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By the time we get back to Oyster Bay, we can have an early lunch. And if you would like, we can go whale watching after that, he said.

Oh, absolutely. That s something I really wanted to do when I got settled in Oyster Bay.

Okay, then. We ll go this afternoon after lunch. When they arrived at the Starfish Deli, he called the whale-watching tour that had the best ratings. Okay, we re on for one o clock. No storms this afternoon, so that s good. Do you get seasick? Ethan asked Charlene.

No, never. What about you?

No, hopefully I ll be good.

That s great.

Then Charlene got a call from Tori and put it on speaker.

Hey, the license plate belongs to a Clara Snyder.

She s sixty-two and lives in Portland. I did a check into her background, and she had bought the car and another at the same time.

It doesn t make any sense. She s a retired high school teacher and she doesn t have that much income from her retirement.

But she paid for the cars in full? Charlene asked.

Yeah. So that s kind of suspect, especially since the car was at Oakley s house. But otherwise, I don t see anything that shows she has a connection to him or anyone else that you re looking for.

Why have two cars when there s just one of her? And where did she get the money from to pay for the two cars? Charlene asked.

What if one of the guys you re after paid for the cars.

He doesn t have any real connection to her, as in he s family, but he has somehow hooked up with her to purchase the cars in her name, Tori said.

Then there s no tie to him that we would easily see.

If he s one of your guys, he might even have gone through another party to make the arrangement to approach Clara.

Does she have any family? Wouldn t they be worried if someone Clara didn t know just gave her money to buy a couple of cars? Charlene asked.

Yeah, that was something else I checked into. She was an only child, never married, no kids, her parents are gone. She doesn t have any living relatives. So we figured she was the perfect choice to approach with the offer of purchasing a couple of cars through her.

You are doing a great job of checking into this, Ethan said.

Well, when I learned who owned the car, it made me curious, and I couldn t quit looking into it.

Adam has been giving me a hard time about it—in his humorous way.

I want to go ask her about the cars, but I m afraid that will spook her, and she ll tell whoever it was who gave her the money that a police officer is asking questions.

Okay, well, be careful, Tori. Not only do we not want to spook Kroner and his cohorts, we don t want you to get hurt in the process, Ethan said.

I ll be careful.

Let us know what you discover, Ethan said.

After that, they ended the call and he and Charlene walked inside the deli.

Black chairs and white tables and booths on a black-and-white-checkered floor set the scene.

Black-and-white pictures of sea creatures hung on the walls.

She pointed them out to Ethan. That s what gave me the idea of taking photos of marine life, but in color, to add to the walls in my home and the rental homes.

That would be so nice. I like the idea of having photographs in color too.

They took a seat in one of the booths and ordered a grilled chicken, bacon, and cheese sandwich for her and a hot pastrami and Swiss on rye sandwich for him.

When the server left to put in their orders, Ethan asked Charlene, Okay, does anyone working here seem familiar, or do you recall if any customer seemed unduly interested in you?

No, nothing. I really wasn t paying any attention to anyone. Even though as wolves we often are wary of our surroundings, I was just focused on eating. The food was great.

Totally understandable. He was certain she would have seen someone if they were obviously watching her since she was a wolf, and though she d been enjoying her meal, wolves did notice things that might make them wary. He was glad to have some enjoyable time to spend with her like this.

Their sandwiches were soon delivered to their table, and they began to eat.

I can see why you enjoyed this place. The food is great, Ethan said.

Yeah, even if my secret admirer isn t from here, I m glad we came here for lunch. She took another bite of her sandwich.

Me too. Have you ever been on a whale trip?

No, not me. I m really looking forward to it. What about you?

No, never.

Don t tell me. You work too much.

He laughed. If some of my friends had wanted to do it, I would have gone along. But going by myself? Nah.

Oh, sure. The same with me. This is going to be fun. We need to drop by my place so I can change into tennis shoes for the boat trip and grab a jacket. It ll be cold on the water.

Absolutely. I m wearing rubber-soled shoes and I have a jacket in the car so I m all set.

After lunch, they drove over to Charlene s place, and she changed shoes and grabbed her jacket.

