Life Guards in the Hamptons (33 page)

“I think he’ll be among friends. And we might need him here.”

A shrink whose touch could calm an entire village? Grandma Eve’s tea leaves must be showing that bad moon rising, too. Dr. Harmon, she told me, did not want to ride the ferries to Shelter Island, not even with one of her composers or a bottle of blackberry brandy, so he’d be delighted to dine with Matt and me. I needed to pick him up at six-thirty.

Chief Haversmith called. He was at the police station, even though it was Sunday. Had I seen any more of that suspicious character, Axel Vanderman? Uncle Henry finally had an hour to look into my warning, between meetings of the emergency preparedness task force.

I hadn’t thought about Axel in days, it seemed, and never saw him after that once. I told the chief I’d check with Susan at the restaurant later, to see if he’d showed up there again.

My father called. Look out for the backside, he told me. I put down the chocolate chip cookie. Nope, he wanted to remind me that hurricanes spiral. If the front side doesn’t get you, the back side can be worse. “Don’t go out when you think it’s done. That’s just the center passing over. It’s the eye you have to watch out for. I saw it in the shower.”

“You saw the eye of the storm?”

“No, just an eye, full of evil and malice. Be careful, baby girl. And don’t worry about me if the phone lines go dead. I’ll be in the clubhouse. We’re going to have a marathon Scrabble tournament.”

“Anything more about the skunk?”

“Funny you should ask. You know how sometimes you think you see something out of the corner of your eye? A shadow or a flicker? That’s what I saw last night, a skunk, real quick. Only you weren’t in danger, so I forgot about it until now. The skunk was in a trap, not you. Now that I think about it, though, it would be just like
you, baby girl, to try to save the critter. Just like your mother would, ignoring the danger. Don’t do it.”

“I won’t, Dad.” I couldn’t if I wanted to. There weren’t any skunks in Paumanok Harbor. And if there were, and it was caught, I’d send Matt to get it out. Wild animals were his department, weren’t they?

Someone else called, without caller ID. Not even a “number unavailable” message. I seldom answered those, usually telemarketers or charities. This time I picked up. “Hello?”

No one was there.

“Hello,” I said, louder.

“It is a hard rain that is going to fall.”

“Who is this?” It sure as hell wasn’t Bob Dylan. He didn’t have my number.

The caller repeated “hard” three or four times.

I knew. “Thank you. You be careful, too.”

Before dinner, I tried to work on my book a little. The sketches of the sea monster were scarier than I’d intended, now that I knew it existed. The eyes, especially, all whirlpools and flickering lightning, could give a kid nightmares. Hey, I was a good illustrator, maybe too good for the YA readers. I thought about changing the eyes, but they fit the character. Now that the chief had spoken about Axel, those swirling eyes brought him back to mind. They fit him, too, how his glittery stare fixed on me, as if they wanted to suck me into his realm, or suck away my will, vampirelike, sea serpentlike. I felt the hairs on my neck raise, just thinking about him and N’fwend in the same picture, as if they were two embodiments of the same evil, one mortal, one made of water and magic.

No way could the two be related, except in my imagination. I’d check with Uncle Henry about Vanderman in the morning.

Instead of frivolous nightwear that was bound to come off almost instantly, I should have invested in a new
outfit for dinner. Matt’s company was dressed to kill—Gina’s shoes alone cost more than everything in my closet combined—and the women were mad enough to do it, too.

First, they couldn’t find the new dolphins. Second, the people in charge of righting the cruise ship had decided they couldn’t wait for the proper winds and equipment and full moon tides, not with the massive storm predicted to arrive during that same full moon. Which was the worst possible scenario for the shorefront.

The tugs and barges and mini-subs had to get to safe harbor themselves, not to mention all the personnel in the storm’s possible path. So what the idiots, Vicki’s word, not mine, were going to do was blow up the reef the ship rested on, then hope the
Nova Pride
was still seaworthy enough to float.

