Shooting at Loons

by Margaret Maron

  “They are. Just like loons. But they’re also a traditional island delicacy, which is why they both keep getting their heads blown off.”

  He rolled his eyes in amusement. “Go on.”

  “It gets worse. I swear to God every interest group down here’s shooting at loons of one sort or the other—each one thinks that what they’re doing doesn’t really hurt anything and it’s the other guys that are messing it up for everybody else. Fish processors ally with developers against environmentalists because they don’t want anybody looking too closely at their waste disposal procedures. But then the developers turn around and talk environment whenever they can because they know if our coastline starts looking like New Jersey’s, the Crystal Coast is a cooked goose. No more golden eggs.”

  “I still don’t see why poor Linville’s supposed to have it in for a fisherman,” he complained.

  “I’m getting to that. Have another hushpuppy and listen,” I said testily, wondering what was this poor Linville crap? “She’s allied herself with the sports fishers against the menhaden boats.”

  He finished boning his grilled mackerel and said, “What the hell is a menhaden anyhow? I’ve never seen it on a menu.”

  “That’s because you’re not a chicken. After the oil is pressed out, the leftover meal is used for feed and fertilizer.”

  “That’s what Barbara What’s-her-name’s factory processes?”

  “Right. But the whole controversy’s turning into a class thing—traditional livelihoods up against privileged leisure.

  “See, what you have to keep in mind is that this place didn’t start booming and become the Crystal Coast till the late seventies, early eighties,” I said. “Down Easters lived so isolated and insular that they just assumed God gave them Core Sound back when He first laid down the waters and He meant it for their personal use till the last trumpet sounds. Then down come these upstate sportsmen who can afford to drop three or four hundred for a weekend of fishing. They’re after the same fish a working man’s trying to catch to feed his family and maybe make a mortgage and boat payments. So you start with that resentment between natives and visitors.”

  “But if menhaden aren’t edible,” Lev said, keeping his eye on the shifting target, “then why—?”

  “According to Barbara Jean, menhaden fishing’s gotten a bad rap both from the sportsmen and from some of the rich retirees along the coast who don’t want to look out from their decks and see big old rusty boats sitting out there off their beach. The stock is healthy, they’re not overfished, and they’re easy to catch because they run in tight schools close to the shoreline. And that’s where the trouble seems to be. About seventy-five percent of the catch is within a quarter mile of the shore. So here comes Barbara Jean’s clunky old Washington Neville. Or Beaufort Fisheries’ Gregory Poole. The big boat sends out two little purse boats to surround the school of fish with a long net that they can draw up tight at the bottom like a purse. Then the mother boat sucks the fish up with a big hose. People on shore are close enough to see exactly what’s happening and they think ‘O, my Gawd! Look at that ugly greedy ship taking all those fish!’ And the sportsman who’s out there casting in the surf and not getting any good bites thinks ‘They’ve just scooped up all the game fish.’ ”

  “And haven’t they?” asked Lev, pouring himself a fresh glass of beer.

  “Local watermen joke that anybody who can catch a menhaden on a hook is welcome to try and no, the bycatch of game fish is incredibly small—something like three-tenths of one percent because there’s nothing in that school except menhaden.”

  “But if a net broke—”

  “I’m told there hasn’t been a spill worth talking about since 1983 and that was up in Virginia.”

  “But why—?”

  “I know, I know. Why poor Linville?”

  “Well?”

  “Because she’s been a very vocal supporter for limits on how close in the menhaden boats can come. She’s even gone up to Raleigh to lobby some of the legislators and they say she’s very persuasive. When people like Barbara Jean or Andy Bynum start yelling in these hearings, she just hangs cool and manages to sound calm and objective and beautifully reasonable. If the boats do get pushed out of the sound and two or three miles offshore, it’ll hurt the industry enough that it may not survive. But Andy thought, and Barbara Jean does, too, that menhaden’s just the stalking horse, a foot in the door.”

