Whisper Beach

by Shelley Noble

  Bud was half dragging, half carrying one of the diggers. The man was very small, and his feet stuttered along the ground as Bud yanked him toward the squad car. The guy didn’t stand a chance.

  “Damn,” Vinnie said under his breath. “He’s already been reprimanded twice in the last year for using undue force in an arrest. He better be careful or he’ll find himself sitting at a desk if they don’t get rid of him completely.” He trotted across the boatyard to meet them, and Joe came down the steps.

  Bud shoved the man to the ground. He hit hard and landed on his hands and knees. His cap fell off. A shaggy-headed boy cringed and covered his head with his arms. He was just a kid, not older than twelve, probably younger.

  Bud growled something to his victim, yanked him to his feet, and ordered him to hold still. “Get my cuffs out of the truck.”

  “Ah, Bud, he’s a kid. You don’t have to cuff him.”

  “No-o-o!” The boy squirmed beneath Bud’s grip.

  Joe ran down the steps. “Hey. What are you doing?”

  “Catching me a poacher.”

  The kid looked up with round frightened eyes.

  “He’s not a poacher. He works for me,” Joe said. “He was on his way home and we saw the poachers. I told him to go run them off.”

  “The hell you did.”

  “The hell I did. You’ve been carping at me for weeks about them, so I was just doing my civic duty.”

  Vinnie wiped his face to hide a grin.

  “Yeah?” Bud shook the kid, and his head snapped back. “What’s your employer’s name then?”

  “ Aw, Bud,” Vinnie broke in. “Stop bothering Joe, here. Everybody knows he hired a kid to help out with the boats. Isn’t that right, kid?”

  The boy nodded energetically.

  Joe stepped forward, put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. He looked at Bud, who was slow in letting go.

  “If I find out you’re lying.”

  Joe pulled the kid closer and out of Bud’s reach.

  “Bud, give it a rest.”

  “I’m warning you.”

  The radio squawked. Vinnie and the two other cops returned to their cruisers. With another scowl at the kid and Joe, Bud finally strode back to his cruiser.

  Joe waited until they had driven away, sirens blasting.

  “Well, kid, it looks like you got yourself a job.”

  THE FIRST THING Van did the next morning after pouring herself a cup of coffee was call her office. It was only eight o’clock, but she knew that either Ellen, her ace office manager, or Maria, her executive secretary, would already be there. They were perfectly able to run things without her for a couple of weeks. Longer if need be. She had tried to resist calling them too early. That would be a sign of not trusting them. Though she suspected she wasn’t fooling anybody. She had control issues.

  They’d joked about it to her face and groused about it behind her back. But she couldn’t help it. It looked like she was going to have a full day, and she had things to do; besides, she really wanted to touch base with the familiar. She just had to remind herself not to micromanage when Maria answered the phone.

  “Elite Lifestyle Managers. How may I help you?”

  “Hi, Maria. It’s me.”

  Was that a sigh she heard?

  “Everything is fine. You better be on the beach with a drink with an umbrella in it.”

  “There’s been a blip in the schedule.”

  That was definitely a groan.

  “I’m still in Whisper Beach.”

  “Fine. As long as you’re on some beach. Having a good time. Don’t call unless you need us to send cash or get you out of jail.”

  Van laughed. “I know you guys are capable of handling everything. I just wanted to—”

  “Check in. I know. And we love you for it; now go have fun. Oh, and this should make your day. We just landed the Hallmark building account. So relax and have fun. I’m hanging up now.”

  “Wow, I wasn’t sure they’d go for the group discount thing. How soon do they want—”

  “We’re taking care of it; go to the beach.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m putting on my bikini now.”

  “Hooray. Good-bye.”

  The line went dead. The Hallmark building. A biggie. Lots of apartments with overworked, harried families in need of organization.

  Van sat down at the kitchen table and looked at her phone. Definitely too early to call the lawyer. Besides, she thought she might run her idea about renting the house to Gigi past Dorie. She didn’t want to enable Gigi to not deal with her life. But she knew Gigi wouldn’t get on with her life until she was out from under her mother’s thumb.

