Kiss River

by Diane Chamberlain

  “Why is it so hard to find compassionate, sensitive, handsome men?” Gina asked Lacey.

  “Why?”

  “Because they all have boyfriends.”

  Lacey groaned, but was raring to go two seconds later. “Why do men give their penises names?” she asked.

  Gina shook her head, the smile already on her lips.

  “Soooo,” Lacey dragged out the answer, “they can be on a first-name basis with the one who makes all their decisions.”

  Gina giggled, but Clay was annoyed. “Have you two had enough male bashing for one morning?” he asked.

  “We’re just making up for centuries of female bashing,” Lacey said, but Gina looked genuinely contrite.

  She leaned forward in her chair. “Sorry, Clay,” she said. “Just remember that women bash men out of fear.”

  “How so?” he asked.

  “It’s our defense,” she said. “You know, using humor to cover up for all the times we’ve been hurt. It’s just a way of coping with our fear.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Lacey said, but Clay’s eyes were on Gina’s. For some reason, her words put a lump in his throat. The simplicity in her explanation, perhaps, or just the fact that she was taking responsibility for something that annoyed the hell out of him.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get married and have kids,” Lacey said, returning to the topic that had started the joke-telling.

  “Why not?” Gina asked.

  “I’ll mess them up,” Lacey said. She looked up at their boarder. “Or I’ll die and desert them.”

  Whoa. The conversation had suddenly taken much too serious a turn for his comfort level.

  “I’m off to work,” he said abruptly. “You guys have a good day.” He left the room, anxious to pick up Henry and have some good safe conversation about the weather and crabs and home repair while he drove across the island to Shorty’s.

  But Gina caught up to him in the kitchen. “Clay?” she said, walking quickly into the room.

  He turned toward her.

  “I was too glib about marriage,” she said. She reached out, touched his arm. “I’m very sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I was married for a few years and it wasn’t very good, that’s all, but your marriage was probably great. One of the rare ones. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thanks.” He rested his hand on hers for a moment, feeling the fine bones beneath the warm skin. He wanted to keep his hand there longer, to curl his fingers into her palm. But he let go, smiling at her, then pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the porch.

  That had been kind of her, he thought as he walked through the sandy yard toward the parking lot. But she was wrong about his marriage.

  CHAPTER 12

  Gina pulled into the crowded parking lot of the ramshackle building. A small, sun-faded sign hung on the gray siding. Shorty’s. The sight of the building put a smile on her face and made her feel strangely at home. She’d grown up on the north side of Bellingham, decidedly the wrong side of the tracks, within both sight and smell of the pulp factories on the waterfront. Places like this one had been common.

  She got out of her stuffy, rattling car, still rehearsing what she would say to the two men she hoped to find inside. The steps up to the front door of the building looked old and worn, but they felt solid beneath her feet. A man on the top step held the door open for her.

  “Thanks,” she said, and she caught the scent of fish on his clothes as she walked past him.

  Inside the building, she felt momentarily self-conscious as she stood near the cash register, surrounded by the din of a place where people clearly knew one another, but the discomfort quickly passed. The place was loud, filled with voices and the clatter of dishes and unrecognizable piped-in music. In front of her, people—mostly men—sat at a long counter, and tables and booths stretched off from her in either direction. A couple of customers stood to her left, paying their lunch bills at the register. The lighting was dim, the paneled walls dark with grease. The smell of onion rings was strong in the air and made her mouth water.

  No one looked up from their food and conversation, and no one came to ask her if she needed a seat. Directly to her left, on the counter near the cash register, there was a huge glass jar filled with five-and ten-dollar bills. A sign taped to the front of the jar read Fifty-Fifty Raffle Drawing Sunday, July 7. Below that the words, Proceeds for Crisis Hot Line. Questions? Contact Lacey O’Neill. A white index card leaned against the box, with the number $676 crossed out and $780 in its place.