  “For what?”

  “Well, from listening to everybody mouth off about everybody else, there probably is too much equipment in the water down here. Especially since the estuaries are getting so much polluted runoff that nursery stocks can’t replenish what’s being taken out. If they could get rid of all the commercial fishers, then it’d really be a sportsman’s paradise. You heard Linville this evening—right now, tourism’s worth half a billion to this area and growing, menhaden’s only worth about four million and dropping. But from what she said to Barbara Jean, I think it’s more than just gentrifying Carteret County. She wants that particular piece of property where the Neville Fishery sits, doesn’t she? Is that part of the investment deal she’s trying to get you to buy into?”

  Lev looked thoughtful. “As you say, she’s very persuasive. I did think things were a little further along.”

  “Like claiming title to property she doesn’t have?”

  “Oh no. She’s too sharp for that.” He gave me a quizzical look. “You still haven’t learned to play chess yet, have you?”

  “I remember the moves,” I lied.

  “Well, Linville Pope has the makings of a natural chess player—always looking eight moves ahead. She sees the ramifications, knows that what happens on this move makes what happens later absolutely inevitable. I’m going to have to watch her closer than I realized. Interesting lady.”

  That I would never take chess seriously was one of the things that had rasped him. He loved the game’s complexity and admired deviousness in his opponents.

  I personally think that bridge and poker call for just as much deviousness. Of course, they also call for more than two players. Was that a fundamental difference?

  “So how interesting would you say she is?” I asked, pushing my plate aside. “Would she kill?”

  “Not for any reason you’ve laid out here. The woman’s bright, beautiful and seems to work hard and smart. Maybe she’s a little too cute about the way she acquires property, but what she’s offering your friend sounds like a good deal to me. I’ve looked that factory over from the outside and even if the fishing continues, it’s probably going to need a lot of capital repairs. I bet her whole operation wouldn’t bring a half-million, if that, on today’s market.”

  How casually he tossed off half a million dollars. I was suddenly remembering the tons of pasta we ate because his fellowship money always ran out before the month did.

  “Do you still have that book—A Hundred Ways With Pasta?”

  “Is that another dig about my current living standards?”

  “Not to mention current moral standards if you don’t see anything wrong with coercing someone to sell.”

  He went into his Daniel Webster mode. “You don’t think your friend might have exaggerated?”

  “Barbara Jean can go off half-cocked,” I conceded. “But not without something to light her fuse. She certainly didn’t dream up that thing about a boat ramp and storage next door to her ancestral home.”

  “But accusing Linville of murdering a fisherman sounds like wishful thinking to me.”

  First it was poor Linville and then it was Linville the bright and beautiful. “Just how long have you known this woman anyhow?” I asked nastily.

  “Long enough to know she wouldn’t do something that vicious or stupid.”

  “Coffee?” chirped our waitress.

  I nodded; Lev said, “Cappuccino?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Espresso, then.”

  “I’m sorry sir, we just have regular and decaf.”
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  “Decaf then,” he said ungraciously; and when she’d brought it, he grumbled, “If this town hopes to keep tourists coming back, it’s going to have to get serious about its coffee.”

  “If the whole world turns into Manhattan, how will you know when you’re on vacation?” I asked sweetly.

  In a familiar gesture of exasperation, he ran his hand through his hair and wiry tufts stood up angrily. Some things even a fifty-dollar haircut can’t change.

  He saw my amusement, started to bristle and then suddenly smiled. “Why the hell are we talking about Linville Pope and Barbara Jean What’s-her-name and fishmeal factories when we should be talking about us? You know, I pictured a thousand times running into you again. I never expected to find you sitting on the bench in a little town on the Intracoastal Waterway.”

  I was willing to play and smiled back at him over my coffee cup. “How did you imagine it?”

  “That we were both back in New York on a visit and we bumped into each other over the cheese counter at Zabar’s or standing in line for Cats or—”

  “Only in Manhattan?” I teased gently.

