Hiss and Tell

by Claire Donally

  Even so, Sunny felt uneasy as she walked the few blocks over to pick up Mrs. Martinson at her place. Helena was out on her porch. “I thought I’d spare you a greeting from Toby.”

  From the level of excited barking inside the house, Sunny was just as glad.

  Mrs. M. held out a set of car keys. “Would you mind driving the Buick? The evenings are still long, but it will be dark by the time we’re heading back.”

  It wasn’t the first time Sunny had done the driving, so she led the way to the car, opening the passenger-side door for Helena. The car started up without a problem, and Sunny noticed the gas gauge read “full.”

  All prepared for the journey, she thought. I hope.

  She took local roads over to the interstate and headed north. The Elmet Ladies usually met in the county seat of Levett, which was sort of enemy territory for Will. Most of his support came from people like Sunny’s dad, down in the southern end of the county, folks around Kittery Harbor who felt they were getting shortchanged by the movers and shakers up in Levett.

  This could be a chance for Will to make some inroads in Frank Nesbit country.

  As long as Mrs. Nesbit doesn’t overturn the applecart. Sunny pushed that thought away.

  Sunny got off at the exit for Levett, and Mrs. M. directed her to a lodge hall that the Elmet Ladies had rented for the evening. There were definitely more than ninety-nine people inside, and some of them weren’t even ladies. Sunny hadn’t expected to find so many political junkies in this neck of the woods. Maybe this was a good thing for Will.

  Helena took her around the room, introducing Sunny to people, and in some cases, reintroducing her to the mothers of old classmates or people who’d been ahead of her at school.

  Then her eyes lit up. “Here’s someone you really should meet.” The someone was a young woman, younger than Sunny, and she was surrounded by a buzzing cluster of ladies. Helena deftly inserted them into the crowd, moving forward until she could make the introductions. “Sunny Coolidge, this is Priscilla Kingsbury. Priscilla, Sunny.”

  So this is the bride-to-be, one of the fabled Kingsburys, Sunny thought. Priscilla had sandy blond hair, cut short in a fairly utilitarian style, and wore a plain khaki dress not that dissimilar from the one Sunny had on. Hmmmm. Maybe I have a future as a political helpmate, at least in the wardrobe department.

  As Priscilla turned to them, Sunny was struck by the girl’s eyes, large, dark, and intelligent, the best feature in an otherwise pleasantly pretty face. She also displayed a killer smile and a sharp memory. “Nice to meet you, Sunny. And good to see you, Helena.”

  “Priscilla is helping with our food pantry,” Mrs. M. explained. That explained a lot. Helena had made keeping the local food pantry stocked her personal mission. Jobs were still scarce around the county, and a lot of families needed help in stretching their food budgets.

  “We just provided some seed money and discussed best practices.” Priscilla smiled. “It’s passionate folks like Helena who really got it off the ground. If we can find more people like that in neighboring counties, we can try setting up a regional pilot program and even wind up with a model that we can use nationally.”

  Sunny nodded, impressed. “Sounds pretty serious.”

  Priscilla laughed, flashing that smile again. “It makes a nice change from forever talking about wedding plans.”

  “Speaking of which . . .” A lady off to Priscilla’s left cut in. “Have you considered using local goods and services for the wedding? That could be a real economic boost.”

  Priscilla turned to her, looking a bit harassed. But the woman on Priscilla’s right stepped forward with an answer. “I’m Fiona Ormond, Ms. Kingsbury’s wedding planner. Some elements of the wedding—the gown, for instance—will of necessity come from New York. But there are many other supplies and services, of course, we’re looking to source locally.”

  The planner had a handsome, slightly square face, and blond hair with dark roots showing at the part. Proof that she’s a busy woman who doesn’t get distracted by mere vanity, Sunny’s irreverent alter ego suggested. With her crisp business suit and a smile that could cut paper, Fiona was the classic stereotype of the go-getting New York career woman.

  Is that what Will thought he was seeing when he first met me? Sunny wondered. She looked over to the stage, where he stood looking out at the crowd. Will smiled when he spotted her. At least he’s changed his mind now.

