Elaine Orr - Jolie Gentil 04 - Any Port in a Storm (8 page)

“I think she had to go to work.
She’s working at the dollar store down the street from Markle’s place,” George said.

As we started to walk slowly around the perimeter a child’s pirate hat sailed toward us and George caught it.
Another gust brought cries from the bake sale table as what appeared to be a couple plates of lighter-weight cookies fell to the ground.

Before George could hand the hat back to the child three police cars, with lights flashing but no sirens, pulled into the fire lane.
Morehouse got out of one, Lt. Tortino from another, and Dana Johnson from a third.

Tortino raised a megaphone to his mouth.
“Folks, I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the area immediately. Storm’s coming in faster and the surge could bring the water into the park within an hour or so.”

Anyone older than about twenty-five looked relieved, while the younger ones grumbled loudly.
As the officers walked into the park I saw some of the bank staff begin to collect the aprons with money. I glanced in the direction of the skeleton and saw Hayden offer to take the apron Lance was wearing over to the bank staff.

Wise up Lance!
I turned slightly so it wasn’t obvious I was watching Hayden. Sure enough, after a quick look around he slid a hand into one of the pockets, withdrew a large handful of change and probably small bills, and slid the money into the pocket of his jeans. As he did so our eyes met. He gave me a malevolent grin.

I was furious, and turned to walk toward him to confront him.

“Did you see that?” Scoobie asked quietly, touching me on the elbow

I had not heard him come up behind me. “You bet your bippy…” I began.

He grabbed my elbow.
“Not now.”

I started to argue with him when he ran a few steps to the side of us to steady the elderly Mrs. Murphy and her walker. Her daughter was trying to grab a young son and had momentarily moved a couple feet away from her mother.
Scoobie put an arm firmly around Mrs. Murphy’s upper arm and she laughed and called out something to me. Whatever she said was lost in the wind.

Dr. Welby’s voice came from the mic.
“We’re going to move up the spaghetti dinner and silent auction,” he said. “Let’s head over to First Prez,” he paused as he caught Rev. Jamison’s look. “First Presbyterian,” he continued. “The doors to the community room area are already open.”

A fire truck pulled up and I realized that the storm predictions must have changed a lot since morning.
The firefighters began unloading a large pump from which extended a fire hose. I figured they were getting it in place to pump water back over the rocks if it accumulated too much in the park.

I walked up to Dana as she talked to George, who was writing notes about whatever Dana was telling him.
“Getting worse?” I asked.

“Just going to come a little closer to shore than we thought.
It’s just been downgraded to a tropical storm, but it’ll still have some pretty strong winds for a few more hours. Not a huge deal,” Dana said, “but these people need to get home.”

RARELY HAVE VOLUNTEERS served spaghetti that fast. The First Prez basement dining area was packed and the wind had picked up markedly from the time we left the park until we drove into the parking lot. It was the difference between about fifteen and thirty miles per hour, but compared to none, that’s a lot.

Reverend Jamison and Father Teehan decided to forgo the silent auction until Sunday afternoon.
“Assuming the church is still here,” Reverend Jamison quipped.

“There’s always room for your congregation at St. Anthony’s,” Father Teehan said, with what you might call a teasing glint in his eyes.

I dished up probably sixty plates of food before spilling half of a plate down the front of my costume. Somehow, all the First Prez women knew to wear aprons, but as I am as far from a domestic diva as you can get, I did not. I mopped the floor by my feet and made for the rest room.

“Jolie,” came a singsong voice.

“I’m not looking at you, George,” I said and pushed open the door to the rest room.

I mopped up as much of the tomato sauce as I could and was walking back to the serving area when I saw Megan come in, soaked, likely from walking to the church from the store where she works.
She went toward Alicia, and as she did so Hayden got up to get more food from the buffet. I didn’t think Megan realized that Hayden was the person Alicia had been with a lot, and I walked over to him.

“I saw what you put in your pocket.”

“You saw what you think you saw,” he said, in an even tone.

“Where did you come from?”
I asked. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“New York City,” he said.

From the mocking tone he used I assumed this was a lie. Even if true, it was such a huge city I’d probably never be able to find his family or learn where he’d gone to school. Or, more important, why he was in Ocean Alley.

You work around here?” I asked.

He thought about that for a second. “I freelance,” he said, again in his mocking tone.

“Leave her alone,” I said, as he turned to walk back to the table where he and Alicia had been sitting.

