Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island Read Free Page A

ago, quite reasonably, she still thought. Yet his “No way!” still reverberated. San Juan Island would be a good place to tackle the topic again. If they took this case.

    Plagiarism, Noel thought, as he checked Triple I’s email. When he’d been at university, some students had bought papers, the stupidest a kid who gave the professor a paper on water imagery in Wordsworth’s poetry, but the guy hadn’t even checked its author—the prof’s wife. Wonder what happened to the guy . . . 
    Good to get to a case again. Dr. Peter Langley was the professor’s name. The email included his landline numbers, home and office, and his cell phone number. But it did seem overkill to pay a private investigator, even if plagiarism was intellectual theft. He texted Kyra that he would go over tomorrow. By now she’d probably read Langley’s email. And since San Juan was a US island, he’d have to leave the Beretta at home. What a shame.
    The Internet told Noel that Morsely University on San Juan Island was a small, expensive, specialized university with most of the teaching online—students came in for two weeks at the start of each term, a few days at the end of term. San Juan was an hour plus by ferry from Sidney, north of Victoria on the Saanich Peninsula. Nanaimo, where Noel lived, was two hours up Vancouver Island. Did he need a reservation for the ferry and what time did it leave? Okay, 12:05 PM , and a reservation was a good idea. He phoned Dr. Langley, no answer, then texted him to confirm his arrival the next afternoon. Texting was a new thing for him, Kyra dragging him into the present. Blackberry or iPhone? His nationalism chose the Blackberry. He didn’t much enjoy it—his fingers were too big.
    Later that evening Langley texted back: Call when you get in, I’ll give you directions. Noel packed a bag, had a drink and slept well. In the morning he grabbed his bag and computer case, locked the condo and put his luggage on the back seat of his brand-new deep-blue Honda Civic; his previous Honda, just a year old, had been totaled by Kyra on Quadra Island. He headed down-island, over the twisting Malahat, bypassed Victoria and arrived at the Sidney terminal with nearly an hour to spare. Before entering the ferry parking lot, he tried phoning Langley. This time a machine told him Langley was in class. Noel paid and lined up, one of three cars in the row going to San Juan. In another segment of the lot, seven more rows—cars to be ferried to Anacortes, connecting from there to the Washington mainland by a bridge. Not many cars on this late August Wednesday. Strangely, a good number of walk-ons. Commuting regularly between Canada and the US? Between the lineups and the dock stood a model of a little boat labeled FERRY BETWEEN FRIENDS . Cute.
    A yellow-jacketed ferry worker slid a yellow card under the Honda’s windshield wiper. Noel presumed that meant they knew he was going to Friday Harbor. Noel got out to explore. Around the parking lot was a high wire fence; toward Sidney, a public boat launch. A path ran along the beachfront and crossed the area where cars drove onto the ferry. Along the path were two gates, one on the ferry side, the other on the parking lot side. Clever, thought Noel. When no one was getting on or off, the gates remained locked and the public could easily walk along the path.
    He returned to the car and pulled out his book, first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography. Fifteen minutes before departure, another yellow-coated ferry worker told him to drive aboard. He did, locked the Honda and went up to the lounge. It looked similar to the BC short-route ferries yet different—for one thing, the seats were more comfortable. He discovered a duty-free shop. Of course: he was traveling between nations. He bought a liter of vodka for twenty-one dollars. Kyra would like that.
    A seventy-five-minute trip. He walked the length of the