  “I guess this isn’t the time or place to discuss life on the campaign trail,” Helena whispered with a smile as she moved away from Priscilla and deftly snagged them a pair of aisle seats. As usual, Mrs. M.’s timing was impeccable. No sooner had they sat down than the chairwoman called the meeting to order.

  Once everyone was seated, Will set off on his stump speech. It wasn’t an attack speech. Will was respectful of Frank Nesbit, praising him as a good administrator who worked well within the county government. Will had practiced and refined his words, working with Mike and other members of his “Kittery Harbor Kitchen Cabinet.” As Will concluded, he said, “Just as his billboards say, Frank Nesbit has done a good job of keeping Elmet County safe. But now the job is changing. We’ve had drug labs appear, even dealt with a serial killer. What you don’t know can hurt you. So you have to ask yourselves: are you safer not knowing what’s out there or being aware of the potential crime situation?”

  Sunny tried to listen like the reporter she used to be, rather than a girlfriend. She thought Will sounded pretty good, and judging by the applause, a lot of other people in the audience did, too. Then the chairwoman opened the floor for questions.

  A voice came from the rear of the hall, pitched so everyone could hear. “But how do you become aware of the potential crime situation? Would you be sending officers out looking for trouble?”

  Sunny twisted in her seat to get a glimpse of the questioner, a handsome woman with a frosting of gray in her short, dark hair.

  “Lenore Nesbit,” Helena Martinson whispered in Sunny’s ear.

  Did Will recognize his antagonist? Whether he did or not, he responded to Lenore with a smile. “For most cops, it’s the other way around. Every time a law enforcement officer goes out, there’s the possibility of trouble finding him—or her. That’s a difference between the sheriff and myself—I’ve pounded a beat in several different locations.”

  “So is that your policing policy, that our officers should be ‘pounding a beat’ rather than, for instance, driving on traffic patrol?” Lenore asked.

  Will refused to be drawn into that trap. “I think we know what the situation is on the interstate through outlet-land,” he said. “There’s a lot of traffic, and people get a little crazy when it comes to bargains. Plus, I’m aware of the revenue generated from giving tickets to folks from outside the state. It’s a fiscal enhancement for the sheriff’s department and for the county, as well as a valid safety issue.”

  So Ben Semple will keep his job, Sunny thought.

  Lenore thanked Will and disappeared while others in the hall asked questions or expressed concerns. The chairwoman was just beginning to wrap things up when a surprise visitor arrived.

  Frank Nesbit walked into the hall, wearing his usual green sheriff’s department Windbreaker, his trademark silver mustache as carefully groomed as ever. He might as well have stepped down off one of his campaign billboards.

  He made his way to the front of the hall, shaking a lot of hands on the way. “I’m not here to steal my opponent’s thunder,” Nesbit said as he faced the crowd. “The past few years have shown that Will Price is a very talented, experienced officer. Right now we have a situation that calls for both of those qualities: the Kingsbury-de Kruk wedding. So I’m appointing Constable Price as my liaison officer for the duration, effective immediately, so he can help us work with all the other law enforcement agencies providing security for the celebration.”

  While
everyone applauded the sheriff’s generous response, Nesbit shook hands with Will, who did a good job of looking pleased. But Sunny could tell otherwise, and so could Mrs. Martinson. “What’s that old rascal up to now?” she asked in a low voice.

  They didn’t get an answer until Will finished pressing the flesh and almost everyone had left the hall. “That’s one I didn’t expect,” Will growled as he escorted Sunny and Helena to the Buick. “If the wedding goes off without a hitch, Nesbit cements his reputation as a great administrator, appointing the right man for the job. And if anything goes wrong, it will all be my fault.”

  “That is clever, in a twisted kind of way,” Sunny had to admit.

  “But here’s the kicker,” Will said. “It also means that I’ll have to spend a lot of time up in Wilawiport, giving me even less of a chance to campaign.”

  “And there you have it in a nutshell,” Helena Martinson said. “The difference between a cop and a politician as sheriff.”

