The sommelier arrived with two bottles and four glasses. "We thought you'd find it interesting to play the desserts against a totally botrytis affected Gewürztraminer and a Riesling Ice Wine." He showed them the labels and poured.

"The chef has challenged himself with this. Tough to match the intensity of these wines." Lorne looked at the sommelier. "We haven't seen the packages, the literature yet. Who's the chef?"

"He prefers to remain in the background..." The sommelier paused and glanced around. "This is private, but they rotate and prefer to kept their identities quiet."

"You know me, Geoff. You can trust it won't go beyond here."

"My job. I'd love to, but —"

"Okay. No problem. I've been following your career progress, pleased you've continued so well. Congratulations on the SWE."

"Thanks. Your courses and mentoring made it so simple for me to..." He looked down and clicked the buzzing light button on his belt pack. "Being called." Geoff left, and Lorne and Catherine sat gazing at the moon and nosing their wines.

Lorne held the glass of Gewürztraminer to his nose again. "Seems strange to me. So much more complexity, greater depth of aroma and flavour, so much more excitement in the botrytis late harvest wines than in the Ice Wines. Huge complexity versus simple balanced sweet."

"Marketing. There's so much more Ice Wine than TBA. Ice Wine has to be pushed, so the consumers have to pay the marketing costs. Simple market economics. There's nowhere near enough TBA produced for marketing expenses to make sense, so the prices for their magnificence languish in comparison. Stupid, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

They nosed again between the two. "Complexity, multi-layered subtleness or monotone expensiveness. I guess the generic Ice Wines attract the insecure who relate price with quality."

"The generic, yes. But there are a few great ones which deserve their strong prices. The rest of them seem to ride on their coattails. Even the counterfeit Chinese chem lab ones are as good as the following herd, sometimes better."

"I wonder..." She was interrupted by the click of the door opening behind them.

"You wonder?"

"Wonder at many things marketing related, most marketing — bafflegab overriding reality. Manipulating emotions and doubt and insecurity. Replacing them with perceived gratification. Justifying the gratifications and polishing the egos of the deceived. It's a great money mill. Keep turning the crank and grinding out the gold, leaving the chaff thinking they're happy."

The waitress stood listening, and when Catherine had finished speaking, she said, "I agree fully, it's so obvious..." She stopped herself. "Sorry, not my place... Your dessert sampler." She placed the platter on the table between them.

"What a splendid assortment." Catherine turned and smiled up at the waitress. "Any special instructions?"

"You both know what it's about. I love your energy, the both of you. Chef hopes you enjoy these samplings."

Lorne and Catherine explored the assortment, enjoying the wide range of sensations, from harmonious to complementary tension of flavours with each wine. All the while, they looked out over the marina at the moon, now much higher and around toward the south.

"Look at the moonlight playing with the wake down there... No, not moonlight, but a trail of phosphorescence behind the boat."

"I've always loved watching that at night, bioluminescence Dad called it." As the boat entered the small harbour and moored at the float, Catherine asked, "Isn't that Molly's tender?"

"Yeah." He took out his iPhone, held it in his lap, thumbed on and in and selected his alarm app. "All green now."

Catherine glanced down at his phone and shook her head as she nudged him and nodded out the window. He followed her prompt and looked out at the moon with her as she caressed his cheek and purred, "I'm as full as the moon. This has been a splendid evening. Memorable."

They leaned to kiss, then sat with hands on each other's thighs, caressing. The door clicked behind them, and they heard the waitress. "It appears the platter finished you. It was huge, wasn't it? Can I get you Porto, Cognac, liqueurs, coffee?"

Catherine smiled at Lorne and silently mouthed coffee? He nodded, and she looked up at the waitress. "Two espressos."

She returned in three minutes with the coffees, followed closely by George. "Sorry, I had no time to pop in earlier. It's been a busy evening." He placed a folder on the table next to Catherine. "I'm told you've been enjoying Chef's cooking."

"Absolutely splendid evening. The ambience, the service, the presentation, the food... All superb."

"We've prepared a dossier here for you." He opened the folder. "You'll find an overview and the philosophy of Molly's Beach and there are interior and exterior photos you can use. Here's the menu, and tucked inside are pages of detailed descriptions of many of the items, including tasting notes. There are also studio photos of many of the more popular menu selections. Feel free to use any or all of these."

"Everything about this evening has been professional, smooth, polished and superbly delicious." She nodded out the window. "Even the full moon." She laughed. "You've done a splendid job here."

"Thank you. We look forward to seeing your reviews. Anything else we can offer you this evening?"

"I'd love to meet the chef. Congratulate him on his cuisine."

"Unfortunately, he left a short while ago. Long day for him."

"Another time then."

"Relax here for a bit, I've a busy evening. I'll send someone up shortly to take you to the tender. Thank you for coming."

Lorne and Catherine stood to shake George's hand and thank him again.

Thirty-five minutes later, as they approached Tastevin's stern, Lorne opened his alarm app and checked the display. All green. He entered the code and smiled as the lights all changed to blue. The operator steadied the tender as Lorne stepped out and gave Catherine a hand across to Tastevin's stern platform. They paused there to bid the operator good night.

Lorne thumbed the pads, relieved to see the lights turn green as he led Catherine through the cockpit to the companionway. "That's quite the sophisticated alarm system. What were the messages you showed me?"

"I've weight sensors around the deck that are set for twenty kilos so they don't announce the birds. Number one at the bow, number six the port quarter and seven the starboard. The stern step, cockpit and all the hatches are also in the system."

"So what happened? What did it report?"

"George boarded at the stern, walked along the starboard side deck, switched on a radio transmitter, I'll bet a GPS tracker, put it in the cable locker and headed back the way he had come."

"Why do you think it was George?"

"His hand was still cold when we shook. It fits the timing."

"Yeah, it was cold, wasn't it? That's why the tender. But why would he want to track us?"

"I don't know. Want to view the video of him doing it?"

"Complex system. Why so much?"

"I looked over my shoulder a lot after... Let's do a playback the loop. What was that, about an hour ago?"

"Close."

"We could do it on the phone, but the MacBook has a much bigger image." He led her below, opened his computer, logged in and selected the program. They watched the alarm scroll, then he went back to the first one. "As I thought, a sea lion."

"A sea lion?"

"Phone vibrated when the carver was doing the venison. I dismissed it. Get a lot of sea lions on the stern platform. Sometimes quite messy." He scrolled to the next alarm, and they watched.

"That's not a sea lion unless it has a good George disguise." She giggled.

The image switched between cameras, as it showed George walk forward, open the hatch, switch on the device then kneel and stick his head inside the locker. "Is that a roll of duct tape?"

"Yeah, taping it under the lip of the deck. That's easy. Let's go remove it."

"No, I've set my alarm system to ignore its transmissions. Let's leave it there while we dream up a way to have a bit of fun with him and see if we can figure out what he's up to. I'm still trying to place him, where I've seen him."

"Not in the trade. Not around this region, anyway. I know pretty well all the faces, and I've not seen him before."

He closed the computer. "Lighter things now. Time for us."

She pressed up against him and kissed his neck. "Let's do something different tonight."

"What have you in mind?"

"Let's go to bed and just fuck, just passionate, wild unfocused fucking. We've not done much of that yet; we've been far too focused."

"You going to talk to me?"

"Yeah."

"Fuck!"

"Yeah."