Life Guards in the Hamptons

by Celia Jerome

  He wouldn’t need me. Which didn’t make me as happy as it ought to.

  Before he got busy in the clinic, I said I’d call our news in to the firehouse in Montauk. The volunteers deserved to hear that the dogs were recovering.

  Melissa almost slammed the clinic’s back door in my face. “Great, then we’ll have reporters on the doorstep, as if we don’t have a full waiting room already.”

  Matt shrugged. “She’s right. Try to keep the dogs’ whereabouts a secret for now, if you can.”

  “In Paumanok Harbor? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  He turned serious. He reached a hand to brush my cheek and looked at me with those soft brown eyes. “You folks keep a lot of secrets, Willy.”

  Yes, and mine were eating at my soul right now. I needed to talk to Oey. Or, sigh, my grandmother.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE FIRST THING I DID WHEN I GOT HOME was strip off my revolting clothes, right by the front door on the porch. No one could see, and the foul rags were not coming inside. Little Red took one sniff and lifted his leg on them.

  “Nice,” Susan said when I came all the way in, nearly naked, nearly frightened to death. The old truck wasn’t in the driveway, and last I’d heard she was staying at the restaurant to keep cooking for the volunteers and the survivors. She tossed me the afghan from the couch and went back to filing her nails and watching the television, like just about everyone else in the region, I’d guess. She wore my old terry cloth robe, so maybe she just came home to shower and change. “It’s a good thing that guy didn’t come over.”

  I was too tired and too angst-ridden for another lecture about not bringing strange men home with her. I hated finding some bare-chested surfer dude raiding my refrigerator before I had a cup of coffee. “Yeah, real good. Thanks.”

  “He said he’d call first, but you never know.”

  I rested my head on the top of the couch. “Men are like that.”

  “He seemed serious about talking to you, though.”

  “If it’s another reporter, tell him I’ve gone back to the city.”

  “No, this guy saw the poster about your mother’s rescued greyhounds. He bought the old Mahoney place and wants a dog. He asked about you at the restaurant last night before all the chaos.”

  “Tell him she’ll be home by Halloween.” Wearing the afghan and nothing else, I watched another station, this one with breaking local news.

  “The rejoicing in the Hamptons is short-lived,” went the lead. I turned the volume louder to hear a bald man in a bow tie.

  “In the midst of a miraculous rescue mission, unknown felons have taken advantage of the situation to escalate the recent crime spree.”

  Susan put down the nail file. “Damn, I guess I should have looked at my cell for messages.” We both leaned forward, as if that made the story any more comprehensible. According to informed sources, which meant someone didn’t want to give his or her name, almost every police officer in the Hamptons had been out directing traffic last night when they weren’t helping pull people from the water. The main roads had to be kept clear for fast-moving emergency vehicles, so cops manned all the busy intersections to prevent more casualties. Some of them drove police cars to the hospital or the walk-in clinics when the ambulances were full.

  So no one was watching Main Street. Except the wily robbers.

  Tiffany’s got hit in East Hampton. London Jewelers, too. Rose Jewelers in Southampton. That little place in Sag Harbor that fixed watches. A coin shop in Westhampton that advertised, “We buy gold.”

  Someone stole it. All of it. No one knew until morning that the alarms had been electronically bypassed, cameras disabled, automatic calls to the security companies interrupted, the storage vaults and safes silently detonated.

  The FBI took over the investigation, now that large corporations like Tiffany and Company had been hit.

  As if the thefts weren’t scary enough, more money went missing from the government coffers. This time a million dollars of Southampton’s bank account disappeared into cyberspace. Worse, nearly every employee of all the departments of that township had a hundred dollars deducted from their paychecks. A hundred dollars meant a lot to a part-time street sweeper or the divorced school crossing guard with four kids and no child support.

  The town could repay the money … if the million dollars had been where it belonged. Now everyone would have to wait. Near riots started breaking out. Homeland Security had investigators in place. The new Federal cybercrime unit had investigators confiscating computers. The whole town was shut down.

