“We’ve been helping Mr. Anderson,” Teena defended.
“No fish again today?” Eddie said, looking into the empty boat.
“Snagged a couple whoppers,” the portly man said, “but they got away.”
“Did you hook them over the sand bar?” Eddie asked.
“Why not?” Simms said sharply.
Eddie glanced at Mr. Anderson. You just couldn’t hook big ones over the sand bar. The boat owner shrugged at Eddie’s inquiring look, but he said nothing.
“We’ll get them next week, though,” the man, Roy Benton, said. “You save us a boat for next Saturday, huh?”
Mr. Anderson made a note of it.
Before Eddie nodded to Teena that they should be leaving, he noticed that there was no metal tube lying in the bottom of the boat. Had he been seeing things last Saturday? After all, even Mr. Anderson claimed the men hadn’t brought anything along except a lunch of some kind.
Eddie was quite sure it hadn’t been imagination, but he didn’t know why the vision of the round metal cylinder kept coming into his mind. And anything he couldn’t explain bothered Eddie a lot.