by Chassie West
The sign on the door of Graystone Travel announced that the agency was closed, and I indulged in some sotto voce swearing before I detected movement in the back behind a translucent panel. Taking a chance, I rapped on the glass and crossed my fingers. A second later, a familiar face peered around the panel. Margie, still here, thank God, but lacking her usual smile of recognition. She hesitated for a second, then strode to the door.
A former cop who had decided the stress wasn’t worth it, Margie was a substantial woman, taller than average, with shoulders like a linebacker. She had intimidated any number of juvenile offenders in her day and seemed to assume much the same attitude as she unlocked the door and stood there, blocking the way. “Yes?”
“Sorry I’m late, okay?” I said, guessing that she was miffed at me for showing up after hours. “Car trouble. But it’s not three yet. I thought you weren’t closing until three.”
“No reason to hang around,” she said, not moving. “Everyone slated to pick up tickets has been here and gone. If you’ve got new travel dates, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow. We’ve signed off for the day.”
“Come on, Margie,” I said. “I appreciate the trouble you’ve gone to to reschedule us twice, but it couldn’t be helped. December twenty-sixth is it, so just give me the tickets and you can go on to your party.”
Her eyes narrowed a trifle. “What do you mean, the twenty-sixth is it? You called and canceled. I don’t mind telling you—”
“Wait a minute. Just hold it,” I said. “What do you mean, I called and canceled? The wedding’s set for the day after Christmas and we’re leaving for Hawaii that evening come hell or high water.”
Margie stared me down, literally, for several seconds, then jerked her head for me to come in. She locked the door, then led me back to her station behind the panel. Dropping into her chair, she pulled a folder from the shelves attached to the wall behind her, opened it, and skimmed a pink “While You Were Out” message slip across the desk toward me.
I caught it, turned it right side up, and felt my jaw and innards spasm. In flowery letters, the kind with little circles above the i’s, someone had written last Wednesday’s date, ten-twenty A.M. as the time, Lee Warren as the caller, and “Honeymoon trip is off, she’ll be in touch,” as the message.
“Margie,” I said, lowering myself into a visitor’s chair, “I didn’t make this call.”
She was clearly insulted, her features rigid. “Dolly Cranston may look like an airhead but when it comes to taking messages, she gets them right.”
“And I’m here to tell you that this time,” I said, with a death grip on my temper, “she got it wrong. I didn’t make this call. Dammit, Margie, I know how much of a pain in the butt these arrangements have been for you. And each time they’ve had to be changed, as much as I dreaded it, I’ve come in and talked to you personally. It was the least I could do. I did not make this call. Someone’s been pulling practical jokes on me and, dammit, this looks like another one.”
For the first time, a measure of uncertainty peeked from beneath her hard shell. “She did say you weren’t specific about the date you and Duck were to have left, only that I should cancel it. And I did. Figured you two had had a fight or something.”
I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment, and massaged my temples. I felt sick, nausea roiling in my midsection. All our plans down the toilet.
I pulled myself together. First things first. “Any chance we could still get those reservations?”
She snorted. “You jest. Christmas in Hawaii is usually sold out weeks in advance, airlines and hotels. I moved heaven and earth to get that last date for you. I might be able to get you on a flight to the West Coast but you’d have to swim from there and honeymoon on the beach because I can guarantee you, there’s nothing available left, at least no place fit for human habitation.”
“How many toes would I have to kiss to ask you to at least check?” I ventured.
“Thanks all the same but I’ve got a husband who takes care of that for me.” She made a face and sighed. “All right, I’ll see what I can do, but it’ll have to wait until after the party today. A couple of corporate clients are invited and I’ve got to be there to welcome them and kiss their toes if I want to stay in business. I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning at the latest.” Rising, she removed her purse and coat from the coat tree in the corner and turned off her desk lamp. “Sorry about all this, Leigh, but we had no way of knowing.” She hustled me out, said a hurried good-bye, and disappeared into the passing crowd.