  “They call them black hat gangs,” Susan told me. “Groups of topnotch hackers with no consciences who work together to steal as much money as they can. It’s a game with them, at first, to see if they can break the codes. Then they get greedy. I heard they suspected Russ, because word is he’s so good at programming. They found some kind of routing device from his computer at Town Hall to an unknown network. But he stayed at the command center all night with his laptop from home, which had no such gizmo.”

  “I bet he’s mad as hell someone messed with his machinery.”

  “Outraged, more like. He thought he had the most firewalls and safeguards on the planet. Now he swears he’ll find the crooks.”

  “They’re going to let him help?” Like setting the fox to guard the henhouse.

  “He swears to Chief Haversmith he had nothing to do with any crimes.”

  Which mightn’t work for the FBI, the CIA, or Homeland Security, but if Russ passed the chief’s test, he told the truth. If anyone could unravel the web back to whoever spun it, I’d put money on Russ, especially when his own honor was at stake.

  “Do they think the street crimes are connected to the electronic ones?”

  “They’re not saying, but someone had to be good at shutting down the security systems.”

  “And no one saw anything?”

  “They never do.”

  “Yeah, but enough people were coming and going for the rescue to notice people leaving jewelry stores with suitcases or sacks.”

  “You’d think so.”

  The next story on the news got weirder when some science expert got on to talk about a new species of dolphin discovered aiding in the disaster off Montauk. These larger, more intelligent animals seem to have been directing the more common species, identified by markings shown in photos from each instance, as the same pod that earlier tried to keep people out of the waters. Now the new ones had disappeared. Called back to secret laboratories? Retrieved by government covert ops? NOAA was sending marine biologists; PETA was sending protestors.

  I was sending mental messages to whoever listened. Go home!

  The camera went back to the newscaster in the bow tie. “And they say this is the off-season in the Hamptons. Well, folks, there’s not a room to be had past the Shinnecock Canal.”

  I found the remote and turned the TV off. “At least the restaurant should do well.”

  Susan said she was too tired to cook. “I never want to look at a soup pot again.”

  “How about a peanut butter sandwich? I had scrambled eggs in another lifetime.”

  My brilliant chef cousin who could make flavors burst in your mouth until you smiled from the inside, laughed. “On Ritz crackers.”

  “Sounds good.”

  While we ate, I listened to phone messages. Uncle Henry at the police station wanted to see me. Oh, yeah, I’d be in a hurry to get there. Did the turkey answer the farmer’s whistle the week before Thanksgiving? Ditto Grandma Eve, who already had the metaphorical hatchet in hand.

  Friends from the city wanted to know if I saw anything. My editor wanted to make sure the new book would be done on time. My father sounded worried. My mother sounded pissed. That was about right, for them.

  I couldn’t face any of it. Maybe if I’d had enough sleep, or enough time. Or more information, not the kind that came from the TV either. I wanted to take the dogs for a walk on the beach, or take a nap. I wanted to
go back and help Matt. I wanted to find Oey and figure out what was going on. As usual, no one gave a rat’s ass over what I wanted.

  First I put word of the Newfoundlands’ recovery on the town’s Facebook page. That would reach everyone in the Harbor and Montauk, too. I made sure to add that the pups were still too traumatized for public viewing, but they were out of danger, in a secure environment.

  Then I called the hospital and got connected to Peg Winters’ room.

  She cried.

  Shit. “Are you all right?”

  She kept crying. “My babies.”

  “Listen, they’re fine. I just saw them.” I had no reason to tell her about the wobbles or the runs, nor could I lie. “They’re not perfect yet, but Matt says they are good. They all ate breakfast.”

  Peg cried some more.

  A nurse got on the line. “It’s the painkillers. Some people react like that, especially after a trauma. Mrs. Winters will be fine in a couple of hours when the last of the heavy stuff wears off. You can pick her up then.”