I said that sounded like a good idea, if they could do it right, like how lumberjacks knew where to make the cuts so the tree fell exactly where they wanted it.

“But what about the dolphins?” Gina demanded, as if I’d suggested using them to carry the dynamite. “Do you know what a depth charge can do to a dolphin’s sonar? What the percussion can do, the water displacement, the disturbed sediments? The jerks could be murdering a completely new species, purported to be the most intelligent sea mammal yet, before we’ve done any research on them.”

To me, if the dolphins survived the kraken, a few small explosions in a newly made underwater mountain wouldn’t faze them one bit. If they were still around. Then again, if they were what we all—we being Paumanok Harbor’s insider espers—believed they were, nothing could hurt them.

Vicki and Gina were so aggravated and agitated, not even Susan’s incredible feel-good food could appease them. Of course Vicki’d ordered shrimp, Gina’d ordered salmon. The only two things on the menu that couldn’t be fresh because they weren’t caught in local waters. The other food was amazing, as always. Matt kept smiling and Dr. Harmon kept looking skyward, as if thanking
heaven for dropping him and manna in this wondrous place.

Gina banged her fork on the table. “Those fools will never get it right. The ship will sink, creating a worse disaster for sea life.”

What choice did the Coast Guard or the Army Corps of Engineers or whoever made the decisions have? If they didn’t try, the storm was sure to dislodge the
Nova Pride
, sinking it or sending it crashing into shore, perhaps doing immense damage there, too. If it floated at all, the ship could end up a hazard in the shipping lanes.

Vicki told us about what happened a few years ago when an enormous dead right whale came ashore in California. It stank. It attracted vultures and rats and stupid tourists who wanted to climb on top of the rotting carcass for photographs. They couldn’t tow it out to sea and they couldn’t bury it. So they decided to blow it up into small pieces that could be bulldozed away.

People came from all over the state, filling the parking lots and the adjoining roadways and beaches. And what did those morons do?

They miscalculated, that’s what. So tiny bits of decomposing flesh rained down on the people, the cars, the beaches.

Matt and I and Dr. Harmon were laughing so loud that Susan’s uncle Bernie, owner of the Breakaway, came to see if we were all right. So we told him, and he clapped his hands and brought us another bottle of wine before rushing off to retell the story.

“It’s not funny!” Vicki insisted, showing she had great taste in shoes, but no sense of humor.

I got the feeling she and Gina were like my mother, so driven by their beliefs, their causes, their righteous indignation on behalf of helpless creatures that they’d developed tunnel vision. Her dogs were all that mattered to Mom. The dolphins, and each other, filled Vicki and Gina’s world. At least they shared their dedication.

The new bottle of wine didn’t placate them either. They guzzled it down like lemonade.

The professor sipped, but matched them glass for
glass, not that I was counting how many he’d had. He’d lived this long without destroying his liver, so tippling tonight made no difference. And I was driving anyway. Soon, I hoped. I wanted to spend time with Matt, who did not drink either. We had to make plans. For the storm, naturally. I still had to decide on the black or the red negligee. Not for the storm.

The women weren’t finished with their rants. They cleaned their plates without once complimenting the food and kept bitching about the imbeciles in command and the hurricane keeping them from locating the missing dolphins.

“You must have seen our subjects,” Gina demanded in strident tones of the professor. “What were they like?”

“He was underwater at the time,” I snapped. “Without his glasses. Half dead.” And he was an esteemed scholar, not a suspect undergoing the third degree.

The wine kept Dr. Harmon his usual pleasant self, so he answered politely. “You cannot trust anything I might recall from that night. I believe I saw my first sweetheart in the waves. She married my cousin and moved to Scotland. She died almost twenty years ago.”

They weren’t interested. I, of course, wanted to know what she died of, if he ever spoke to his cousin, and if he still missed her.

Gina interrupted my questions. “And you, Willow. Did you see anything odd?”

“Me? I was onshore with Matt, waiting for a call about the dogs, long after most of the survivors had been brought in.”

