For Whom the Bread Rolls

by Sarah Fox

  “Good. I finished up work a bit early, which was nice. What have you been up to?”

  “Most recently, checking out the tidal pools.”

  “See anything interesting?”

  I told him about my finds and then we both turned to look out over the water. With the cloudless sky and the San Juan Islands in the distance, the view was as gorgeous as ever.

  “It doesn’t get much better than this, does it?” Brett said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” I agreed.

  He took my hand and we walked slowly away from the lapping waves. A comfortable silence fell between us, but when I glanced his way, my fears from the other day resurfaced and my sense of ease slipped away. I felt a sudden need to fill the silence, but I didn’t know what to say. When we headed up the slope of soft, dry sand toward my house, Brett looked at me with a hint of concern in his blue eyes.

  “Everything okay?”

  I realized that I’d tightened my grip on his hand. I let go and tried to smile. “Fine.”

  I had the sense that he was about to question me further, but his phone rang in the pocket of his shorts. He dug it out and answered the call.

  “Hi, Mrs. Rideout,” he said into his phone. He listened for a moment before his expression grew more serious. “Where, exactly?” He listened again and then asked, “Can you identify any of it?”

  I listened and watched him with concern, wondering what was going on.

  “That doesn’t sound good. Stay well away from it. I’ll be there in a few minutes, and I’ll give my uncle a call.”

  As soon as he hung up, I asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Brett was already scrolling through his list of contacts. “That was one of my clients, a widow who lives just outside of town on a few acres of land. She was out for a walk and found a pile of junk dumped on her property.”

  “Another dump site?” I said, dispirited.

  “And this one sounds worse. From what she described, it could be waste from a clandestine drug lab.”

  “That’s awful,” I said, remembering what Ray had told me about the dangers of such waste.

  Brett put his phone back to his ear. “I’m going to see if I can get hold of Ray.” He waited a few moments after calling but then shook his head. “He’s not answering his direct line.” He punched some numbers on his phone.

  “Who are you calling now?”

  “911. If it is waste from a meth lab, it needs to be reported right away.”

  He walked toward his truck as he spoke to the emergency dispatcher, and I followed, climbing into the passenger seat as he got behind the wheel. As soon as he ended the call, he started the engine, and seconds later we were off along Wildwood Road.

  “The dump site by the river was bad enough,” I said as we drove, “but this is even worse. If drug lab waste is so dangerous, people or wildlife could really suffer.”

  Brett gave a grim nod. “And Mrs. Rideout has enough to deal with already. She didn’t need this.”

  “Why? What else has been going on?”

  “She lost her husband to cancer a year ago, and she was in a bad car accident about four months back.”

  “That’s terrible. Does she have any other family?”

  “She does, but not on the peninsula. Hopefully Ray can get this sorted out fairly quickly.”

  He turned onto a quiet road with only the occasional driveway leading off from it. After about another mile, he turned left onto an unpaved driveway that wound through a grove of trees before cutting through a neatly trimmed lawn—Brett’s handiwork, I didn’t doubt—and ended in front of a cute two-story white house with a front porch.

  A woman who appeared to be in her mid-sixties stood on the porch, giving us a wave as we approached. Brett pulled the truck to a stop, and as Mrs. Rideout came down the front steps to meet us, I noticed that she walked with a slight limp.

  Once we were out of the truck, Brett introduced me and Mrs. Rideout told us she’d show us the dump site.

  “From a distance, mind you,” she added.

  She fetched a pair of binoculars from the front porch and led us toward the back of the house, her limp barely slowing her down at all. After crossing the backyard, we entered the woods, following a well-worn trail.

  “I try to get out for a walk every day,” Mrs. Rideout said. “I’m determined not to let this bad leg of mine stop me from enjoying all the things I used to do. But I hadn’t come this way for a couple of days, so I’m not sure if the stuff was dumped today or yesterday.”