  Suze wandered into the kitchen holding a huge coffee mug.

  “Morning,” Van said. “Did you just get up?”

  “Been up for hours. Trying to concentrate on my paper while waiting for the mailman to come.” She poured herself a cup and sat across from Van. “What are you doing today?”

  “I’m going to try to get the key from Mr. Pimlico and go take a look at the house. If you’d like to go.”

  “Thanks, but I have to get some work done. Why don’t you do that this morning, and after lunch, we’ll go to the beach. Or maybe we’ll take Dorie to lunch.”

  The outer door opened, and Dorie came in carrying two filled grocery bags. “Take me where?”

  “To lunch or something.”

  “I thought you were calling Gigi.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot. I will.” Van made a face. “But first, I wanted to consult you about something.”

  “Let me put the eggs in the fridge, and you can hit me with it.” Dorie slid the carton of eggs in, along with lettuce and tomatoes and a few other things, then poured out the last of the coffee and sat down. “Shoot.”

  “I’m going to see the lawyer about the house.”

  “Well, it’s about time. I don’t guess you’re planning to live in it?”

  Van gave her a quelling look.

  “So you’re going to sell it?”

  “I was thinking maybe Gigi and the kids could live there. It’s small, but big enough for them—if it’s in decent shape or at least doesn’t need a lot of work. I don’t want to put any real money into it.”

  “And you would be doing this why?”

  “I think Uncle Nate and Aunt Amelia have had enough. And I don’t think Gigi’s going to move on until she has her own place, and since her own place is foreclosed on and since my house is sitting there unused, it makes perfect sense.”

  “Enabling,” Suze said from the bottom of her coffee mug.

  “What do you think, Dorie? Is it enabling?” Van asked. “I thought it might give her the impetus to pull herself together. I know Nate is worried about her, and I got the feeling he would love to have his house back.”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you take a look at it before you make any decisions.”

  Which is just what she did.

  VAN MET THE lawyer at his office at nine fifteen and drove over to the house with his set of keys. She parked at the curb and sat, feeling a sudden lethargy that kept her in the car. Lethargy or anxiety.

  She didn’t know what shape the cottage would be in, what she would feel, if anything. Would memories crowd around her like soul suckers in a sci-fi film? Or would it just be another empty house? One thing was for sure. It wasn’t going away.

  Van got out of the car and walked up to the front door, noticed that her hand shook slightly as she pushed the key in the lock, turned it. The door opened on a squeak of hinges.

  She automatically reached for the light switch. Of course the electricity had been turned off years ago.

  She walked into the dim living room, groped her way to the windows and pulled back the drapes, setting off a cloud of dust. She stood in the center of the room and looked around. The light coming through the window barely reached into the gloom. Just enough to show the same old furniture untouched and covered by a thick layer of dust.

 
Van stepped through to the kitchen; the counters were bare, the laminate faded and cloudy. There was a water stain in the corner and the blackish mold that grew around it. That would have to be removed. A spray of TSP should do it; it didn’t look widespread.

  She opened a cabinet. Mismatched plates and glasses; a drawer, cooking utensils, another drawer, the aluminum flatware Van had bought on sale for her mother’s Christmas present one year. Everything was like she remembered it, only dusty.

  Back through the living room to the other half of the house; the two bedrooms and bath. She went through to her bedroom first. Opened the closet and saw the clothes she’d left behind, still hanging there. On the desk a pile of schoolbooks that had never been returned. A green stuffed frog that Joe had won at the boardwalk in Ocean City.

  She didn’t pick it up, didn’t even touch it, just walked past it, the dust and mold tickling her nose and throat. She coughed, sniffed, pulled open the top drawer of the bureau, where she found underwear and pajamas neatly folded. The second drawer held T-shirts and jeans, just as neat. The bottom drawer, empty. She couldn’t remember what had been there.

