by Celia Jerome
The hardware store had a customer I’d never seen before. He was wearing ironed jeans, loafers with no socks and a gold chain around his neck. He was asking Bill about keeping deer out of his ornamentals. Definitely a summer resident.
I was circumspect, showing the poster to Bill when the customer picked up some ant traps. I said I hoped the night mares would leave soon.
The customer glanced at the poster without really seeing it, then sneered at me and Bill. “Between the traffic and the taxes, this place is a nightmare, all right, but you locals forget where your money comes from. It’s people like me who pay your rip-off prices, so you could show a little respect.”
He stormed out, but somehow stepped on a tack that went through his fancy loafers and into his sockless foot.
Never mess with a cranky telekinetic in a hardware store.
Mrs. Findel at the grocery store was always unfriendly, so it was hard to tell if today’s irascibility was caused by bad dreams or her usual bad temperament. She didn’t want any stupid posters cluttering up her window. Besides, I’d been shopping out of town, so why should she do me any favors?
“For the young horse’s sake?” I suggested, vowing not to shop here in the future, either. “Or for the townspeople?”
She cracked her chewing gum. I guess the rest of the locals shopped elsewhere when they could, too. I asked to speak to Mr. Findel, who was always nice to me, but she said he was gone. I wouldn’t blame him if he never came back. I left one of the posters on the counter anyway.
I found myself at the eastern end of the commons, facing the library, Mrs. Terwilliger’s domain. She of the new gun permit.
I looked at the stately library building. I looked at the posters in my hand. I looked across the square and decided to go to Janie’s Beauty Parlor and the drugstore first.
CHAPTER 8
“AW, SWEETIE, I’M SORRY ABOUT YOUR boyfriend,” Janie said, giving me an enthusiastic hug that slopped the coffee onto my jeans and set Little Red to barking in panic.
All the other ladies getting their perms and weekly sets nodded in sympathy. It wasn’t that the town was telepathic; they were just terrible gossips. By now, they all knew my business and my mission. I didn’t have to say a word about the horses or the kidnapped colt. Janie took the poster from me, said, “We’ll find you, baby,” and hung it in the shop window.
Then she walked around me, studying my hair. “Time for a new cut, sweetie. You know, out with the old, in with the new, just like last time. Or maybe a different color.”
I’d let her cut and highlight my streaky blonde hair last spring, after I made a break from a loser named Arlen in the city. I hadn’t done much with my hair since, and it showed, darker roots and all.
“I’m kind of busy right now.” And I liked it longer, so I could clump it back with a scrunchie and be done. Then again, Janie always knew what made a woman look her best.
She returned to putting Mrs. Chemlecki’s white hair onto big rollers. “I guess it’s just as good you and the hunk split up. It never works out when the groom is prettier than the bride.”
Mrs. Chemlecki quickly added, “Not that you’re not an attractive woman, Willow dear.”
Janie agreed, kind of. “But no one dumps on a gorgeous redhead.”
“He didn’t dump—”
“Of course not.”
Red and I slunk out of Janie’s and headed to the drugstore, feeling about as attractive as the pot of wilted geraniums out front that someone had forgotten to water.
Walter, the pharmacist, made me feel better. He took the poster and said, “You’ll find the poor bugger if anyone can.” Then he handed me a paper bag.
I looked inside to find a sample pack of condoms. “But I’m not—” I sputtered. “That is, Grant and I . . . He’s not . . . I don’t need . . .”
“You will,” he assured me.
I smiled at him. “That’s right. Blondes have more fun.”
He winked and I held my head higher when I left, until he said, “Doc Lassiter doesn’t usually prescribe drugs, but if he thinks they’ll help, I’ll make sure I have a bunch in stock.”
Shit. Dumped, dumpy, and deranged, what a combination.
On that low note I dragged myself next door to the liquor store. I figured I better get my mother another bottle of Kahlua to replace the one I’d been sipping. Or slurping.
