Death by Marriage by Blair Bancroft

sagged even lower on the bait box. “It’s better than being accused of murder.”
    “Not much.”
    He was right. Rape, even statutory rape, was severely frowned on in the State of Florida.
    “The new Chief of Police is a reasonable guy,” I told him. “Talk to him.”
    “My name’s Brannigan, remember?”
    “Boone Talbot didn’t come along until months after your daddy lost his job. He doesn’t care that your name is Brannigan.”
    “Yeah, right.”
    I sighed and heaved myself off the bait box. “Tell Talbot about the parade, exactly what you saw, what you did. He’ll understand. You don’t have to mention Cary, but Talbot’s sharp. I expect he’s going to find out, so I still think you should be upfront about it.” I turned toward the gunnel and gasped. The tide was on the way out, and while Jeb and I talked, the distance back up to the parking lot had grown from a challenging scramble to climbing Everest without a Sherpa guide.
    Jeb unfolded all six feet-four inches from the fishing chair, lips twitching, his cocky self clearly back to normal. He gripped my left arm. “Up on the benchseat, then the gunnel,” he ordered, heaving me into the air as easily as a sack of sugar. “Grab the bollard. Good. One, two, three, hike !” Jeb shifted his hands and boosted me up to the parking lot asphalt . When I got home, I’d have to check for palm prints on my booty. It felt like both nether cheeks had been burned with a branding iron.
    I thanked him and staggered off to my car. As I sank behind the steering wheel, I glanced at my watch. Sunday in Golden Beach, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

 
    Chapter 7
     
    When I pulled into the driveway at home, there was no sign of Scott’s red Corvette, but Mom was whacking weeds with a vengeance. It seemed likely Scott had made his confession, swiftly followed by his escape. Not that a taut atmosphere at home was solely responsible for his disappearance. Yesterday Scott had missed his second busiest day of the week for rescues at sea. Not being on call on Sunday would be total dereliction of duty, no matter what shape he was in. There were a number of routes across the Island; we must have just missed each other.
    I wanted to sneak up to my room and quiver for a while. Unfortunately, I was a big girl now. I forced my feet across the grass, past the bird bath, to where Mom was now lopping great spiky branches off the bougainvillea. “Not enough weeds in winter,” she puffed as I moved up beside her. Snip . A long branch full of magenta blooms hit the grass.
    “Uh, Mom . . .”
    “It’ll grow back, bushier than ever.” Snip. Thwack.
    “But I like it with the branches all helter-skelter,” I protested. “At the rate you’re going, it’s going to look like a shipping crate.”
    “It needs taming.”
    I got the message. The bougainvillea she could control. I heaved the hear t-felt sigh Mom was holding in.
    “I’ve asked Scott to hunt wild hogs for the barbecue,” Mom announced. Snip. Thwack.
    This was not as irrelevant as it sounded. Mom was running the Hospital Auxiliary Fund-raiser this year and had decided on an old-fashioned Florida barbecue. Thoughts of pigs roasted over open pits, mountains of potato salad, coleslaw and beans, followed by pecan and Key Lime pie already had people’s mouths watering. Throw in a country band, horse and pony rides, and a mini rodeo, and this year’s charity drive—traditionally held between Christmas and New Years when the town was bursting with visitors—was already being proclaimed a triumph.
    Trouble was, you can’t have a proper Florida pig roast without wild pig. No ordinary porker would do. And Mom had just assigned the task of producing enough wild pigs for the barbecue to Scott. I could only presume she was trying to keep him fully occupied when not out on Sea Tow . But . . . I shuddered. On a danger scale of one to ten, fastening a tow line to a cruiser adrift in the G ulf in anything less than a tropical