The Summer Man Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lisa waited a few steps down the trail, in the dark. Coach usually parked at the head of the trail—there were no streetlights where Eleanor dead-ended—and she went to his car, but tonight, she wanted to walk and talk, not to do it, not have sex.

  Thinking of sex with him gave her a chill, sweet and heavy and terrible, too, her heart suddenly picking up speed. He was married and more than twice her age, and she knew what people would think if they knew, but it felt so good, so wrong and wild and good…

  He says I’m beautiful; he says I’m his beautiful girl.

  She clamped down on the thought. It was over. It had to be over now. He had been getting…strange. It had been a mistake, telling him that she loved him. She hadn’t meant to, but two weeks ago he’d said he loved her, and she’d had to say something, she couldn’t just leave him hanging. And then he’d started talking about the two of them running away together, and she had nodded and agreed because she didn’t want him to feel bad, but she had to tell him; she couldn’t let him keep thinking what he was thinking.

  Lisa crossed her arms against the chill, wishing she had somewhere to sit, hoping it wouldn’t go too badly, that he wouldn’t be too upset. She knew it was going to hurt him and was afraid he might cry or even yell at her. He’d never yelled at her before—not since they’d started doing it—but he’d raised his voice to the team more than once, like when they were playing Port Angeles and gone into halftime down by seven…Coach definitely had a temper, but he wasn’t crazy; he wouldn’t yell if they were outside where anyone could hear them…

  That made her think of Amanda Young, what she’d said at Pam’s party. Lisa’s lip curled. Total bullshit. Coach would never hurt her, never, and Amanda was a bitch for calling that shit out right in front of everybody, practically. That was not cool. Nobody knew anything; they’d been careful, there was no private connection between her and Coach, and Amanda’s dramatic bullshit scene had created one.

  All the more reason to do this now.

  She saw the glow of approaching headlights a block down, heard the familiar purr of the Volvo’s engine. He could have walked, he lived close enough, but he almost always drove if he could, so they’d have a dry, clean place to lie down. Not tonight, though, not unless it was to say good-bye, one final time together…

  That sweet, heavy chill tried to overtake her again, but she was suddenly nervous, because there was his car, it was time, she was going to tell him, tell Coach—

  Ed! His name is Ed!

  —that she didn’t want to be with him anymore.

  She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders as the lights splashed over the dead end’s turnout, trying to make herself ready. Walk and talk. It would all turn out OK.

  Miranda Greene-Moreland breezed into the newspaper office early Monday morning with a beaming smile and open arms, followed a beat later by her husband. James Greene-Moreland was lugging a large cardboard box—presumably containing the picnic leaflets—and he set it on Bob’s desk with an audible sigh of relief.

  “Robert!” Miranda said, and Bob stood, allowing himself to be embraced, his cheek smacked. As usual, Miranda reeked of lavender oil. Her outfit today was a long, blousy floral affair over an ankle-length skirt, belted with a wide macramé sash that she had undoubtedly made herself.

  “Please, Miranda, it’s Bob,” Bob said, knowing she’d ignore him. She always did.

  “We’ve brought the flyers,” Miranda said. “They turned out beautifully. James, show Robert the flyer.”

  James hurried to comply, handing over one of the leaflets, a half page of tan paper—what Miranda would undoubtedly call “ocher”—that was adorned with a pretty good sketch of the lighthouse to one side. COME ONE AND ALL, the flyer proclaimed, and beneath that:

  PORT ISLEY’S ANNUAL EMBRACE OF THE SUMMER SOLSTICE

  FINE FOOD, GOOD COMPANY, DIVERSIONS OF EVERY KIND

  At the bottom, in smaller print, were the specifics—June 21, eleven a.m. to eleven p.m., Stanton’s Point Park at the lighthouse.

  ‘Embrace of the Summer Solstice’? What the hell was wrong with ‘picnic’?

  “Isn’t it perfect?” Miranda said, not really a question so much as an exclamation. “Simple, clear, and concise, but inviting, too—the font is Copperplate Gothic Light. James actually suggested Times New Roman, but the Copperplate is so much more refined, don’t you think?”

