Page 32 of What a Wolf Wants
The captain waved at the dolphins near the boat. “This is a large group—about ninety of them but they can reach up to 300 in a pod.”
“Wow.” Charlene was taking pictures like crazy.
But so was Ethan, thinking she might even want to use one of his pictures in her rental units if he could take any good ones.
“The dolphins come up north from California and visit Oregon and Washington over the summer,” Rusty said.
“That is too cool for us,” Charlene said.
When the dolphins moved off, they didn’t see anything for a while, but then they saw Flipper and his relatives! Bottlenose dolphins! They were about ten in number, Ethan thought.
“The bottlenose dolphins can be loners or even swim up to a thousand in a pod. Though most pods consist of about ten to thirty dolphins hunting fish together,” Rusty said.
Once the dolphins left, they had to wait patiently to watch for whales, but Ethan was thrilled they had gotten to see the two kinds of dolphins. If they didn’t see a whale, he would take Charlene out again on another whale-watching trip. He could see where this could be addictive. He was just glad they were loving the boat ride on the ocean and feeling the sea breeze whipping across their bow and that neither of them had gotten seasick.
Just when it seemed like they wouldn’t catch sight of any whales, they saw two gray whales feeding on the kelp beds. Captain Rusty moved the boat closer and then just stopped. Before they were ready for it, they were surrounded by four whales, curious about the boat.
“Oh,” Charlene squealed, pointing at the tail of a whale.
Ethan smiled at her and was enjoying seeing the whales as much as he was enjoying seeing Charlene having fun doing this.
After watching them for about a half hour, the whales finally left, and after the beautiful experience, Capt. Rusty motored them back to the dock.
They thanked the captain for a delightful trip and then headed off to Charlene’s home.
“That was incredible,” Charlene said.
“I agree.”
“I think you took as many pictures of all the marine life as I did.”
He laughed. “I’m sure of it. You can use any of the ones I got if you think they’re good.”
“Oh, thanks. I sure will.”
***
For dinner, they headed over to the Pelican Brief Pub where Charlene had eaten the first time she was here in Oyster Bay. Once they sat down and had their menus in hand, Ethan asked her, “Do you recall seeing anyone who might have anything to do with sending flowers to you?”
Charlene looked over her menu. “Nah. I really didn’t think this would work, but I’m glad we had the meals together and checked the restaurants out just in case.”
“Yeah, it was worth trying and I’ve enjoyed the whole day.”
“Me too.”
“So what’s the best case you ever worked on as a homicide detective?” Ethan closed up his menu.
“Whenever I could catch a murderer and had enough evidence to put him or her or both away, those were the best cases. The family would suffer forever from the loss of their loved one or ones, but at least the guilty party would besitting in prison so he or she couldn’t do it again. But I was also involved in helping to locate missing kids when there was an urgent need and I wasn’t in the middle of a murder investigation. Even during murder investigations, I would spend practically every waking hour of my own time searching for kids who went missing in the area. My boss joked that he needed to create a one-person missing persons bureau that I worked at full-time because my success rate was so high, whether I was recovering missing children who just got separated from their parents on one of the boardwalks or runaway teens.”
The server came to take their orders and after Charlene ordered a lobster meal and Ethan ordered a rib eye steak dinner, the server brought them a small loaf of sourdough bread and butter and glasses of white wine and water, then left to take orders from another table.
Ethan sliced off a piece of bread for Charlene, who thanked him and began buttering the bread. He cut off another slice for himself and buttered it. Before long, the server brought their lobster and steak dinners. They thanked the server and then began eating.
“So what was the best case that you ever worked on?” Charlene asked Ethan.
“It’s pending. Taking down Kroner and his cohorts was supposed to be my best case, since they were the ones responsible for my parents’ murders. But with Kroner out and on the run, and no trial yet for Benny, and the others still free, it will be a while before I learn if it’s the best case or not. One of my earlier cases involved a boy, though, whohad stolen a thirty-dollar fountain pen from an office supply store. He didn’t want the pen so much as he wanted to prove to his friends that he could steal like they could. He figured it would be easy to grab because it was so small, but it had a security sticker on it.”
“How old was he?”