Then they headed over to the boat docks where they would take off on a smaller Zodiac boat.

Unlike some of the large boats that carried thirty to forty people to watch whales, the Zodiac would take a max of five customers.

For this trip, it was just the two of them, so this was nice and personalized.

They met Captain Rusty, who greeted them and then gave them safety tips and made sure they had life vests on before he headed out. Okay, are you ready to go see some whales?

We sure are, Charlene said.

The captain motored out through the narrow harbor, and they saw sunbathing seals.

Oh, wonderful. Charlene began taking pictures. They re beautiful.

The sun was shining off the choppy water as the captain steered into the bay. He moved into calmer water as soon as he could. They began trolling for whales, and it wasn t long before they saw a pod of dolphins.

Those are Pacific white-sided dolphins, the captain said.

The dolphins approached the boat and rode the bow waves and looked eager to make their acquaintance.

The captain waved at the dolphins near the boat. This is a large group—about ninety of them but they can reach up to 300 in a pod.

Wow. Charlene was taking pictures like crazy.

But so was Ethan, thinking she might even want to use one of his pictures in her rental units if he could take any good ones.

The dolphins come up north from California and visit Oregon and Washington over the summer, Rusty said.

That is too cool for us, Charlene said.

When the dolphins moved off, they didn t see anything for a while, but then they saw Flipper and his relatives! Bottlenose dolphins! They were about ten in number, Ethan thought.

The bottlenose dolphins can be loners or even swim up to a thousand in a pod. Though most pods consist of about ten to thirty dolphins hunting fish together, Rusty said.

Once the dolphins left, they had to wait patiently to watch for whales, but Ethan was thrilled they had gotten to see the two kinds of dolphins.

If they didn t see a whale, he would take Charlene out again on another whale-watching trip.

He could see where this could be addictive.

He was just glad they were loving the boat ride on the ocean and feeling the sea breeze whipping across their bow and that neither of them had gotten seasick.

Just when it seemed like they wouldn t catch sight of any whales, they saw two gray whales feeding on the kelp beds. Captain Rusty moved the boat closer and then just stopped. Before they were ready for it, they were surrounded by four whales, curious about the boat.

Oh, Charlene squealed, pointing at the tail of a whale.

Ethan smiled at her and was enjoying seeing the whales as much as he was enjoying seeing Charlene having fun doing this.

After watching them for about a half hour, the whales finally left, and after the beautiful experience, Capt. Rusty motored them back to the dock.

They thanked the captain for a delightful trip and then headed off to Charlene s home.

That was incredible, Charlene said.

I agree.

I think you took as many pictures of all the marine life as I did.

He laughed. I m sure of it. You can use any of the ones I got if you think they re good.

Oh, thanks. I sure will.

***

For dinner, they headed over to the Pelican Brief Pub where Charlene had eaten the first time she was here in Oyster Bay. Once they sat down and had their menus in hand, Ethan asked her, Do you recall seeing anyone who might have anything to do with sending flowers to you?

Charlene looked over her menu. Nah. I really didn t think this would work, but I m glad we had the meals together and checked the restaurants out just in case.

Yeah, it was worth trying and I ve enjoyed the whole day.

Me too.

So what s the best case you ever worked on as a homicide detective? Ethan closed up his menu.

Whenever I could catch a murderer and had enough evidence to put him or her or both away, those were the best cases.

The family would suffer forever from the loss of their loved one or ones, but at least the guilty party would be sitting in prison so he or she couldn t do it again.

But I was also involved in helping to locate missing kids when there was an urgent need and I wasn t in the middle of a murder investigation.

Even during murder investigations, I would spend practically every waking hour of my own time searching for kids who went missing in the area.

My boss joked that he needed to create a one-person missing persons bureau that I worked at full-time because my success rate was so high, whether I was recovering missing children who just got separated from their parents on one of the boardwalks or runaway teens.

The server came to take their orders and after Charlene ordered a lobster meal and Ethan ordered a rib eye steak dinner, the server brought them a small loaf of sourdough bread and butter and glasses of white wine and water, then left to take orders from another table.