W
HEN I GOT HOME, Susan was blowing soap bubbles with Elladaire. It was one of those perfect family photo album pictures, full of rainbows and laughter. It should have made me happy, but it didn't.
Susan said that Piet had gone to the firehouse to meet with Mac and the arson investigators. That was his job, but I was annoyed that he'd gone off and foisted the baby on my cousin. I admit that I'd done the same to him, but he was better at the kid thing than either me or my cousin, and safer. Decades of family lectures and her recent history kept me protective of Susan.
He should have called me. It's not as if I'd run off to Ronkonkoma or something. We were partners.
Then there was that protective thing again. He could have shown more sensitivity to Susan's feelings about babies.
Which I realized I did not know. Everyone was so careful around her, no one brought up any delicate subjects. We all figured that if she wanted to talk about her possible infertility, she would.
Now she gave me the opportunity to find out by bringing up the subject of children herself: “You better give the kid back soon before you get attached to her.”
“I already adore the brat, especially when she's happy.”
“She is a cutie.”
We both watched her bumbling chase of the bubbles across the yard. Edie didn't fall once this time, and I did feel like a proud mother. Susan noticed. “That's how you ended up with Little Red, you know.”
I did know. Care for him for a week or two, my mother'd said. That's all. But the little terror sank his teeth into my heart as well as my ankles. He loved me in his own way. He needed me. Now I wouldn't part with him for a
New York Times
bestseller. Well, maybe I would if my mother got back to take over his care.
“That's how she gets all those dogs adopted,” Susan reminded me. “By asking people to foster them for a couple of days so the poor abandoned animals are not locked in a pen, frightened and lonely. They look up at you with those big blue eyesâ”
“The dogs have brown eyes. It's Elladaire who has blue eyes.”
“Whatever. And you're sunk.”
“Would you want to keep her ifâNo, Mary is going to be fine, Janie said. Would you want one of your own?”
“Now, when I'm making my way up the restaurant ladder? When I'm not sure if I'm cured or in remission? When I'm having a good time coming and going when I choose? Hell, no. Someday? Yes. Two or three. If I can't have my own, then I'll adopt. Sometimes I think of adopting three different nationalities, start my own UN peacekeeping force. Show the world we're all the same under our skin.”
My crazy cousin had her head on straight. Even if it had eyebrow hoops and three colors of hair. Sometimes I admired her.
Sometimes I hated her. She looked straight at me for the first time and shook her head. “You did something bad again, didn't you?”
That depends on how you define bad. What crime did she read in my face this afternoon? Showing jealousy over the veterinarian, lusting after a fireman and then rejecting him, leaving Piet with the baby, or inviting the bugs to town?
“I swear I didn'tâHow is Edie anyway? She was a little peaky when I left for the vet.” Okay, she was pukey. “Little Red was sick. I had to go.”
He was sleeping on my foot now, wiped out from the trip and the shot, I guessed. Otherwise he'd be fighting Elladaire for the soap bubbles.
“Piet said her stomach was bothering her, so I took her over to Grandma's. Gran gave her some special concoction mixed in honey. She's fine now.”
I checked Edie for a tail or rabbit's ears or crossed eyes. You never knew with Eve Garland's potions. Sure, she'd never changed anyone into a toad that I heard of, but I swear she could if she wanted to.
Elladaire was fine, and cute as a kittenânot cute as a bug, not these daysâchasing the pretty bubbles. Instead of scooping her up and twirling her around just to hear her baby laughter, I decided Susan was right: I had to get her back to Janie's.
Jane could send her to day care while she worked, where Edie'd have other kids to play with and professional attention. The other children would be safe, I was sure. Safer than she'd be here or handed off to the nearest person when I had to go back to the marshes.
“Are you working this afternoon? Tonight?”
“Yes, I have to leave soon. My mother said she'd take Elladaire when she gets home from school. Everyone wants you to concentrate on the fireflies.”
