Wicked Fix (32 page)

maybe not such a nice guy."

Of course there would be talk about him, plenty of

it right on the money, too.

"But no matter what he is, the last thing she wants

is to mess up her shiny new image with an ugly old

story, dredge it all up again," Ellie finished.

"What old story?" I tried to go on sounding interested,

but when I heard this last part, my heart sank

discouragedly. All I'd been doing was listening to tales

of the old days, and none of them had helped.

"The story," Ellie said, "about the night Reuben

Tate burned down Uncle Deckie Cobb's shack."

She turned to me, her green eyes luminous in the

last fading glow of an autumn evening thickening

steadily to night.

"With," she added, "Uncle Deckie still in it."

I felt my jaw drop.

"Willow was there," Ellie said. "But she doesn't

want the memory refreshed around town. Bad for her

new identity as a woman of means and importance.

She cares about that a lot."

I was still busy absorbing Ellie's earlier statement.

"So Reuben was a firebug, too."

Her forehead furrowed. "Yes. You couldn't tell

what he might do." She got up and began clearing the

table.

"Anyway, the word is Willow's going to be around

a few more days. Make sure she sees everybody, and

more to the point, that everyone sees her. So tomorrow

at the salmon supper maybe you can corner her and

explain a couple of things."

"Such as, she talks to me or I talk to everyone else?

Spruce up their memories of her old, unimproved situation?

Sounds like a plan."

Just then Tommy Daigle's jalopy appeared around

the corner, horn blaring and headlights flashing, the

big raccoon tails Tommy thought so much of flying like

banners. The jalopy pulled over, Sam got in, and the

cherry-red glow of the taillights moved away up Water

Street.

Ellie and I gathered our paper trash and put it in

one of the barrels Tim Poole had stationed around the

area, wrapped up our lobster tools and butter and so

on to take home. In the near darkness, the fire in the

brick stove under the lobster pots leaped orange and

yellow.

"So tomorrow you confront her and question her,"

Ellie said, meaning Willow.

"Right," I said doubtfully. "But I still can't say I'm

confident it's going to do any real good. I've been chasing

her because I don't have much else. But what can

she tell me that I don't already know?"

Ellie turned, her hair like flowing copper under the

yard lights Tim Poole was turning on. The dock he'd

built shone yellow with new, raw wood, looming over

the glinting wave tops and scenting the damp breeze

with the pine-sap smell of fresh logs.

"Jacobia. When I say Willow cares what people

think, I mean she really cares. And who do you suppose

she despised finding out had gotten here ahead of

her when she got back to Eastport? Who could wreck

her reputation just by existing?"

"Reuben Tate," I replied slowly. "Her partner in

teenaged crime." Suddenly I got what Ellie was implying.

"But, Ellie, that doesn't mean she could or

would ..."

Kill him, I was about to say. Because how would

she get the weapon, or know about Victor, or ...

"Just meet her," Ellie interrupted. "Then come and

tell me what you think Willow might or might not do.

Because the image is impressive, and it probably cost a

mint," she finished with a glance at the glamorous

woman seated a few tables from us. "But it's fake, and

what it's covering ... well, Willow would do almost

anything to keep people from remembering it."

Later that evening, sitting up in bed with

Wade:

"I'm not going to lose the house. I might

have to go back to work. But if I do, big

deal. People in Eastport work harder than I've ever

worked in my life, and think nothing of it."

I put my chin on my clasped hands. "It's not," I

finished, "the end of the world. Tell you what, though,

I sure wish I had been paying more attention to my

own investing instead of giving all those stock tips to

Ellie. If I had, I'd be sitting on a big fortune by now."

Aside, I meant, from the one I was losing.

He chuckled. "Don't know she hasn't, do you?

Done something about them herself, I mean. Ellie's

pure Maine, you know, keeps money matters pretty

close to the vest."

"Be that as it may." I turned to him. "I'm not kidding,

Wade, I've got to do something about this."

"Will you," he asked soberly, "be able to stay on

here? To work, or would you have to go away?"

Trust him to find the crux of the matter. I'd been

avoiding thinking about it too hard, but push was coming

to shove. Very soon I would have to decide about

that land-option payment. And from that, everything

else would fall like a row of dominoes.

The operative word being fall. "I don't know," I

admitted. "The kind of thing I'm good at, individual

client work, takes face time. I probably could come

home on weekends."

