Signwave (24 page)

I did that, MaryLou was a half move behind me, and Franklin got behind the wheel. Neither of them was breathing hard. Franklin started the motor and drove without lights to the turnoff; then it was only a few minutes until we were all headed home.

—

“D
id you get it done?” MaryLou asked.

She knew I must have had a real good reason for whatever I was up to, even if she didn't know what it was.

“Better than I hoped for,” I told her. “Franklin really handled the hard work.”

“We both pushed the truck—”

I quickly cut off Franklin's defense of MaryLou. “I know. I was talking about the tree.”

“Oh.”

“The only doubt I had was about you,” MaryLou said, as sweet as ever.

“Me, too,” I agreed. Then I finished pulling off the whole outfit, changed into the fresh one I had stashed behind the seat, and peeled the fake soles off the boots.

We hadn't gone ten miles before everything was as normal-looking as any cop could want. The fake soles had been reduced to little shreds of nylon with the tin snips I'd brought along. I kept them balled in my fist. If we got stopped for any reason, I'd just toss them if I could, and hand them to MaryLou if I couldn't. Once the cops found out who she was, they wouldn't be surprised to see her carrying a squeeze ball to keep that pitching hand exercised.

But nothing happened. Franklin wheeled into our driveway, and I jumped off, figuring I'd grab a few hours of sleep before Dolly and Rascal showed up.

—

I
was awake by the time I picked up Dolly's car on the monitor.

Nine-thirty in the morning—I guess Mack and Bridgette had stalled Dolly about as much as she was going to stand for. She and Rascal bounded in the back door like a pair of firefighters.

“You had breakfast?” were the first words out of my wife's mouth.

“Hours ago.”

“Hmmm…,” she kind of hummed to herself, opening the refrigerator to pour herself some juice, then one of the cabinets to pull out a granola bar. I knew she wasn't hungry, just checking to make sure I'd really had breakfast.

That's my wife: she'd take my word that I was “working” for weeks at a time without raising an eyebrow, but when it came to things like making sure I kept up my nutrition, she was relentless.

“My girls—some of them—they'll be here in a half hour or so.”

“Want me to…?”

“Oh, Dell,” she said, chuckling. “You do whatever you want to do. I know they'll drive you out of here on their own soon enough.”

“They get to where they're all talking at the same time—it sounds like a wall of noise.”

“To you, sure.”

Meaning, “Not to me,”
I thought. But they were already starting to roll in. I didn't recognize the first three; that is, I'd seen them before, but I didn't know their names.

“Let's give the others a few minutes,” Dolly told them, already bustling around, pasting charts back up on the cabinets, firing up her tablet, pointing at the coffeemaker to tell them they were on their own if they wanted any.

I didn't have anything to do, not yet. But that wasn't why I
stayed in the kitchen. I was just being stubborn, showing Dolly that I
was
interested in whatever they were up to…and the white noise hadn't started yet.

There were seven girls inside before Dolly kicked it off.

“If the town accepts the offer of that strip of land,” she said, pointing at the map with the thick pink ribbon standing out boldly, “it'd probably cost more to provide it with services—water, sewage, electricity—than they'd get back in taxes. But I asked around, and that isn't the game. See, unless the land is
used
—like, to put houses on it or something—the town doesn't have to put any of that in.”

“So it's just a freebie? For real?” a girl with spiky hair and black eyeliner asked, her tone saying she didn't believe there was any such thing, anywhere.

“No!” Dolly told them. She reached into a net sack that was next to the sinks, took out three of those miniature tangerines—they're called something, but I didn't remember what—and started to juggle them. The girls watched, fascinated, as Dolly kept them spinning, as if they were doing the work themselves.

She talked right through the tangerine wheel. “We found out that TrustUs, LLC, is actually owned by PNW Upstream. That hedge fund up in Portland that Benton manages.”

“So?” the little redhead with owl glasses asked.

“So the donation itself is worth money. How
much
money depends on how the town assessor ‘values' the land.”

“The town says it's worth a million bucks, they get a milliondollar tax credit for land they bought for—what?—five percent of that?” the beanpole said.

“Yep,” Dolly answered, still spinning the tangerines.

“Where'd you learn to do that, Tontay?” one of the cheerleader girls said.

“In the circus,” Dolly said. “I used to be a high-wire walker.”

“Wow!”

I closed my eyes, thinking of how Dolly had transformed from battlefield nurse to a new persona so perfectly that she never had to lie. If tending to the wounded in Darkville while staying neutral in whatever war was going on at the time wasn't a high-wire act, I didn't know what else you could call it.

“Could you teach us?” another cheerleader asked.

“To juggle, sure. But high-wire is another story—it takes years and years to work yourself up to that. Anyway, if you want to see a circus, all you have to do is come to the next council meeting,” Dolly said, deftly catching all three of the baby tangerines in one small hand. “And that's what we're going to do.”

—

I
hadn't used the Glock, so disassembly was just a by-the-numbers routine, not a pre-disposal necessity.

All I could do was wait.

How long was up to me. I pulled up
Undercurrents
. They were continuing their investigation, but all they had to report was the same potential tax break Dolly had been talking about upstairs before. Their incoming letters weren't about anything close to home.

I realized it was Sunday. It usually doesn't make any difference to me, but today, it made me feel a little better, because I knew that Franklin would have gone to work even if he hadn't slept at all the night before.

Sometimes you can't track the enemy. All you can do is find the best spot to fire from, and wait for them to show up.

—

T
he headline wasn't in
Undercurrents
. It was the kind of big-deal thing that wouldn't interest them.

