Smugglers & Scones

by Talbot, Morgan C

  A sound like exploding plastic woke me in the middle of a dream full of tunnels and drums. I bolted upright in bed, froze, and listened. Svetlana’s eyes, one blue and the other green, shined in the darkness as she gazed at me with intent concern. Rex wriggled by my feet, trying to get back to sleep by shoving his head under my ankle.

  Seconds later, a muffled metal screech and a heavy thud reached my ears from outside the house, and I breathed out a little of my tension. “We’re okay, guys.” Living in a house approaching its fifth quarter-century, I regularly had fears about it simply collapsing around me and trapping me under the rubble. Thankfully, this particular noise didn’t seem like it was trying to kill me. But it sounded like it was murdering something.

  I hopped out of bed and stepped to the windows in my octagonal room at the base of one of Moorehaven’s three turrets—not the front one with the best view. That was Hilt’s room. My three narrow windows showed a broad, south-facing expanse of coastline and cliffs. Svetlana joined me by standing on one of the windowsills, her tail arching. As I slid a comforting hand along her back, a prolonged, ponderous grating sound penetrated the glass, ratcheting up my heartbeat. Nothing appeared to be falling to pieces outside, so I guessed it was coming from below the edge of the cliff that wrapped around two sides of Moorehaven, lofting us a few dozen feet up from the wild Pacific. And that could only mean one thing. Criminy on a cracker! I thought, borrowing one of Uncle Hilt’s expressions. He warned me about boats foundering, but I’ve never been the closest person before! I am not prepared for this!

  I grabbed my pink robe and stuffed my feet into my fuzzy bunny slippers. Svetlana hopped back onto the bed with Rex, and they watched me leave with stiff poses that conveyed their flabbergasted state. What was I thinking, abandoning my warm, cozy bed?

  What indeed? Not for the first time, I regretted agreeing to convert the old storage room behind the pantry into my bedroom. It wasn’t like Moorehaven didn’t have other bedrooms. It had almost a dozen. But taking a guest room as my own would’ve meant fewer options for the guests, and they always came first. Still, I felt like a spy or a dungeon master every time I used the secret door to the pantry.

  I pushed my way through then closed the door behind me—laden with shelves bearing various flours, sugars, and all my baking spices. My path to the kitchen took me past other shelves full of canned fruits and vegetables, dry goods, and bulk herbs. I hurried through the kitchen’s side door, across the cross-hallway that led to the veranda, and down to the front turret, where I knocked on Hilt’s door.

  He opened it immediately, his other hand tucking the tail of his flannel shirt into an old pair of jeans. His jaw was set, but his lips had gone white with fear. “You heard it, too?”

  I nodded.

  He handed me a flashlight. “You’d better get out there then. I’ll be on the porch. I’ve already called it in.”

  Hilt reached for his jacket, and I ran around to the front door. I burst through the heavy wooden front door, trusting its hydraulic closer to keep the large, stained-glass inset from shattering. As the damp air hit me, so did the full volume of the crash of the sea. Its rushing roar flooded my ears with a constant, slow-motion thrum.

  I ran across the porch, down the front steps, through the neatly landscaped yard, and reached the old asphalt road without slowing. My bunny slippers got soaked in three steps flat. The fog closed around me as I moved away from Moorehaven, and the flashlight beam formed a swirling white cone ahead of me.

  As I stepped onto the wooden promenade that wrapped the cliff top in the old downtown area, I glanced back to see if Hilt had come onto the porch yet, but I could barely see the pale-gray building with its dark-red trim, and its porch lights were bare suggestions of illumination. The massive Seven Vistas Resort Hotel, just a block away, was nothing more than shadowy rumor. The ruined tower of the old lighthouse on the cliff top across the river, usually gleaming white even in the rain, was deep in the drifting billows.

  I jogged down the promenade to the sturdy wooden stairs that led down the cliff side to the sliver of beach. Every few seconds, the waves shoved something against the rocks at the jutting base of the cliff. It sounded like grumpy metal and wounded fiberglass.

  Though the moon was mostly full, heavy fog scattered and diffused its light. My flashlight only showed me what lay at my feet, leaving me in a murky gray world devoid of features. Moving cautiously, I squinted toward the rocks that jutted out into the sea. I could barely make out the dullest glint of moonlight from a twisted hulk nearly sunk beneath the waves.

