Life Guards in the Hamptons (24 page)

I
 HAD A PLAN. WHICH WAS A WHOLE LOT better than waking up Saturday morning feeling as alone and lost as I’d felt Friday night. Like wandering through a desert without a hat, as if a sunburn was the worst of my problems. Now if my plan had half a chance of working, I’d be thrilled.

Find the professor, get him to vanquish N’fwend with Oey’s help, and discover Matt’s intentions. Great plan.

I made a list during breakfast. Vegetable quiche was like a healthy omelet and toast, right?

I did a mental run-through of the Paumanok Harborites whose talents I knew, writing down those I needed to speak with. Like, Bill the telekinetic at the hardware store couldn’t find things, he could just move them. The weather forecasters couldn’t help either. I knew the morning temperature was brisk from walking the dogs, so I had on a zippered sweatshirt. I also knew I’d be taking it off as soon as the sun warmed up, or putting a rain jacket over it if the clouds stayed. None of that could locate the missing passenger. I had a bunch of names and talents to try, though, so I packed up a bottle of water, my sketch pads, a pocketful of dog biscuits, and Little Red.

I wanted to be done by noon when the vet’s office closed. Mom had a drawer full of dog leashes, so I had an excuse to call on Peg. And Matt.

Great plan.

I started with Mrs. Desmond on Osprey Street.

“I’m looking for the lost passenger on the cruise ship. Can you help me?”

“I can try, dear.” She put a small pot of water on to boil and took down a jar of alphabet noodles. “What’s his name?”

“James Everett Harmon.”

“Harmon, did you say?”

“Yes, from England. That’s why it’s so important.”

The H floated to the top of the pot first. I held my breath. Then the J and the E popped up to the surface. Yes!

I thanked Mrs. Desmond. She gave me some corn muffins and wished me luck.

Next stop, the auto repair shop.

“How’s your big toe feeling, Kelvin?”

“Just fine, Willy. This carburetor isn’t. What do you want?”

“Professor Harmon is alive.”

“Good for him. So can I get back to work?”

“How’s your toe now?”

“Fine, no itching.”

I kissed his cheek.

My plan was working!

I hurried to the big building off Main Street that housed the village offices and the police station. The place seemed more crowded than usual for after the summer season, although no one stood on line at the front desk. That area opened half a day on Saturday so weekenders and people with long-hour day jobs could get beach stickers and dump permits and pay their taxes.

Mrs. Ralston sat stiff-backed and purse-lipped behind her plastic partition, while a woman I did not know looked over her shoulder. I hadn’t intended to speak with the village clerk since Mrs. Ralston’s talent, besides being an excellent office manager, was knowing the sex of a pregnant woman’s child. I didn’t need to find out if Mrs. Kale’s new grandchild was a boy or a girl. My
mother also kept a closet full of baby blankets in yellow and turquoise and stuffed dogs for baby shower emergencies.

I waved on my way to the police department’s wing. Mrs. Ralston did not smile. The woman beside her stared at me through narrowed eyes, as if I had a weapon under my sweatshirt jacket. All I had was Little Red. She sneered and pointed to the No Dogs Allowed sign, but I kept going. Except that stare gave me an idea. I backtracked and asked if Mrs. Ralston knew anything about an Axel Vanderman. He wasn’t on my list or part of my plan, but it never hurt to have information.

Mrs. Ralston gave a dirty look to the woman watching her, as if daring her to make a comment, then turned to her computer. She read out his address, the old Mahoney place, which I already knew. He bought the place three months ago, paid his taxes on time, applied for a permit to put in a pool, and got a beach parking sticker so he could use all of the East Hampton Township beaches, but not the East Hampton Village ones, because we did not pay them taxes. The locals were bitter about that, because we paid a fortune to use their high school. But that’s another story.

“No dump permit registered to him, so he must have garbage pickup.”

The other woman tsked. “That’s supposed to be private information.”

Mrs. Ralston turned to her. “And you are supposed to be frisking female prisoners at the county jail, not interfering with village business. If Willy asks, she has a reason.”