Tank and Tina were parked around the corner. I wasn’t quite ready to face them yet. Taking advantage of the niche afforded by the recessed doorway, I fished in my purse for my cell phone.
Surprise, surprise, Duck answered, and on the first ring.
“Kennedy,” he announced.
Hearing his voice brought me close to tears. “Duck, I’m outside. Graystone. She’s done it again, called here last week and had them cancel all our reservations for Hawaii.”
“WHAT?” His usual baritone soared into coloratura range.
“You heard me. Margie was plenty pissed until she realized I was serious about not having canceled anything. She says she’ll do the best she can to find a flight and hotel for us but she’s not hopeful.” I dreaded doing it, but it was time to bite the bullet. “Duck, I hate to ask, but is there any way one of your former girlfriends might be doing this?”
The ensuing silence made me wonder if I’d struck a nerve. He had had quite a reputation as lady-killer in the earlier years of our acquaintance, allegedly unwarranted. “Duck? You still there?”
“Oh, yeah, still here and trying to decide who I’m more pissed at, you for asking that question, or whoever made that call. How the hell did she know what our plans were? I mean, she might have lucked up on someone who’d tell her we were going to Hawaii, but how could she know which travel agency we used? When did all this happen again?”
“Last Wednesday. And somebody spray-painted my car. It’s a mess. Tina’s brother does detailing and will see if he can remove it, so Tank’s playing chauffeur. I’m sorry, Duck. I’m just so mad I could spit. What’ll we do if Hawaii’s a bust?”
“Keep it down, dammit,” he yelled at his coworkers, inflicting considerable damage to my right ear. “Sorry, babe. Look, push comes to shove, there are plenty of other places we can go—the Caribbean, maybe. We’ll talk tonight. Don’t sweat it. At least we had cancellation insurance so we won’t lose that much—I hope. Everything will work out okay. I haven’t caught up with Willard yet but I’ll damned sure keep trying. This shit has to stop. Look, honey, gotta go. See you tonight.”
He had disconnected before I could say good-bye. At least he hadn’t flipped his lid, leaving that to me, I guess. It was just as well someone was keeping a cool head. I sure as hell wasn’t.
I trotted around the corner and found Tank and Tina playing kissy-face. I gave them a couple of minutes, then couldn’t take it any longer.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I said, climbing into the backseat, “but it’s too cold to stand out here and watch.”
Tina unglued herself from her husband’s shirtfront, looking more than pleased with herself. “Just as well you came back now or there’d have been no turning back. You get the tickets?”
I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. “No. Long story. Let’s go get your pizza. I’ll tell you then.”
Tank said, “Uh-oh. I smell trouble. How about Paisan’s, Tina?”
Her expression made it plain that he had hit the jackpot. Tank zipped through Northwest D.C. to just inside the District line.
We’d settled into a booth and were scanning a menu packed with four pages of different kinds of pizza and pasta when my cell phone rang. It was Margie, the murmur of voices in the background and yet again, wherever she was, the Drummer Boy on the Muzak.
“Leigh? I left a message on Janeece’s machine, but thought I’d better try your cellular too.”
My pulse rate
tripled. “Don’t tell me. You’ll be able to get us to Hawaii after all?”
Tank and Tina looked up with interest.
“No, no. I just got to this stupid party. I cornered Dolly about the message she’d left and it turns out I misunderstood one thing.”
“What?” I couldn’t see how it mattered.
“She apologized for not making it clear. It wasn’t a call, Leigh. She says you came in and canceled the trip yourself.”
Numb with shock, I counted to five. “Again, no, I didn’t, Margie. But thanks for letting me know.” Without a good-bye, I hung up.
“What?” Tina demanded. “What’s going on?”
Somehow, I managed to relay this latest foul-up of my life.
“That,” Tina said, slamming a small fist on the table, “does it. She’s gone too far this time. We’re not gonna take this. She’s messing with our Duck’s money!”