  A boat. A capsizing boat. My stomach spasmed. Seacrest was famous—or infamous—for its murder-friendly reputation thanks to Raymond Moore and his world-famous books, but actual deaths in my town weren’t everyday occurrences. The locals loved their black humor—a badge of belonging, as it were—and I’d made all the usual death jokes with my author guests, but a real-life death didn’t seem that funny all of a sudden.

  At the top of the beach stairs, I ripped open the door to the heavy-duty plastic box mounted on the railing and yanked out the emergency flotation ring inside. The town council had decided that one of these old-fashioned rescue devices should adorn the top of every beach access point in Seacrest. Most of them got stolen by tourists, but seeing this one exactly where it should have been brought a rush of relief to my chest, despite the permanent-marker graffiti on its neon-green surface. I grabbed the attached length of rope with my other hand and bolted down the stairs. Part of me hoped no one had been on board the boat, and the rest of me hoped that if someone was in the water, they were ready and willing to play catch.

  The stairs bottomed out in dry sand, a flat gray expanse in the foggy light. But the boat was caught on the rocks out in the water. The fog made it hard to determine how far out. I’d have to climb along the edge of the cliff to look for survivors.

  My poor bunny slippers.

  With a flotation ring over one shoulder and the length of rope over the other, I aimed my flashlight downward and clambered along an old footpath along the side of the cliff. Ahead of me, the long, low foot of the cliff swooped out into the sea, losing its defining edges in the gloom. Behind me, I heard Hilt’s strained voice. “Be careful, Greta! Be careful!”

  I couldn’t have heard him from the porch, not over the waves. He’d crossed the road to the promenade, which meant he was freaking out, for me and for his proximity to the ocean. And he’d called me by his sister’s name, which meant he was in the grips of his phobia. Little Greta had drowned right in front of him when he was ten years old in a river back in Pennsylvania. Hilt had lived in Seacrest for most of his life, but he had never set foot on a boat, not even when he was police chief. He didn’t even take baths. He knew water’s terrible power, and for his sake, and his sanity, I would respect it.

  I turned my focus and my light to the task at hand. The fiberglass hull of a thirty-odd-foot white boat with red stripes had shattered against the rugged foot of the cliff. Its wheelhouse sagged to one side, sloshing in the waves like a floating corpse, and a portion of its metal railing arched out of the sea. The flashlight beam played across the wreck like a forlorn lighthouse in one of Hilt’s classic drama movies. “Hello? I mean, ahoy the boat! Is anyone on board?”

  “Not technically on board anymore,” came a deep voice from somewhere in the wreckage.

  “Oh, God,” I blurted, nearly dropping my flashlight. Someone was alive in that sinking mess. “Uh, okay, uh… You need rescue from a woman in sopping bunny slippers?”

  “Why, do you see one brandishing a chainsaw or something?”

  “Just a life ring.” The man’s dark hair had obscured his face, pale in the foggy light, until he looked up at me from where he clung to a groaning section of the deck. He couldn’t have been more than twenty feet away, but with the fog and the waves, I couldn’t place him.

  “Then I sup
pose that’ll have to do.”

  His wry tone when he clearly sounded exhausted amazed me. “Can you catch?”

  “My arms feel like spaghetti, and my head feels like a three-alarm fire, but I’ll do my best.”

  I aimed with all the schoolyard accuracy I could muster and flung the firm white ring into the ocean. The man flopped onto it and clasped it with both arms, murmuring something derogatory about Davey Jones. It wasn’t a particularly stormy night, but the tide was high, and the waves were unruly.

  “Watch the rocks. I don’t want you to slam into them.”

  “We think so alike, we could be twins,” the man called back.

  I set down my light and started hauling. The swamped sailor and his life ring zoomed toward me, lifted by each passing wave. I did my best to yank him the last few feet in time with the next rise in the water, and to my surprise, I didn’t do too terrible a job. Neither of us lost a limb as the rope and the wave deposited him nearly on top of my dirty slippers, and I clutched his arm so he didn’t roll back in.

