened local fishing to be a personal threat, as well.
She checked, but saw no red tinge to his irises as she stepped up to the counter, where a glass display case offered a wide selection of local favorites arranged on fresh greens, with plastic lemons strategically placed for a hint of color.
“I hear you brought in some medical detectives from out of town,” Smith said in a gravelly voice. “Couldn’t take care of a few fevers on your own? Business is off, you know. Much more of this and word’s going to get around. It’s the start of summer—we can’t afford to lose the tourists.”
“We’re talking about far more than a few fevers here,” she said, stung. “People are dying.”
“Then why aren’t you off running tests or something?”
I am, she thought, but knew she would have to tread lightly if she wanted to get anything out of the combative ex-fisherman. “We’ve split up to pursue various angles of the investigation. I’m collecting samples from the main food sources in town.” She gestured to the door behind him, which led to a long, narrow room where the fish were filleted and weighed out. “Can I get back there? It won’t take long.”
“What won’t take long?” It took a second for Smith to process her intention. When he got it, he narrowed his eyes. “You want to take my fish?”
“I just need a small sample of each type,” she assured him, though she fully intended to take samples from multiple fish of each variety. The fact that the disease hadn’t struck everyone who’d eaten fish over the past bunch of days suggested the source might be a certain type of fish, or maybe even one specimen that had yielded multiple cuts, or had gone through a certain processing machine.
“You going to pay for it?”
“Of course,” she said, though it irked her to do so. A call to the police chief or the mayor probably would’ve cleared her way, but she preferred to handle things on her own. Besides, Mayor Wells had plenty to cope with right now—besides the outbreak, he was dealing with a vociferous group of locals who, at the town meeting the night before, had started pushing him to let local businessman Theodore Fisher buy and refurbish the burned-out Beacon Lighthouse, which some residents believed was the seat of all the bad luck Raven’s Cliff had suffered in recent months.
Rox didn’t put much stock in curses, but if rebuilding the lighthouse gave the town a common goal she didn’t see why it was such a bad idea. The mayor, however, was doing his damnedest to block the project for some reason.
“Okay,” Smith finally said, reluctance etched in his body language as he flipped up the pass-through and let her come behind the counter, then led her through the door to the processing area. “I guess I can’t stop you from buying fish, can I?”
“Thanks.” She moved among the big ice chests, trying not to make it obvious that she was checking each thermostat, each coolant line, looking for malfunctioning equipment that might be associated with the illness. “Do you supply the Cove Café?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.
“Why?”
“Just curious. I had an amazing cod sandwich there the other day and I was wondering if they purchased their fish through you.” That wasn’t entirely a lie—she’d had a good fish sandwich at the café, but it’d been more like a month ago, and she hadn’t particularly cared where the fillet had come from. She was looking for an easy connection among the sick people.
He shook his head. “Nope. They buy straight off the boats.”
Okay, so there went that theory. “You buy off the boats too, though, right? Have they been bringing in anything special lately?”
“Special in what way?” he asked, continuing to answer most of her questions with questions of his own, a technique she suspected was designed to put her on the defensive.
It was working, too. She found herself growing more tense as she worked her way into the processing room, toward where the narrow space opened directly onto one of the fishing piers. Smith followed close behind her, making her feel as though she was being stalked.
Or herded.
She turned to him. “Can you get me twenty or so of those little bags you use for small shellfish orders? I need to keep each of the samples separate. A grease pencil would be good, too.”
He didn’t budge, instead moving closer. His voice dropped to a growl. “What, exactly, are you going to test for?”
“That’s up to the CDC team,” she said, playing dumb.
“Where else have you taken samples?”
She was almost positive he would call and check, so she didn’t lie. “You’re the first.”
Catching movement out of her peripheral vision, she turned her head and saw two men enter from the pier. One was moving strangely, shuffling his feet as though he was having neurological problems.
Panic