If everyone did, why wasn't Piet here? Whatever horror was in the drainage ditches had to be the key to getting the lanterns home. Searching during the day was bound to be hot, smelly, sticky, and scary. Going again at night was unthinkable.
Susan left. Of course Edie was tired of the bubbles by nowâit had been all of twenty minutes, some kind of record for her pea-sized attention span except for the TV.
I put it on for her. I'm sure day care sang and danced and read books and played games. I started Edie's favorite video.
My own work hadn't been touched in days, it seemed. I needed to get back to it before I lost too much time, continuity, and confidence. I dropped the creature-in-the-dark-lagoon idea. Hell, that was too close to reality for me. I wanted to draw something clean, graceful, and strong, not frightful and ugly. The story line could come later.
My sketch pad quickly filled with fishâno, intelligent, mammalian dolphins, leaping out of clear waters, playing in the sun.
Except some of them had six flippers.
I turned the page. This time I drew a large dolphin, the king of the dolphins, who could transform himself into a sea god, fighting to clean up the oceans so his people were not threatened. I liked it. I liked him. He was noble and caring and dedicated, like Piet. Like Matt Spenser, too, it occurred to me. I gave him Matt's clean-shaven look, but Piet's short hair. I could almost feel the water dripping off him as he rose as a man in muscular glory from the surfâNo, that was Elladaire spilling my iced tea on my notes and drawings.
I really had to get her back to her aunt.
I left a message there, then thought about calling Piet to ask if he'd be home for dinner, or did he want us to meet him in town and get pizza. Blech. That was too damned domestic. Let him worry about his own dinner. Let him come and go when he wanted. So would I. Except pizza sounded good.
Meantime, I called my mother. She was in the middle of a meeting. “I am busy. What do you want?”
“I want you to come home and help with this baby. You're always saying you want grandchildren. Here's your chance.”
“I want grandchildren with my DNA. Ones I can love, not babysit every day. I did that for you. It was enough.”
“You left me with Grandma Eve every summer.”
“So?”
“I am babysitting your dogs.”
“So?”
“So I need help here.”
“So do the poor dogs at the puppy mills. You can take care of yourself. They can't. You're a big girl, Willow. Figure it out.”
I figured I'd get at least a smidgeon of sympathy from my father. Not that I expected him to fly north to care for a baby. I didn't remember if he was any good at it when I was young. He worked a lot. He worried a lot, too.
He still worried. “You've got to be careful, baby girl,” he told me. “There's something rotten in that ridiculous town.”
That would be Mama, judging from the smell.
“Or maybe in the family.”
Definitely Mama. “Everyone's okay here, Dad.”
“No, sweetheart, there's danger. I feel it. It's been keeping me awake nights. Well, last night Karin and I went out dancing, so that doesn't count, but I felt it. Rot.”
Rats. I wasn't surprised. I knew the salt marsh was dangerous; maybe Mama was, too. I didn't want to frighten both of us any more than we already were, though, so I said I'd stay away from Grandma Eve's extensive compost piles in case something poisonous or rabid lived there. “I'll warn Uncle Roger and his workers at the farm, too. Okay?”
“Good, but you be careful, hear? Remember to wear sunscreen, even though the sun isn't as strong up there now.”
“I always do, Dad. So who is Karin?”
“Got to go, Willy. It's half-price day for the early show at the movie theater.”
Just when I started to get annoyed that Piet didn't callâdamned if I'd call himâI heard a squawk from the scanner box the fire department lent him. I didn't know what the number codes meant. It could have been a traffic accident, a fire, an ambulance call, or a school of bluefish off the shore. Either way, it gave a location: Rick Stamfield's marina.
Rick is one of my favorite Paumanok Harbor residents, and he'd had enough bad luck in the past, with a fancy yacht sinking suspiciously right at the dock. He was one of the few people in the village who didn't blame me for that.