  “I like the lighthouse,” Bob said.

  “I know,” Miranda said, presumably in agreement. “It’s by Darrin Everret. He’s new this year, came to us all the way from Massachusetts. All his landscapes are simply amazing. He did a piece on one of the trails in Kehoe Park? You can just smell the trees, it’s so real.”

  “Well, I can’t thank you enough for picking the flyers up,” Bob said, hoping to deter her from launching into a fresh spiel of uninspired adjectives. Once she started talking about the retreat’s new “prodigies,” he’d be doomed to a good half hour of amazing.

  “Or designing them,” he added, before she could remind him. “They’re very nice. Um eloquent.”

  “They are, aren’t they?” Miranda gushed. “Now, they’ll be going out in this week’s edition, is that right?”

  As if she didn’t know. “That’s the plan,” Bob said. The Port Isley Press—managed, operated, and edited by the silver-haired Bob “Robert” Sayers—came out every other Wednesday. Since the picnic was on the coming Saturday, having it go out two weeks from now didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  “Wonderful,” she said. Miranda had crowned herself Isley’s unofficial PR personality at some point and had decided their annual picnic wasn’t trumpeted nearly loudly enough, to her taste. She’d actually lobbied for the job, presenting her case at one of the council’s quarterly meetings, offering to foot the cost of advertising herself. The council’s response had been a big shrug, which had pretty much mirrored Bob’s regard for the issue, thus leaving Ms. Miranda Greene-Moreland in charge of the yearly picnic flyer.

  Summer solstice embrace flyer, actually, Bob thought. Good Lord.

  Miranda filled Bob in on the news from the retreat—officially the Greene-Moreland Artisan’s Community—as James fussed with the flyers. There were several new artists, twelve in all, making it a full seventeen residents for the summer. Bob nodded at what she said, the quicker to relieve himself of her presence. He didn’t dislike Miranda, exactly, or her henpecked husband—she was like a force of nature, to be endured rather than judged, and her husband was as close to a cardboard cutout as a person could get—but Bob had work to do. Deadline to get the issue to the printer’s over in Port Angeles wasn’t until six, but while his pieces were finished, he had yet to edit what his “reporters” had turned in. This week, there was still the high school English teacher’s monthly book review to get to, plus a few final tidbits from this year’s journalism class. He hadn’t looked at Nancy’s stuff, either. There was also one of Dick Calvin’s gardening columns. Dick didn’t understand what punctuation was for; his pieces always took time.

  Which Nancy was going to do, Bob thought, stealing a glance at the clock by the door. Where the hell is she, anyway? He didn’t particularly give a crap about punctuality, but Nancy was almost always in on Mondays by eight, eight thirty at the latest. It was after nine already.

  “All done,” James said, smiling. He held an armful of bundled flyers.

  Nodding at him, Miranda wrapped up her gently wandering rant about the spiritual rewards of art, how much more satisfying those were than the monetary, and leaned in to kiss Bob’s cheek once more.

  “It’s been wonderful, as always,” she said. “Now, you’ll be at the picnic, of course.”

  “Of course,” Bob said. Everyone would be. There were connections to be made, affairs to rekindle, summer faces to be air-kissed. It usually had a better turnout than the Fourth, when half of Isley would be out on boats, watching Port Angeles’s firework show. Or getting drunk at a backyard barbecue.
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  Behind Miranda, the door to the office opened. Nancy Biggs, his sole part-time employee, walked in. Her expression was dark, almost grim, but when she saw that the Greene-Morelands were in the office, she smiled widely. Bob could barely tell it was fake.

  Miranda didn’t bother with the hug-kiss for Nancy—Ms. Greene-Moreland only seemed to deem it appropriate with men—but she did go through the flyer presentation again. Nancy responded appropriately, briefly oohing over the lighthouse drawing…but then went out of her way to apologize to Bob for being late, which was when he knew that something was up. Nancy cared as much about being on time as he did.

  Miranda took the hint and sailed out of the office after another round of see-you-at-the-picnics, James at a close heel. The second the door closed, Nancy dropped the smile.

