Misery Bay: A Mystery by Chris Angus Page A

limo when it leaves.”
    They sat in the car for about a minute before the big car turned slowly out of the drive. Lonnie said, “Something stinks.”
    “I know. The guy in the car just sold three girls inside. But I don’t want to move in now. I’m hoping they’ll lead me to someone—maybe a bad cop.”
    “No. I mean something stinks. You stink.”
    Garrett looked down at his shoe and realized it was covered in manure. “My new cologne,” he said. “Deal with it, and get going. I don’t want to lose those sons of bitches.”
    That was unlikely. Lonnie had been a tank driver in Iraq. He could make anything with a cylinder purr like a pussycat. You hadn’t lived till you’d seen him on a Harley. He looked like an elephant riding a motor scooter. It had always amused Garrett to watch his cousin squeeze himself into a tank. It was a very tight fit, but Lonnie had absolutely no problem with claustrophobia.
    They kept an easy distance behind the big car. Though there was little traffic this time of night, the rainfall made it unlikely they’d be spotted. They followed Route 2 along the shore of Bedford Basin all the way downtown, hooked up with Barrington Street and funneled onto the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge that took them across the harbor to Dartmouth.
    Garrett looked down on the warships of the Canadian Navy parked just off the bridge access, their turrets drifting in and out of a fogbank. The lights of the city twinkled in the mist along both shores. A steady rain made the scene as dismal as could be.
    “Typical Halifax weather,” Lonnie groused.
    “A wonder Governor Cornwallis didn’t turn around and go home when he got here,” said Garrett. “Hell of a lot better weather in the old world.” But they both knew there was more to it than that. Halifax had one of the best protected ice-free harbors in the world.
    They turned left on Victoria Road, right on Woodland Avenue, passed through the rotary, and ended up on the shore of a small body of water called Lake Micmac. The limo pulled into a small private parking lot. Lonnie drove past and pulled over to the side of the road.
    By the time they got out of the car and crept back, they discovered what was happening. The occupants of the limo had boarded a small launch at a dock and were motoring out onto the black lake. In a moment, only its running lights could be seen.
    “Damn! We’ve lost them.”
    “Maybe not,” said Lonnie. “Wait a minute.”
    They watched the boat’s lights dwindle and then heard its engines cut back.
    “Going to that island,” said Lonnie. “We can always come back in daylight and check it out.”
    Garrett nodded. If it was a private home, it was certainly well isolated, the kind of place someone might want if he was up to no good.
    “Okay,” he said. “We’ll be back.”

12
    I F LONNIE AND GARRETT WERE going to get on that island, they’d need transportation. A standard kayak wasn’t feasible for Lonnie. He was wider than the cockpit. At an outfitter Garrett knew on the outskirts of the city, he purchased two solo kayaks, one with an open cockpit for Lonnie. He paid for them with an RCMP voucher. Tuttle was going to love that.
    He took the boats straight to Sarah’s. She wasn’t home, so he went out alone for a test run. When he got back an hour later, she was waiting on the pebble beach by the wharf.
    “I was thinking about calling the police,” she said, as he pulled up and stepped out of the boat. “But then I remembered you are the police and I couldn’t very well report that you were missing to you.”
    “Elementary, my dear Watson.” He shook off his life jacket and tossed it and the paddle into the boat. Then he pulled the kayak above the high tide line.
    “What happens when you get the bionic foot wet?”
    “Never a good thing, but it stands up pretty well under most conditions.”
    “Where have you been?”
    “Doing a little recon out beyond Heron Rook Island.”
    “There’s a storm supposed to be