slight jam as in life or death, or merely serious?”
“In the big picture we might call it turbulence,” I said. “But you might want to treat your home phone like a party line.”
Her face went to instant disgust. “Is the damned Pentagon interested in my hair appointments? My pizza orders? Is there an extra topping profile that will turn me into a ‘person of interest?’”
I couldn’t answer without saying too much. After a half-minute of silence I said, “Anything more on your no-content news story?”
Marnie mulled my words, stared up at the mast lights of the tall schooner Hindu . “The paper got an email, a Citizens Voice blast. It questioned a police blockade on Bay Point yesterday, so we know it wasn’t Sugarloaf.”
“It wasn’t just a blockade,” I said. “I heard some maniac bitching at Liska this afternoon on the Afterdeck at Louie’s. They evacuated homes along one stretch. He saw it going down and pretended not to be home. The deputies had helpers in unmarked vehicles. I’m guessing they maybe found a body.”
“I demand the maniac’s name,” she said.
“Don’t know it.”
“How did Liska react?”
“He didn’t say squat. His mood could’ve darkened a coal mine.”
“You know more than you’re letting on,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“When I saw you at the library, you had something on your mind. I could tell by the lines in your face.”
“Always the reporter,” I said, “sussing out her sources.”
“Anything you need to unload?”
“I didn’t think so until I got back to my house and talked to Carmen,” I said. “A slick fellow in his mid-forties came by Monday, tried to feel me out on selling my cottage. I sent him away. He showed again this morning, looking like forty miles of bad road, and tried to hire me as a private eye. He said I had a reputation for crime solutions. He knew about Little Torch, even knew about Avery Hatch, back in the Stone Age. His nineteen-year-old daughter works at a grocery on Summerland but she’s been missing for two days.”
“At Murray’s?”
“No, Colding’s, the one farther up, where Monte’s Restaurant used to be. I told him I made my living taking pictures, so he tried to pay me a tall stack of cash to take her picture.”
“All you had to do was find her first?”
“I sent him away again. But that’s not the punch line. He’s also made offers to buy Carmen’s cottage and her parents’ house. Do you know what time it is?”
“Two minutes to seven. I want his number and the daughter’s name.”
I gave her the info and said, “Go slowly with this guy. This mess has him shook. He was a pompous dick, but his sanity was barely along for the ride.”
Five minutes after counseling Marnie not to drink, I grabbed another beer and a roadie cup before hiking over to meet Lisa Cormier. If I ran through the humid October evening, hustled three hundred yards to the restaurant, I’d be a one-man sweatshop and five minutes late. If I walked and sipped warming Amstel and watched the evening sun fade from the tops of palm trees and utility poles, I might be ten minutes late.
Damn, I like easy decisions.
It would be my last for a few days.
I chugged my beer and ditched the cup in a trash bin before entering Prime 951. I didn’t want to look low-rent on my arrival to secretly meet a glamorous society dame from Atlanta. I found six empty bar stools within four steps of the door. A sign of good planning for the chronically thirsty and weary of leg. I sensed Mrs. Cormier about fifteen feet away, the only person at the bar, but didn’t look at her.
I pointed to a stool to inform the woman at the podium that I didn’t need a dinner table, then dutifully kept my eyes on the bartender as he delivered a drink napkin and a wine list.
For some reason, at that moment, I wondered if everything Copeland Cormier had told me in church was bullshit. I tempered the thought with the fact that Sam Wheeler
“In the big picture we might call it turbulence,” I said. “But you might want to treat your home phone like a party line.”
Her face went to instant disgust. “Is the damned Pentagon interested in my hair appointments? My pizza orders? Is there an extra topping profile that will turn me into a ‘person of interest?’”
I couldn’t answer without saying too much. After a half-minute of silence I said, “Anything more on your no-content news story?”
Marnie mulled my words, stared up at the mast lights of the tall schooner Hindu . “The paper got an email, a Citizens Voice blast. It questioned a police blockade on Bay Point yesterday, so we know it wasn’t Sugarloaf.”
“It wasn’t just a blockade,” I said. “I heard some maniac bitching at Liska this afternoon on the Afterdeck at Louie’s. They evacuated homes along one stretch. He saw it going down and pretended not to be home. The deputies had helpers in unmarked vehicles. I’m guessing they maybe found a body.”
“I demand the maniac’s name,” she said.
“Don’t know it.”
“How did Liska react?”
“He didn’t say squat. His mood could’ve darkened a coal mine.”
“You know more than you’re letting on,” she said.
“What makes you say that?”
“When I saw you at the library, you had something on your mind. I could tell by the lines in your face.”
“Always the reporter,” I said, “sussing out her sources.”
“Anything you need to unload?”
“I didn’t think so until I got back to my house and talked to Carmen,” I said. “A slick fellow in his mid-forties came by Monday, tried to feel me out on selling my cottage. I sent him away. He showed again this morning, looking like forty miles of bad road, and tried to hire me as a private eye. He said I had a reputation for crime solutions. He knew about Little Torch, even knew about Avery Hatch, back in the Stone Age. His nineteen-year-old daughter works at a grocery on Summerland but she’s been missing for two days.”
“At Murray’s?”
“No, Colding’s, the one farther up, where Monte’s Restaurant used to be. I told him I made my living taking pictures, so he tried to pay me a tall stack of cash to take her picture.”
“All you had to do was find her first?”
“I sent him away again. But that’s not the punch line. He’s also made offers to buy Carmen’s cottage and her parents’ house. Do you know what time it is?”
“Two minutes to seven. I want his number and the daughter’s name.”
I gave her the info and said, “Go slowly with this guy. This mess has him shook. He was a pompous dick, but his sanity was barely along for the ride.”
Five minutes after counseling Marnie not to drink, I grabbed another beer and a roadie cup before hiking over to meet Lisa Cormier. If I ran through the humid October evening, hustled three hundred yards to the restaurant, I’d be a one-man sweatshop and five minutes late. If I walked and sipped warming Amstel and watched the evening sun fade from the tops of palm trees and utility poles, I might be ten minutes late.
Damn, I like easy decisions.
It would be my last for a few days.
I chugged my beer and ditched the cup in a trash bin before entering Prime 951. I didn’t want to look low-rent on my arrival to secretly meet a glamorous society dame from Atlanta. I found six empty bar stools within four steps of the door. A sign of good planning for the chronically thirsty and weary of leg. I sensed Mrs. Cormier about fifteen feet away, the only person at the bar, but didn’t look at her.
I pointed to a stool to inform the woman at the podium that I didn’t need a dinner table, then dutifully kept my eyes on the bartender as he delivered a drink napkin and a wine list.
For some reason, at that moment, I wondered if everything Copeland Cormier had told me in church was bullshit. I tempered the thought with the fact that Sam Wheeler
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