Page 27 of Presumed Dead

“Saw him sanding the rail yesterday afternoon. Looked like he knew what he was doing.”

“He does.”

“What’d you say he did before?”

“Logistics.”

“Logistics is a hell of a word.”

“It is.”

She didn’t look up from the daybook. The daybook had a column for the Doyle diesel she was filling in with her right hand, and she’d been filling in columns in this daybook since 2014, and she could fill in the column with her right hand and watch Doyle Pruitt with the side of her face.

Doyle was looking out the back window.

Not at her. Not at the daybook. At the back window, which faced the piers, which faced the kiosk, which faced Pier Three, at the angle the side of the kiosk made it face Pier Three. From where Doyle was standing at her counter, the only thing he could see out the front window that he hadn’t already seen this morning was the top eighteen inches of slip seventeen’s windshield over the line of the kiosk roof.

He was looking at the top eighteen inches of slip seventeen’s windshield. He had been looking at them for the count of about ten seconds.

Sloane finished the column.

“Anything else, Doyle?”

He turned back. The eyes that came back to her were the eyes of a man who’d been somewhere else for a count of ten seconds and was now choosing to be back at her counter, and he did the small smile that didn’t reach his eyes, the way he’d been doing it for five years.

“Nope.” He tapped the counter twice with his thumbnail. “You have a good day, Sloane.”

“You too, Doyle.”

He went out. The bell sounded. She watched his back through the back window all the way across until he turned down Pier Two, and she watched the spot he’d been standing in for another count of about four breaths after he was gone.

She’d been telling herself for five years that Doyle Pruitt watching her marina from her counter was Doyle Pruitt being a marina tenant who didn’t have anything better to do with his morning. This morning, with the angle of his head and the ten-second count and the cleanliness of his thumbnail, she was no longer telling herself that.

She didn’t have what was on the other side of that sentence yet.

She filed it. The shelf behind the insurance certificates was getting busy.

Catherine Pell came in at ten-fifteen with a Pyrex dish in her arms, a tea towel folded over the top, and the smell of cheese that had been melted on top of more cheese.

The bell dinged. Catherine paused in the doorway, which was for the half-second it took an older woman with a covered Pyrex to find a place to set it down without committing. Her eyes went to the back counter, where Sloane’s rags lived. She decided against the back counter. Her eyes went to the front counter. She set the Pyrex down on the front counter beside the daybook and let the tea towel fall back to the half-inch it had been holding up off the top.

“Tuna noodle.”

“Catherine.”

“I told the new tenant I was bringing him one. I have brought him one. He was busy. He is busy at all the hours I have come over there in the last twenty-four. So I have brought the other one to you.”

“The other one.”

“I made two. I always make two. I've made tuna noodle in pairs since 1974, when my mother made me promise I would never let a friend who needed a casserole sit waiting on it.”

“Catherine.”

“Yes.”

“Did I need a casserole?”

“You don’t need a casserole. You need a Pyrex dish on your counter on a Wednesday morning so that when you go home tonight, you don’t cook. That is a separate condition. The casserole is the vehicle.”