  “Nothing brought me down to Raleigh and I couldn’t picture you in Boston. Were you?”

  I shook my head.

  “What about the Clara Barton Rest Stop on the Jersey Turnpike seven years ago near the end of August?”

  His big hands toyed with the glass candleholder as he tried to make his tone light.

  “Were you really there?” I asked, incredulous. “Why on earth didn’t you speak to me?”

  He shrugged. “You were with some other women.”

  “Three of my brothers’ wives,” I remembered. “We probably were on our way to see Cats.”

  “I had just pulled in and you passed right in front of my car. You had on white shorts and a red shirt and your hair was still long.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “Ah, what the hell?” He pushed the candle away and signalled for the bill. “Let’s walk.”

  • • •

  It always amazes me what walkers city people are. We’ve got the wide open spaces and farm work requires a certain amount of walking, but nothing like city life. Probably because we don’t categorize feet as a genuine form of transportation. When there are fences to mend down by the creek or if you need to take a jug of water to someone plowing new ground out behind the pasture, you jump in a pickup with four-wheel drive. City people—especially New Yorkers—think nothing of walking two country miles to go pick up a library book.

  “Can’t we take a bus?” I used to whine, cabs being out of our price range.

  “But it’s only thirty blocks,” Lev would say heartlessly.

  Yet when we weren’t rushing to get somewhere before the doors closed or the lights went down, walking in the city could be wonderful. Beaufort was no city, of course, but we walked through the cool night air and enjoyed the old white clapboard houses, the antique store windows, the deserted sidewalks back up from the water. Tourist season was only beginning so we mostly had those side streets to ourselves even though it wasn’t yet ten o’clock.

  By tacit consent, our talk was of life in Boston, life in Colleton County, how I’d come to the bench, where are they now all the people we’d known, and who do you suppose lived in this great white house with the widow’s walk?

  Eventually we wound up near the Ritchie House, the only place still open and still serving drinks. But as he started to open the glass door to the lounge, Lev said, “Oh hell!” and stepped back quickly.

  Through the glass I saw the Docksiders seated at one of the lounge tables with a couple of attorneys I recognized from court. Mrs. Llewellyn’s hair was a swirl of dandelion gold as she threw back her head and laughed at something one of the men had said. There was no sign of Claire Montgomery.

  “You’re not in the mood for more cocktail chatter, are you?” Lev asked.

  “Not really.” And certainly not with people I’d effectively ruled against in court.

  We walked back along the boardwalk where all the boats were moored. A northeast breeze whipped my hair, and low music from someone’s radio mingled with the sound of lapping water. A few of the decks had people sitting outside enjoying the quiet night, but most had gone below, with only a dim glow showing behind curtained windows.

  Beneath one of the security lights, I paused and checked my watch. Nearly eleven.

  Lev suddenly took my hand and said, “Don’t go yet. Let’s have our nightcap on the Rainmaker.”

  “Better give me a raincheck,” I demurred. “I’m not up to small talk with a puppet.”

  “Oh Claire won’t be there. When we’re in port, they wimp out and stay ashore. Their baby—well, actually Nicky’s not really a baby any more—but it’s still easier to manage him in a hotel. It was a fluke that Claire was even here the day that bike was taken. No, they have a suite at the Ritchie House. Linville’s a friend of the owners.”

  No doubt. Barbara Jean said that handling the Ritchie House had been her first big coup a few years back.

  “No strings,” he promised as I hesitated.

  “Not a good idea,” said the preacher.

  “The books are closed on this,” agreed the pragmatist. “You sure you want to open them again?”

  I ignored both warnings and followed Lev down the pier to the Rainmaker’s slip. I told myself it was only because I’d never been below on a private boat this size before. It would be interesting to see the fittings.

  “Yah, we know what fittings you’re interested in,” leered the pragmatist.