I glanced that way. With an unhappy expression, Alicia was gathering used paper plates, apparently getting ready to leave with her mother.

“And stay out of the food pantry,” I said, impulsively.
“I don’t need any more mess to clean up.”

His expression darkened and he bent over a couple inches.
“I go where I want.” He walked away with his plate of garlic bread.

When I glanced toward Alicia, her look in my direction was anything but friendly.

I turned to finish my walk back to the serving area and jumped at the huge crack of thunder. The lights flickered for perhaps a second and the room went black.

I never understand why people scream.
It wasn’t as if the building was shaking. “It’s okay,” I yelled.

“Okay, everybody, we have candles,” Reverend Jamison shouted.

Voices quieted and I heard a couple of matches striking.
Scoobie was holding a tall, glass-encased candle while Sylvia lit it. They were the first to get one lit, and about fifteen more followed in short order. I realized Reverend Jamison had planned for a storm.

Father Teehan walked toward them, and winked at me as he went by.
“And people say we Catholics use too many candles.”

I laughed, and turned to again make my way back to the serving table to clean up.

“Damn,” George was at my elbow. “I wanted to get one of you with your lap all wet.”

“Such a shame,” Aunt Madge murmured.
“Come on, Jolie. I don’t think we have time to do a full clean-up, but we can at least get the pots soaking and they’ll be easier to clean tomorrow.”

After about thirty seconds every kid in the place thought the storm was the height of a good time, and even the adults were good humoredly lighting more candles and collecting kids and pirate hats to head into the rain and wind.

“Listen up!” boomed Dr. Welby. “The Salvation Army has opened a shelter at the middle school if you run out of power.”

“What if we need a boat?” someone asked.

“Call the Coast Guard,” Ramona yelled. A lot of people laughed.

Ten minutes later Aunt Madge, Harry, and I were ready to leave.
When did we become a threesome?

“Is everybody invited?” George asked, hopefully.

“I don’t think the real story will be at the Cozy Corner,” Aunt Madge said, dryly “but you can come if you like.”

“I’m going straight to bed,” I said, firmly.
I was beat and I didn’t want company.

“Too bad, George,” Scoobie said, and George flushed.

ALL IN ALL, the storm could have been a lot worse. There were limbs down everywhere and the radio said there were still thousands of people without power, but there was no major damage. At least not in our part of Jersey.

Scoobie, George, Ramona and I surveyed the damage from the edge of the park.
Water was standing several inches deep in about half of it, and Jennifer’s pirate ship bean bag toss was on its side, half of it resting in the water near the large piles of rocks that now did keep the ocean out. They obviously hadn’t last night. The large pump the firefighters had brought to the park yesterday was gone, I assumed taken to someplace more important.

“You think we can repair the plank?” Scoobie asked.

I followed his gaze, looking at the now sideways wooden contraption.

“Maybe,” George said, “but I figure we can do a bigger one next year.”

“Would you like suggestions for where you can put the old one?” I asked, trying to sound as if I had a good disposition instead of the humongous sense of irritation that was building. I don’t need this mess.

“I’m sure George’s ears are full,” Ramona said, simply.
She was the only one who had been smart enough to bring a pair of rubber boots. I had thought my old running shoes would get muddy, but had not expected that they’d have to serve as waders.

“We’re going to have to wait a couple more hours until the ground absorbs more of the water,” Scoobie said.

“Yes,” Ramona said, looking at her watch.
“We can’t see what washed up, and I don’t feel like stepping on dead fish or a dirty diaper.”

“Thanks for that thought,” Scoobie said, and we agreed to come back at ten o’clock.

Despite my work for Harvest for All, I don’t usually go to church.
Scoobie goes more in the winter, in part because the library is closed Sunday mornings. I figured that before Aunt Madge got back from First Prez I’d have time to do some of the laundry that had piled up during the past week. I was getting back in my car when Alicia rounded the corner at a fast pace. I stood next to the car and waved.

“Where’s Hayden?” she asked, her face contorted as she shouted.
“We were supposed to see what washed up on the beach, but he didn’t come!”

I stared at her, puzzled.
“I wouldn’t have any way of knowing, Alicia. Why do you think…?”

She got closer and pointed an accusing finger at me.
“He said you were going to have him arrested!”