  Gina was not a gambler, and she’d never won a thing in her life, but the thought of an easy three hundred and ninety dollars when she was in dire need of money was too seductive to pass up. Lacey’s name attached to the jar probably also had something to do with why she leaned toward the cashier to ask, “How much to take a chance on this?” She pointed to the enormous jar.

  “Six chances for five dollars,” the woman said. She was perhaps forty, sharp-featured and tanned. Her short blond hair looked as if it had been styled by raking her fingers through it after her shower.

  Gina dropped a five-dollar bill through the slot cut into the jar’s white metal top, and the cashier handed her six raffle tickets. Leaning on the counter, she wrote her name on each one, trying to stand out of the way of customers paying their bills. She didn’t know the phone number at the keeper’s house, so she simply wrote “Kiss River keeper’s house” beneath her name. While she was handing the tickets back to the woman, she noticed another sign, this one on the wall above the cashier’s head: Waitress Wanted.

  She felt herself smile again. It had been a long time since she’d set foot in a restaurant like this, longer still since she’d waitressed in one. She’d put herself through college waitressing in places no better than this. It hadn’t crossed her mind to work while she was here, of course. She hadn’t planned to stay that long and still hoped that she would be able to leave North Carolina—armed with cash, or at least the information she would need to get the cash—very soon. But she might as well earn a little money while she was here. If she was going to wait tables, one of the busy upscale restaurants would make more sense. She could make far more in one of them than she could here. But there was comfort in this loud little building. This was where she wanted to be.

  She leaned across the counter to the cashier again. “Who do I see about the waitress job?” she asked.

  “Me.” The woman raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I’m Frankie.” She reached past Gina to hand a customer his change.

  “I’m Gina Higgins,” Gina said. “I’ve had experience waitress—”

  “Can you start today?” Frankie reached for the next customer’s check.

  “Uh,” Gina laughed, surprised. “No, but I could start tomorrow. What hours?”

  “You name it,” Frankie said, punching keys on the register. “I need somebody either eight to three or the dinner-to-eleven shift. That starts—”

  “I’ll do the morning,” Gina said. “Can I work just four days a week?”

  “Five, including weekends. You can pick your days off.”

  “Okay,” Gina said. Hesitating a moment, she thought of telling Frankie that she would probably be leaving the area very soon, but she doubted the woman would care. She had the feeling Frankie would take whatever help she could get for however long she could get it.

  One of the waitresses whisked past Gina, holding a tray of food above her head to prevent it from knocking into anyone. The young woman was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt.

  “Anything special I have to wear?” She turned back to Frankie.

  “Closed shoes,” Frankie said without looking up from the cash register. “That’s it. The rest is up to you.”

  “Thanks,” Gina said. “I’ll be here at eight tomorrow morning.”

  Well, that was damn impulsive, she thought as she moved away from the register. She stood in the bustling center of the building again, trying to remember where Lacey had said she would find W
alter Liscott and Brian Cass: in “the back room that’s actually a side room.” She could see an open doorway far to her left, and she walked between the booths and tables to reach it. Once she crossed the threshold, she knew she’d found the “back room.”

  It was not quite as noisy in the large, open room as it had been in the main restaurant. Sunlight poured in through a wall of windows and caught tendrils of smoke wafting into the air. There was music, something not too loud but heavy and throbbing enough for her to feel it in the soles of her feet on the hardwood floor. Small tables were scattered haphazardly around the room, and a pool table dominated one end. Her eyes fell immediately to one of the pool players, a young, handsome, dark-haired man with tattoos covering every inch of his tightly muscled arms. He looked up when she walked in, as did several of the other men, and she felt some of their gazes linger on her awhile. She was conscious of her appearance. She knew she was exceptionally pretty, and tried to downplay that prettiness with her loose T-shirt and drawstring pants, but these guys seemed adroit at undressing her with their eyes. She ignored them, searching through a vague smoke haze until she spotted three elderly men sitting in the corner of the room, hunched over a chessboard. One of them, who was bespectacled and nearly bald, was in a wheelchair, whittling on a chunk of wood as he watched the other two play. God, they all looked ancient. How could they possibly help her? She walked closer.

