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thick, gray line across his eyes. “I don’t know. But I guess the way he was killed suggests some sort of an emotional element, doesn’t it?” He glanced at Claire out of the corner of his eye.
    Claire pressed her lips together. Investigating the emotional aspect of the cases was her forte, not Dom’s. She would have to appeal to his sense of logical clues to get him excited about teaming up on the case. “I’m not so sure about that. I think the fact that he was put in the kettle is the real clue. I bet if the police follow that logically, they’ll uncover the killer.”
    “So, you think it was someone from the island?”
    Claire shook her head. “I doubt it. I mean, why would someone from the island put him in the kettle? What would their motive be? I noticed the police were putting down a lot of those yellow cards. I bet there was some interesting physical evidence there.” Claire laughed. “But what am I telling you that for? You’re the expert in that area. I bet you noticed every little detail yourself.”
    Dom straightened in the chair. A slight flush crept into his cheeks. He picked another pistachio out of the bag. “I might have noticed a few things. But someone must have been quite mad to strangle him. That’s the part that’s got me baffled. You know I’m not good at the human relationship aspect of investigations like you are.”
    Claire fidgeted in her seat, a swell of pride warming her chest. “I wonder what he was doing down there in the first place. He must have been killed early in the morning. We found him around eight and the ME said he had been dead about six hours.”
    Dom nodded slowly, then stared out to sea, timing his words so they would have the most impact on Claire. “I guess the police will question everyone as to their whereabouts and try to figure out a motive. You know Zambuco. He’ll want to get the case closed as soon as possible. Do you think he’ll try to nail someone from the island?”
    Claire looked at him curiously. He sounded apprehensive, almost as if he took offense in Zambuco trying to pin it on an islander. Maybe he was becoming an islander himself … and that would be a great way to get him to team up. “Probably. That’s what he did last time … but last time, we didn’t let him get away with it. We found the real killer.”
    “That’s right. We did good, but I’m afraid on this one, the emotional element would trip me up.”
    Claire frowned at him. “Oh, no, there’s a much bigger problem with the physical clues .. This case needs your unique skills of logical deduction.”
    Dom nodded and they both let a few seconds pass before cautiously peering at each other out of the corner of their eyes.
    “Our skills are complementary. That worked well on the last case. I suppose it could work on this one, too,” Claire ventured, keeping her voice light as if it didn’t make much of a difference to her whether they teamed up or not.
    Dom twisted his lips and looked thoughtful, as if he hadn’t considered the idea of them teaming up. “I suppose so. We did solve a lot of cases by putting our heads together down in Boston, and the last case on the island was kind of fun.”
    “It was,” Claire said truthfully. She still hadn’t forgotten the rush of capturing the killer and how it had made her feel useful and alive. “We do need to protect our own islanders from Zambuco and it seems we can best do that by working together.”
    “That’s true.” Dom cracked open a pistachio. “I suppose it can’t hurt to team up. I was kind of looking for something to do anyway.”
    “It’s settled, then. Where do we start?” Claire shifted in her seat to look at Dom. She’d purposely appealed to Dom’s ego by asking him where he thought they should start. She already knew where she would start, but she didn’t have a huge ego like he did and she figured that acting like she needed his input would insure his cooperation. She congratulated herself at how