by Shannon Hill
I could hear Aunt Marge approaching, by the clank of thermoses in her big shoulder bag. I could feel Punk’s presence, hovering, undecided. I could all but taste the whispers of speculation rushing around the park. Mostly, though, I could only wonder what I’d done in a past life to earn this kind of karma.
***^***
Seeing Steven Kipling made me sick. Shaking sick. I’d left a lot behind me in my life, and he was part of it. While Aunt Marge renewed their acquaintance, and the town whispered, I stalked blindly toward the creek. By the time I reached Bobbi, Raj had found another camp chair for me, and had made himself blessedly scarce. I dropped into the canvas seat and said in a shudder, “God help me.”
Bobbi’s face was pink, her eyes glittering as fiercely as Boris’s. Her arm came out and gave me a rough half-hug. She’s the only person who knows the whole story. Not even Aunt Marge had gotten all the truth. Only Bobbi. “Don’t you give him the satisfaction, Lil. Don’t you dare.”
My lips felt numb. I realized my jaw was clenched, and broke it free with a forced yawn that hurt. “God help me,” I repeated, and took the cup of lemonade she thrust into my hand. It was icy, sweet, and gone in two gulps. “I don’t think I’m up to this.”
“You’re up to it,” Bobbi told me firmly. “I know it’s a lot, but you got through this Kim thing.”
I was still getting through that “Kim thing”, as the town called my secretary’s part in the kidnap scheme that darn near saw me dead. Kim had been more than a secretary. She’d been a friend. One of the few women friends I had. Or so I’d thought.
“Look, you’ve got your job, you have your house, you’ve got Punk…”
I sort of had Punk.
“Look at me, hon. Look at me, you hear?”
I looked. When Bobbi gets all mountain twangy, it’s time to obey.
Her eyes bored into mine. “I know, okay? Or at least I can guess. And I may not be the one who did your highlights this last time, but that gal up in Charlottesville is a master for a reason, you look gorgeous. Okay?”
Aunt Marge had never taught me to value appearances over substance, but it felt good to think I looked good. Like a cozy Kevlar vest for the soul. I drew a deep breath and my head cleared of some of the fuzzy panic. I smiled and gave Bobbi a hug. “Thanks.”
She clung to me, shaking a little. Two shipwreck victims in the same lifeboat, that was us. Always had been, always would be.
“Now,” she ordered, “go get my husband back here, and maybe you better find out what that sonvabitch is doing here.”
I still felt my old life smacking me around like a twig in rapids, but I could control it now. I went to find out what my ex-fiancée was doing in my hometown.
2.
When I first met Steven Kipling, he asked me where I was from. When I told him, he said, “Oh, like the Waltons,” and I burst out laughing.
Looking back, I probably took that as a better omen than it was.
Nobody was laughing Tuesday morning, when I met Jack for breakfast out at the Country Rose. It’s the bed and breakfast on the back end of Johns Mountain, owned and operated by Lynn Turner, a relation of Aunt Marge’s. She had recently gotten the idea to open the breakfast part to all comers, since the only restaurant in Crazy is Old Mill, and that’s only open for lunch and supper. She didn’t serve anything too high-end, pretty much a five-bucks-a-head buffet of oatmeal, fruit, juice, tea, coffee, and some wicked good cornbread with honey or molasses. Lynn served it all on gorgeous china with patterns of roses, in a very Victorian room with very Victorian furniture. Or, in nice weather, on her screened-in porch with the view out toward Bear Mountain. Not bad for a fiver.
I loaded up on the cornbread and fruit. Jack chose coffee, oatmeal, and a lonely banana. We sat at a small round patio table outside, covered in a white tablecloth. The napkins were white, too. Lynn loved her roses, but she wasn’t insane. She kept it tasteful. And tasty.
“I’m sorry, Lil, when Steve said he knew you, I didn’t think twice,” my cousin apologized, pouring cream into his coffee. “I thought it was just an FBI thing.”
“No harm done, I was just surprised. Haven’t heard from him since we broke up. That’s…” I calculated around a mouthful of cornbread and honey. “Ten years, give or take a lifetime.”