  One of the chess players, a dapper old fellow wearing a blue-striped tie and white shirt, looked up at her as she approached.

  “Hey, there,” he said.

  “Hi.” Gina smiled at him. “I’m looking for Walter Liscott and Brian Cass.”

  The balding whittler glanced up at her, then started to get to his feet from the wheelchair. “I’m Walter, young lady,” he said. “And this is—”

  “Please don’t get up,” she said, holding her hands out to stop him.

  He lowered himself slowly into the chair again. “This here is Brian Cass.” He waved in the direction of one of the chess players, a gently handsome man with disheveled silver hair and watery blue eyes, who nodded to her. “And this is Henry Hazelwood.” He motioned toward the man with the tie.

  “Ah,” she said to Henry. “You must be Clay’s…” She wasn’t sure how to describe the relationship. “His grandfather-in-law.”

  “You know Clay?” he asked.

  “Yes. Actually, I’m renting a room from him and Lacey at the keeper’s house.”

  “You don’t say,” Henry said. “He didn’t tell me he had anyone who looked like you living there.”

  She smiled. “I don’t want to interrupt your game,” she said. “But I was wondering if I could talk with you—” she looked from Brian to Walter “—just for a minute.”

  “I’ll pull you up a chair,” Brian said, getting to his feet. She thought of stopping him and getting the chair for herself, but he seemed perfectly capable. “Do you play chess, girlie?” he asked as she sat down next to him.

  “Don’t call her girlie,” Walter said, and he exchanged a look of amusement with Gina.

  “Once or twice,” she said. “Not in a long time, though. I was never very good at it.”

  “It’s your turn,” Henry said to Brian.

  “Hold your blasted horses, will you?” Brian retorted. “We have company.”

  Gina looked at Walter. “Will you play the winner, Mr. Liscott?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He carved a sliver of wood from the block in his lap, and she saw that he was forming the shape of a duck. “And I’ll beat the starch out of him, too. And call me Walter. Don’t make me feel so old.”

  “Is that duck going to be like those?” She pointed to the decoys that lined shelves near the ceiling of the room.

  Walter nodded. “Yep,” he said. “As a matter of fact, every one of them decoys is mine.” There was a touch of pride in his voice.

  “Really!” she said, standing up to take a closer look at the masterfully painted ducks.

  “Too bad he doesn’t play chess as good as he carves decoys,” Brian said.

  All three of the men had similar accents. You could hear salt and syrup in each of their voices.

  “So,” Henry said, his attention now on her instead of the chessboard. “Where are you from?”

  “Washington.” She took her seat again. “I’m just here visiting for a while.”

  “Washington, D.C.?” Walter asked.

  “No, Washington State.” She had to remember that here in North Carolina, a few hundred miles from the capital, it was necessary to add that fact.

  “I visited there back in…who knows…back a while,” Brian said, nodding. “Beautiful place. I went up in that needle thing. Is that where you’re from? Seattle?”

  “Bellingham,” she said. “Not too far.”

  “Plenty of water out there,” Brian said. “You been there?” he asked his cronies, who shook their heads.

  “Any place with plenty of water sounds good to me, though,” Henry said.

  “What do you do there?” Walter asked her.

  “I’m a teacher. And a lighthouse historian.”

  “You don’t say,” Henry said. He nodded at his friends. “Well, you came to the right fellas. These two know all there is to know about the lighthouses.”

  “It’s Kiss River I’m most interested in,” she said. “In particular, I’m interested in trying to raise the Fresnel lens from the ocean.”

  Brian Cass and Walter Liscott exchanged glances. “You’re interested in beating your head against a brick wall, too, I guess,” Brian said.