After discussing the horses and the hopes of reassuring the mares and the baby with Alan, the sales clerk, I paid for the bottle. And decided to buy a lottery ticket, one of the scratch-off kinds. Not that I felt lucky, but maybe my luck was due to change. I pointed to a one-dollar ticket that had fortune cookies on it.
“You don’t want that one,” Alan said.
“The one with the hearts?”
He shook his head.
“The penguins?”
He flashed his eyes toward the stack of horseshoes.
“That one?”
He winked again.
You learn not to question things in Paumanok Harbor, especially when they win you ten bucks.
One of the questions you don’t ask is how come the postmaster has a Seeing Eye dog. The mail always got sorted properly and delivered on time. Outgoing letters and packages got the correct postage. Customers got the right change. Yet the old man in the bow tie couldn’t see a thing.
I asked if I could hang my poster up on the bulletin board with the wanted flyers and the church schedule. Mr. Kendall took it from my hand.
“Handsome horse. About six months, I’d guess. He’d have to be, to be weaned.”
Like I said, you learn not to ask questions.
By now I was at the far end of the square, nearing the church. I’d been here in the spring for the Patchen girl’s wedding, but not since, which I did not want to discuss with Reverend Shankman. I hoped he was out visiting the sick or writing his sermon—not that many people listened, he was so long-winded and boring—so I could hang my poster on the bulletin board in the vestry and go.
Red was too tired to hop anymore, besides being exhausted from barking at everything bigger than he was. I juggled the Pom, the bottle of Kahlua, the condoms, and the rest of the posters to open the heavy wooden doors into the dark entry hall.
The church was empty, thank God, who might not be as grateful. The sanctuary was not well used in a place like Paumanok Harbor where the truth came in lots of colors, and the minister became tedious. Temple Yisroel used it on Friday nights, and two African-American Muslims prayed there to the east, or to Montauk, twice a day.
I started to lay my burdens down—the physical, not the soulful—starting with Red, when Reverend Shankman suddenly rose up from the last pew. Startled, I dropped the sack of condoms, which naturally spilled out across the marble floor. The bottle of liquor didn’t break, but it did roll across the hall. And of course Little Red bit the reverend’s ankle.
Proving his dedication, the man did not curse, just hopped once or twice while I stuffed everything back in their bags and grabbed Little Red’s leash.
“Heaven knows you need our prayers.” Silently, he took the top poster and tacked it to the bulletin board.
The gray-haired cleric had learned not to ask questions, either, it seemed. I know he always preached that, with God, all things were possible, but God would have to be a magician in this place. I thanked him and went back out to the bright sunshine.
I crossed the street to the next block, behind the stores on the square.
The bowling alley was closed, not surprisingly, since the owner, Joey Danvers, was the one whose wife ran him over.
Bud from the gas station next door saw me trying to juggle my packages and find the masking tape in my pocket so I could stick a poster to the bowling alley’s front door. He came over and hung the notice for me.
“That should hold until someone comes to run the alley for Joey. The men’s league plays tomorrow, so one of the guys’ll get the keys until Joey’s out of the hospital. Or Maureen’s out of jail. I
t’s not going to rain until the end of the week.”
Bud was better at forecasting than the weather channel. Everyone knew that. “I’ll tell Grandma Eve she’d better water extra.”
“And Claire”—that was his wife—“says her nose is itchy, so tell your grandma to expect company.”
Grandma hadn’t mentioned anything to me, so I wondered if Lou was coming back. He worked with Grant at the Department of Unexplained Events, and I didn’t much like him. Grandma did.
I doubled back to the square and bought a bottle of water and a corn muffin at the deli, sat on one of the benches, and shared with Little Red. I called Susan on her cell to see how she was doing and told her I just had the art center and the library left. Maybe she’d meet me at the library?
“When pigs fly,” was her answer.
