Killer Crab Cakes Read Free Page A

but there was still a lot about him she didn’t know.
    He shook his head. “Nah. Strictly amateur. Mostly lake fishin’. But I’ve done a little saltwater fishin’ like this, too.”
    They were drawing nearer to Ed McKenna, who hadn’t looked around at them even though he must have heard their footsteps on the wooden pier. He was staring out at the water with a fixed expression, obviously intent on his fishing. He wasn’t turning the handle on his reel, Phyllis noticed, which struck her as a little strange, but maybe that was some special fishing technique she didn’t know anything about.
    As they came even with McKenna, Sam paused and reached down to give the man a friendly slap on the shoulder. “Gettin’ any bites?” he asked.
    McKenna didn’t answer.
    Instead, he pitched forward face-first into the water.
    Phyllis was so shocked that for a moment all she could do was stand there staring at the ripples spreading out violently from the place where McKenna had vanished beneath the surface with a giant splash. Then her instincts kicked in and she realized that someone should jump in and help the poor man. She started to kick off her shoes.
    Sam was already in motion, though. He had dropped his fishing equipment and toed the sneakers off his feet. He sat down on the wall, swung his legs over it, and dropped feetfirst into the water, which was about four feet under the pier. He entered the water carefully because he didn’t know how deep it was right here, Phyllis realized.
    Sam took a deep breath and went all the way under as Phyllis leaned over the side, resting her hands on the wall. She watched the surface anxiously as she waited for him to reappear. Fear welled up inside her. She was glad that Sam had gone in to help McKenna, but she didn’t want anything to happen to him. There might be all sorts of things in that water, like jagged rocks or stingrays or even sharks . . .
    With another big splash, Sam broke the surface. He had one arm around Ed McKenna’s body, looped under his arms to hold him up. Sam waved his other hand toward the shore and called, “I’m takin’ him in!”
    That made sense. He couldn’t lift McKenna to the pier from where he was. Carrying Sam’s sneakers, Phyllis trotted along the pier. She kept pace as Sam swam strongly toward shore, towing McKenna as he went.
    From what Phyllis could see of McKenna’s face, the man didn’t look good. He hadn’t been under the water all that long, probably less than a minute in all. A person couldn’t drown in that short a time, could they?
    Phyllis got to the end of the pier and jumped down to the narrow, reedy beach. She dropped Sam’s sneakers and waded into the water, heedless of her own shoes and blue jeans, and leaned down to grab McKenna and help Sam haul him out of the water. A shudder went through her as she saw the man’s gray, lifeless face.
    “My God, Sam!” she said as he climbed out. Water streamed from his clothes and body. “Mr. McKenna’s dead. He must have drowned right away.”
    Sam pawed his soaked hair back and shook his head. “Nobody drowns that fast. Did you see the way he went in? He was just balanced there on the wall, waiting for somebody like me to come along and knock him in.”
    “You mean . . . ?”
    Sam nodded. “He was dead when he went into the water.”

Chapter 2

    A heart attack. That was Phyllis’s first thought. The poor man must have been sitting there fishing when the crushing pain hit him. That was why he had been sort of hunched over when Sam came along and gave him that friendly slap on the shoulder.
    Ed McKenna had died doing what he loved, she told herself.
    Then she realized immediately that she didn’t know that at all. She had met him only three days earlier and hadn’t exchanged more than a few dozen words with him since then. Even though he spent a lot of time fishing, she had no idea if he loved it or not.
    Sam leaned over and put his hands on his knees as he took several deep