In Too Deep (4 page)

“I'll be fine,” Morgan assured me. “If anything happens, I'll call you. If I can't get you, I'll call Mr. Duggan at the marina. And if I can't get him, I'll call the cops. But, really, what could happen? Most summers, my biggest problem is boredom.”

I looked out over the peaceful lake and decided she was right. Really, what could happen?

  .    .    .

The next morning I made sandwiches for both of us and left Morgan's in the fridge for her. Morgan hobbled down to the dock to give me a crash course on how to operate the boat.

“Maybe you should take me over,” I said as I listened to her instructions for the second time and watched her demonstrate yet again what I was supposed to do. “Then you can bring the boat back and pick me up after work.”

“I can't get in and out of the boat by myself,” she reminded me. “Besides, operating a boat is a lot easier than driving a car, Robyn. Just go slowly, that's all. Come on, I'll walk you through the start-up again.”

I followed her instructions and made it across the lake to the marina, but I panicked when I saw how fast the dock was rushing up to meet me. When I tried to throttle back the engine, it died on me, and I couldn't get it started again.

“You've flooded it,” someone called out. A girl standing on the dock. She picked up a rope. “Catch.” I grabbed it, and she pulled me toward the dock. “Haven't been in boats much, huh?” she said.

“Not alone,” I confessed.

She helped me tie up and then jumped into the boat and showed me how to get the engine going and how to slow it down again without flooding it.

“You sure know your way around,” I said.

She laughed. “I grew up around boats. My dad owns the marina.”

“Mr. Duggan?”

“That's right.” She sounded surprised.

“I'm staying with my friend Morgan,” I said. “Over there.” I pointed to where I had just come from.

“Sure. I know her. Well, I know who she is. She comes up here every summer with her parents. I saw you arrive yesterday. What happened to her leg?”

“Broke her ankle.”

“Are you two up here on vacation?”

“Morgan is. I have a job. At the
Lakesider
. I'm Robyn.”

“Colleen.”

We chatted for a few minutes, then I asked her for directions to the newspaper office. My stomach was alive with butterflies as I steered the Toyota out of the marina parking lot and headed into town. Turns out I could have walked from the marina. Car safely parked, I drew in a deep breath and pushed open the front door of the low-rise brick building that housed the
Lakesider News
. I approached a woman inside and asked to see Mr. Griffith, the publisher.

“Doug, someone's here to see you,” she called across the room.

A tall man with a shock of steel-grey hair looked up from the doorway to a private office. He strode over to where I was standing, grasped my hand, and shook it enthusiastically.

“Robyn. Great to meet you in person,” he said. “Tony had a lot of good things to say about you.” He meant Morgan's dad. “Are you all settled in?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Excellent. Well, come on. Let me show you around.”

He introduced me to the rest of the staff—Gloria Zorros, who handled the paper's advertising; Rob Hartford, editor and features reporter; Tom Matheson, the paper's sole full-time general reporter; and Nan Sullivan, who copyedited all of the paper's content, proofed everything, coordinated distribution, and took care of office supplies—“among other things,” Mr. Griffith said.

“You'll be working with just about everyone, Robyn. Summer is our busiest time of the year. With all the tourists up here, all the summer events, we carry a lot of ads and have a lot more news to cover. I'll leave you with Gloria this morning. She can answer any questions you have. But you're going to have to be flexible, Robyn. Are you okay with that?”

I assured him I was.

I spent the morning with Gloria, who showed me how to take down requests for classified ads. She also showed me everything I needed to know about what she called “display advertising”—any ad that wasn't a classified ad. “You can give them the prices, the deadlines, and the sizes,” she said. “If they have any other questions, pass them on to me.” She showed me the computer system and gave me a user name and a password. By lunchtime my head was spinning. That's when Rob Hartford called me into his office.

“I have an important job for you, Robyn,” he said. “You think you're up for it?”