Which might be coming next for all I knew. I put everything I could into the deli bag and headed toward the arts and recreation center.
The center was only a few years old and the pride of Paumanok Harbor. Built with a huge legacy from one of the former residents on donated land, the place hadn’t cost the taxpayers a lot, and benefited them all. On one side was a gym and a pool where they held youth nights and senior yoga and ballroom dance lessons. On the other was a gallery with much of the donor’s private collection, classrooms for after school programs, and studios for visiting artists.
My friend Louisa Rivera used to run the whole thing. With two children and another on the way, she stuck to the arts side now. I was looking forward to seeing her if she had a rare two minutes to spare. We’d been friends forever, it seemed, since both of us were summer kids and not really part of the locals’ groups.
Mostly I wanted to know what she was feeling. As far as I knew, neither she nor her parents were born in Paumanok Harbor, and I’d never seen a twinge of paranormal ability in her. Her husband came here as a young boy, a hellion, in fact. His only claim to extraordinary power, other than his amazing good looks, was in making money, first in the computer business, then in land speculation. Now I was curious if they or their children were affected at all by the nightmares.
“I’m pregnant,” Louisa told me. “I barely sleep at night anyway. Who has time for nightmares between peeing every couple of hours?”
“What about mood shifts?”
“Willy, I’m pregnant. That’s another name for bitchy. And no, I don’t know anything about white horses or the new missing one everyone’s talking about this morning. Sorry.”
“What about Dante?”
She smiled, the way she always did when someone mentioned his name. “Nope, he never mentioned anything about them, except to worry that our daughter wants pony lessons, too. We hardly get a chance to speak anyway. He falls into bed exhausted as soon as the kids are asleep and never moves once his head hits the pillow. The poor guy’s been taking care of the children all day so I can get the summer programs up and running.”
Which reminded both of us that I had agreed to teach a creative writing course for teenagers in a couple of weeks. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Now it sounded like another nightmare.
I looked at the flyers around Louisa’s office while she hung one of mine and took several others to post in the classrooms and the rec center. Yup, my name was right there, with pictures of my latest book covers. No backing out now. I saw Louisa had talked Dante into doing two weeks on designing computer games. Someone else was teaching digital photography, and one of the summer interns had ongoing painting classes. I wish there’d been something like that when I spent summers here. All we had was the library.
Oh, boy.
Mrs. Terwilliger had been librarian when my mother was a girl, back when they used the old Shrade house on Main Street for a library. She had to be close to ninety, but no one ever even thought about her retiring. Hell, no. Everyone was afraid of the old bat. So maybe she never turned anyone into a toad when they talked out loud or gave them warts if they put a book back on the shelf out of alphabetical order, she was still scary. She’d give Dewey himself nightmares if he spilled juice on one of the books.
Put a gun in her age-spotted hand and you were asking for trouble.
Taking a dog into the library was putting your library privileges on the line—if not your life.
But this was Little Red, who did not take kindly to being left anywhere, anytime. Out in the sun, tied to a bench where seagulls and squirrels could insult him? My mother would kill me. So I left my bags and bottles near the bike rack and tucked the dog under my T-shirt. So what if I looked pregnant with a six-pound Pomeranian?
Mrs. Terwilliger reached down behind her desk when I opened the door. Uh-oh.
Instead of pulling out a pistol, she handed me a stack of books. You never knew what Mrs. Terwilliger was going to give you, but you could be sure it was something you ought to read.
The Horse Whisperer I was expecting. But three Louis L’Amour westerns?
“These are cowboy books, Mrs. T. I don’t usually—”
“You do now.”
“But the horses aren’t like the Old West mustangs. Or cow ponies.”
“Read them. And remember, the cowboy always rides off into the sunset.”
“Yes, Mrs. T. Thank you.”
Then she handed me another book, Women Who Like Too Many Men Too Much. I’d never heard of it. I looked down at the lump of Little Red. “I’m not . . .”
