Or Murder For Free

"Jan and Dick's evidence doesn't agree with yours, Skipper," I said casually, my voice carefully flat. The man's transition was abrupt, his face turned white, then greenish, his jaw and cheeks distorted, as he half-started from the bed. "I brought them in off the liferaft, you see," I explained as flatly. The small wake was of turgid mud as I tooled the LOAFALONG up a canal meant for outboard-fishing boats. It was grueling work, inching ahead, eyes fixed on banks a dozen feet from each side of my boat's broad beam, juggling throttles and wheels to fend against a light cross-wind. With too-little power, the ship swung towards port-bank, with too much, the froth behind was beaten into a chocolaty batter by the big props that swung bare inches above the bottom of the drainage slash that connected a Sarasota Marina with a now distant Gulf of Mexico . . .