  Me? Well, better driving to Southampton than into the abattoir of the council meeting Uncle Henry said they’d call this morning. I showered, twice, walked the dogs, and still had time to check in with my father. A worried parent had to be easier than an angry one.

  “Stu, skunk, and a broken nose, right?”

  “I never said your nose got broken. I never even said that he’d hit you, just that he wanted to. Now that you know, you can be more careful.”

  Okay, I’d stay out of bars and Paumanok Harbor where everyone saw me as Calamity Jane. “Nothing about fish? Dolphins?”

  “No, baby girl, they won’t harm you. A cat might.”

  “A cat?” They kept a couple at the farm, half-feral rescues, to keep the rodent population under control. “One of Grandma Eve’s mousers?”

  “A mouser! That’s it! With green eyes. It can give a nasty scratch and carry all kinds of germs and diseases. Don’t get hurt, Willy. I love you.”

  “You, too, Dad. Don’t play tennis in the sun.”

  Traffic hit a dead stop at the light on Montauk Highway near Wainscott, so I called my mother. I got her voice mail, hallelujah.

  “Hi, Mom. Everything is getting back to normal out here, even the traffic jams. Not that I’m calling from the car or anything. I might have someone interested in a greyhound. I’ll get his number, so you can check him out when you get back. We’re really busy here, as you can imagine. Those Newfies are adorable and Matt says they should be okay. The rest of us, too. Talk to you soon.”

  Another long delay at Watermill. Another duty call.

  “Hi, Grandma. I am fine, yes, Susan is too. Listen, I don’t think the oiaca will be around today.”

  “Because it had a long night?”

  “We all did.”

  “Well, the tourists are flocking east to Montauk, looking for dolphins and taking pictures of the boat on its side. We should have a quiet time of it. Quiet enough to hear your story.”

  She didn’t mean the one I was writing, either.

  “Sorry, I’m losing the connection.”

  CHAPTER 19

  MRS. PEG WINTERS, MY NEW BEST FRIEND, cried when I picked her up. She was so grateful the dogs were safe, she was alive, she had a place to stay and someone to drive her while her arm was in a cast and a sling, that she gave me a hug. In one swoop I had the breath knocked out of me with the heavy cast and my turquoise silk shirt spotted with her tears. I hadn’t brought all that many clothes with me out to the Harbor this trip because I was counting on being back in the city in days. And half of what I had brought was in the garbage. So I wore my favorite blouse, the one that made my eyes look bluer. The fact that I would see Matt when I dropped Peg off at his house did not have anything to do with my decision. He’d be too busy to notice me, anyway.

  Peg wore a T-shirt with an MFD logo, donated by the ambulance crew, baggy surgical scrubs provided by the nurses, and a man’s flannel shirt over her shoulders, because of the sling, from the hospital’s lost and found department. She cried about that, too. She managed to look both attractive and feminine in her hand-me-downs, way younger than her forty-something years with her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail. If her green eyes weren’t so red from crying and her nose so red from wiping from the crying, she’d be really pretty. I wondered how someone who appeared as delicate as Peg could handle a full-grown Newfoundland. Sure they’d look good trotting beside her in a show ring, but what about on the road, if they saw a squirrel? Those puppies already weighed more than I felt comfortable managing. Of course I was used to a six-pound Pomeranian, and no one carried a Newfie around like an accessory.

  I told Peg how good I thought she looked, considering what she’d been through. She started weeping again.

  “All my clothes, I bought new ones for the cruise, like a trousseau for the first vacation I’ve had since the divorce, and now they’re gone.”

  “We can stop in Bridgehampton on the way home. There’s a shopping center with a lot of the chain stores you’ll recognize. You’ll want to get things like a hairbrush and underwear and deodorant, too. There’s a drugstore.”

  “But I have no money!” she sobbed. “No wallet, no checks, no credit cards.”

