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skillfully she’d maneuvered him into agreeing to work with her and even thinking it was his idea.
    Dom chewed his pistachio. “Well, we need to find out the identity of the victim and what he was doing down at the pier early this morning.”
    “Didn’t Larry say he had seen him down near the boat tours?” Claire’s memory tingled. “I think I saw him talking to Donovan Hicks yesterday afternoon.” She left out the part about him talking to Mae.
    Dom looked at Claire sharply. “So you saw the victim yesterday? Did you mention it to Zambuco?”
    Oops, she probably shouldn’t have said that. “Well, yes. I mean, I think it was him. I was at the hairdresser and happened to be looking out at the dock. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even really think about telling Zambuco. I mean, it’s not like I know who he is or anything.”
    “But you did see him. What was he doing?”
    Claire avoided eye contact. “Nothing. I just saw him talking to Donovan and then he walked off. They did seem like they were arguing, though.”
    Dom pressed his lips together and gazed out at the ocean. Donovan Hicks ran Crabby Cove Charters which had a fleet of tour boats and fishing boats. And fishing boats use twine. “Sounds like we need to go have a little talk with Donovan Hicks.”

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    D onovan Hicks was on the SeaStar , one of Crabby Tours' sightseeing boats that took tourists on a round-trip excursion to the lighthouse at the end of the island and back. He was cleaning the boat out after its mid-afternoon trip. Claire and Dom weaved their way through the crowd of tourists disembarking from the boat, as they made their way down the dock toward it.
    Donovan turned from his task of picking up the empty plastic cups left scattered on the wooden benches on the boat. “Hey, Claire.” He nodded his chin at them. “Dom.”
    “Hi, Donovan. How you doing?” Claire stopped on the dock next to the boat and shaded her eyes from the sun to look up at him.
    Beneath them, the water lapped at the thick pylons that held the dock in place. Dom watched a pair of ducks paddle leisurely under the dock, his eyes drifting to the other side, waiting for them to appear while he mentally congratulated himself on how skillfully he’d maneuvered Claire into agreeing to work with him. It seemed like she even thought it was her idea, which was perfect since that would make her more agreeable to work with.
    Donovan came to the boat's railing, the brim of his captain’s hat casting a shadow on his face as he looked down at them, his questioning eyes switching from Claire to Dom and back again. “Good. You guys fixin’ to take a cruise?”
    “Not today,” Dom said, watching the ducks emerge on the other side. “We were wondering what you knew about the trouble this morning.”
    Donovan’s eyes drifted to the grassy area at the end of the pier. “I heard ‘bout that. Doesn’t seem to have hurt the festival none, though.”
    Dom looked back at the long pier. It was crowded with tourists in colorful outfits, strolling along as if oblivious to the fact that someone had died there. Many of them probably were oblivious, since they’d likely only taken the ferry to the island for the day and weren’t up on island news. But bad news traveled fast so many of them would have heard about it, as evidenced by the crowd around the yellow crime scene tape at the end of the pier.
    “Did you know who he was?” Dom asked.
    Donovan’s eyes shot back to Dom’s face. He hitched the left leg of his perfectly pressed navy blue Dockers up, put his foot on a bench and leaned his left elbow on his thigh. Dom wondered how he kept his clothes so clean—he always looked sharp and Dom expected tending to a cruise boat could get messy. He must have a big dry cleaning bill.
    “Not really," Donovan said. "He was some developer guy come to the island to build some condos or something.”
    Claire’s brows shot up. “Really? I didn’t hear anything about any