Read Online Still Waters by John Moss - Free Book Online Page A

a few minutes to adjustwhile pond water flooded the container, the Chagoi flicked its tail and disappeared into the murky deep.
    Morgan and Miranda waited so close that their clothing touched like the rustling of dry grass on a still day or the sound between calm water and the shore of a northern lake. They both knew northern lakes from working as students in the summers. They both loved summer, and the heart of winter. And the suddenness of spring, the slow advent of autumn. They agreed that March and November were the dismal months.
    After a while, the big Chagoi surfaced and mouthed the air to express a healthy appetite, then faded back into opacity until Morgan returned with food. The fish rose to feed from his hand, and as it did, softly shifting patterns of red and white slowly came into focus in the water behind it. Heartened by the Chagoi, a myriad fish hovered randomly below the surface. Then, gradually, as the Chagoi swam away and back, taking food and releasing pellets into the surrounding water, they all began to eat.
    â€œOkay,” said Miranda. “We were right. These are fabulous Kohaku. There must be a fortune tied up in this pool. People pay astounding sums for fish like these.”
    â€œYesterday you thought koi were pond ornaments. Miranda, the woman next door is watching us from her attic. Don’t turn around! I saw her glasses, maybe binoculars. Okay, let’s both look at once.”
    Miranda wheeled, and they both gazed at the attic window. There was the briefest flash, then the window emptied of even that much of Mrs. Jorge de Cucherillos.
    â€œWho talked to her?” asked Miranda. “Don’t you love the name? I knew someone called Snot once.”
    â€œYou did not.”
    â€œI knew Finks and Risks and Underhills and Over-dales, and I went to school with Juliet Smellie —” Shestopped suddenly, her banter overtaken by an observation. “Someone was here last night.”
    â€œHow so?”
    â€œThere are no leaves on the ponds. There’s a skimmer thing sucking most of them away on the upper pool, but not this one.”
    â€œIt wasn’t the pond maintenance people,” said Morgan. “They checked out as water mechanics. They don’t know much about the fish themselves. There was a guy here this morning when I arrived, just after sunrise. He seemed more concerned about lost business than murder.”
    â€œYou were here at sunrise?”
    â€œGot a call from a friend in the night, couldn’t sleep for worrying. So, anyway, Griffin must have brought the fish directly from Japan. We can check customs, though maybe they’re smuggled.”
    â€œA fish-smuggling lawyer with a language obsession!”
    â€œWho he could sell to is an open question.”
    â€œWhom,” Miranda corrected. “What about Mrs. Jorge de Cuchilleros?”
    â€œShe’s housebound, apparently. Let’s go and talk to her.”
    â€œMy great-grandmother and her friends used to call each other by their last names. ‘Mrs. Nisbell came to tea,’ she’d say. ‘And Mrs. Purvis and Mrs. Frank Pattinson, and so on.’”
    â€œA bygone era when —”
    â€œWomen were women.”
    â€œWhen life was gracious.”
    â€œFor the rich,” said Miranda. “We weren’t rich. Maybe village rich — we had indoor plumbing.”
    â€œI want to see inside the house.”
    â€œYou weren’t rich, either.”
    â€œI remember.” He touched her on the arm as if to hold her back, though she was standing still. “I don’t recall my father ever being called mister. My mother got Mrs., but only from people above her talking down.”
    â€œMy parents were Mom and Dad even to each other.”
    â€œMine were Darlene and Fred. And we lived in Cabbagetown when it was still Cabbagetown.”
    â€œThe largest Anglo-Saxon slum outside England — I’ve heard it before, Morgan. And