Jack nodded thoughtfully. I poured some of the cream into a saucer and set it on a third chair for Boris. Lynn winced but shut her mouth.
“Look, I can get another adviser,” Jack said reasonably. “You’re family. He’s just hired help.”
The Littlepage arrogance grated. “No. I’m sure he’s a good adviser. What exactly is he advising you on?”
“Grenville.”
Oh Lord, spare me. Not Grenville. That is one hunk of property I would like to never have known existed. It lies out Piedmont Road, sort of opposite our mini-mall, and it was once owned by a Littlepage who thought he could make himself a fancy English estate. What he ended up with was a lot of nothing. Over the decades, the land had been sold off, but it had eventually wound up in one big parcel again. Grenville was last owned by Vera Collier, and ownership since Vera’s death had been contested by those of her heirs not disqualified from inheriting by reason of having been involved in her murder.
My first question was, therefore, “Grenville? How’d that happen?”
Jack’s grin was pure malice, in an indifferent, big-business way. “The Colliers didn’t pay the taxes. I saw it on the county website, and it only cost me twenty grand at auction.”
Considering he’d been willing to pay seven figures, that was some bargain. He also got one up on my Eller relatives. Grenville would’ve given them a route from Crazy to their land at Quarry, where geology had been delaying a development plan for ages.
I whistled. “Congratulations, but what are you going to do with it? It’s too vertical for much.” Not my most brilliant observation, but I’m probably the only Littlepage or Eller in a century to be raised in Crazy. I couldn’t bet Jack had ever seen the land. He had said often he’d like to settle here more permanently, but talk is cheap, especially to rich people.
I watched my cousin cut a banana into perfect little yellow discs and spear one with a fork. I’d never seen someone eat a banana with a fork. Even Boris stared. “Tourism. We’ll have a main lodge, lots of family activities, you know, Wii, and a big room of those bouncy things kids like, outdoor playground and pool, some little cabins for couples…Mostly tent sites, though. RVs wouldn’t be able to manage these roads.”
That was true enough. I shut my mouth before, as Aunt Marge would say, I attracted flies. “Tents?”
“Camping, Cousin,” he said, and stabbed a piece of banana. “What’s the most affordable vacation you can imagine?”
“Not leaving home?”
Jack paid no attention. “Tent camping! Think of it! We could have some with electric or water hook-ups, forty-fifty a night for rural peace and quiet, real country hospitality…”
“Have you met this town?”
Jack kept going, banana piece waving in the air in little circles. Boris watched, hypnotized, tail beginning to lash. Uh-oh.
“We can use the creek to feed the pool. Oh, not directly, I know there’d be health issues, but we can make it look that way. The tent sites would be simplicity itself, all we need is enough flat space. And imagine what it could do for the town, Lil!”
He’d reached a peak of enthusiasm with the word town, which was when his fork lifted up, Boris levitated, and my cousin’s fork went flying across the porch with Boris in pursuit.
Eyes boggling, Jack sat very still. Boris had caromed off his arm, but otherwise, no harm was done, except to his composure. “Th-th-th-that cat!”
“Sorry,” I snorted. I wasn’t laughing. Really. More that I was thinking how hard I could laugh when I got some privacy. “Ahem. Anyway, you were saying?”
From across the porch we heard the clank of a sterling silver fork hitting a metal table leg. Jack’s mouth turned down e
xactly like his late father’s. Or, come to think of it, mine on a bad day.
“I’ll show you the site, and Steve’s ideas. He knows his markets.”
Aunt Marge raised me to be kind. It didn’t always work. Nevertheless, I managed an honest compliment. “He always was good at white-collar stuff.”
“I try not to hire idiots. So, it’s all right for you to take the morning?”
“The joy of being sheriff,” I said, “and besides, I was on yesterday, I’ve got a day off coming. Let’s get rolling.”
