Read Online Isolation by Mary Anna Evans - Free Book Online Page A

other people to work his murder cases. There’s a connection between your environmental work and her murder, isn’t there? If your illegal dumpers used the marina, they knew Liz. Maybe they rented a boat slip from her.” She got no response from the detective, not even an adolescent shrug.
    Faye had spent enough time at the marina to be able to hold an image of the whole thing in her mind, picturing it and all the people who frequented it. She pictured the marina’s maintenance shed, located near the slips Liz had rented to people wealthy enough to pay rent so that their boats would have a place to stay. The shop was rented out to a man named Tommy Barnett who worked on balky boats when he worked at all.
    Her mind also turned to Wilma, the woman who paid Liz for the right to sell fuel to the marina’s customers. Neither Tommy nor Wilma seemed to make much money, but they were never without customers and they didn’t seem to work all that hard. The very definition of a “captive market” would be “a person sitting at Liz’s dock in a boat that won’t go.”
    â€œYou talked to Tommy and Wilma yet? About the murder? Or about whatever environmental case was sending you to Liz’s place?”
    Gerry was studying the papers in his hand hard, like a man who was trying not to listen.
    â€œWhen you think about it,” Faye said, “any boat that’s not a sailboat is a useless bucket without a working motor and fuel. When it comes to fuel, Wilma’s the only game for miles around. As for motors, putting metal in salt water is just stupid, but that’s what we do. When a motor quits—and sooner or later, it will quit—Tommy’s the only game for miles around. Anybody that uses this marina is going to cross paths with Tommy or Wilma sooner or later. Guaranteed.”
    Gerry gave the lab reports an impatient twitch, as if he longed to swat her away like a fly. “I get your point. Tommy and Wilma see all and they know all.”
    â€œWell, they did, until Liz died and her marina stopped being open for business.”
    Gerry finally met her eyes. “Do you think either of them realized—”
    Nadia, breathless, interrupted him with a single deadly word.
    â€œArsenic.”
    Faye’s head swiveled in Nadia’s direction and Gerry’s did the same. Notorious poisons have a way of attracting attention.
    Gerry tucked the reports he’d been reading under one arm and reached for the new ones in Nadia’s hands. “Arsenic? Just arsenic and nothing else?”
    â€œI see volatiles, but they belong at a petroleum site. Other than the usual suspects, I only see arsenic, but why would I be getting hits for arsenic? And there’s something else weird. The arsenic contamination isn’t in the same pattern as the petroleum. It’s spread over a wider area and it’s not centered on the kerosene hot spot around the old tank. What the hell?”
    Faye wasn’t sure how sick she should feel about the discovery of a famous poison on her property.
    He asked Faye, “Did anybody ever run cattle out here?”
    â€œOnly small-scale, for their own use for meat and milk. Never at a commercial level. And it was a long time ago.”
    He looked around the spot where they stood, so close to the shore and on soil so sandy that it was almost a beach. “This doesn’t look like a place where anybody ever grew crops.”
    â€œNot to my knowledge,” Faye said. Then her honest mouth betrayed her and she said, “The whole island has been rebuilt by hurricanes several times, though. It’s possible that, at some point, this was a spot where somebody might have tried to grow something. But if they did, I don’t know about it.”
    Nadia and Gerry huddled over the lab sheets. He mumbled something apparently intended for Faye, since Nadia would already know it. “In the old days, arsenic was a key