  “I’ll put it on my card for now—” which caused more tears of gratitude and another painful hug, “—and I’ll call Mr. Whitside at the bank in Paumanok Harbor. If you give him your social security number, he can have a new card waiting for you by the time we get there.”

  I sincerely hoped so, because she bought a complete fall wardrobe, mostly black that looked really good with her red-brown hair, plus shoes, cosmetics, watch, and cell phone, all on my credit card. I bought a new pair of jeans and two long-sleeved jerseys with cash. She changed in a ladies’ room. I stayed in my turquoise silk shirt. The spots were almost dry by now.

  All that shopping—and controlling my impulses—made me hungry. Since I decided Peg needed sustenance after her ordeal, and since the Carvel store was right across the street, I treated for that, too. Peg, who still looked dainty, petite and put-together now, with a filigree hair clip and neat trousers and a tailored blazer draped over her shoulders because of the sling, had a kiddie cup of no-fat frozen yogurt. I had a coffee royale ice cream cone. With sprinkles, so there. And I only got a couple of drips on my good shirt. So there. And there. And there.

  We talked about her dogs and her business and the expenses of showing a dog through puppy classes to champion status, so a bitch’s offspring and a dog’s stud service had more value. Thank goodness my mother wasn’t in the car with us. Her views on dog shows and breeders did not mesh with Peg’s—by about a football field.

  Tears started to fill Peg’s eyes again when she worried the puppies might not be salable now, if they lived. She’d have to return the deposits, pay the vet bills, feed the growing pups, start training them herself while she searched for good homes for them, with no income until next spring, when she hoped to have two new litters to sell. Only Mollie, she felt, had show potential that might never be realized.

  She loved her dogs, but they were still a business and her livelihood. I couldn’t imagine someone turning down a puppy because it wasn’t perfect to its breed standards. But who was I to judge? I loved a three-legged critter with missing teeth and an attitude problem.

  I didn’t want to get Peg’s hopes up about Frankie yet. The middle-aged Romeo might change his mind and decide the fancy sports car was a better chick magnet than a drooling puppy. “Look on the bright side,” I told her. “You are all alive.”

  Damn, the woman could cry! “I thought those pills would have worn off by now.”

  “Oh, I’m always like this when I’m upset. Or happy. Or tired. I just cry a lot. My ex couldn’t stand it, especially when we went to a sad movie. He walked out.”

  Of the movies or the marriage?

  She stopped weeping in time to get her new credit card at the bank and withdraw the limit, which she used to repay
me, thank goodness, or I’d be paying interest on my next bill.

  She didn’t cry much when she saw two of her puppies bound out of the back room at Matt’s clinic to greet her. Mollie came slower, but she did wag her tail. Matt’s last two customers applauded.

  Of course Peg turned on the waterworks again when she threw herself into Matt’s arms in joyous gratitude for saving them, for keeping them safe, for letting her stay at his own house when she had nowhere else to go.

  I almost mentioned she could go to any of the Montauk motels reserved by the Nova Pride’s owners for the stranded passengers, but I liked her and liked how she appreciated the generosity of his offer. What I didn’t like was Peg in Matt’s arms, his hand patting her back. “There, there. It’ll be fine.”

  No, it wouldn’t, because my father’s latest gloomy premonition just came true. There it was, the green-eyed mouser. Only he meant the green-eyed monster that clawed at my heartstrings leaving raw, bloody furrows. Peg and Matt were about the same age, both divorced, both dedicated to dogs. And she didn’t have Little Orphan Annie curly hair or a too-flat chest, an extra five pounds—okay, ten—or weird and dangerous friends from other worlds.

  She was normal.

  I felt like crying myself. Yeah, Dad, it hurt. A lot. One of these days I’d have to admit to myself how much Matt meant to me. I knew we were friends, knew he might wish for more, but I’d made my decision not to get involved with any man, especially not one who lived in outer Bumhampton. So where did this jealousy come from, this knife-edged wound?