“I was looking for Martin Bledsoe. He owns the Pole Star Line.”

Bobby relaxed a bit. “Why?”

“I was on board the Lucella when she blew up last week. That’s his flagship. Someone put depth charges under her last Friday up in Sault Ste. Marie and—”

“Yes, I know all about that. What did you want to see Bledsoe for?”

“My suitcase fell into the middle of the ship. I wanted to know if they recovered it.”

Mallory turned red at that. “You don’t go bothering the owner of a steamship line for that kind of crap. Cut out the horseplay and tell me the truth.”

I shook my head earnestly. “I am telling you the truth. No one else knew anything about it, so I went to see him. You see, my Smith & Wesson was in my case. That cost me three hundred dollars and I can’t afford to replace it.”

I knew that would divert Bobby’s attention. He does not like the idea of my carrying a gun. He knows that my dad taught me how to use one. Tony believed most shooting accidents were caused by children not knowing anything about firearms. Since he had to keep his police revolver at home sometimes, he made me learn how to clean, load, and shoot it. Nonetheless, the idea of a woman toting around a Smith & Wesson is contrary to all Bobby’s notions of a proper lady’s life-style. He jumped on that, demanding to know why I had the gun with me on board ship and what I was doing on the Lucella anyway.

That was easier ground. I reminded him of my car accident. “You guys wanted to believe it was vandals. I thought it was someone connected with the Port. I went up to Thunder Bay to talk to the captain and the chief engineer of the Lucella. Since one of them might have tried to kill me, I took my gun with me.”

We talked about that for a while. I reiterated my belief that Boom Boom had been pushed under the Bertha Krupnik. I told him I thought Henry Kelvin, the night watchman in his building, had been killed when he surprised intruders trying to find evidence that Boom Boom had of a crime down at the Port. Bobby wouldn’t be persuaded. As far as he was concerned, Boom Boom had fallen in by accident, I was the victim of vandals, and Kelvin had interrupted a routine housebreaking. At that point a stubborn decision to keep the rest of my information to myself overtook me. If they were going to be so damned pigheaded, I would be, too.

When Bobby got back to my fingerprints in Phillips’s office, I evaded the issue. “What were you guys doing fingerprinting the man’s office, anyway?”