  Well, and so what? I argued back. We had been good together once upon a time, and like that old Ray Price song says, what was wrong with one more time for all the good times?

  • • •

  Except that it trailed a small dinghy instead of a Ford and sported a keel instead of wheels, the outside of the Rainmaker was really not much more than a fancier version of the RV that my Aunt Sister and Uncle Rufus drive back and forth to Florida. That resemblance was the real reason I’d even noticed it in the first place. That and the name, of course, which suggested a corporate attorney.

  Inside, the similarities were even more pronounced. The interior was bigger than Aunt Sister’s Winnebago—she could only sleep four, the Rainmaker six, Lev told me—but if it weren’t for the gentle motion, you’d be hard pressed to tell much difference. Every inch used, no wasted space, yet it didn’t seem cramped because the main cabin felt like a small lounge. The recessed wall lights were dimmed way down. A wide upholstered bench became a sofa berth when the table was flipped back out of the way, and cushions softened the angles.

  I slipped one of those cushions under my head and watched lazily as Lev pulled ice cubes from the tiny refrigerator and glasses from a shallow cupboard.

  “Still bourbon and—was it Coke?” he asked.

  “Pepsi, but Coke’s fine. Easy on the bourbon.”

  The preacher approved, but the pragmatist wasn’t fooled. He knew I still hadn’t decided whether or not I’d be driving later.

  Lev brought our drinks over and sat down beside me. He touched his glass to mine and his dark eyes were unreadable in the soft light.

  “To all the good times,” he said, echoing my own memories.

  I probably took two good sips before carefully setting my glass down where it wouldn’t get knocked over.

  “I think I like the beard,” I said and leaned forward until our lips met—gently, tentatively at first, then with such deepening hunger that searing jets of purely carnal desire shot through me, blocking out all voices of reason and prudence, leaving me sensate and reckless.

  His hands. His big and wonderfully familiar hands were everywhere, burning through the thin cream-colored silk of my jumpsuit, touching me where no one else had touched in much too long. I tugged at his shirt, wildly impatient to feel and taste his skin again. His hair tangled in the crystal beads against my breasts. I was trying to untangle them and he was undoing my butto
ns, when we heard the hatch opening up above.

  A light voice called, “Ahoy, the Rainmaker!” and slender legs descended the laddered stair. There was a bottle of champagne in one hand, a large purse in the other.

  “Did you think I got lost, honey?” Linville Pope caroled. “One of those long-winded—”

  She reached the bottom step and the smile on her lips froze as she saw us.

  “Oh,” she said finally when it seemed as if the leaden silence would go on forever. “You started without me.”

  Give her points for poise.

  Lev had sat up so abruptly that my necklace broke and a shower of crystal spilled into my lap.

  “I thought you said you weren’t coming,” Lev said harshly.

  “I said I might not be able to get away,” she corrected him quietly. “Obviously I should have called first. Sorry.”

  Clutching her purse to her chest, a just-in-case purse that probably held a toothbrush and a couple of other necessities should champagne turn into a sleepover, she set the bottle on a nearby counter and turned to go.

  “Don’t leave on my account.” I had rebuttoned my blouse and was now scooping up crystal beads and shoving them into my Mexican purse. “I’m just going myself.”

  “No,” she protested.

  “Yes,” I said firmly. Passion was gone and so was I, just as soon as I could find my missing shoe. A cold thick rage consumed me.

  Lev took one look at my face and silently handed over the high-heeled slipper that had come off before. So at least he’d learned that much over the years.

  More beads sparkled across the floor when I stood, but I was too angry to stop. All I wanted was out of there. Linville stood aside to let me pass, but then I heard her steps behind me as she followed me up the ladder and off the boat.

  We walked half the length of the planked dock in stony silence until the whole farcical ridiculousness of the situation abruptly hit me and I started giggling.

  After a startled glance, Linville Pope gave an unladylike gurgle and by the time we reached the parking area we were both laughing so hard we had to hold onto each other to stand up.