“I guess so,” I said. But I was having a hard enough time remembering everything that Gloria had spent the morning showing me.

Mr. Hartford opened a desk drawer and pulled out a reporter's notebook and a ballpoint pen. He handed them to me.

“Two blocks down, on the other side of the street, there's an establishment called Roxy's,” he said solemnly. “Your assignment”—assignment!—“is to take everyone's lunch order, collect their money, and bring back lunch.” When I just stood there thinking, he nodded at the notebook in my hand. Well, Dr. Turner had said there would probably be a lot of gofer work. I scribbled down Mr. Hartford's lunch order.

Twenty minutes later, armed with my order pad, er, reporter's notebook, I headed down to Roxy's. I was on my way back holding a cardboard box filled with sandwiches, salads, and beverages, when a kid burst out of a record store right in front of me and bolted into the street.

“Oh no you don't!” a red-faced man yelled. He darted out of the store and grabbed the kid by the collar of his T-shirt. The kid struggled, but the man kept an iron grip on him. “I'm holding you for the police, you brat,” he said.

“He didn't do nothing,” someone said. Another kid grabbed the first kid by the arm. “Come on, Lucas. Let's get out of here.”

“He's not going anywhere until he hands over the DVDs he took,” the man said.

“Let me go,” the first kid said. But he didn't struggle very hard. The man had him firmly by the collar, and a crowd had started to gather.

“You think I'm blind?” the man said. “Or maybe you think I'm stupid. I watched you take those DVDs. The police are on their way.”

As if on cue, a police cruiser rolled up at the curb and an officer got out. He was a big man whose eyes were hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. Despite the heat of the day, he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and gloves. He had on the same sturdy boots that my dad used to wear when he was a patrol officer.

“What seems to be the problem?” he said.

“These kids were shoplifting, that's what,” the storeowner said, still holding the struggling kid.

“He didn't do nothin',” the second kid said again.

The crowd had swelled even more once the police arrived. I looked down at the lunch order I was carrying.
I should probably get it back to the office
, I thought—but what if this turned out to be news?

The police officer told the kid to step over to the cruiser and empty his pockets onto the hood of the car.

The kid glanced at his friend, who shook his head in defeat. Then he pulled a wad of tissues and a battered pack of gum from one of the side pockets of his jeans and a handful of small change from the other. The officer started patting the kid down and paused as he ran his hand down the kid's back.

“What's that?” he said.

The kid just shrugged.

“Take it out and put it on the car,” the officer said.

Someone pushed past me through the crowd.

“What's going on here, Officer?” he said. He was a burly man with salt-and-pepper hair and a soft voice. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt tucked into a pair of loose-fitting jeans. “That's one of my kids.”

“I'm aware of that, Mr. Wilson,” the officer said. He never took his eyes off the kid. “Go on,” he said. “Put it on the car.”

The kid hung his head as he reached around and pulled two DVDs from the back of his pants.

“See?” the storeowner said. “What did I tell you? Thief. I want him arrested.”

Another police cruiser pulled up, and a second officer got out. This one was older than the first one and wore a short-sleeved uniform shirt. He was also wearing sunglasses, but he took them off when he got out of the car. Dean Lafayette, my father's old friend.

“What seems to be the problem, Phil?” he said to the first officer.

“That kid was stealing from my store, that's what,” the storeowner said.

The first police officer, Phil, nodded to the DVDs that were sitting on the hood of the car.

“We can give him a warning, George,” Dean Lafayette said.

“I found stolen goods on him, Chief,” Phil said.

“There you go,” the storeowner said triumphantly.

“Come on, George,” Lafayette said. “Phil is new on the job. He's still learning how we do things around here. This is just a boy. You've got your merchandise back. What do you say we get the kid to agree he won't set foot in your store again and leave it at that?”

“Warning?” the storeowner said. “You've got to be kidding! Last time I checked, stealing was a criminal offense. I want him arrested.”