***^***
The turnoff to Grenville is just a dirt track, used mostly by hunters and kids. Weed-choked. Thickets of sumac and what-all around it. Boris took one look and decided he’d rather stay in the car. He’s hell on paws in town, but out in the woods, he turns into a wimp. I left his window rolled down—like my cruiser, my car has mesh over his window so he can’t get out—and trudged up the track in Jack and Steve’s wake. Once we passed out of the weeds and into the woods, the temperature dropped about ten degrees, and I could suddenly see why Cousin Jack thought a campground would be a success.
Wow.
The hollow was beautiful. Here and there you could see where someone had taken an acre or two for timber, scattered with younger trees, or where a storm had toppled a giant and done the same work. Rhododendrons sported late blossoms and laurels flashed white. Along the stream tumbling its way to Elk Creek, ferns and mosses covered the ground in sun-dappled greens. The light poured through the leaves, and glinted gold off the water. As we moved upstream, a deer track veered off, and I padded along it to a boulder in which tiny garnets marched in perfect lines. I remembered a science teacher telling us that it was a sign of something to do with the formation of the surrounding metamorphic rock, but it looked like magic.
I rejoined the men where a long-ago Littlepage had planted the foundation markers for his house. You could still see the stones under lichen and moss and ivy. Jack busily kicked the growth away. “This’ll make a great lodge site.”
Until now, Steve had been remarkably quiet, making notes on some kind of handheld electronic gadget, barely replying to a question. At Jack’s enthusiastic comment, his head came up and the gadget went into the leather bag slung over one shoulder. “No,” he said, hands moving animatedly. “What you want to do is this.”
He’d always done that. Said that. The exact way he did then. Eyes sparkling and smiling. Hands dancing all over the place, pointing and shaping. He’d done it the night of the rehearsal dinner when we’d broken up. It’s peculiar, but I’d somehow thought that wouldn’t be the same. It creeped me out a little.
What he said creeped me out a lot.
Calmly he described the benefits of shaping the stream thus and carving out the mountain so, of bringing in backhoes, bulldozers, explosives if necessary. The lodge would go there, the pool here, the bicycle and footpath that way, the playground this way, new plantings everywhere.
When he said there’d be profit in cutting out a certain percentage of trees, say, forty percent, any spell he’d woven on Cousin Jack broke. “No,” said my cousin sharply, interrupting. “No. There’s plenty of room for the trees.”
“Look, you have 500 acres, maybe half of it usable for the campground, you can maximize the number of tent sites if you thin out the trees and grade the land.”
“No,” said Jack, the Littlepage Glare focusing on Steve. I should have warned Jack that Steve has never been bothered by it. “The point is that every tent site will enjoy shade.”
“You’ll lose fifty-sixty tent sites, maybe more.”
I decided to finally enter the conversation. “How many tent sites were you planning?” I was thinking of how many calls we’d get for noise, drunkenness, trespassing.
Jack said, “A hundred.”
Steve said, “Two hundred.”
I said, “Are you nuts?”
Steve grinned the same old cheeky grin. “Which one?”
“Both,” I snarled, and stomped up to my cousin. I am, in fact, closer to six feet tall than he is, but it’s not something I typically take advantage of. “Assuming an average of even two people per tent, you’re damn near doubling the size of the town! Do you plan to have private security? Because damn if I’ve got the personnel, and you know Fat-Ass Rucker won’t send his boys to help.”
Steve’s head tipped to one side, his grin broadening. “Your personnel?”
I’ve frequently claimed my pride got hurt more than my heart by our canceled nuptials, and I’d been lying. To save that pride. Which flared up hot enough to please any of my haughty blood relatives on either side. “My personnel!” I bit out, turning my version of the Littlepage Ice Glare on him. “I’m the sheriff, this is my jurisdiction, and if you’re going to double the number of jackasses I have to deal with, then by God someone had better double the number of my deputies in tourist season. And pay for them!”
Steve tut-tutted me. Jackass. “The town will be able to give you more deputies from the extra revenue. Taxes, retail sales…”
I took a deep breath to let loose on Cousin Jack, since I knew better than to talk sense to Steve, and suddenly stopped. I couldn’t believe it. Yet it was true. Staring me in the face. Cousin Jack couldn’t care less about owning a campground, though it did foil Eller hopes quite nicely. He was doing this for Crazy. He wanted to save the town.