  At the top of a small rise, she stopped, handing the binoculars to Brett and pointing through the trees. I could see bits of white and metallic gray through the greenery, but couldn’t make out any details.

  Brett lowered the binoculars a moment later, passing them to me. “No, that doesn’t look good.”

  I trained the binoculars on the dump site and saw what looked like propane tanks and tubing among a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t identify.

  “It makes my blood boil,” Mrs. Rideout said with a shake of her head.

  “I’m sure.” I was frustrated myself, and it wasn’t my property.

  We turned around and headed back toward the house. By the time we got there, a small truck from the fire department was pulling up, a sheriff’s department cruiser not far behind. Ray and Deputy Devereaux climbed out of the cruiser and joined the men from the fire department at the base of the porch steps. Brett and Mrs. Rideout gave a quick summary of what had been found and where. Then the authorities set off into the woods behind the house.

  “I think this is going to be a long process,” Brett said, watching them go.

  “You two don’t need to stick around,” Mrs. Rideout assured us. “I’ll settle in with a good book until they’ve got something to tell me. There’s not much we can do now anyhow.”

  We agreed that was probably true. Mrs. Rideout thanked us for coming, and we set off in Brett’s car, slowly driving around the emergency vehicles and out to the road.

  “What do you think will happen next?” I asked.

  “A lot of cleanup, though I’m not sure who exactly will take care of that. The Department of Ecology or the State Patrol, maybe?”

  “And once all the junk is taken away, what then? That part of Mrs. Rideout’s property could be contaminated now.”

  “It definitely could be,” Brett agreed. “And I have a feeling the cost of dealing with that might fall on Mrs. Rideout’s shoulders.”

  “I’m guessing that won’t be cheap.”

  “Most likely not.”

  I frowned as I looked out the window. The woman had been through a lot in the past year. It really didn’t seem fair that she should have this on her plate now too. The problem remained on my mind after Brett dropped me off at home, and I wondered if there was a way the town could rally together to help Mrs. Rideout.

  Chapter 9

  By the next morning I’d decided that something definitely needed to be done to help Mrs. Rideout with the remediation of her property once the hazardous materials were removed from the dump site. Between the breakfast and lunch rushes at The Flip Side, I sent a text message to Patricia Murray, letting her know about the problem and the idea that was taking shape in my mind. I figured she was a good person to approach because she was active in the community and would likely be able to build on my still-forming plan.

  I spent the rest of the morning focused on work, but in the early afternoon Patricia stopped by.

  “I got your text message,” she said once I’d greeted her. “Do you have time to chat?”

  “Sure,” I said as I untied my apron. “Let’s go to the office.”

  I stopped by the kitchen to get Patricia a cup of coffee and one of Ivan’s delicious maple pecan sticky rolls for each of us. Once we’d settled into chairs in the office and had savored our first bites of the sticky rolls, we turned our attention to the reason for Patricia’s visit.

  “I saw Gwen Georgeson at the grocery store this morning,” Pa
tricia said, referring to Ray’s wife. “She gave me some more details about the dump site on Mrs. Rideout’s property.”

  “You probably have more recent information than I do then.”

  “The state police are involved now. They’re working with the Department of Ecology and the sheriff’s department to investigate and get the place cleaned up. They did a search of Mrs. Rideout’s property early this morning and found an abandoned trailer not far from the dump site.”

  “Was it used for the drug lab?” I asked.

  “It looks like it. There’s a road through the forest that leads onto the back of Mrs. Rideout’s property, one that’s rarely used anymore. It looks as though the people involved got the trailer in that way. The police are still investigating, of course, but they seem satisfied that Mrs. Rideout had nothing to do with the drug lab, so the state will likely foot the bill for the cleanup.”

  “That’s good news. But if further environmental remediation is needed?”

  Patricia set her coffee cup on the desk after taking a sip. “That could be a different story.”

  “So my idea about fundraising might still be relevant?”