  Between our efforts, we managed to get him sitting on a lumpy basalt rock formation several feet from the sea’s threatening edge. He slumped forward, gasping, as if he’d drained every ounce of his strength, but at least he wasn’t bleeding out all over my slippers. I crouched beside him and laid a firm hand on his trembling shoulder. “You’re okay now. You’re safe.”

  “I was always safe, Pippa. I knew something would happen to save me. Turned out to be you. Thanks. No, when I die, it won’t be from drowning. Might be from this head wound, though. Dude, that hurts.”

  He knew my name. I peered closer at his damp face, slack with exhaustion. He gave me a tired smile. I knew him. I’d seen him from the cliff top as he’d piloted one of Cecil French’s tourist boats out to sea for fishing trips. “Lake, right? Cecil’s new pilot.”

  “For the moment, anyway. Boss man isn’t going to like me wrecking the Mazu, though.” A shudder wracked his body. “Still not sure how that happened.”

  A wailing siren approached at the top of the cliff then cut out. Red and blue lights spun through the fog like an out-of-control ride at the county fair. Hilt’s shadow flung itself out into the fog with every flicker. He was safe atop the cliff and probably worried sick about me.

  “One cavalry, no waiting. We’ll get you taken care of, Lake. Let me go up and see if Doc Stevens is here yet.”

  “No, it’s dangerous out here on the rocks. I can walk. Gimme a hand?”

  He stood up slowly but steadily, and his face showed more irritation and tiredness than pain. “I’ll help you to the beach.” I slipped my arm around his waist.

  Lake rested his handsome, lean self on my shoulder and gingerly rubbed at the back of his head as we shuffled along the footpath, following the beam from my flashlight. He held his fingers under its illumination. “Guess I’m not bleeding.”

  “Don’t worry. We won’t bury you before you’re dead,” I said reassuringly, using some local morbid slang. We reached the flat, smooth sand. “Sit over there while I get the doc. She’s probably here by now.”

  “I can make it. It’s just some stairs.” Lake tried to maneuver me toward the bottom of the wooden staircase.

  I dug my heels into the sand. “Did I stutter, sailor boy?”

  A short silence ensued, during which Lake tried to pull away from me and utterly failed. He let out a pained sigh. “No, ma’am, you didn’t. Therefore, I have decided that I shall remain here.” He tried to lower himself to the sand with grace, but he nearly plopped onto his butt before I caught his arm and eased him down.

  “You are wise in all things,” I muttered with just a dash of sarcasm. I trotted up the cliff stairs, but Doc Stevens was already on her way down, old-fashioned medical bag in hand.

  The doc, a stocky, frizzy-haired, no-nonsense woman twice my age, asked, “Whadda we got, kid?” without even breaking her stride.

  I turned around and matched her steps. “He seems okay except for a bad headache. He says the back of his head isn’t even bleeding.”

  “You did great, Pippa. Rescuing him and all, I mean. Bring that light. I’ll need it.”

  And just like that, I’d been pressed into service as a triage nurse. Doc Stevens knelt heavily by Lake’s side, penlight in one hand, while I illuminated them both. “Let’s look at you, son. You’re soaked. You were on that boat? How’s your head?” She briefly flicked the light into his eyes.

  “Well, it’s not literally on fire, but it feels pretty close. I woke up… I think the crash woke me. But I don’t know how I got here. How the Mazu got here.”

  “Well, no obvious concussion. Any other injuries?” Doc Stevens’s capable hands probed Lake’s joints.

  His eyes got wide when she reached for his hips. “Nope, nope, I’m all good. Just the head.”

  Doc Stevens nodded briskly. “Give me that light, Pippa, and I’ll get him up top. You go check on your uncle.”

  “Right.” I handed over the flashlight and, after a last, worried look at my rescued sailor, headed up to the top of the cliff.

  Hilt had called in all the cavalry there was to call in, and Police Chief Jimmy Craig stood in the flashing lights of his old squad car. As Lake and the doc followed more slowly, I stepped over to Hilt and Chief Craig. Without Lake’s body warmth against my side, I realized how dank and chilly the night was and stuffed my hands into my fluffy pockets. “Hey, Chief. Lake says he crashed Cecil’s boat. But he says he doesn’t know how it happened. He was acting pretty woozy.”