  She moved to the bathroom. Everything was gone from the windowsill except a bottle of shampoo and conditioner, the brand that she had used in those days, maybe the actual bottles she had used. The medicine cabinet had been cleaned out. A hand mirror and a glass of makeup brushes sat on the back of the toilet. Everything was just as it had been when she’d left twelve years ago.

  She left the bathroom, hesitated, then stepped into her parents’ room. Her father’s room after her mother’s death. Still the white Battenburg runner on the dresser, a picture of the three of them at the beach. It had sat there ever since the summer it was taken when Van was seven.

  They’d been happy then. Van picked it up. At least Van had been happy. But looking closely at her parents’ faces, she understood now that something was already deeply wrong.

  The way you could almost feel her father bending away from her mother. Her mother’s frantic eyes caught perfectly by the camera. Van was smiling between them, oblivious. He’d even left that behind.

  It takes two to make an argument, Nate had said.

  But it didn’t take two to make a drunk. The photo had been taken before her father started drinking heavily. Van remembered he’d go to work every day. Come home and they would eat dinner together, then he would take a beer to the easy chair, turn on the television, and pick up the paper.

  It was like he couldn’t do just one thing at a time; he had to be doing it all at once. And remembering this, Van wondered if it was him building a barrier through which neither she nor her mother could travel.

  Later, tired turned into blitzed. He stopped eating with them, would grab something to put on his plate, and take his plate and beer down to the basement where he’d installed a second television; it was where he lived when he wasn’t at work or at the pub, and where he slept on an old sagging couch he’d found on the curb one day.

  Van shivered. There was nothing of him left in the house. Not a forgotten razor in the bathroom, not an undershirt or a pair of socks in the dresser. Not one book that he kept by the bed for when he went to sleep sober enough to read. Nothing but empty hangers in the closet. And Van knew if she went downstairs, it would be empty, too.

  It was like he’d never existed. Anger boiled up inside of her. He’d taken himself and his possessions away and left them behind. Everything that had been Van and her mother lay rotting in these few rooms. And nothing of him.

  Bastard, she thought. He couldn’t wait to get away. Well, good riddance. Good riddance, good riddance.

  But why? What did we do that was so bad that you needed to erase us?

  Van backed out of the room. She’d have to hire a service to cart the stuff away and then cleaners. Everything would go. Everything. If Gigi wanted to live there, Van was sure she could scrounge some extra furniture from her parents.

  And if Gigi didn’t want it? Well, Van would put it on the market before she left.

  Chapter 9

  GIGI WAS STANDING ON THE SIDEWALK WHEN VAN PULLED into Dorie’s driveway. She was wearing shorts, had a beach bag slung over one shoulder, and was holding a stack of papers that looked like the mail.

  “I was going to call you,” Van said, getting out of the car. She’d hoped to have a few minutes with Dorie and Suze.

  “I just thought I’d come and surprise you.”

  “Oh, good. Let’s go inside. I need more coffee.”

  “In this weather? Ugh.”

  As they walked toward the front door, it opened and Suze stepped out. She zeroed in on Gigi and then her hand. “Is that the mail?”

  “Yeah, I ran into the mailman when I got here.”

  “Great.” Suze gently extricated it from Gigi’s hand and started back toward the house as she riffled through the envelopes.

  Van and Gigi followed her inside and got to the foyer just in time for Suze to drop the mail on the table with a “Dammit.”

  “No luck?” Van asked.

  Suze shook her head. “I don’t know why this is taking so long. I need coffee.” Suze headed for the kitchen.

  “Was she expecting something important?” Gigi asked.

  “Yes. She’s up for a grant and the deadline for the final round or whatever is looming, and they haven’t sent her the forms she needs.”

  “Oh. Why is she having her mail sent here?”

  “I think she’s planning to spend the fall here, at least if the grant comes through. You should ask her.”

  Suze was gloomily nursing a mug of black coffee when they reached the kitchen.