  “Definitely. And there are other things to consider too. I had a chat with a man named Bill Archer before I came over here.”

  “Brett mentioned him before. He works for the Department of Natural Resources, right?”

  “That’s right. He and his wife live here in Wildwood Cove. We talked about taking preventative measures to keep this from happening again—not just the drug lab problem, but the illegal dumping by the river too.”

  “What did he have to say about that?”

  “He suggested finding a way to make access to the sites more difficult. One suggestion was to place large boulders along the edge of the road by the river so vehicles can’t get into the clearing. Otherwise we could see about the town putting up a fence there. For Mrs. Rideout’s property, putting a locked gate across the back road could help. A security camera might be a good idea too. That way if someone decides to break through the gate, at least the police would have a chance to see who it was.”

  “Those are all good ideas,” I said after swallowing another bite of my sticky roll.

  “And I think we can drum up some good support if we go ahead with the fundraising. I’ve only talked to a few people so far, but they all seemed eager to help out. Mrs. Rideout has lived here for decades and is well known in town, and we all want to see the river protected.”

  “How do you think we should go about the fundraising? I was thinking The Flip Side could have a day where partial proceeds are donated to the cause.”

  “That would be great. Maybe we could get some of the vendors at the farmers’ market to do that too. Maybe on the same day as The Flip Side’s event?”

  “Sounds good,” I agreed.

  We set a date for the fundraiser before Patricia left, promising to keep me updated on her organizational efforts. I’d made a good decision when I’d contacted her with my idea, and I didn’t doubt that she’d get many other townsfolk involved.

  It felt good to know that something would be done to help combat illegal dumping in the area and to ease Mrs. Rideout’s financial burden. Hopefully those responsible for the drug lab on Mrs. Rideout’s property would be caught. I didn’t like the thought of them setting up again elsewhere to continue on with their terrible enterprise.

  As the workday drew to a close, my mind drifted away from the illegal dumping and returned to the puzzle of Ida’s murder. I really needed to make some headway on that front, but I wasn’t sure what step to take next. When I got home, I decided to take a swim in the ocean, hoping that would bring me some clarity.

  I walked down to the beach and left my towel on a log before wading into the ocean. Once I’d grown used to the chilly water, I floated on my back, watching the puffy clouds drift across the sky as the waves gently took me up and down, up and down. For the first time that day my muscles truly relaxed, all my stress and tension slipping away. I shut my eyes and listened to the water lapping against me, the voices of children playing in the distance. This was what I loved best about Wildwood Beach—the way it calmed me like nothing else could.

  I soaked in the peaceful feeling, still drifting on the waves, until goosebumps formed on my skin, the sun’s warmth no longer enough to combat the chill of the ocean. Ducking under the water, I swam toward the shore. When I broke through the surface and blinked salt water from my eyes, I spotted Brett standing at the water’s edge. In my relaxed state, I forgot to be anxious about our relationship and a genuine smile spread across my face.

  “Hi.” I splashed through the shallows, a minnow darting around my ankles. When I reached Brett, I raised myself up on tiptoe to give him a quick kiss, taking care not to drip all over his clothes. “How are you doing?”

  “Good. You?”

  “Same. I had a nice swim.”

  I picked my way across a strip of pebbles in my bare feet. Brett fetched my beach towel from the log and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “Thanks.” I wiped away the water dripping down my face.

  Brett sat down on the log and I joined him, enjoying the warmth of the sun as it chased away my goosebumps. We chatted for a few minutes about how work had gone for each of us that day, and then we lapsed into silence, watching the waves break over a sandbar as the tide crept its way in.

  “Patricia Murray told me an abandoned trailer was found on Mrs. Rideout’s property,” I said after a time. “Do you think there’s a chance the police will be able to track down whoever was behind the drug lab?”

  “I hope so,” Brett said. “I guess it depends on whether they found any fingerprints or other evidence.”

