Fire Works in the Hamptons : A Willow Tate Novel (9781101547649)

by Jerome, Celia

  CHAPTER 2

  BARRY JENSEN WAS NICE. Almost too nice, if that makes sense. He was too pleasant, too complimentary, too interested in me and the village. Or maybe I simply hadn’t gotten over the idea of him being one of Susan’s leftovers. On the other hand, I was flattered that he’d preferred my company to hers this morning. No one ever accused me of an abundance of logic.

  “I’ve never been to Paumanok Harbor, barely heard of the place,” he said when we stopped to get him an egg sandwich on the town’s main street.

  He didn’t seem to notice how Joanne at the deli had the sandwich ready and waiting for him. She winked at me while he looked around at the shops on either side of the wide village green that divided the town, New England style.

  “I used to come out to Sag Harbor, but this time I was visiting friends in Montauk. I only stopped off at the Breakaway because I’d read a rave review of your cousin’s cooking and wanted to try it for myself. The review didn’t do the place justice. Susan is an amazing cook.”

  Susan was generally a pain in the ass, but she was my baby cousin and I was proud of her. “She uses only the freshest local ingredients, a lot from my grandmother’s farm.” I didn’t say that Grandma Eve’s herbs and spices were exotic and possibly ensorcelled, or that Susan’s cooking was known to affect a diner’s mood. No way was I going to tell a stranger, no matter how nice he was, that I suspected my family of being witches. Actually, I firmly believed my grandmother could cast spells; the jury was still out on Susan.

  “It’s a cozy little town, isn’t it?” he was saying as we decided to walk the few blocks to Kelvin’s garage. The weather was perfect for a summer morning, not too hot yet, with a soft breeze and no humidity. “Sweet.”

  Sweet was one word for it. Bizarre was another, but I wouldn’t let that ruin my enjoyment of the day or the company.

  “While I was waiting for Susan at the bar last night, some guys were laughing about how Paumanok Harbor had more than its share of harmless characters and kooks, but bad stuff, too. Drug busts, kidnappings, murder, and mass—”

  “Hysteria.” I quickly interrupted him. “I know. Don’t you know better than to believe a bunch of drunks?” Who were telling the truth.

  He laughed. “Yeah, and so far I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.” He turned to smile at me. “Except a lot of sweetness.”

  I was too old to blush, wasn’t I? I pretended to help Little Red up a high curb—and almost got my fingers bitten. Barry’s flirting was as refreshing as the gentle breeze with the hint of honeysuckle in the air, but I couldn’t let him continue. That is, my ego could have listened to his silly flattery all day, but my rational mind couldn’t let him get too curious about Paumanok Harbor. We were part of the whole clandestine Royce-Harmon Institute for Psionic Research, with psychic Royce descendants settling the place centuries ago and inbreeding with witches, shamans, mystics, and nut jobs ever since. I knew our locale was a forbidden gateway between worlds. And I knew better than to discuss the Harbor or its inhabitants with anyone else. I changed the subject. “I bet the same people at the bar still believe mad scientists are conducting mind control experiments in the tunnels under Montauk.”

  He laughed again. “Yeah, I read some of those books about it. I even looked into the oddball theories about Montauk while I was there, and got lost in the retired air force base near the lighthouse. They’ve got bunkers and underground artillery batteries, but no tunnels as far as I could find out.”

  I murmured something about urban legends in the boondocks while I waved to old Mrs. Grissom, hoping she wouldn’t give me the latest insights from her husband Vern, who’d been dead for decades. Instead, I pointed out our new arts and recreation center, and the school where Susan’s mother was assistant principal. She’d made my friend Ellen a courtesy appointment with the science teacher there for ten o’clock, which is why I had Barry to myself this morning.

  Which the entire town noticed. Once again I’d be the topic of the day at the beauty salon and the supermarket and the bowling alley. My mother in Florida would hear I was parading around with a strange man in about an hour, I figured. I turned my cell phone off before she could call.