I'd gotten past the stage where I'd had to be at

clients' beck and call, back in the city. But they all still

needed to be sweet-talked, scolded, or simply educated.

They had to be protected from a variety of scams, flimflams,

and rackets. And they'd all needed heavy-duty

advice before doing deeds more complicated than

brushing their teeth. In the rarefied world of rich people,

structure is everything; they plan their activities

with an eye to the tax implications, down to the penny.

In other words, they hire somebody like me: cool

head and keen eye. Or so I'd thought.

"I'm sorry, Wade. I've told people a million times

not to let their emotions affect sensible financial decisions.

And now look how awful my own decision has

turned out."

"Oh, hey, wait a minute. First of all, it hasn't

turned out any way, yet. And second, it wasn't your

emotions that got you to this point."

He looked at me, shrugged in concession. "Okay,

so it wasn't all your emotions, anyway. But the area

needs the trauma center, Victor's a good fit for it, and

having this thing happen was like getting hit by lightning.

You couldn't have seen it coming."

"Thanks. That makes me feel better." I settled

against him. "Once, it was all I wanted to do, you

know. "Wheeling and dealing was exciting. But I'm not

sure I have the energy for the money business anymore.

Part of why I'd just talk about it to Ellie, I guess. Instead

of acting on stocks I heard about, or read about."

"I haven't noticed any lack of energy. And I still

think you are exciting, even if you're flat broke."

I smiled against his shoulder. "That's because

you're not one of those boring nitwits who think

money's an aphrodisiac."

Which clearly he didn't. At the moment, for instance,

I didn't have a dime on me. Or anything else,

which was turning out to be awfully convenient.

"Aw. You mean it's not? Another myth bites the

dust."

"Don't worry," I told him, shifting slightly. "There

are plenty of soft, pliable young girls out there, ready

and willing to keep that particular myth propped up.

As it were."

"Oh." He paused. Monday woke up, looked

around, and jumped off the bed.

"You know," he said in a different voice, "you'd

better stop doing that or I might start mistaking you

for one of those girls. The soft, pliable ones."

He turned toward me, smelling of soap and fresh

air. Sam wasn't home; he had left a message to say he

was staying the night with Tommy Daigle.

"That," I managed from the tiny part of my brain

that could still form a coherent thought, "was pretty

much the whole idea."

The next day was Salmon Sunday, so long

awaited and now so absolutely upon us.

Clouds loomed on the western horizon,

heaped up dark and ominous like clenched

fists, but moved no closer as the sun rose red over the

Canadian islands.

"It can rain all it wants, but later," Ellie said worriedly

around noon, peering out my kitchen window.

The town was packed with people and more were

arriving by the minute: parked along the curbs, pulled

onto lawns, crowding along the sidewalks pushing

strollers and lugging backpacks, and gazing enviously

at the lovely old white clapboard houses they passed.

Personally, I felt there was a big patch of clapboard

that somebody was more than welcome to; the carpenters

had come and dropped off the estimate for replacing

all that siding and some framing beneath it. They

would go over the unhappy news with me later, they

said, after the festival was over. Now, the backyard

was littered with the siding they'd torn off, to peer

underneath it, and the envelope they'd left lay on the

kitchen table like an unexploded bomb. I didn't even

want to open it.

By contrast, Ellie was a sight for sore eyes in a pale

yellow T-shirt, a turquoise jumper, white sandals, and

a necklace of tiny turquoise lumps. Her red hair was

tied back with a white grosgrain ribbon, and she was

wearing the small emerald earrings George had given

her when they got married.

"You look," I told her sincerely, "absolutely stunning."

She turned hopefully to me. "Do you think so? I

wanted to make a good impression on the visitors."

"The only way you could make a better impression

would be by handing out hundred-dollar bills," I said.

Outside, Tommy's jalopy rumbled into the driveway.

The boys thundered in, grabbed oatmeal cookies

and glasses of milk, and galumphed upstairs. Wade and

George had already gone down to the park to set up

the barbecues and start marinating the salmon.

Ellie checked her clipboard. "Plates, cups, napkins,

ice," she recited. "Lemons. Oh, gosh, I forgot about

tartar sauce."

"Who's going to glop up that salmon with tartar

sauce?" I asked, but only rhetorically; as the mother of

a teenaged boy, I know there's no accounting for