“I don’t care who takes his trash. And I don’t want to know how high his taxes are or how much he paid for the house. Although,” I told the female sent to make sure Mrs. Ralston didn’t steal any paper clips or whatever, “that information is in the public record.”

Now Mrs. Ralston did smile at me for putting her hostile watchdog in her place. “What else do you want to know, Willy? I cannot recall his appearance, or hearing any gossip about him. Which would not be in the official
records anyway, of course,” she added, with a glare for the intruder in her carefully organized domain. “But I would tell you if I knew.”

“I’m not sure what I’m looking for. He’s spooky, is all. I met him last night and something about him felt wrong.”

“Woo-ee, just what we need, another whackadoodle person in this town.”

I didn’t know if the female from the prison meant me or Axel. “I think he might be some kind of sexual predator.”

That set the guard back. She sucked in her lips, as if daring Vanderman to show up and try to get hinky with her. Mrs. Ralston said she’d pass it on.

I said I’d mention him to the chief, and went down the corridor. With my dog.

I wasn’t surprised to find the police station full of people, not with the crime spree going on. What did surprise me was all the different uniforms from the county and the state, plus plainclothes cops with bulges under their jackets and men in suits with earpieces. Like Mrs. Ralston and her warden, Paumanok Harbor was under suspicion, and under siege.

I walked past the strangers toward the chief’s office. I saw Big Eddie, but he looked grim, so I didn’t stop at his desk, not even to pet his K9 partner who snored beside it. Neither one of their noses could help me yet. Nor could Baitfish Barry, standing over by an open window, unless I wanted to catch a fish for dinner. After holding Oey in my arms? No, thank you.

Officer Eric Kenton, the one they called Keys, might come in handy if I discovered the professor held prisoner somewhere and we needed to break in. With a search warrant, of course, with respect to the Feds present.

Uncle Henry Haversmith’s office door stood open, so I walked in. I expected more law enforcement types, not the long-married chief of police holding a weeping woman.

“Thank goodness you’re here, Willy.” He pushed the female in my direction.

What was I, comforter of criers? “I—”

“It’s Lolly, and she’s upset.”

No kidding. So was Little Red. I put him down before he got squashed or so scared he peed. He immediately lifted his leg against one of the wooden chairs along the wall.

The nightshift cleaning woman wailed.

Hey, it didn’t get on her, did it? “I’ll clean it up, I promise.” I led her over to a different chair and told the chief to get some water and tissues for Lolly, paper towels and spray disinfectant for the chair. She told him which closet to look in.

While Uncle Henry was out, Lolly told me her woes, between sobs. They suspected her, all those awful men.

“Of what, Lolly?”

“Of stealing the mayor’s pass codes, putting some kind of bug in Russ’ computer, having bank accounts somewheres else. I don’t even have a savings account here in town where I live! My sister does my bills for me.”

“How could they suspect you, Lolly?” Why would anyone consider that a woman who didn’t graduate from high school could hack into so many sophisticated, up-to-the- minute protected systems. “You’ve always done a good job here.”

She held up her hands, reddened, swollen joints and all. “My fingerprints’re on all the machines. A course they are. I clean, don’t I? That Russ always eats his breakfast at the computer, and the mayor? He forgets to wipe his hands after eating a donut and I don’t know what else.”

“I’m sure they know all that, Lolly. They’re just desperate to find answers.”

“And they’ll blame it on me ’cause I don’t have the answers or money for a lawyer or alibis. No one’s here when I clean, so no one can swear I didn’t do nothing wrong. I seen all the cop shows on TV, I know what they do. They’ll send me to prison for life!”

She started bawling again. Luckily Uncle Henry returned by then.

“Chief, tell her no one is going to arrest her.”

He stayed quiet while I wiped up after my dog. “Tell her.”

“I can’t swear to that, Willy. I can’t lie, either. They’ll never get the charges to stick, but they don’t care about intimidating people or trampling innocents. I’m sorry to say some of them care more about closing a case than they do about finding the real perps.”