Startled, I dropped my keys.
“What I told him was that I wished there was evidence of anything that would let the police arrest him. He has no business…”

“It’s my business!” she yelled.
“You don’t have anything to do with it.” She stalked off, but turned to face me when she got back to the corner. “And I’m not helping at the stupid food pantry!”

“Yeah,” George said, from behind me as Scoobie stooped to retrieve my keys.
“Having her do that game really changed her attitude.”

I WON’T GO SO far as to say I was shaken by Alicia’s anger, but it disturbed me.
It’s not up to you to decide who she should be kissing.
I knew this was one of those things that I should turn over to my Higher Power, but I didn’t think she’d be as concerned as I was, and I hated the thought of Alicia getting expelled or pregnant at fourteen.
And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

Half of me wished I had talked to Megan about Alicia being in the houses, and maybe about Hayden, too.
The other half of me figured that if I had talked to Megan, then Alicia wouldn’t have gotten the group of teens involved with Talk Like a Pirate Day. Her involvement was a positive thing. Right?
I guess it depends on what happens next.
That wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but you don’t always get good answers when you talk to yourself.

When I returned to the park at ten o’clock, having transferred a load of laundry to the dryer and placed another in the washer, Scoobie and George were already in the park, trying to lift the plank from the gooey soil.
“Watch your back, Scoobie,” I called.

“I thought you had his back,” George said, breathing hard.
They pushed the plank upright and surveyed all sides of the sodden wooden structure.

“I’m not going to carry it to the pickup,” Scoobie said.
“Just setting it up so it can start drying out.”

I didn’t reply, since I was looking for dirty diapers and other debris as I walked toward them.
The ground felt more like thick scrambled eggs than soil, and water oozed from it each time I took a step.

“Hey guys, let’s get the ship back up.”
Ramona said as she walked down the steps that came down from where the boardwalk ended. She sat on the bottom step and put on her boots, then walked toward the swing set where George and Scoobie were trying to disentangle a chain that had wrapped itself around the top bar.

“How many extra holes do you think it has?” Scoobie asked, nodding at the plywood ship as we began to walk toward it.

“Too bad you can still see the name,” I said, as we got closer.

“Now, now.”
Scoobie said.

George started to wade through the water to grab the portion of the plywood that hung across a couple large rocks and over deeper water.
Ramona stopped him. “I’ll wade in there,” she said. “My boots will keep me drier than your shoes would.”

“Ahoy, mate,” Scoobie said.
“Hoist the sail so we can put her out to sea.”

Ramona and I ignored him.

The plan was to get hold of all sides of the plywood and get it flat and a few feet off the ground. Then we’d each take a corner and move toward the pickup George had borrowed from somebody. Idly I wondered what had happened to the pieces of wood that used to brace Jennifer’s ship so it stood up.

“Jolie,” George said.
“Just balance the end that’s already off the ground.”

“Scoobie’s the one with the bad back.
He should balance instead of lift,” I groused.

George grinned at me.
“You’re too short to lift it over the pilings.”

I stuck out my tongue.

“George, where’s your camera?” Scoobie asked.

“Quit kidding around,” Ramona said.
“This is my first day off all week.”

I inferred she had a lot to do.
With Ramona standing in the water near the pile of rocks and Scoobie and George grabbing the bottom of the length-wise portion of the plywood, they slowly began moving the plywood so that it would be wholly on the park side of the rock pilings. As the top left corner came toward me, I steadied it and walked a couple steps back.

“Yeeee!”
I screamed and sat down in the mud, hands splayed at my side. It was a horrible place to sit, as I could stare straight into Hayden’s dead eyes.

GEORGE, SCOOBIE, RAMONA, AND I sat next to each other on wooden pilings near the edge of the park, which was where we had been told to “park it” half an hour ago. We were inside the ring of yellow tape the police had erected. George was not quite through cursing a blue streak because Sgt. Morehouse had made George give him his camera’s data card, since George had taken a lot of pictures of the body before the police got there. Words such as “first amendment” and “see if I hold a story” came out as mutters.

Since it was Sunday morning, there were not a lot of people gazing down from the end of the boardwalk, but there were enough gawkers to make me really uncomfortable.
As if finding Hayden’s body wasn’t enough to do that. I wanted to go home.

The wind had died down, but the water was still slapping against the rocks every few seconds.
Scoobie stared, unspeaking, as the coroner’s staff began carefully lifting Hayden’s body from the mud and loading it into a large black bag. They had taken far more pictures than George. Ramona and I had held hands for a few minutes, but hers were now in her lap and mine were trying to fend off the bugs that were suddenly as thick as the humid air.

