Trout hit the MEMORY button to return the call.

“Quite the show you put on for my seminar on climate change,” Trout said in his dry New England tone. “Are you auditioning for the Rockettes?”

Rich feminine laughter cascaded from the phone.

“I tried to call you but you didn’t answer, Herr Professor,” said Gamay. “Then I waved my hands outside your window until I was blue in the face. I had on my bathing suit from this morning’s dive, so in desperation I slipped my shift off and put on a skin show. Apparently, it worked.”

Paul broke into an easy grin.

“Oh, it worked, all right,” he said. “The body temperature of every male in the room rose twenty degrees. Your little striptease may have set off a new round of global warming.”

“Sorry,” Gamay said lightly, “but Kurt called. He and Joe are still on the Beebe.”

“Kurt? Why didn’t you say so? How’d the bathysphere dive go?”

“I told him we had watched until the transmission got cut short. He said the dive was memorable.”

“Odd choice of words. What did he mean?”

“He said he’d explain later. But it appears our attempt to relive our courting days here at Scripps is over. Kurt needs somebody to go to Florida to look into the Bonefish Key Marine Center.”

“Why the interest in Bonefish?”

“He again said he’d explain later. He’d like us to snoop around the center and let him know if anything there strikes us as funny . . . As in peculiar.”

“It’s going to be awkward trying to get out of my schedule,” Paul said. “I’m committed to two more days of panels and lectures.”

“I’ve finished my research dives,” Gamay said. “While you wrap up your seminar, I’ll head off to Florida. You can follow when you’re done.”

Paul glanced at his watch.

“Let’s discuss it over lunch,” he said. “I’ll meet you in the cafeteria after I cool down my seminar group.”

He had been amused but not surprised at his wife’s effective, if unorthodox, attention-getting technique. It was typical of her resourcefulness and her fearlessness. Her open personality was the opposite of Trout’s New England reserve, but they had been immediately attracted to each other from the time they first met at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. Paul was studying for his Ph.D. in ocean science, while Gamay had changed her field of interest from marine archaeology to marine biology and was working toward her doctorate also.