“But you can tell them that Lolly—” No, he could not tell the FBI or the anti-terrorist people that he knew Lolly told the truth because his stomach didn’t hurt. And because he was one of the Royce truth-seer descendants, the same as Kelvin. “Damn.”

“Yeah.” He sighed and sat back in his own chair. “Besides, she can’t remember stuff. Like if anyone ever came in while she cleaned.”

“I told them the one time—”

He sighed again. “I know, Lolly. A young woman had to use the restroom. You shouldn’t have opened the door to her.”

“But she needed it. Bad. And she left right after.”

“But you don’t know her name or what she looked like or if she stole a key or anything. That could be aiding and abetting.”

“I never bet on nothing.”

I wouldn’t bet on Lolly staying out of jail either.

“Okay, Lolly,” the chief told her. “You sit and get yourself together while I hear what Willy has to say.”

“Did they find the professor?”

“No. I could have told you that over the phone. We’re pretty busy here, you know.”

“I do know, but I need a copy of his passport picture or driver’s license. I have to see what he looks like.”

“All my men—and those other bastards out there—have copies. Not that any of the outsiders are interested in finding an old man missing from a boat. No, they only want the missing money. That’s what’s wrong with the whole damned government. Money.”

The chief went off on a rant about politicians and how they needed so much money to get reelected, they couldn’t be trusted to put the public’s interest ahead of
their own. Meanwhile, I studied the grainy enlargement he gave me. The professor did not have a beard, at least not when he had the picture taken. He did wear glasses, and had a round face with a fringe of hair, straggly eyebrows, and a gap between his front teeth. He looked like what you’d expect from the word avuncular.

I made sure Uncle Henry, who was big and beefy and weathered, not at all avuncular, was sitting down near his bottle of antacids, just in case. “He’s alive.”

That got no reaction but a raised eyebrow, and a head nod toward Lolly, meaning he wanted to know how I knew, but not now.

I didn’t know, not for absolutely sure. Alphabet soup and a mechanic’s big toe gave me hope, but I had to be positive. The chief’s stomach was infallible. So I went further.

“He’s not in the water.” I figured he couldn’t be alive and still be in the ocean.

“Good. I’ll tell London. Go on.”

I watched his hands, to see if they tended toward the bottle. Nope. “He’s somewhere nearby.”

“Great, Willy, that narrows it down, doesn’t it? To what, fifteen or twenty miles?”

That was better than what we had last night. I couldn’t think of any other questions to ask without jeopardizing the chief’s digestion and my welcome with wild guesses. “I’ll go see what else I can find out.”

“Yeah, kid. Come back when you have an address. Better yet, come back with the professor.”

“Oh, one more thing. Do you know anything about Axel Vanderman? He bought the old Mahoney place.”

“I know him,” Lolly said. “I clean his house on Tuesdays.”

I turned to her. “Is he nice? Does he treat you well? Did he ever make suggestive remarks?”

“He suggested I use bleach on the deck furniture. Sure, and it’s not him as has to breathe those fumes. But, lordy, those eyes of his! I look at them and sometimes I forget where I left the vacuum or the clothes in the dryer.
But he never minds if I don’t finish up the place on time. He just pays me for another hour.”

“Well, I think he’s up to something. Don’t let him stare at you, Lolly. And don’t let him touch you.”

“Won’t have to worry about that, will I, when they arrest me. He’ll hire someone else.” She started crying again.

Uncle Henry had typed in Axel’s name. “No record in the sex offender’s list. The federal crime database takes longer. But I’ll look into it. Did he try anything with you? Threaten you? Want me to have a talk with him?”

“Not yet. Maybe it’s just my nerves on edge, with the disaster and all.”

“Right. Like you never had a man look at you before.”

“Not like this, trust me.”

“Hell, Willy, I’m trusting you with the whole town’s welfare. Now go find us Dr. Harmon. That’s the PhD kind. And take your dog with you. You know why we posted that sign that’s supposed to keep dogs out?”

I was afraid to ask.

“Because the last time you brought him here he pissed on the leg of the Suffolk County District Attorney, the SOB.” He looked down. “Good dog.”