  Chief Craig and Hilt humphed in unison, looking like the law enforcement partners they had been forty years ago. “Could be lying,” Hilt said.

  “Hope he wasn’t drunk,” Chief Craig muttered.

  “Cecil will do more than give him the boot if he was,” Hilt added.

  I nodded along, but I was more sympathetic with Cecil’s new pilot than I was with Cecil, who had a hard-ass reputation among Seacrest’s townsfolk. Oh, the tourists flocked to Blade and Boom Sea Tours because he gave them exactly what they wanted: sunset tours, whales to watch, fishing trips, and any other kind of boat ride they wanted. But if you lived in Seacrest, eventually you’d run afoul of Cecil French, his dyed-in-the-wool stubbornness, and the clout he wielded on the town council, usually to promote tourism, from which his business directly benefited.

  “Oh, my God, what happened? Pippa?” Paul Sheen and Skylar Lea stood at the edge of the Moorehaven property, wearing the clothing they’d arrived in yesterday morning. Paul’s shirt buttons were off by one hole, revealing a slice of manly chest hair and his rush to come outside to rubberneck. The dark-blond hair on his head was mussed, but then it always looked that way. If I dated my guests, his looks would’ve qualified him easily. Skylar’s sandy locks were tucked into her thick wool cloche hat, hiding her fuchsia highlights. The right sides of their faces flared alternately blue and red in the squad car’s lights.

  I hurried over in my sopping slippers. “A boat crashed, and I pulled the pilot out of the ocean. He’s getting checked out by our local doctor, Ms. Stevens.”

  Skylar gaped at me and pulled her heavy blue wool coat tighter around her neck. “You pulled him out? No way. That’s so cool.”

  Paul chuckled. “You gonna put a sea rescue in your novel now, Skylar?”

  Despite Skylar’s youth—she might have been old enough to drink legally—she gave Paul an arch look. “I just might… if Miss Winterbourne will give me all the details. You know, in the morning like a normal person.”

  “Over a nice late breakfast, definitely. What time is it, anyway?” My adrenaline had ruined my normal sense of time.

  Paul checked his watch, and its face glowed green in the dimness. “Quarter past three.”

  Argh. I’d barely gotten into my first REM cycle. “Listen, guys. You’d better go back to
bed and get—”

  “Pippa!” Doc Stevens called.

  I excused myself, and as they headed back inside, I walked over to the others. “How’s he doing, Doc?”

  She heaved a big breath, and her wild gray-blond curls winked with fog droplets. Beside her, Lake stood with his head lowered. “Possible concussion, as I said earlier, but nothing else to write home about. He’s got youth and stubbornness on his side.”

  “I’m not stubborn,” Lake protested.

  Doc Stevens ignored him with gusto. “Right now, I can’t determine whether the gap in his memory is from the blow to the head or from being unconscious for more than a few minutes. But the last thing he remembers was several hours ago. So I’m gonna need your help.”

  My eyebrows shot up. “Me?”

  Doc Stevens nodded. “The life you save and all that, honey. Lake needs to be watched overnight. He needs to wake up every hour to make sure he can wake up. Despite his headache, he isn’t suffering any warning symptoms right now, so it’s possible that he’ll continue to recover with no ill effects. But just in case, we need to make sure he doesn’t die when no one’s looking. He’s new in town, no permanent residence, no roommates or local family. You have plenty of rooms. You got an empty one tonight?”

  My eyes zoomed from Doc Stevens to Lake, who seemed desperate to lie down. “I-I do, yes. You sure that’s all he needs, hourly wakeup calls? No drugs or anything?”

  “Tylenol or ibuprofen if he’s in a lot of pain. We don’t want to mess with anything stronger at this point. And no aspirin. Let’s go get him settled. The sooner he rests, the sooner he can begin to recover.”

  Surprised at this sudden twist on top of the first sudden twist in my night, I led the way back into the bed and breakfast. Lake followed, supported on each side by Hilt and Doc Stevens, though his gait appeared steady.

  Chief Craig trailed behind, glancing left and right as if looking for the crash’s cause in my shrubbery. “You sure he ain’t faking, Doc?”