Carousel Seas (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

MONDAY, JUNE 26

The
Journal-Tribune
was on the porch when I got home.

I’d had a pleasant walk up the sunny, already-warming-up-nicely beach. The Fourth of July was just a week and a day in the future, and the Beach was starting to fill up with tourists and summer people. Despite the fact that it was well before nine o’clock, people were playing in the surf, while little kids with buckets and shovels and starfish molds were hard at work on architectural sand projects. A pod of teenage boys engaged in a running game of Frisbee broke around me, the disc arcing above my head—“’Scuse us!” one boy called over his shoulder as they thundered down the beach toward the Pier.

I even spied one hearty couple drawing a bocce court in the sand.

Who could doubt that summer had finally arrived?

It wasn’t until I was climbing the steps to the porch that it occurred to me to wonder why I hadn’t wished myself all the way home, instead of just across the water to the dock.

“Kate,” I said, bending over to pick up the
Journal-Trib
, “you lack vision.”

Or maybe not; it
had
been a nice walk, and I was feeling mellow and at peace with the universe.

Until I flipped the paper over so I could see what was above the fold.

CAMP ELLIS TO EVICT DUMMY CATS . . . was the headline—and a shocking one, too. The Dummy Cats—so called because the colony was headquartered in the remains of a former railroad shed that had served the Dummy Railroad—were a Camp Ellis institution. The colony had been established at least fifty years ago, and had been stable for almost that long. The cats earned their keep by holding down the rat population—always a problem in a working harbor—and the whole town pitched in to keep them fed, and housed, and inoculated.

They were warp and woof of the town, as much as any other resident. There was no reason to evict them, unless the town councilors had unilaterally lost their minds.

But it appeared that the councilors hadn’t lost their minds. According to the
Journal-Trib
, a new resident—a summer person by the name of Talbot—had taken the cats in dislike. They were unsanitary, he claimed, and unsightly; they scared his wife, hissed at his kids, and were very probably bringing down the value of his summer residence.

He said this and more, loudly, to the townies, who, mostly, ignored him.

Then, he took his grievance to the town council.

In my opinion, the town councilors should’ve told the nice man from Away to eat his hat, but, in Maine as elsewhere, money talks. In this case, money was talking via big city lawyers who were threatening to bankrupt the town with legal fees unless the cats were destroyed—Option One—or moved—Option Two.

The councilors buckled. To their credit, I guess, they took Option Two.

“So,” said a raspy, cheerful voice behind and below me, “still looking for news of a friend?”

I pivoted in place and shook the paper lightly at Peggy Marr, who was renting the basement studio for the Season. Peggy managed the midway; she’s almost exactly as short as I am; plump, and fiercely competent. She has a sense of humor that I understand and a soft, gooey interior to balance the tough Jersey-girl exterior. Her fashion sense is . . . interesting. This morning, for instance, she was wearing pink sneakers to match her pink hair, black jeans, and a black T-shirt with the following message written out in glittery pink cursive:
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE, BUT FIRST, IT WILL PISS YOU OFF. —GLORIA STEINEM.

In case it’s not clear, I like Peggy a lot.

“Good morning, Jersey. Cup of coffee?”

“That’d be swell,” she said, climbing the stairs. “Seriously, Kate—bad news?”

I handed her the paper and turned to deal with the door.

“Bad enough. Some guy from Away’s all offended by the Dummy Cats.”

The door opened easily, which it had been doing ever since I let Borgan in. I kind of missed the way it used to stick tight; the flat-footed kick required to get it unstuck had been . . . cathartic.

“Be a couple,” I told Peggy over my shoulder, as I turned right, toward the kitchen.

“No hurry.”

She leaned against the wall, frowning down at the paper. I got the coffee out of the fridge, started the water running in the sink, and slotted a paper filter into the cone.

Peggy sighed, and took the newspaper into the living room, adding it to the pile of guidebooks and maps on the coffee table.