  “Now, why’d you say that?” Henry said. “Let the girl say her piece.”

  “I say that because your grandson’s damn father won’t ever let that happen,” Brian said.

  Here we go again, Gina thought. Alec O’Neill was going to be the bane of her existence here on the Outer Banks.

  “I’ve met Dr. O’Neill,” she said. “You’re right that he’s not interested in helping. But he did give me your names.”

  Walter shifted in his wheelchair and set the decoy on the table. “Look, miss,” he said, “Brian, here, and I would like nothing better than to see that lens up out of the ocean. See it on display somewhere.”

  “Right.” She nodded.

  “And if that could be done without Alec’s support,” he continued, “it would have been done a long time ago.”

  “Walter’s right, for once in his life,” Brian said. “I don’t know as we can be much help to you. Henry’s the only one with family ties to Alec, and he doesn’t really give a hoot about the lighthouse, do you, Henry?”

  “Not when there’s crabs to catch and one of them game shows to watch on TV,” Henry admitted.

  “Well,” Walter said with a sigh, “Brian and I are both pushing eighty. I don’t—”

  “You’ve already pushed right on past it,” Brian interrupted him.

  Walter ignored him. “I’m not sure how we can help. But I can tell you this—” he looked across the table at her “—we’d like to see you succeed. That light saw a lot of history.”

  “Hell of a lot,” Brian agreed. “It’s a sin to leave it on the ocean bottom.”

  “I agree,” Gina said. “So, tell me what to do.” She leaned closer to them, her chin inches from the chessmen on the board. “I’m willing to work hard to make it happen.”

  “First off,” Brian said, “you should try talking to Alec again. We’re stubborn old coots and he’s sick of talking to us. A pretty girl like you might be able to persuade him.”

  “I never did understand why Alec got so gung ho about leaving the lens right where it is,” Walter said, carving again. “One minute he was willing to spend every second of his waking life to save the lighthouse. The next, he says to just let it be.”

  “He probably just got frustrated after all the work we did to save it and then we lost it in the storm,” Brian said.

  “I keep hearing about all the work the committee did,” Gina said, “but
I don’t really know much about it.”

  Brian and Walter slipped easily into a description of the work the committee had done a decade ago.

  “They were going to move it,” Walter said, shaking his head. “I didn’t approve of that plan back then. I thought for sure they’d destroy it in the process. Now they’ve moved Hatt’ras, I see they were probably right. I regret not pushing for that solution.” Sudden laughter broke out from the other side of the room, and he glanced toward the pool players before continuing. “I cried like a baby when that thing broke in two. I said, the least we can do is see if the lens survived the storm. But Alec said forget it. And what Alec says goes.”

  “Alec isn’t God, though, right?” Gina said, feeling almost blasphemous as the words left her mouth.

  The men hesitated, as though none of them wanted to be the first to agree with her.

  “No, Alec’s not God,” Walter said finally. “But truth is, he’s respected around here and no one likes to go against him.”

  “Let’s give her Bill Keys’s name,” Brian said.

  “That’s an idea,” Walter nodded. He took a pen from his pocket and jotted something down on the napkin beneath his coffee cup. He handed it to her. “You call the lighthouse association and ask for him,” he said. “He’ll be behind you. But persuading Alec should really be your first plan of attack.”

  “Useless,” Brian said. He returned his attention to the chessboard, but looked up at her as she rose to leave.

  “You come back sometime, all right, girlie?” he asked.

  “I’m planning on it.” She smiled. “I start working here tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Thursday, March 26, 1942

  Last night, I finally felt brave enough to go back out to the beach and climbed my tree so I could spy on Jimmy Brown as he did his patrol. It had been a week since I’d found the dead man, and I finally stopped having nightmares about his face and the terrible gash across his throat. Nobody knows who he is or where he came from or what truly happened to him, and everybody’s got the jitters knowing there’s a killer on the loose.