Tuesday Tales: From the Word MOUSE

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Tales, and A Case of Mistaken Identity, my NaNoWriMo novel this year. I’m pleased to say the story is going very well, and I’m more than two-thirds through. A story moves quickly when it’s written this way and doesn’t leave a lot of room for explanation. I hope you don’t have too much trouble following the disjointed scenes. Our word prompt this week is MOUSE.

Opening my Search program, I typed in Asleep with the Empress, the name Al had given his dive company. It came up right away. The site was well done, easy to navigate, and provided all the information a diver would need, from the size of the boat, the air mix in the tanks, to the qualifications needed to dive. I used the mouse to highlight Al’s name to learn a little more about the museum curator-dive boat company owner. As an investigator, I was used to researching both the people and every aspect of a case, but there was something that didn’t feel right about checking out the guy taking me to dinner. Still, I didn’t let it stop me.

Alphonse Binette was forty-three years old, which made him eight years older than me. He was ex-military, a former US Navy Seal, who’d retired ten years ago and had started the business. His diving qualifications were listed as well as the honors he’d received serving in the US Navy. There wasn’t anything unusual about that. Lots of Canadians had opted to join the US military during WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, and again right after 9 11. Had he lost someone significant that day? Twenty-four Canadians had died in the terrorist attack, including the grandson of a woman from our church who’d been at the World Trade Center for a business meeting. His wife had been pregnant at the time. My parents had taken me to the funeral, both of them afraid that the attack had been a prelude to war. They hadn’t been wrong.

Feeling too much like a voyeur, I changed my search to information concerning the boathouse fires he’d mentioned. As a detective, I was constantly looking for holes in a story. It wasn’t that I assumed everyone was lying, but two years of doing this job had taught me that a good many people did. Everyone had skeletons in the closets and secrets. It occurred to me that if I had taken the imposter out on my boat, and she’d somehow ended up in the water, I wouldn’t want to take a chance on anyone finding anything that could incriminate me.

Arson would get rid of the evidence quickly, and if other boats got damaged in the process, well, that would convolute matters and cover up the crime even more quickly. There wasn’t much information there, but I did see the line requesting anyone with information to contact Charles Lavoie. It seemed my inspector had his hands full.

Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.