7
WE WERE HALFWAY TO THE SHORES BEFORE Tina’s fuse finally burned itself out. Tank’s eyes had met mine in his rearview mirror, his message telegraphed across his broad open features: just wait; eventually she’ll shut up. By the time she did, the silence in the Explorer was so welcome, neither Tank nor I opened our mouths, except for his sigh of relief. All I could think was: ditto.
Other than that, I was incapable of thought. My brain had the consistency of lumpy oatmeal. Who the hell was this woman? What could I have done to her to warrant this kind of maliciousness?
Tina turned around in her seat as far as her seat belt would allow and demanded, “Well, what are you gonna do?”
I fought the temptation to remind her that, contrary to the accusation implicit in her tone, as far as I could determine, this whole business was not my fault. I had done nothing to deserve it. Rather than waste breath in defense, I took the direct route.
“I’m doing all I can for the time being, Tina, trying to figure out who the hell this woman is. I’m assuming she was in the lobby of my building Monday, helping to decorate the tree, an outsider, one of two. What’s puzzling is that none of my neighbors who were there has mentioned any resemblance between this woman—or girl—and me. Yet she must, to have fooled the receptionist at the travel agency. I’ve been in there several times. They all know what I look like.”
Saying that triggered a connection that hadn’t occurred to me before: the woman who’d walked into that travel agency and the one whooping it up at the Silver Shaker. One and the same? I wasn’t sure. Eddie said that the cops there to set up a sting had thought it was me because they remembered me from Jensen’s wedding, not because the woman had identified herself as Leigh Warren. If she had, Eddie would have said so. And the woman could not have known that a few of the nightclub’s patrons were boys in blue, much less boys in blue who knew me. Coincidence, pure and simple.
Then why did it smell so much like rotten fish?
Once again I wondered if it might be a cousin. Tracy, my aunt’s daughter, and I were enough alike to be sisters. I’d only known her a matter of weeks but had no doubt that she had nothing to do with any of this. We had clicked immediately, a blood bond formed over plates of cheeseburgers and French fries.
Ourland, however, was chockablock with cousins I had yet to meet. And I had been responsible for the death of my father’s first cousin, a man so consumed with jealousy and hatred of my dad that he’d been willing to kill my father and mother years ago, then try for me and my brother. I’d had no choice and had acted in self-defense. But he’d been a man well thought of in town. Perhaps someone was exacting revenge. I’d have to ask around, find out if there was yet another relative who looked like me and Tracy.
“Hey!” Tina snapped her fingers toward me. “You still in there?”
“Do you mind?” I asked, annoyed at having my train of thought derailed. “I was thinking. Okay, I’ve narrowed down the number of unfamiliar faces in the lobby to a teenager named Georgia Keith and a woman with a West Indian accent.”
“Well, I know Ted Willard,” Tank said, zipping with panache past a sixteen-wheeler. “He’ll have checked to see if there was anything distinguishable about the voice of the woman who called. If he didn’t mention an accent, it probably wasn’t your Jamaican lady.”
“Duck talked to Libby Tuesday evening,” I said. “She had no idea who it was.”
Tina gave me a penetrating stare. “So if you eliminate those two, where do you go from there?”
It burned my butt to admit that I didn’t have a backup road map in mind. “Perhaps a cousin,” I ventured. “I’ve already met one who could pass for my sister. She’s definitely out, but God knows there are a whole crop of them I haven’t met yet. Make the next exit, Tank, then watch for the first turn on your right. It’s the back way into town but it’s quicker.”
“Gotcha.” He sped up, scared the bejesus out of a man in a battered pickup, and me, then zipped down the off ramp. I closed my eyes. Tank drove as if in hot pursuit of a stolen auto, and my nerves were frayed enough already.
I didn’t dare even peek until he said, “Hot damn! It’s been a long time since this baby got to do some off-road maneuvering.” He hit a pothole in the long-neglected two-lane road, and Tina went flying toward the roof of the Explorer.
She squealed and, once no longer airborne, hauled off and whacked her husband on the shoulder with enough muscle behind it to make me wince in sympathy.
“Slow down,” she said, teeth gritted. “And next time, Leigh, we go in the front way.”
