“So good,” she muttered. The caramel was perfectly soft, the nuts perfectly crunchy, the nougat perfectly smooth, and the chocolate—well, perfectly chocolaty. As she sat down at the desk, she noticed Mojo watching her with what seemed like a look of disapproval. “What?” she demanded.
The food guilt was bad enough without any added feline recrimination.
He gave her a short little meow, jumped down from the bed, trotted over, and jumped up to her lap. There he circled once and settled right down. His satisfied purr rumbled quietly and she had to smile. There’d been no recrimination, just an opportunity for a better napping spot.
Maris softly stroked his back. “Thanks, Mojo.”
But as she enjoyed the rest of the bar, she recalled the market, particularly the flyer that Howard had put together. She tapped her temple and used her photographic memory to bring up an image of it. She stroked Mojo’s back as she took a minute to actually read the labels on the illustration. It did sound a bit like a science paper, which wasn’t too surprising. Nor was the fact that she wasn’t familiar with some of the terms.
She frowned a little. “Air guns and sonic waves.”
Her gaze landed on her laptop and she decided to educate herself. As Howard had said, they all ought to be doing some research.
She opened the computer and booted it up, then went to a search engine and typed in “air guns sonic waves.” The first link looked promising and she clicked on it. As she read about seismic surveys, her curiosity turned to dismay. The method of using an air gun to produce enormous pulses of sound killed plankton as far away as one kilometer.
“Good grief,” she said, leaning forward.
Mojo gave a forlorn little meow before jumping down.
She put down the bar and started scrolling. More than fifty percent of the tiny creatures were killed outright—not to mention the knock-on effect of animals higher in the food chain also dying. But the real clincher was the sonic effect on the gentle creatures who used sound for communication and were finely tuned to detect it. It was nothing short of a bomb blast. Whales had actually been known to avoid those areas, going so far as to halt migrations 175 kilometers away.
As one click led to another, she found herself on web pages with original journal articles and wondered if perhaps Howard had authored one. But as she kept an eye out for his name, it came up in a completely different context: he had a related patent.
“Hmm,” Maris muttered, doing a quick search for the patent. When she found it, she had to blink. “A new oil drilling technology?”
Though she didn’t understand the details, it looked like satellites could be used to spot oil leaks from abandoned underwater wells. But the same technology had been used to detect wells whose construction had never been finished, but were already approved, and could be started up again rapidly. In fact, the oil company that had used this patented satellite technology to resurrect old wells was synonymous with environmental disaster, having perpetrated the largest oil spill in history. Even today, birds on that part of the Gulf of Mexico were being rescued from an oil-sodden death, while the sludgy bodies of sea turtles and dolphins regularly washed ashore.
Maris sat back in her chair. No wonder Howard was so opposed to the oil well. He’d inadvertently been involved with one of the most lethal spills in history.
But did that translate to violence?
Maris shook her head. “No,” she whispered.
She’d known Howard too long. He was simply not capable. She glanced at the computer screen. But she was going to have to ask him about this. With a sigh, she finished off the last of the candy bar. Good thing she’d bought more.
14
When Maris got up from the desk, she found that Mojo had decided to perch in the bay window. Luckily, her little cat preferred to interact with nature remotely. In the beginning she’d been worried that he might be an escape artist and scooped him up every time he was in the vicinity of open doors. But it hadn’t taken long, with the guests coming and going, until she’d simply been too far away to pick him up. But to her relief, he’d trotted to the threshold, looked out, and then trotted away before the door closed. At this point she wondered if he’d even put up with being carried outside—not that she wanted to encourage him.
“What do your kitty eyes see?” she asked him.
Following his line of sight, Maris looked south along the coast, and then at the lawn that bordered the B&B. A small squirrel seemed to be foraging in the grass. It tucked its nose to the ground, in between the green blades, but periodically checked the surroundings. Slowly it was crossing from right to left, and Mojo was watching.
But as Maris watched him watch, she realized it wasn’t a predatory or hunting type of interest. His whiskers didn’t twitch; he seemed relaxed; and he certainly didn’t hunker low. It was almost as though he was watching television. Then again, the pudgy black cat had no need of hunting, since she and Cookie kept him constantly supplied with the only thing he would eat: smoked salmon.
“At least you’ve got good taste,” she said, as she stroked his head.
When she turned away from the window, she saw the black skeleton key that hung next to the door. It’d been weeks since she’d been in the basement. After having spent a bit of time in the cellars of Alegra Winery, she’d felt she’d been making good progress on confronting her mild claustrophobia. But her trip into the dark space below floor level had still created the anxiety that