  “They found a body at Kehoe Park,” she said.

  “What? When? Who did?” Even in his surprise, he had to appreciate Nancy’s decision to hurry the Greene-Morelands off before speaking; if she’d dropped that particular bomb with Miranda in earshot, they’d have had to suffer her for another hour.

  “A body,” Nancy said. “This morning, by the trail the kids use to get to school.”

  “A kid found the body?”

  She shook her head. “School’s out now, remember? Since Friday. A jogger, I think. A teenager.”

  “The jogger was, or the victim?”

  “Who?”

  Bob clenched his teeth and tried to remember that Nancy tended to rattle easily. “Nancy, who was killed?”

  If she noticed his agitation, her face didn’t show it. She simply seemed anxious. “A teenage girl, is what I heard. This morning. I got up just before eight, and there were already deputies there.”

  It took the county sheriff’s people almost an hour to get to Port Isley, their upscale little town on the northwest tip of the Olympic Peninsula. Someone had called it in early. Assuming that the chief had called the county after securing the scene, the body had been found—or reported, at least—no later than six thirty.

  “By your apartment?” he asked. Nancy lived in one of the nicer complexes west of the park, on the back of the hill.

  “Yeah. Well, that little dead end half a block away, where the trail starts. And there was another state car at the main entrance, on Eleanor. I swung by on my way in.”

  “Any idea who was killed?”

  Nancy shook her head. “Annie was there, but she said she couldn’t talk. She said she’d try to call later, once Vincent says OK.”

  Annie Thomas was their “in” at the police office, part of Chief Vincent’s summer patrol. Stan Vincent employed about twenty full-time officers between June and September, plus any number of part-timers. In the off-season, there were only ten, and Vincent still sometimes closed the office on Sunday afternoons, routing everything through cell phones. Port Isley wasn’t exactly abuzz with crime.

  “She’s who told me it was a girl. She also said…she said it was a mess,” Nancy added, her voice lowering as though they weren’t alone. “That it was most definitely homicide.”

  “Who found her? The body, I mean?” Bob was surprised to find that he felt a bit flustered himself. He’d been a reporter for almost forty years, interned on a paper right out of high school, and though he’d never worked a crime beat, he’d seen a few murder scenes in his time. Since coming to Port Isley, though? Not a homicide town. He’d lived there nine years and thought he could count the number on one hand.

  “Maybe Nora Dickerson? She was there, in her sweats. Or Poppy Peters, he walks in the park most mornings. Could have been one of the summer people, though.”

  Bob nodded, looked at the clock. He should wait for Annie to call, or put in a call himself to Stan Vincent; the guy was uptight but usually fair…it was still pretty early, though…

  Fuck it. Bob walked to the door, grabbed his coat off the hook. “I’m going up there,” he said. “Can you man the office? Take a look at Dick’s column, check over the book review?”

  “I can, but…I thought I could go with you,” she said. “I mean, this is a real story, isn’t it?”

  A real story. And right at the kickoff of tourist season. He’d be hearing from Dan Turner within the hour, probably chockfull of phrases like “let’s handle this carefully” and “we don’t want to start a panic.” There was no way the council would trust Bob to go solo on this, not without at least trying to help spin it…and considering that the Press only ran because of a healthy town subsidy, courtesy of the mayor’s office, and half the ads in his little rag came from council members or relatives thereof, he’d have no choice but to play ball. Even a decade ago, the very thought would have raised his ethical hackles. These days…these days, deciding not to run some nasty little detail in order to spare someone—a neighbor or friend, likely—pain or embarrassment didn’t strike him as all that terrible.

  A murder, though.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Looks like it. But we’ve got to get this week to bed, and you’re better on layout than I am. A lot better.”

  Nancy looked pained.

  “But I was already up there…doesn’t that make it my story?” she asked.

  Bob shrugged into his coat. “In comic books, maybe,” he said. “Don’t worry, you can write up Deputy Annie’s interview, do all the follow-up. I just want to see what’s going on.”