I doubted there’d be another occasion for them to make the trip to the Shores, front way or back. Tank and Tina were big-city denizens. Native Washingtonians, they eschewed the suburbs except for the occasional restaurant. Tina, especially, looked down her pert little nose at anyone who lived more than a mile or two beyond the city limits, considering them too chicken to live in the District. What she’d make of Ourland/Umber Shores challenged the imagination, especially after a mile and three-quarters on a rutted road that should have been condemned long since.
“Sorry, Tina,” I said. “I promise, we’ll be there soon. Tank, take it in second and stay off the shoulders or you’ll be listing worse than the Titanic.”
“Yes’m, Miz Daisy.” He grinned and downshifted, clearly enjoying himself, zigzagging to avoid the craters in the pavement until we began to pass the industrial section, ancient warehouses that must have been empty for years, their sidings bleeding rust.
“Jesus,” Tina said, staring gloomily out the windows. “This is where you’re gonna work?”
“I’ll have to check, but I don’t think the Shores extend this far.”
“Can’t tell you how happy I am for you,” she grumbled.
I decided to shut up. Something told me that she was just beginning to realize how far she was from what she considered civilization. Probably nothing I could say would improve her disposition.
Which was a shame, because it was a beautiful, atypical December day, the temperature inching toward the mid-fifties, with the sky a shade of blue you’d love to paint a room. Once past the warehouse graveyard, there were few opportunities to see it until we’d cleared the section where trees older than Moses arched branches, still in full leaf in spite of the season, over the road to form a dimly lit tunnel. Then, in an instant, we were in open air again, and directly in front of us was an expanse of warm gray water that seemed to stretch into infinity.
Tina sat up straight and leaned forward. “Holy shit. That’s the bay?”
The road came to an end at a cul-de-sac. Well beyond it, the incoming tide caressed the shoreline, which consisted of rich, umber-hued sand pockmarked with wispy stalks of grass that swayed gently in the breeze. A parade of wooden piers of varying lengths jutted from the shore, a few fat gulls standing sentry on the railings.
“Stop, Tank. I want to get out.” Tina wrestled with her seat belt.
“What for?” He slowed and pulled onto a paved section on the right, the excuse for a parking lot protecting two sides of the ramshackl
e house that camouflaged the Ourland Eatery, the best restaurant in the area. Thank God none of the aromas of Mary Castle’s cooking wafted toward us or we’d be eating again.
Tina threw open her door and scrambled out. Slowly she made her way onto the sand, walking as if testing her weight on it. The water was perhaps thirty yards ahead, the first pier a good ten yards beyond that.
Tank cut the engine and got out, but remained standing against the open door of the Explorer, his expression quizzical. Reaching back, he opened the rear door for me. I unbuckled and joined him for a second, then followed Tina onto the sand.
“This really is the bay?” she asked softly. “I mean, not a river or something?”
Belatedly I realized that this might be her first time seeing the Chesapeake. “This is it, Tina. But just a tiny section of it. It runs the length of the state.”
“And that’s the Bay Bridge way down there?” she asked, pointing. Barely visible at this distance, the umpteen-mile-long bridge wore a ghostly quality, as if you blinked hard it might disappear.
“Yup. Pretty, isn’t it?”
She took it all in, seemingly mesmerized, before glancing toward her left, where the roofs of the houses that backed up onto the sand peeked from among surrounding trees. “People live there? All the time?”
“Most of them. See that street?” I nodded toward the only one branching off the cul-de-sac on our left. “That’s North Star Road. All the property on this side is Ourland. On the other side, it’s called Umber Shores.”
“Why?”
“I had an aunt who was killed way before I was born, and her death caused a big multifamily feud. East side versus west, actually. The ones on the west decided they didn’t want to have anything to do with anybody in Ourland, so they changed the name to Umber Shores. Everybody’s kissed and made up just recently, and now they’re trying to decide what to do about the names. There’s a lot of history to Ourland, so no one really wants to give it up, but they also like the fact that Umber Shores is a perfect description of the area. I figure they’ll work it out sooner or later.”