  “You haven’t heard anything about that yet?”

  “No, not so far.”

  “Patricia and I had a chat about helping Mrs. Rideout with remediation costs or possibly putting up a gate or security camera on her property. We’re planning to do some fundraising.”

  “That sounds great. I can help out with any labor that’s needed, and I’ll make a cash donation too.”

  “Thanks. Hopefully lots of other people will get involved too.”

  “Knowing this town, I think there’s a good chance of that.”

  Silence settled between us again as I watched a bald eagle fly by overhead. When the majestic bird was out of sight, I returned my gaze to the ocean.

  “Marley,” Brett said after a while, “has there been something on your mind lately?” I was about to respond when he added, “Aside from being a person of interest in the murder investigation, I mean.”

  I swallowed before speaking. “I’m still worried about The Flip Side. I just took on the business. I don’t want it to fail before I’m barely out of the gates with it. But if people start avoiding me and won’t come in to eat…”

  Trailing off, I glanced at Brett. I knew that wasn’t what he’d meant by his question, but I couldn’t bring myself to give him a different answer.

  He took my hand. “That’s not going to happen. Even if a couple of people avoid the pancake house, the business will be fine. Like I said before, this will all be sorted out soon and things will get back to normal.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  He raised my hand and kissed my knuckles. “I am.”

  I wanted to rest my head on his shoulder, but my hair was still dripping wet, so I contented myself with holding his hand. As my gaze drifted out toward the water, movement off to the right of us caught my attention. Using my free hand to shade my eyes from the bright sun, I took in the sight of a golden dog limping its way along the beach toward us.

  “He doesn’t look so good.” I got up from the log.

  Brett had spotted the dog now too and followed me as I took careful steps toward it. The dog limped its way closer to us, barely putting any weight on its left hind leg. We stopped and waited as the dog approached, its pink tongue hanging out of its mouth. I knelt down in the sand and Brett cr
ouched next to me. The dog came right up to us and snuffled at the hand I held out to it.

  “Hey, buddy,” Brett said, resting a hand on the dog’s head. He examined the hindquarters. “What’s happened to you, boy?”

  “Poor thing.” I let the dog lick my hand. “He’s not in good shape.”

  Aside from the obvious problem of his injured hind leg, the dog’s curly fur was dirty and matted. Although not emaciated, he was definitely on the skinny side, and clearly hadn’t been well cared for anytime recently.

  “Is there anyone with him?” Brett stood up and shaded his eyes as he gazed along the beach.

  “See anyone?” I stroked the dog’s fur as I looked up at Brett.

  “Only some sunbathers. No one who looks like they might be his owner.” Brett rested a hand on the dog’s head and the dog gazed up at him, his brown eyes full of happiness despite his physical condition. “You guys hang out here. I’ll go ask around.”

  The dog looked longingly after Brett, but I kept a gentle hold on him so he wouldn’t try to follow.

  “You need to take it easy, buddy.”

  The dog returned his attention to me, his tail wagging as he gave me a sloppy kiss on the cheek.

  “You’re such a sweetheart. How did you end up like this, you poor thing?”

  The dog sat down carefully in the sand and I stroked his matted fur. When Brett returned a few minutes later, the dog bounded back to his feet as if he were in no pain at all, his tail wagging furiously. Brett crouched down and ruffled the fur on the dog’s head.

  “No luck?” I guessed.

  Brett’s blue eyes were troubled. “No.” The dog licked his hands and Brett smiled. “But don’t worry, bud. We’re going to make sure you’re looked after.”

  “Definitely,” I agreed.

  “We need a name for him. What do you think?”

  My mind drew a blank, so I said, “You choose.”

  Brett regarded the dog for a moment. “Bentley?”

  I smiled. “I think Bentley’s perfect.”

  “What do you think, buddy?” Brett asked the dog.

  He received an enthusiastic tail-wagging in response.