  Barry needed a few things at the drugstore. I waited outside with Little Red, praying the pharmacist wouldn’t stuff a few condoms in with Barry’s purchases the way Walter always did when he sensed they’d come in handy. I also hoped Bill at the hardware store didn’t set the loose nails to jingling an embarrassing tune like “Going to the Chapel.” And that no one spoke to Barry about the weather; Paumanok Harbor predictions were always accurate.

  “We better hurry,” I told him when he came back out to the sidewalk. “Uh, Kelvin might get too busy to look at your car if we wait too long.” I picked up Little Red so we could make better time before someone proved just how peculiar Paumanok Harbor could be.

  I wasn’t that fast, or that lucky, except the cranky Pomeranian was too tired to nip.

  Vinnie stood outside his barbershop. He smiled, but shook his head, no.

  Big Eddie, with his K-9 police dog, stopped marking tires in the two-hour parking zone to look at us and shake his head.

  Micky from the Fire Department shrugged and shook his head.

  “They’re all shaking their heads. Does that mean I’m trespassing?”

  I almost choked. Vinnie’s gesture meant Barry had no aura, no paranormal talent. He wasn’t one of us. The cop’s head shake meant he hadn’t smelled anything suspicious on Barry, no drugs, no weapons. Micky’s meant Barry wasn’t gay. Oh, boy.

  “Just the opposite. They’re most likely warning me not to mess up. They’re friendly, I promise.” I walked faster, cutting across the green to avoid as many people as I could. I rushed Barry past the tourists taking pictures in the bandstand and the kids playing ball on their last days before school. I couldn’t ignore the locals waving at me to stop and chat, though.

  “Have you heard when your mother’s coming back?”

  “Thanks for teaching my son at that free-your-mind workshop the arts center held. It got him away from his video games for a change.”

  “When do you think Bayview Ranch will be ready to move horses in, and when will they be hiring? With the crowds leaving, there’ll be a lot of folks without jobs.”

  Barry whistled. “Wow, you know everyone.”

  I didn’t want to tell him they were all checking out the new man in town. Did I mention how everyone in the Harbor agreed with my mother—my divorced mother—that it was high time I got married? Skewed logic ran in the family, as well as eccentricity.

  Mom wanted grandchildren. The psychic crew wanted to find out what kind of kid I could produce, to propagate the species of paranormal oddities. That was another reason I was eager to go back to the city. No one there cared whether a woman was single or not, pregnant or not. Well, no one knew me that well, either. Maybe they didn’t care, but at least they didn’t nag.

  Barry didn’t pick up on the unspoken interest in him as a sperm donor. Thank goodness.

  “No wonder you like this place. It’s clean and open and the people are friendly. I bet you and your neighbors started those rumors about mad cow disease and magic tricks just so you wouldn’t be overrun like the rest of the Hamptons. I can see why you’ve kept your little corner of heaven a well-kept secret.”

  See? He didn’t see anything, not the sly looks, not the small-time surrealism. Which didn’t say much for a would-be writer’s powers of observation. Paumanok Harbor held more secrets than the CIA. If the CIA knew what we could do here, they’d have us flown to Guantanamo, or declare Paumanok Harbor a quarantine area and condemn it, with the inhabitants held captive inside barricades for experiments and government work. Talk about captive breeding programs, we’d belong to Uncle Sam. If we weren’t all burned at the stake.

  We? Funny how I couldn’t wait to leave, but still thought of myself as one of them, the oddball espers. I have almost come to accept that I am one of them, no matter ho
w hard I’ve tried to avoid the fact.

  Kelvin reminded me.

  When Barry instantly agreed to the semi-exorbitant price he charged just for the tow, the mechanic grinned in approval. He liked the new guy. His eleven-year-old son, Kelvin Junior, also known as K2 for his size and appetite, liked the baby blue Mercedes convertible. He liked it so well he stepped back so his ice cream cone didn’t drip on the shiny paint job.

  Barry didn’t pay any attention to the kid or Little Red, who was licking the drips off K2’s bare toes. Yeck. “What do you think is wrong?” Barry asked Kelvin Senior.

  “Won’t start,” was all Kelvin said, wiping his hands on a rag. He thought he might have time to take a better look at it this afternoon. If he couldn’t get it going today, though, Barry might have to wait until Tuesday. This was Friday and no one delivered parts over Labor Day weekend.

