Mystery Short Story

Fog rolls into Port Callan the way trouble always does — quietly, until you can't see your hand in front of your face.

I'd been nursing the same cup of cold coffee for two hours when she walked into my office above the bait shop, the kind of woman who makes you wish you'd cleaned the place up. She didn't seem to notice the stacked case files or the dying plant on the windowsill. She had that particular look of someone whose problems were bigger than aesthetics.

"Detective Rourke?" Her voice was steadier than her hands.

"That's what it says on the door."

She sat without being asked. "My husband went out three nights ago. The harbormaster says his boat came back. He didn't."

I wrote her name in my notebook — Clara Mast — and thought about the fisherman I'd seen last week at the Anchor, drinking with a man whose face I couldn't quite place now that I tried. Funny how memory works. Or doesn't.