  Dorie was at the sink. “What’s in the bag?”

  Gigi held up her beach bag like it was show-and-tell.

  “My beach towel. I’m wearing my swimsuit under my clothes. I thought Van and I . . . and Suze could go to the beach today. Like the old days. Dad said it would be all right as long as we minded our own business. And I didn’t call attention to myself. I brought my sunglasses.”

  Suze snorted, but turned it into a sneeze. She quickly covered her mouth and said, “Excuse me, need a tissue,” as she fled from the room.

  Dorie rolled her eyes and turned back to the dishes, leaving Van to wrestle with the smile on her own face.

  “Do you think sunglasses will keep people from recognizing you?” Van asked.

  “I guess. Besides, nobody will be at the beach. It’s a weekday.”

  “Good point. Well, Dorie, if you don’t have anything for us to do, I guess we’re going to the beach.”

  “Have fun.”

  “I’ll just get changed,” Van said. “Back in a flash.”

  She went upstairs and knocked on Suze’s door. A muffled answer came from the other side, so she walked in. Suze was sitting on the bed, red faced, and for a second Van was afraid she’d been crying. But she saw Van and said, “Sunglasses,” and broke into suppressed laughter.

  Van closed the door. “Shh, you’ll hurt her feelings.”

  “I’m sorry, but is that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard?”

  “Pretty silly. You are coming to the beach with us, aren’t you?”

  “I need to work.”

  “I respect that, so let me phrase it a different way. ‘If you don’t come to the beach with us, I’ll sneak in and hide all those musty tomes you have stacked on the desk.’”

  “I took yesterday off.”

  “I know and ordinarily I wouldn’t beg, but ple-e-e-ase.”

  “God, you sound like Gigi.”

  “Did it work?”

  “Okay, for a couple of hours, and then I’m locking myself in here and do not want to be disturbed.”

  “Deal. Get changed.”

  From downstairs, Gigi’s voice called, “What’s taking you two so long?”

  Suze and Van exchanged looks. Surely this wasn’t normal recently widowed behavior.

  Van went across the hall and pulled her suitcase up to the bed. She
hadn’t bothered to unpack. In her mind she was still thinking four-star luxury hotel. That’s what her vacations should be these days. Upscale luxury, not sleeping on a sagging single bed surrounded by faded florals and Depression-era furniture.

  She rummaged in her suitcase, pulled out the little—and she did mean little—bikini she’d bought for the beach at Rehoboth. It was a shame to waste it on Whisper Beach, but it was the only one she’d brought. Actually it was the only one she had.

  Van slipped it on and put on a pair of denim cutoffs, which she’d bought at a Fifth Avenue boutique and fit wonderfully, though she was still having trouble reconciling the price for something she used to wear when she was too poor to even afford Kmart.

  Life could be funny.

  She slipped on her new, gauzy cover-up. Unfortunately she’d been depending on the hotel to provide soft, thick beach towels. She took the threadbare towel she’d dried off with after her shower.

  She didn’t have a beach bag. She wouldn’t need one. She could take her laptop. The news that they’d won the Hallmark contract was an itch she was dying to scratch. But one big wave could destroy her entire digital life. She could take one of the paperbacks on the tiny bookshelf under her window.

  Or she could bite the bullet and just pay attention to Gigi. And what was so hard about that? They’d always gotten along. And Gigi needed friends at this sad time. That had been obvious yesterday when Gigi fairly disappeared around her boisterous family.

  This was supposed to be Gigi’s day, though Van would rather spend her time with Suze than her cousin. And she felt a little guilty.

  Suze stuck her head in the door. “You ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.” Van unzipped her toiletry bag and retrieved a pump bottle of sunscreen. She looked at Suze, still dressed in her khaki shorts and polo shirt from breakfast. “You sure as hell better tell me there’s a swimsuit under that safari outfit.”

  “It’s there, but I’m not walking to the beach in it.”

  Gigi was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs. “Dorie went to get us some beach chairs out of the storage shed.”