  3

  Since it was a work night, Sunny couldn’t stay out late to help Will figure out how to deal with this latest political curveball. By the time she got Mrs. Martinson home, it was just about time for bed. Sunny arrived at her house to see her father watching the late news.

  “Somehow, Will’s speech didn’t make it into the national newscast.” Mike grinned at her. “How did it go?”

  “As far as the speech went, that was pretty good. But afterward . . .” She recounted what happened with Frank Nesbit’s surprise visit.

  “Not wanting to steal Will’s thunder? Of course he did.” Mike frowned. “And Nesbit’s shoveled enough happy horseflop with the Kingsburys to know damn well this isn’t the plum job he’s making it out to be.”

  Sunny nodded. “Will already figured out it’s a heads-Nesbit-wins, tails-Will-loses situation. And it will keep him stuck in Wilawiport instead of campaigning.”

  That got a deeper scowl out of Mike. “Just means we’ll have to pull up our socks and work all the harder to get the word out. Is Will taking it okay?”

  “He knew from the start what he was getting into,” Sunny said. “And we all knew the sheriff wasn’t going to make it any easier.” She looked down. “I’d better get out of this outfit and into bed.”

  She’d already spotted Shadow making a slow circle around her, watching intently. It wasn’t often that Sunny wore nylons, and she wanted to get safely out of reach before Shadow’s nosiness overcame his usual caution. Cat claws and pantyhose did not make a good combination.

  Up in her room, she quickly changed into pjs. Shadow shouldered the door open and came in, looking relieved to find her back to normal.

  Sunny sat on the floor, and Shadow crawled into her lap, arranging himself for a good petting.

  “Yeah,” Sunny told him, “life would be so much easier if all any of us needed was a good belly scratch.”

  *

  The next morning Sunny breakfasted with her dad, who was already dressed for his daily hike. “Going up to outlet-land to walk in the air conditioning,” he said. “The weather guy last night said to expect some more hot air,” Mike winked. “He didn’t say whether to expect it from Will, Frank Nesbit, or any of the Kingsburys.”

  Whatever the cause, the prediction was right. The air felt unseasonably warm as Sunny walked out to her Wrangler for the ride into town.

  Monday-morning traffic flowed more freely than it had on the weekend. At least all the people visiting on Saturday and Sunday excursions had gone home. But Sunny saw plenty of vehicles with out-of-state plates, lazing along, enjoying the scenery—and clogging the roads. Considering her line of work, boosting tourism and booking accommodations at the Maine Adventure X-perience, Sunny realized that the waves of tourists were partly her doing. Obviously, not all—there were things like great scenery, discount goods in the outlets, and a state tourism bureau involved. But her promotional copy and the time and effort she put into the website made a contribution, too. So in a way, one could argue that the traffic-laden roads were a testament to her success.

  Be interesting to use that as an excuse if I’m late, Sunny thought.

  Either way, she beat the clock into the office, fired up the computer, and started checking e-mail. A few minutes later, Nancy the summer intern arrived and started a pot of coffee. Nancy was supposed to have been working on the local paper but had found publicity and promotional work more interesting than the nuts and bolts of journalism. Sunny didn’t necessarily agree with that herself, but having an assistant web lackey around had made life a lot easier—she’d miss Nancy when the girl returned to school in a few weeks. For now, though, they divvied up the morning’s tasks and set to work.

  Around eleven o’clock, they had a real surprise when their boss, Oliver Barnstable, also showed up. Ollie was a local boy who’d left town to make good, then came back to spread his money around his old hometown. The MAX office wasn’t just about tourism, it also served as home base for a variety of his mysterious enterprises. The whole back wall of the office was lined with locked file cabinets containing all the dealings of Ollie’s mini-empire.

  “Looking good, Ollie.” Sunny’s compliment was genuine as Ollie maneuvered inside with his walker. Although he was still undergoing in-patient rehab for his broken leg at a facility up near Levett, Ollie had wangled taking a few hours a week off-site, to take care of business. The rehab was doing him a world of good—he was svelter, his eyes were clearer, and his temper was much more peaceful.