MAGNIFICENT GIFT TO PERMANENTLY DISPLAY LOCAL ART

The local newspaper made it front-page, with a separate foldout to explain. Architectural plans, computer-generated images of what the display would look like from all angles. They also showed three different pictures of Benton, one the usual head shot, one of him superimposed against something that looked like a flowing wall, and another of him standing before an audience.

A small audience—just the council, the County Attorney, and a few other people I didn't recognize.

One photo was captioned:
“What better way to represent our community's connection to the ocean than a wave?” George Benton says, as he demonstrates the unique features of his incredible act of philanthropy
.

The story explained in detail. An acrylic wall “the length of a football field” would be constructed as a “sandwich.” It would have a flip-up slot running the length of its top for insertion of anything that could fit: photography, painting, poetry in some sections, small sculpture, glass-blown creations, even scale-model airplanes in another.

The sandwich would be made of varying thicknesses, so it could accommodate “all the art forms.” There was even an “electronic slot” that would house tablets on which different blogs could be posted or a staged performance could run continuously. Benton was quoted:

If you look at the irregularity of the wall, you'll see it's really a sine wave, much as an oscilloscope would record sound. But, for our community, it becomes a “Sign Wave.” A message to all tourists and visitors that our village is the artistic epicenter of the coast. And how much we value all those who contribute to it.

There it was. A potion of magic words. “Art” and “tourism” were the most sacred anyone in this town could ever speak.

—

“Y
ou saw the paper?” I said to Dolly.

“Of course I did. But…Well, so what, Dell? It's not going to hurt anyone, and the kids are really excited—it's all they're talking about.

“And now we know what he wanted that strip of land for, don't we? What if he
does
have an ulterior motive? Another tax break for his hedge fund—who cares? That's what it's like in this place. Everyone who donates
anything
gets his name on a plaque; part of the deal. I don't care if it's helping support the library, or buying some new chairs for the waiting room in the hospital; you put some money in, you get to put your name on it.

“And, believe me, Benton's name is going to be all
over
this ‘Sign Wave' wall. Forever. You won't be able to look at one without looking at the other.”

“So why tell you to not run around half-cocked?”

“Dell! Just stop it, now. Isn't it obvious? He's a supreme egotist. What's so strange about that? He just wanted to be the one to spring the big surprise himself. So, when
Undercurrents
ran that story about that useless strip of dirt being bought up, piece by piece, I guess he put two and two together and—”

“He saw the story in
Undercurrents
, right? So how did he know
you
had anything to do with it? They don't disclose their sources.”

“I…I don't know. Maybe one of the girls bragged about the super-secret ‘investigation' we were all doing.”

“No, they didn't.”

“How could you know that?”

“How could you
not
, Dolly? One of them talks about one
of your damn crusades, how long before
another
one finds out she's doing it? And then the girl with the loose mouth goes from insider to outsider in a half-second. Teenage girls—you really think any of them want to run that risk?”

“Well…”

“There's got to be more.”

“More than huge tax breaks
and
an even bigger ego?”

“Why is this PNW Upstream group buying up tracts of land right around where you're going to build your dog park?”

“I don't know, but…”

I didn't say anything.

“You think I should drop
Undercurrents
another hint?”

“No, Dolly,” I said, thinking to myself how desperately she had wanted to find her dream cottage by the ocean. Not for the cottage, not for the ocean…for a place where she could live in peace. “That's the last thing you should do.”

“Then I won't, okay, honey?”

“Sure.”

“Dell…”

—

“T
here was nothing to vote on,” Dolly said when she got back from the “open meeting” of the council.

“Because it's not going to cost the taxpayers a dime?”

“That's the least of it. It's going to bring in business, sure. And this place is always going to be way in favor of anything that supports the arts. I saw people in the audience who do all of that. Poems and crafts and…you know. Just imagine, all their stuff, on
display
—if it
was
put to a vote, it'd be a landslide.

“And you know what? It
is
kind of fascinating. The project, I mean. Nobody ever heard of anything like it. It's going to be built with local labor, too. All Benton has is the design. Which he paid for himself. They're going to have to build a small casting
plant just to create the acrylic sections, never mind transporting them and fitting them into place. That means even
more
new jobs.”

“Everybody wins, then?”

“Who loses?”

“I don't know.”

—

T
hat was the truth—I
didn't
know.

But what I did know was that, for whatever reason, Rhonda Jayne Johnson was still part of
Undercurrents
. So the boss hadn't talked to her. Or stabbed her. But I dismissed that last thought as soon as it came up—whoever that severe-looking woman was in her heart, she was a journalist in her bone marrow.

I was still thinking about that when Dolly came into the dark kitchen where I'd been waiting for her to return from another council meeting.

“We're never going to have our dog park,” she said. Not raising her voice, but I could see the steam coming off her.

“Why?” is all I asked.

“You know what ‘eminent domain' is, Dell?”

“When the government takes private property for some public purpose.”

“Ah! You've been reading up on it?”

“No.”

“I…Never mind. Listen to this: That strip of land, you know, where they're going to build that ‘Sign Wave' thing Benton promised? It's not wide enough to let people park their cars. There's only space for a walkway. We're not getting any tourists to come here just to drive by and see that wall at thirty miles an hour. And we're not getting any ego strokes for the artists if people can't
stroll
by and admire their work.”

“So now they want to…?”

“Build a bridge! A quaint little wooden bridge, but with a heavy steel skeleton for bracing.”

“But if they can't park, what's the use?”

“The bridge isn't for cars, Dell. It's for people. The parking is on the other side.”