Away with the Fishes Read Online Free Page B

have cameras? Maybe we should just call the police,” Branson suggested. In response, Trevor looked knowingly at Raoul and did something of a cough and a snort combined. It was the sound he made whenever he wished to remind Branson that his years off Oh had rubbed away a few layers of islander varnish.
    “The police? They’ll fill out a dozen forms, cite me for covering the evidence in flour, and call in experts from Killig who’ll file a report.” (Killig is Oh’s island neighbor, known for its rum and for robbing Oh of a lucrative pineapple trade.) Though Raoul counted himself among Oh’s government ranks and almost took offense at Trevor’s characterization, over the years he had witnessed more than one pickle at the hands of the Island Police, and so he held his tongue.
    Trevor cough-snorted again and went on. “Then
our
police will file a report about
their
report and before you know it, the trail’s gone cold.”
    “What trail?” Branson asked.
    “The trail from the bike to its rider,” Trevor said with a bit too much glee.
    Though Branson listened to his best friend sort out the islanders’ troubles every evening at the bakery, he forgot how muchTrevor fancied a really good riddle. Which is what the mystery of the mangled bicycle was becoming.
    “Have it your way,” Branson said and let his hands fall to his legs with a loud slap. It was the sound
he
made whenever he wished to
acknowledge
his thin islander veneer (a Bowles hallmark, alas, this thinness). Which was not so thin, mind you, that he didn’t guess Trevor’s ulterior motive for involving the
Morning Crier
.
    Trevor wanted to stir up talk, a foolproof island remedy for any island problem. In this, too, Raoul agreed with him. Though Raoul himself was a man of few words, and much preferred the permanency of those printed in his library books, he had long since discovered the power of some old-fashioned island gossip.

    Bruce arrived shortly after (he only lived a few minutes away on foot) and began to assemble his reportage of dog-eared notepad pages on which he scribbled Randolph’s and Jarvis’s account, and snapshots of the bike from every angle. Raoul and Trevor finally allowed the removal of the bike remains from the truck, and Bruce photographed them upright, too, or as close to upright as the boys could hold them.
    “If you don’t mind, Trevor, I’ll get a start on the story here, while it’s all fresh.” Bruce tapped his temple with his index finger and cleared some space on the counter. “I might need to ask the boys for more details as I go along.”
    “Suit yourself,” Trevor said. “We have to wait for Ernest anyway.”
    Wait they did, Trevor, his son Randolph, Jarvis the bus conductor, Branson, and Raoul, in silence, seated on the low concretestep outside the bakery. Randolph and Jarvis, still shaken by their discovery, drank beer from sweaty brown bottles with slippery labels. Trevor drew with his fingers in the dirt between his feet, and Branson stared at the moon, fuller-faced than any he could remember for quite some time. He half-noticed that the tree-frogs and crickets, too, chirped louder than they had in weeks.
    Only Raoul’s mind was racing. He was troubled, he was. By the hot-pink message that had sent him scrambling to the bakery, by the news of Bruce’s anonymous ad, by the bent and twisted bicycle the baker’s son had found in the road. It seemed a terrific coincidence that bikes were turning up in newspapers and on shortcuts alike, or that Bruce and Raoul should both receive unsigned letters in the space of two days. As much as Raoul hated to admit it, it seemed that Trevor had got it right. Oh was wide awake, and the rainy moon was just the beginning. Unless—and Raoul thought this the better guess by far—the rain was the only
real
coincidence and he could find some connection between the BAKER, the bicycle, and the bashful bachelor hungry for a wife.
    While Raoul wondered how to go about such a