  Just then, Ollie bumped his walker into the edge of a visitor’s chair and let rip with an expletive.

  Well, comparatively more peaceful, Sunny amended. But really, altogether, her boss was much improved from the irascible guy who’d hired her, the one who’d earned himself the nickname of “Ollie the Barnacle.” Sunny suspected that was due to Elsa Hogue, an occupational therapist who had taken more than a professional interest in her patient.

  Ollie gave Nancy a key and instructions to open one of the back file cabinets, and he soon had the contents of a folder spread out on a desk, reading them over.

  They all worked in silence until an actual visitor arrived in the form of Will Price.

  “How goes the campaign?” Ollie asked in the tone of someone with a vested interest. He’d surprised Sunny—and Will, too—by offering to switch his support from sheriff Nesbit to Will’s insurgent candidacy.

  “Just dandy.” Will didn’t even try to keep the disgust out of his voice. “I just wasted my whole morning on what looks to be an enormous time-suck.” As Will explained the assignment Nesbit had stuck him with, Ollie’s eyebrows drew together.

  “Clever, pushing you off to the sidelines,” Ollie said.

  “No kidding!” Will burst out. “I was just up on Neal’s Neck, talking with the head of Kingsbury’s private security, a guy named Lee Trehearne. To put it as nicely as possible, the guy was patronizing. Besides his own guys, he has a detachment of Maine state troopers—the Senator still has pull—plus executive protection details from two other state police forces covering governors Lem and Tom. The way they see it, the contribution of local law enforcement lies in traffic control. I might as well have been assigned to be a school crossing guard.”

  “Got to hand it to old Frank.” Ollie shook his head, still admiring. “He’s good at this stuff.”

  Under the circumstances, Sunny felt it was only fair of her to take Will out to lunch to lick his wounds. But then another visitor arrived—Ken Howell, the editor, publisher, printer, and pretty much everything else on the local paper, the Harbor Courier.

  Sunny assumed he was there for intern Nancy, but instead Ken came straight to Sunny’s desk. “Back when you first came back to town and talked to me about a newspaper job, didn’t you mention you could handle a camera?”

  Sunny wondered where he was going with this, but nodded. “I was always pretty good, and after some papers began fir
ing their whole photographic departments and expecting the reporters to shoot pictures, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look ahead. So I took classes in photography and media—not that it saved my job.” Even though it happened more than a year ago, it still irked Sunny that she’d gotten laid off while on leave taking care of her dad.

  “Here’s the situation,” Ken said. “My regular photographer is away on vacation, and his backup managed to break an arm using a hand winch to pull a boat onto its trailer. There’s a press conference this afternoon on Neal’s Neck about the Kingsbury-de Kruk wedding.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been hearing a lot about that.” Will still looked disgusted.

  “I heard about what Nesbit pulled, and I’m sorry.” Ken’s long, bony face was serious. He was another member of the Kittery Harbor group backing Will. “But we knew he wasn’t just going to hand the keys over to you. You’ll have to pick your appearances for maximum effect—”

  “And hope a picture of me directing traffic doesn’t turn up on TV or in a paper,” Will finished for him.

  “Not in my paper,” Ken assured him. “At this point, I’m wondering if I’ll get any pictures at all. It’s one thing to cover an event with pictures and interview people later. But this is supposed to be a Q and A, and it’s kind of hard to ask questions while staring through a viewfinder. Can you help me out, Sunny?”

  Sunny glanced over at Ollie, and so did Ken. “Can you spare her for a while?” he asked Ollie.

  “I can handle things,” Nancy eagerly volunteered.

  “You weren’t planning to strip down the computers and polish the insides—anything like that, were you?” Ollie asked Sunny.

  Smiling, she shook her head. “Not for another couple of weeks at least. Besides, I won’t be that far away, and Nancy can always call my cell if there are any problems.”

  Sunny was trying to play it cool, but she could feel her pulse starting to race. Much as she tried to convince herself that she’d closed the book on her journalism career, she was a reporter at heart. If she had a chance of making a living as a journalist, even on a tiny local operation like the Courier, she’d bag her job at MAX in a heartbeat.