“For your cousin,” Mrs. Terwilliger said with a curl in her lip. “If she remembers how to read.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“This one is for Dr. Lassiter when you see him.”
“I’m not going to—”
She reached back under the desk. I took the book, a pamphlet really, from the Royce Institute Press. Transuniversal Metaphysics and the Human Mind. An easy read, for sure. Before she could find more books for me to carry, I gave her a poster to hang, and to think about.
She looked at the colt’s picture, then at me. “I’ll read National Velvet tonight. Aloud. That should encourage him. In fact, I already put Secretariat’s biography on various readers’ lists.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“And the dog needs more air than that.” She handed me a cloth book bag with the library logo on it.
“He doesn’t like—”
“For the books, Willow. For the books.”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you. I’ll bring it back as soon as I can.” And I’d put it in the book drop instead of coming inside the library. We left in a hurry, sweating, but alive.
CHAPTER 9
I MET SUSAN OUTSIDE THE POLICE STATION. She showed me the box full of laminated posters but decided to wait outside while I spoke to the chief. I didn’t believe her when she said she wanted to sit in the sun. She’d always hated her freckles. What I believed was she wanted to check out the young cop walking a German shepherd that was wearing an orange vest with K9 on it. The officer was short and almost skinny, with a real honker of a nose, but he was Susan’s type: male and breathing.
Red and I went in and found Uncle Henry at his desk in his shirtsleeves unwrapping a bologna and mustard sandwich. Red wagged his tail. Uncle Henry offered us a piece. I refused; Red whined.
“I didn’t know you had a working dog here,” I said, putting Red down so I could show Uncle Henry the posters. “What does it do?”
“The dog? He’s our drug sniffer.”
I looked out the window. Susan and the cop were sharing the bench. The dog was fast asleep on the grass at their feet. “The shepherd reminds me of one of my mother’s rescue dogs. Hers had a chewed ear too.”
“Yeah, she gave him to us. Want a soda? Root beer’s the only kind we’ve got left.”
“No, thanks.” I kept watching out the window, more to see how close Susan was sitting to the young cop than to see what the dog was doing. “I didn’t think Mom ever trained a dog to smell out drugs.”
Uncle Henry took a bite of his sandwich and shrugged. “She didn’t. She didn’t te
ach Ranger to sniff out bombs or track felons either, but he does them, too.”
“One dog can do all that?”
Uncle Henry shrugged again. “No, but Big Eddie can.” He jerked a thumb toward where I was staring and took a long drink from his soda can.
I took a better look while the chief burped. There was nothing big about Eddie . . . except his unfortunate nose. “Oh.”
“Yeah, but try to explain that to the big shots in Riverhead. It’s easier to let them think we have a whole squad of trained dogs. The only problem with Big Eddie is you can’t overload him with smells. Which means he can’t take duty at the drunk tank, disinfected or not. He can’t ride patrol with Baitfish Barry, can’t be near Ranger after the old boy’s been out in the rain.”
He wouldn’t be good near Little Red either, if Uncle Henry kept slipping the Pomeranian pieces of bologna.
“Then again,” the chief went on, “we don’t have a lot of drug runners, bomb scares, or escaped convicts.”
“Do you think Big Eddie could find a horse?”
“Sure, but you’d be surprised how many horses are out here. Can’t hurt to send him and Ranger out in a squad car except I need them in town at night. We’ve been getting hit hard these days. Every kind of violence, too. No murders yet, but the Danvers thing was a close call. I’ve got to tell you, Willy, I’m worried.”
He looked it, his clothes more rumpled than usual, his deep-set brown eyes heavily shadowed.
“Me, too. But I’m working on it.” I put two of the posters near the second half of his sandwich.
He studied the reward poster, then the plastic-coated one of the three mares and frolicking colt.
“You’re good, Willy.”
I started to thank him, until he said, “Maybe too good.”