It might work.
The Food Mart would get tons of extra business, all those toiletries and groceries people forget. Same with Green’s Pharmacy. Bob Shifflett’s fuel and service station would be the nearest source of gasoline. Joe Brady’s Hunt & Fish would see an uptick in business for camping gear. Somebody would think to rent bicycles. Blue Quartz Pottery might actually make money off their little shop instead of relying solely on their internet sales for profits. Dr. Hartley’s Emergicare would make money off sunburns and bee stings and stitches. Maury and his butter-for-brains brother would get the sanitation contract. Even Junior’s Lawn & Garden would probably make money. To say nothing of the teenagers who’d have summer jobs they could walk to. I thought of Veronica Turner, Lynn’s mom, never married, who in her retirement dreamed of opening a little store that sold only health food and organics and such. She could make that work, if she had tourists to help boost sales. Then there were the Simms, Marsha and Chet, of Spottswood Lane. They’d retired here from Northern Virginia, which I ought to mention most of us see as its own state. They’d said more than once they’d like to open some little store or other selling local crafts, but who’d buy them? Answer: Tourists.
Then there was the liquor store. It’d make money, too.
I forgot my rage. I looked at my cousin in some awe. “My God,” I said, “it might work.”
Jack smiled. It was soft, and shy, and pleased. “I told you,” he said, “I want this to be where I live. Where my kids’ll grow up someday. It won’t last if we don’t do something.”
Generally, tourism is a lousy way to boost an economy. The money doesn’t go far, and the jobs are usually minimum wage. Yet in such a small town, how far would the money have to go? Figure eighty campsites booked at least three months of tourist season, maybe half that the rest of the time what with hikers and fishermen and hunters. Average that out to, say, sixty percent capacity full. That’s sixty tents of people who’d need paper towels, sunscreen, bait, umbrellas, towels, snacks. A hundred people coming and going and buying and shopping and recreating, eating at Old Mill and the Country Rose, or running out to the Reynolds farm on Turner Gap Road to buy organic produce and tour the place to see how you could raise food without steroids and hormones. They might make donations at the Littlepage Eller Animal Sanctuary built by Aunt Marge using that Eller money I’d inherited and given her.
Jack must have followed my thoughts. “Even if it’s just seasonal, Lil, think what it could mean.”
I did think. It blew my mind.
We’d both forgotten Steve. “I thought our goal here was a profitable venture.”
“Profitable town,” said Jack Littlepage. “I owe this town. I want it to survive. No more than a hundred tent sites, plenty of space between them, and minimal changes to the landscape.” Though Steve is taller, Jack loomed over him, the Voice of What Will Be. “This is why they’ll come, and come back, and tell others to come.” He spread his arms slowly, grandly, to encompass five hundred acres of trees so big around it’d take two of us to hug one. Of rocks and stream and bushes and delicate little wildflowers that only grew in the sheltered places of the forest. “This is the hook, Mr. Kipling. We’ll have a lodge full of fun, but this stays as close to as-is as possible. Or I find someone else to oversee the project.” His gaze looked warm, his smile chilly. “You’re very good at business. So am I. This isn’t about that.” My cousin put out an arm and encircled my shoulders, a shocking show of emotion for a Littlepage. “This is about…what is owed this community.”
I almost ruined the nobility of the moment by pointing out he’d paid for my fancy new cruiser the previous year, but for once I knew when to keep my mouth shut. Had an Eller talked about owing the community, I’d be pretty sure back taxes had to be involved. But I’d come to know my Littlepage cousin a bit since his sister’s murder. Whoever he’d been before that day, I knew who he was after. He meant what he said. This wasn’t about one-upping the Ellers, or trying to finally win the feud with another public works project. He’d been bit by the Crazy bug. He wanted to bring money into the town because that’s the way he expressed love.
3.
News of the Grenville Campground did what all news does in a town of 300 people. It spontaneously combusted.
So did Punk.
Like I said, we weren’t officially dating. We couldn’t. I’m his boss. By keeping it low-profile, and by low-profile I mean subterranean, we could keep up the polite fiction of a purely platonic relationship.