  “Of course I could tow the car to the Mercedes dealer in Southampton, not that they’ll look at it until Tuesday either, by the time I can get it to them.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Barry’s staying for the weekend. He wants to see the fireworks in East Hampton Sunday night. And he thinks I can help him with the novel he wants to write.”

  Kelvin bent down to scratch his big toe. K2 wiped his runny nose on his sleeve.

  Uh-oh. The supernatural strikes again. Kelvin was from the founders’ clan of human lie detectors. His itchy toe and K2’s congestion signaled that what I just said was a lie. I repeated my words in my head. Barry didn’t want to see the fireworks in East Hampton? He seemed excited when Ellen mentioned it, offering to bring marshmallows to the beach. He wasn’t going to write a novel? Almost everyone I met wanted to write one. He didn’t think I could help? Of course I could; I was a professional. So the two Kelvins must have reacted to my lie. Barry wasn’t staying for any of those reasons. He was staying for me, because I wanted him to, even if I didn’t want another man in my life. I wanted to do some sketches of him for my book, take some photos of him at the fireworks to paint later. Research, perfectly legitimate research. And a good thing neither Kelvin could read minds.

  We met Ellen at the school and listened to her rave about Mr. Martin Armbruster, the seventh grade science teacher she’d just met. He was smart and funny and the kids adored him. He had students go on to win science fairs and get scholarships to MIT. He was well-read and well-conditioned for a middle-aged bachelor. He had a new honors project he was willing to share with Ellen. And he was coming with us to see the fireworks Sunday night. So now I didn’t have to feel bad about monopolizing Barry.

  While we were at the school, I stopped in to see my aunt Jasmine, Susan’s mother. She was willing to let Barry sleep in Susan’s old room for a couple of nights, if he’d come back for Career Day to tell the kids about book reviewing and writing for the Internet.

  So now my reputation was pulled out of the gossip muck, and Barry was still across the road from my mother’s house on the private drive leading to Grandma Eve’s home, farm, and produce stand.

  In return, he treated all of us—Ellen, Aunt Jas, and me—to lunch at the clam bar at Rick’s Marina. Susan met us there and he put the whole meal on his credit card. Nice, huh?

  By the time we got home, Susan had to leave for work. The restaurant was facing its busiest weekend of the summer and she had to prepare. Barry took his suitcase over to Aunt Jasmine’s, and Ellen went up to study Mr. Armbruster’s syllabus for seventh grade honors science.

  Knowing I couldn’t put it off any longer, I checked my phone messages. Yup, two from my mother on the landline, one on my cell. My father had called, too.

  I called him first. He was a half-assed clairvoyant, not a hard-wired matchmaker. He’d recently had a heart attack, so I didn’t want him to worry. “How are you feeling, Dad?”

  “All recovered from the bypass surgery,” he told me. “Not quite recovered from your mother’s visit.”

  “She worries about you.” That was my job, mediating. I’d had a lot of practice at it before they finally separated, to the relief of all of us. “You needed someone to take care of you when you got out of the hospital.”

  “I didn’t need her lecturing the condo board about allowing pets in the building. Or shouting at my neighbors for going to the dog track. Or—”

  “She’s on her way back north, isn’t she? I bet you miss having someone to fight with.”

  “Not as much as I miss you, baby girl. I don’t know what I ever saw in that woman, but I wouldn’t do anything different because I got you out of the deal.”

  “Aw, Dad, cut it out before I get weepy. I miss you, too.”

  “I don’t mean to make you cry, Willy. I just wanted to warn you about something.”

  Here it comes, another of my father’s inscrutable alerts. It wasn’t his fault, I knew. He got feelings of doom connected to those he loved, but the feelings didn’t come with names, times, or places, only vague clouds of foreboding. “What is it, Dad?”

  “Old tables. Don’t know what or why. Just watch out, baby girl.”

  If that was the worst of it, nothing would ruin my nice weekend. I wouldn’t lean on the rickety wicker table on the porch, or sit under the dining room table in an earthquake. “Got it, Dad. Thanks.”