“Crap, you’re as useless as everyone else we spoke to. All we get is rumors and hearsay, or eyewitness accounts from people suffering hypothermia or the rapture of the deep. No damned evidence.”

Vicki patted Gina’s hand. “There will be other new species for you to name. I’m certain of it.”

They drank to that, and drank to Matt, who was paying for the outrageous bar tab, too. Then they kept drinking to nothing at all.

I suggested we leave while they could still stand, inviting
everyone back to my house for dessert and coffee. Good thing I hadn’t eaten all the ice cream.

The marine biologists didn’t accept my invitation. They claimed phone calls to make, protests to lodge, guidelines to give to the ship captains and the underwater demolitions crews. In their condition? I didn’t care if they called the President.

I wanted to get Matt alone. Too bad I’d promised the professor a chance to meet Oey. And the wine hadn’t made him the least bit sleepy, damn it.

Matt yawned, though. Maybe another all-nighter wasn’t such a good idea, but with the storm coming, the water worm coming, who know when we’d be … together again.

The dinner bill was high enough to buy a flat screen TV to watch the weather maps get bigger and scarier. Uncle Bernie ripped it up. “You look after my girls. That’s enough.”

I didn’t know if Uncle Bernie meant his two Jack Russells or me and Susan. She was his real niece, on her father’s side, and no relation to me at all. I smiled anyway.

“And thanks for the great story. They’re taking bets on which way the
Nova Pride
will go, straight down or up in pieces. Oh, and Susan packed up some cream puffs for you to take home, speedy.”

I tried to laugh. “We’ve taken to jogging on the beach. Last one home has to buy dessert.”

Uncle Bernie’s right falsehood-detecting leg started twitching and tapping against the wooden floor. He hurried back to the kitchens.

“An old war wound,” I told the curious diners at the next table. Since I was on a roll, I told Vicki and Gina what a pleasure it was to meet them, and I’d be sure to let them know if I spotted any peculiar creatures.

We could hear Uncle Bernie’s foot tapping from all the way across the restaurant.

B
EFORE WE LEFT THE RESTAURANT, I remembered to ask Susan if Axel Vanderman had been back. I stepped into the kitchen and tapped her on the shoulder.

“No, thank heaven. After what you said, he felt really skeevy to me. I told the other girls around town. Fran dated him once, but she couldn’t remember why they didn’t hit it off.”

“Weird. The chief is looking into it.” And then I did an evil thing that felt really, really good. I picked up a cream puff from the dessert tray and crammed it into Susan’s mouth. “Now maybe you’ll learn to keep your lips closed, puddles.”

Matt waited in the parking lot after helping Dr. Harmon to my car and his two guests to his. None of them were steady on their legs. We ducked behind a parked van for a quick kiss. Mine tasted of whipped cream, from licking my fingers. He groaned.

“I’ll be over at your house as soon as I get them settled. Is it okay if I bring Moses, though? Vicki isn’t crazy about dogs, and he’ll be lonely without his sisters.”

“Sure. We have to introduce the dogs sooner or later.” Then we’d both know the relationship couldn’t last. Like if you hated your boyfriend’s mother, or his kids from a first marriage. “We can let Moses play in the dog run if it looks like Little Red is in danger.”

“Hell, I’m worried more about Moses. I’ve seen the Red Baron in action, remember?”

He could make jokes, but the six-pound Pomeranian didn’t have a chance in any confrontation, especially if he started it.

I promised to save Matt a cream puff … if he wasn’t too long. Not that I truly thought he’d get up a threesome with Vicki and Gina, but I was my mother’s distrustful daughter, my father’s constant worrier.

The professor liked my house. “This is more what I had pictured for my retirement, old dogs and comfortable, old furniture, not the elegance of Rosehill. I do not see how I can be at ease in such opulence.”

“You’ll get used to it,” I said while I set out paper plates for the cream puffs. Everything else was in the dishwasher or the sink. “Imagine dining on delicious food off fine china, with someone to clean up after you.” My idea of heaven.