“This is the kind of guy who gives the rest of us from Away a bad rep,” she commented. “Now I know why you folks say it that way.”

Peggy being from Away herself, she’d caught the nuance quick. I poured water into the reservoir, set the pot on the plate and hit the
on
switch.

“There’s Away and Away,” I told her. “The people who come up to Maine because it’s empty and unspoiled and like moving back twenty years in time, and who then start agitating for things to be like they are in Baltimore, or New York, or Philly—they’re the worst kind. The rest of you”—I gave her a grin—“can’t help having been born disadvantaged.”

Peggy laughed.

“How’d it go with the cell phone company?” I asked, opening the cupboard to get down two mugs. Peggy’s cell phone had been the victim of a tragic accident just recently, and I hadn’t seen her since, my own life having taken a turn for the hectic.

“They’re sending a replacement, free of charge,” she said. “The insurance covered it.”

I turned to look at her. “You had insurance on your cell phone?”

“The warranty was still in and the insurance came with,” she told me. “You can stop looking at my second head now.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You want a bagel?” I frowned, counting backward from my last visit to Beach Bagels. “Hang on; I might not be able to make good on that.”

I opened the fridge. It was looking kind of white and bare inside. Right. Time for a trip to the grocery store. Good thing today was my day off.

“How ’bout we trade out bagels for scrambled eggs and toast?”

“You don’t have to feed me at all.”

I straightened enough to look at her over the half door.

“Look me in the eye and tell me you ate breakfast, or that you have any plans at all to eat lunch.”

“I’ll probably have a smoothie for lunch,” she said earnestly. “If there isn’t a crowd.”

To fill her free time in between managing the midway, Peggy also runs The Last Mango, feeding the world, one smoothie at a time.

“Hey!” she said suddenly. “I forgot you wouldn’t know—Felsic’s crew really did take care of the stand—you’d never know there’d been a fire.”

She hadn’t told me, but it wasn’t a surprise. Peggy was dating a
trenvay
—Felsic, that was—and practically the whole crew working the midway were
trenvay
. Repairing a wooden booth wouldn’t put them in a sweat. The machinery, though . . .

“I’m down one juicer,” Peggy said, as I extracted eggs, cheese, and milk from the fridge, backed out and shut the door with a nudge of the hip.

“That’s going to be dicey, with the Fourth coming right up, but the factory says they’ll express one, and it should be here in plenty of time.”

I started cracking eggs into a bowl. Peggy opened the fridge, and got out cream and what remained of my last loaf of bread.

She poured coffee and cream, and brought the mug with the sunflower painted on it over to the counter where I was working.

“Thanks.”

“It’s an honor to assist an artist,” she told me. “I’ll take care of the toast, too.”

The muted clang of a buoy bell wafted across the kitchen. I looked up, frowning.

“What the hell?”

“Doorbell,” Peggy said, already crossing the kitchen. “I’ll get it.”

Doorbell? Tupelo House’s doorbell was a ragged belling, like hounds giving tongue at the sight of quarry after a long chase. Having once been quarry, and heard the hounds belling behind me, I’d never really bonded with the doorbell.

. . . which now sounded like a buoy bell.

And why
, I asked myself, whipping eggs with a little more vigor than was probably necessary,
does the doorbell sound like a buoy bell now, Kate
?

I sighed, gently.

Because Borgan—who had been forcefully apprised of my feelings in re the bell—had probably fixed it for me. Honestly, welcome a man into the house and right away he starts messing with tradition.

“Kate?” Peggy called from the door. “It’s Henry Emerson.”

“Henry!” I called. “C’mon in! I’m just about to scramble some eggs. Am I adding some for you?”

“Thank you,” Henry said. “I just had breakfast. A cup of coffee would be welcome. I apologize for intruding, but I have the letter here, and time is an issue.”

Hell, yes, time was an issue. I’d forgotten about the letter—well, no. I hadn’t forgotten about it; the press of other matters had just shoved it to the back of my mind.