  I took a deep breath and called my mother. “Yes, he’s handsome. Likes books. Must have money to judge by his car and buying lunch. Yes, he’s single. No, he’s not talented.”

  I hadn’t seen his writing yet, but we both knew those weren’t the kinds of talents I meant.

  Mother sniffed her disappointment. After all, I’d almost been engaged to a wealthy English lord who half ran the Department of Unexplained Events. “Does he like dogs?”

  “Little Red hasn’t bitten him yet.” He tried and missed, so that doesn’t count.

  “That’s a good sign. Put him on the phone.”

  Let my mother talk to a man I’d just met this morning? In her dreams. “Barry’s staying with Aunt Jas for the weekend. He’s over there now, unpacking.”

  “Not the newcomer. I want to talk to the dog.”

  I tried to be subtle, without being insulting. “Uh, Mom, Ellen is here.”

  Even my mother had her limits. “Oh. Well, be careful.”

  “I know. Old tables.”

  “Huh?”

  “Dad mentioned that. Danger in old tables.”

  “He’s an old patoot, your father. Don’t listen to him. He never makes any sense anyway. Have a good time. And ask your young man if he’ll adopt a retired greyhound.”

  “He’s not my—”

  She hung up. I should have let Little Red talk to her.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE SCIENCE TEACHER CALLED on Saturday and invited us to go out on his boat. Ellen was thrilled and begged me to come. I was not thrilled. Boats and I didn’t do well together. Some of my worst experiences have been on board something too flimsy to float. Hell, the one I was on a few months ago—not by my choice, either—caught on fire and sank. How could I admit to one of my oldest friends that I was uncomfortable, if not terrified, any time my feet were not on solid ground? That included boats, planes, skis, and elevators.

  “I get seasick.”

  “There’s not a breeze in the air, not a whitecap in sight. Not even you could get sick on a day like today. Besides, Martin said we’re following the shoreline, not going out into the Sound. You have no excuse except you’re still the same chickenshit you always were.”

  That was the trouble with longtime friends. They had long memories. “Don’t you want to spend time alone with your new friend?” They had a lot in common, chief of which was they were both single, living in areas without many opportunities to meet like-minded adults of the opposite sex. “Yes, but I don’t want to be so obvious about it. He said you could invite Barry, too. And Susan.”

  Susan refused. “Spend the day with my old science teacher? Ee-uw. ’Sides, I’d worry about calling him Farty Marty to his face.”

  Ellen gasped. “You did
n’t call him that, did you?”

  “Of course. Everyone did.”

  Ellen called to invite Barry before I could tell her not to. I didn’t want him to see me wretched, or retching.

  He agreed instantly, of course. “Perfect day for a sail.”

  A sailboat was ten times worse! They always rocked or got becalmed or heeled over or whatever you call the step before capsizing. “I need to work.”

  “I thought you said we were going to the beach today.” Ellen started packing a bag with sunscreen, bottled water, and binoculars. “You weren’t going to get a lot done anyway. The only difference is we’ll be on the water instead of in it.”

  I prayed we stayed that way.

  Martin had a converted lobster boat, not a sail in sight but only a single sputtering engine. The boat’s name, hand-painted on the back, was the She Crab. I wondered if that was the original name, or if Martin was a misogynist. The tub smelled like a dead fish anyway.

  It was low and narrow, with a shallow draft, according to Martin’s lecture about its history. Her history, he corrected me. The craft was a she. That’s what he thought. No female would tolerate a boat without a bathroom, only a bucket. A head, he said. There was a tiny three-sided protected cabin for the driver. The captain, Martin preferred. And benches installed along the low sides. Gunwales. There was a tiny deck up front. Fore. Where Martin thought I should sit to be lookout. Jackass.

  The She Crab contained one other furnishing: a stained and scarred wooden table bolted to the deck. An old table, like my father warned me about. I eyed it warily.

  Barry was so damn cheerful about leaving the dock I wanted to throw something at him, but I wasn’t about to touch the bucket. Okay, so he wasn’t a sensitive, but couldn’t he see my hands shaking, my knees knocking? I was wearing shorts, for Pete’s sake.