At first I thought she was making fun of me, but then I realized she was serious.

“Your daddy doesn't drink, does he?” she said. “That's truly amazing.”

It was sort of unusual, for the Keys. People who didn't know my father automatically assumed he had to be drunk to do some of the things he did, but he wasn't. He never touched a drop of alcohol, even on New Year's. It wasn't a religious thing; he just didn't care for the taste.

“Why can't I find a guy like that?” Shelly said in a small voice.

I couldn't help but notice that she was using Lice Peeking's head as a footrest. It didn't seem to bother him, though. He kept snoring away.

“You go to the public school?” she said. “Then you must know Jasper Jr.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Is that boy still nasty as a pygmy rattler?”

“Nastier,” I answered honestly.

Shelly shook her head. “He's been that way since he was about three foot high. Honestly? I don't see a bright future there.”

Her mentioning Jasper Jr. reminded me of what my dad said about Shelly and Dusty Muleman, about how she'd gotten so fed up with him that she'd moved out. I decided to find out if she still felt that way.

“Didn't you used to work on the Coral Queen?” I asked.

“For almost three years,” said Shelly.

“Was it a fun job?”

She rolled her eyes. “Tending bar? Oh yeah, it was a barrel of laughs. Very glamorous, too. Come on now, what're you drivin' at?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“There you go again, Noah.”

Shelly was sharp when it came to sniffing out fibs, so I just came out and asked her: “Did you ever hear about anything crooked going on with that boat?”

“Crooked how?” she asked.

“Like dumping sewer water into the basin.”

She laughed in a way that sounded hard and bitter. “Sweetie,” she said, “the only sewage I ever saw was the human kind. That's what you call the ‘downside' of my job.”