“Chief, may I say something?” Mr. Wilson said.

Lafayette nodded.

“Lucas has been with me for less than a month,” Wilson continued. “If you arrest him, he's going to end up back in a juvenile detention facility.”

“Which is exactly where he belongs,” the storeowner said.

“It's where they all belong,” said a man standing next to me.

Wilson shook his head. He appealed again to the chief of police. “You know what those places are like. Sending him back there isn't going to help him. Give him a warning. Release him to me. I'll see to it that he stays on my property and that he does extra chores. He'll learn more from that then he ever would from being locked up again. Please. He's just a kid, and not a bad one, either, despite what you might think.”

Dean Lafayette seemed to consider this for a few moments. He turned to the storeowner.

“What do you say, George?”

The storeowner shook his head. “Those kids are nothing but trouble.”

“Just one chance, that's all I'm asking,” Wilson said. “If he messes up again, you can throw the book at him.”

Lafayette looked at the storeowner again. The man was glowering at the kid he'd caught stealing. I was pretty sure he was going to press charges.

“One chance,” Mr. Wilson said again. “You name the conditions, and I'll see that he abides by them.”

“It's up to you, George,” the chief said.

“Fine,” the storeowner grumbled. “He doesn't set foot in my store again.
None
of your kids do.”

“That's not fair,” the second kid wailed. “I didn't do anything.”

“And I want that one searched, too,” the storeowner said.

“But I didn't do anything,” the kid said again.

Wilson nodded his agreement. Phil gestured to the second kid to step over to the patrol car and empty his pockets. He patted him down but didn't find any stolen goods.

“See?” the kid said. “I didn't touch your stupid stuff.”

“That's enough, Tal,” Mr. Wilson said. He looked at Lafayette. “So, are we good here, Chief?”

The chief turned to the storeowner. The storeowner gave a curt nod.

“Lucas, apologize to the man,” Mr. Wilson said.

Lucas scooped up the loose change that he had taken from his pocket and deposited on the roof of the police car. He jammed it in his pocket.

“Apologize now, Lucas,” Mr. Wilson said, “before I change my mind and let the chief throw the book at you.”

“Sorry,” Lucas muttered under his breath.

The storeowner stared at him with disgust. “If one of your kids ever comes into my store again, he's going to be sorry, Wilson.”

“You'd better get these boys back to your place, Larry,” Lafayette said to Wilson. Then he turned to the crowd. “Okay, folks. We're all done here.”

As the crowd dispersed, I heard people muttering about those kids. “Nothing but trouble,” one person said. “Just like the government to take all these delinquents and send them up to a peaceful town like this where they make nothing but trouble,” someone else added.

The chief spoke to the other officer for a moment before starting back to his cruiser. I intercepted him.

“Excuse me,” I said. “My dad said I should say hi.”

“Robyn! Good Lord, you're all grown-up. Seems to me that the last time I spotted you around town, you were all arms and legs.”

“It's been a couple of years,” I said. I'd spent all of the previous summer in the city. The summer before that, Morgan had been away.

“Well, it's good to see you. Mac told me you were coming up here.” He fished in his pocket for a business card, pulled out a pen, and scribbled a phone number on the back of it. “Here's where you can reach me. And that's my cell-phone number on the back. If you need anything, anything at all, just give me a call.”

I thanked him.

“What was that all about?” I said, tucking his card into a pocket. “Who were those kids?”

“Just a couple of Larry's kids. Larry Wilson runs a group home for teens who have been in trouble with the law. He puts them to work, teaches them a trade, helps them get their lives back on track.”

“It sounds like not everyone appreciates what he's doing,” I said.

Lafayette shrugged. “This is a small town. We get a lot of summer people up here. Some of them have been coming up for generations. But the people who live here year-round don't consider them part of the community. They feel the same way about Larry's kids, even though they only come into town about once a week, if that. A lot of the locals see them as troublemakers.”

“Are they?”