“You’re not intruding,” I said, pouring whipped eggs into the frying pan. “Jersey, get the nice man a cup of coffee. And, hey—take a look at that letter, will you? If it’s not a conflict of interest, I’d like your opinion.”

* * *

Peggy cleared the table and made a new pot of coffee while I read the letter.

“Seems to cover all the points,” I said to Henry, and “Thanks,” to Peggy. “States the case clearly. I say give it to Jess, and let’s start getting signatures.” I became aware of the quality of the silence from across the room, and turned my head to look at Peggy, who was standing hipshot against the sink, arms folded over her chest.

“Not?” I suggested.

She sighed.

“I don’t bear any particular fondness for Arbitrary and Cruel, but they are my employer, so I gotta be careful, here,” she said, slowly. “I don’t think I’m telling any secrets if I say that corporate culture firmly embraces the ‘most profit for least effort, expense, and upkeep’ model of doing business.”

“Right. Which is why we’re being careful to show them how there’s money in it for them by keeping the park open past Labor Day.”

“. . . how
maybe
, if the committee’s right that there’s a market, there might be some unquantifiable amount of money in it for them, a couple years down the road.” Peggy shook her head. “In Arbitrary and Cruel Land, that’s tantamount to asking for a loan. Or a raise.” She shook her head, came back to the table, and picked up her mug.

“I don’t think that letter will make any difference to Management’s plans,” she said, and drank coffee with the air of a woman who has, perhaps, said too much.

I looked to Henry, who was being patient and poker-faced, because Henry’s a lawyer and that’s what lawyers do.

“Can’t hurt to float the balloon?” I offered. “Worst they can do is say no, like Peggy says.”

Henry nodded. “I agree. The final decision, of course, rests with the committee.”

That was true enough; I wasn’t a decision-maker on this, just a volunteer selected by our chair, Jess Robald, to make sure the letter covered the points identified by the committee.

“It’s a good idea, trying to grow the Season,” Peggy said suddenly. “Twelve weeks is . . . really short.”

“Used to be longer,” I told her, “though I don’t think we were ever a twelve-month destination. When my grandmother’s back in town, I’ll have you over and she can explain how it used to be, back in the good old days.”

Peggy grinned. “I’d like that.”

“It’s a date, then.” I looked to Henry. “You want me to take that to Jess? I need to go down to the carousel this morning, and check in with Vassily.”

“That would be very helpful, Kate, thank you,” Henry said. He put the letter in the center of the table, drank off what was left of his coffee and rose.

“Thank you for the charming company—and for the coffee, which was delicious.”

“Or at least better than Bob’s,” I said, giving him a grin. “Thanks, Henry. Stop by anytime.”

“I may avail myself of that.” He turned, then turned back, one eyebrow quirking.

“Do you expect your grandmother home soon?”

Henry is Gran’s lawyer—and mine—this by way of saying that his question was reasonable on both a professional and personal basis. To the best of his knowledge, Gran had been out of town for a good nine months. Since Henry’s also one of those mundane folk who can see the
trenvay
for what they are, and not only hears, but contributes to the making of, fey music at the big Midsummer Eve party, he also knows that Gran is a dryad. And that a dryad
can’t
leave town, unless she wants to kill herself and her tree.

The full story of where she was at present, and where she’d been before was complicated, so I opted for the next best answer that would ease an old friend’s worry.

“I hope to see her soon,” I said, “but I don’t have a date.”

There was a longish silence while Henry studied my face, his normally soft blue eyes ice-sharp.

I must’ve looked convincing, because he nodded and sort of smiled.

“I’m looking forward to seeing her again,” he said. “Bonny’s an old friend.” He turned to Peggy.

“Ms. Marr, it’s been a pleasure. I hope we’ll meet again during the summer.”

Peggy smiled. “I’m happy to have met you, Mr. Emerson.”