I got up and walked to within a few feet of Sgt. Morehouse and Lt. Tortino.
Morehouse saw me first. “I said back off,” he snarled.

“You should call Megan,” I said.
“Alicia was looking for Hayden a couple hours ago.”

Lt. Tortino walked toward me while Morehouse seemed to make a point not to.
“How well do they know him?” Tortino asked.

“I don’t know that Megan has met Hayden.
I just know that Alicia’s been hanging around with him some and she was mad at me this morning because Hayden didn’t show up to walk along the beach with her.”

Tortino looked surprised.
“Why be mad at you?”

I heard Morehouse mutter, “Why not?” but I could tell I had his attention.

“Hayden’s been surly to me a couple of times, and when I saw him kissing Alicia behind the beanbag pirate ship yesterday I told him I wished I had a reason to get him arrested.”
I watched Tortino as he digested this. I saw what I thought was a mental gear shift in his expression.

He took a small notebook from his pocket.
“How did he react to that?” Tortino asked.

“Yeah, how?” George asked, from behind me.

Tortino pointed and George gave him a look of churlish impatience and walked back toward Scoobie and Ramona.

“He told me to mind my own business or he’d help me do it.”

Morehouse walked up and nodded to Lt. Tortino. “I’ll take her down to the station.”

“What for?” I asked.
“I told you everything I know.”

“That’s what they all say,” Tortino said, with a grim smile.

“You can’t possibly think…” I began.

“Come on Jolie,” Morehouse put a hand on the small of my back.
“I’ll buy you a donut.”

TWO HOURS LATER I had relayed what little I knew of Hayden three times, with growing irritation each time.

We were in the small conference room down the hall from Morehouse and Tortino’s puny offices.
Morehouse shoved a piece of paper across the table to me. “Jot down where you were and who you were with after you left First Prez. Then go on home.”

I know my mouth was hanging open.

“Look Jolie,” he said, as if carefully choosing his words, “I figure it’s more likely a sea horse killed the guy than you, but I gotta cover every base.”

I took the paper and looked across at Morehouse, who had been in and out of the room several times.
“How did he die?” I asked.

Tortino walked in.
“You going to talk to your buddies?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“He’s got a hell of an indent on the back of his skull, but we have to wait for the coroner’s report.” He glanced at Morehouse. “Out here for a minute.”

They left and I wrote down my timeline for last night, trying to remember exactly when Aunt Madge and I got back to the Cozy Corner and when I went to bed.
I was so exhausted I had definitely been asleep long before the eleven o’clock news. Not that we could have watched it. The power was out.

“That is just ridiculous!”
Aunt Madge’s voice carried down the hall.

As Morehouse walked past the open door he glanced in.

“Now you’re in for it,” I called.

He snorted, and soon walked back in with Aunt Madge. She stared at me.

“What?”
I had expected a comforting hug or something, but she had her what-did-you-do-now expression.

“I told you.
You should have told Megan Alicia was in that house,” she said.

Crud, I forgot about that!

“Whaddya mean?” Morehouse asked, his voice rising.

I put my head in my folded arms on the table for a moment and looked back up.
“I honestly forgot,” I said to him.

Aunt Madge pulled a chair back from the table and sat.
I saw Morehouse look at her and then back at me. I figured if it had been anyone besides Aunt Madge he would have told them to leave.

Morehouse reached over and took the pen I’d been writing with and opened his notebook.
“Remember!”

“It was the day I told you I saw those two kids leaving the house on Ferry.”
I briefly told him Alicia had been there too, and that I’d made her promise not to do it again and that Scoobie and I had gotten her to agree to do a game at Talk Like a Pirate Day. For good measure, I added, “But Scoobie wasn’t there when I saw her at the house, he just ate with us at Burger King.”

Morehouse glared at me, as Tortino walked back into the room and nodded at Aunt Madge.
“Scoobie’s been doing good for years now,” Morehouse said, “and you’re getting him involved in lying to the police…”

“I am not!”

“Jolie,” Aunt Madge said, in her best calming tone.

“Scoobie’s fine,” Tortino said, looking at Morehouse.
“In fact, he just left. He came by to talk about him and Jolie seeing Hayden Grosso behind the plywood game with Alicia.” Tortino glanced at me, and smiled slightly. “He wanted to be sure we knew no ‘fisticuffs’ were involved.”