  He reminded her to clear a spot on the front page—he’d written an op-ed on classic film that could hold until a future issue; that would give them enough space with a little juggling—and promised to pick up coffee on the way back, which earned him an actual smile. Then he was on his way, stepping out of the small building that housed the Press and Wiseman’s Insurance and into a brilliantly bright day, the sky cloudless, the wind from the bay sharp and numbing this close to the water. He considered walking—Kehoe Park was maybe fifteen minutes from the office—but it was almost straight up the hill, too. And there was the paper to consider. He didn’t want to be out long; Nancy couldn’t be expected to do everything…

  Could be you’re just getting old, Bob, he told himself as he settled into his battered, aging pickup. Don’t want to walk when you could drive.

  Well, no shit, he thought, and cranked the heater before starting up the hill.

  As soon as the police let her go, Nora went home, ticking off a to-do list as she jogged the half mile from the park. She’d want to call Curt, first, obviously, shower…Then she’d hit the Klatch, to tell Jen.

  She’ll shit, Nora thought, feeling an anticipatory guilty glee, she’ll just shit.

  It was funny. Jen had just been talking about personal safety, hadn’t she? Like her and Curt, Jen and Alex had migrated to Port Isley from a larger city—Seattle for Curt and Nora, LA for Jen and Alex. Jen ran Coffee Klatch, a charming little cafe just off Main, and the two would meet up most mornings for lattes. Two—or three?—days ago, they’d been talking about how strange it was, not to live somewhere you had to worry about people breaking into your car, and then Jen had said that with the summer people coming, she and Alex had been talking about getting a dog, for protection. There were a number of drifters who inevitably blew through each year. What little crime there was in Isley always seemed to be a summer thing. Never mind that both couples had been summer people to Isley for a handful of years before; now that they were “natives,” the annual tourists were to be despised, just the tiniest bit. And really, there were always a few strange men wandering around each summer.

  She winced and drew a deep breath as she turned up her drive. It had been terrible, less than halfway through her run and then just stumbling across her like that, one pale hand practically right on the path, the rest of her crumpled in a little runoff trench that skirted that part of the trail. The state of her clothes, the rips and the stains…

  …her face…

  Nora stopped at the attached garage and leaned in to stretch her hamstrings, breathing deeply. She hoped she wouldn’t end up with some sort of posttraumatic disorder
from what she’d seen, but she could already imagine picturing that poor girl every time she closed her eyes.

  It had taken Chief Vincent and two of his people less than fifteen minutes to get there. Nora had been impressed by Chief Vincent’s thoroughness, using a video camera, blocking the paths, just like the true-crime-type shows she occasionally caught on cable, only with the dull parts left in—the waiting, the bland conversations among those who waited. Funny how reality could be so much less dramatic than television.

  I saw plenty enough drama, she thought, visualizing the girl’s face as she grabbed one ankle, lifting her heel up to her butt, stretching her quads. Mutilated, no other word for it, and Nora was pretty sure she’d seen bite marks. The girl had apparently been a local, Lisa something. When one of the officers had seen her, he’d said it was Lisa something before Vincent had shushed him. Meyer? Myron?

  Nora shook her head and went inside, kicking her shoes off in the kitchen. She took a shower first, then called Curt. He needed several assurances that she was well enough to let him stay at work and actually brought up the whole getting a gun thing again. She decided to go to the Klatch, but after she’d dressed and started up the SUV, she felt compelled to drive by the park on her way. And when she slowed to a stop behind the parked ambulance—its lights dead, the attendants standing by for a cigarette as they waited for the police to finish whatever they were doing—she felt further compelled to get out for a moment, to stand with the dozen other watchers. Nora didn’t recognize most of the watching group—summer people, mostly, although Sadie Truman was there. Sadie nodded and smiled at her but was too immersed in conversation with some overdressed summer woman to come over. When a hand touched her shoulder, Nora jumped.

  Then smiled. It was Bob Sayers, one of the more interesting local characters…he ran the town paper and was a popular dinner guest with the better educated of Port Isley’s population. Bob had worked for the Seattle Intelligencer for decades as a reporter, before retiring to Isley.