Death Runs Adrift (The Gray Whale Inn Mysteries) by Karen MacInerney Page B

just knocked unconscious, or had something worse happened?
    For the first time since the skiff had been hit, I found myself wondering who had done it—and why. “Did you see the boat that hit us?” I asked Beryl as we kicked toward shore.
    “Only briefly,” she said. “It was a little one, about the size of yours.”
    “Did you see any other boat?”
    “I think there was a lobster boat,” she said. “But I wasn’t really paying attention.”
    “Me neither,” I said, but wished I had. A lobster boat. “Did you see a buoy on it?”
    “No,” she said.
    I turned briefly and scanned the water, but there was no lobster boat in sight. Whoever it was had disappeared fast—and probably with the skiff that had hit us. Any local lobsterman would have stopped to help us, not disappeared. Which meant whoever had sideswiped the boat wasn’t local—and I was guessing they were displaying a turquoise and orange buoy.
    By the time we made it to the beach, there was no sign of the Little Marian , and the boat that had sideswiped us hadn’t returned. Within a few minutes of laying her out on the beach, Agnes woke with a start and sat up.
    “What happened?” she asked, teeth chattering. “Where are we?”
    While Beryl explained what had happened and we helped her take off her waterlogged clothes, I scanned the water for a boat. I’d waved down the Sea Queen from here before; we’d be cold, but with any luck, George McLeod would spot us when he went on his next run.
    As I hugged myself and shivered—it wasn’t cold, but the breeze sucked the warmth out of my wet clothes, and the icy water had chilled me to the bone—I thought again of the boat that had run us down. What had they been doing near the cove, and why hadn’t they stopped to render aid? Had they been about to enter the cove themselves?
    Someone had been in Smuggler’s Cove recently. And it was a good guess that whoever had left that mud on the floor wasn’t there for sightseeing—and didn’t want anyone else there, either.
    But who? I wondered.
    And more importantly—why?
    _____
    We were lucky; the next mail boat run was only twenty minutes after we dragged ourselves ashore. I jumped up and down, waving my waterlogged jacket. Several passengers waved back, and when I saw George, the captain, hail me, I knew he’d send someone to retrieve us.
    It was only another fifteen minutes before I heard the thrum of an engine, and John appeared in Mooncatcher .
    “Is everyone okay?” His green eyes scanned us—both my guests had dark mascara streaks down their faces, and we all resembled drowned rats—but lingered on me. A deep furrow appeared between his eyebrows.
    “We’re fine,” I said. “We probably want to get Agnes checked out, though—she took a nasty knock to the head.” There were no signs of concussion that I could see, but I was hardly a trained medical professional.
    “How did this happen? Where’s your skiff?”
    “We got blindsided on the way out of Smuggler’s Cove, and the skiff went down,” I said as I helped Agnes into John’s skiff.
    “And they didn’t stop?”
    I shook my head. “None of us got a good look at it, either. It was a skiff, and Beryl saw a lobster boat nearby, but that’s all we’ve got.” I was no Sherlock Holmes, I thought with a grimace. On the other hand, I’d been more worried about saving Agnes than about identifying boats.
    “Well, let’s get you home and warmed up,” John said as I climbed into the boat after our guests. As he gunned the engine and we turned toward home, his face was grave, and his eyes were turned toward the now-disappearing cove in the side of the cliffs. “I’ll ask around and see if anyone knows anything. We’ll have to report this.”
    As I huddled down and tried to stay warm, I knew both of us were wondering the same thing. Was there any connection between the skiff that had rammed us and the death of young Derek?
    I sighed and looked back at the dark cove. Sometimes I