Now he was in trouble, and I couldn't go. Not that I'd be much help, but that's what friends did. They showed support by getting in the way. Elladaire couldn't see me stick my tongue out at her.
Then came the sirens and the volunteer alert klaxon. Damn. I called Uncle Roger on his cell. He managed the family farm, but he'd be going to whatever emergency called for every member of the force to respond. “Fire at Rick's,” he shouted over the siren on his car. “Bad.”
Piet had his camper, so he had his protective gear with him. I believed in his magic, I truly did, but a fireproof jacket couldn't hurt. If he remembered to put it on.
And I couldn't go. I had a baby. I didn't want a baby. Didn't need a baby. Damn, damn, damn.
She looked up from the TV with those baby-blue eyes and four-tooth grin. “Go bye-bye car?”
Shit. I loved a baby. Maybe I loved a dedicated fireman used to flying solo. It was a good thing I'd sworn off men, or I'd be dragging him to my bed to make a baby in the age-old method for keeping a man. Not keeping him happy, mind, but keeping him from leaving.
Wrong. Everything I was thinking was wrong, mean, and immoral, and I'd regret it tomorrow. I sat down to do some serious thinking about my priorities and my intentions. What I came up with was something rotten in the family.
I called Piet's cell and prayed he'd answer.
“It's Roy Ruskin,” I shouted when he picked up. “It's Roy, not Rot, and kin, not family. Rick fired him when he got arrested for wife-beating. And the Danverses let him go before that for drinking at the bowling alley. He's the one setting the fires!”
“The chief made that deduction, too. He's got everyone he can spare out looking for the bastard, along with the East Hampton town police and the county sheriff's office. They're setting up roadblocks, but there are a million places he could hide. I'm on my way back to your house now.”
“Great.” That meant the fire was out. “How are things at the boatyard? Is Rick okay?”
“Rick's fine. His own boat and a couple of others aren't. We got the fires out before they could spread to the whole marina, and only one fuel tank exploded. Part of a dock is gone. One guy got cut by flying glass, but everyone else is all right.”
“Thank goodness for that. Did you find any . . . ?”
“Dead bugs? No, but Rick's boat got towed out of the harbor before I could look, to keep sparks away from the dock. It sank before they could get the arson squad aboard. Big Eddie smelled kerosene, though, so maybe Ruskin couldn't capture any more of your friends.”
I'd tried to tell them to stay away from bad guys with evil intentions. Maybe they understood me after all. “So no one suspects them?”
“They're positive it was Ruskin. He'd been spotted earlier. They'll get him sooner or later. The other problem is that Jensen, or whatever he's calling himself these days, was at the fire. Taking pictures and watching me. I had to step back so the fires did more damage than needed. Then he wanted to know what new experimental chemicals I was testing, that worked so well, for a book he's going to write. I heard him tell one of the firemen. He's going to call it
Hell Harbor in the Hamptons
, about all the weird disasters here.”
“I don't suppose the mayor canâ”
“They're on public record.”
In a way, Barry was more dangerous than Roy. And more unstoppable. “What do you think we should do?”
“First we get rid of Ruskin, then the fireflies, then worry about the reporter. Meantime, I'm going through town. Do you want me to pick up a pizza?”
That would be the next best thing to getting rid of all the plagues. “Great, then I can leave Elladaire with my aunt Jas, and we can track down Mama in the ditches.”
He was so quiet I thought we'd lost the connection. “Piet?”
“I thought you understood.”
“I do. We need to get the bugs gone.”
“We need to keep the people safe from a vicious arsonist. The chief sent messages to the Coast Guard, because one of the commercial fishing boats in Montauk fired Ruskin, too. And Joe the plumber went to bring Jane to his house, in case Ruskin goes after her.”
“They've been seeing each other recently, ever since she helped him after the accident.”
“The chief told me she's the one who called the police on Ruskin the first time, and who paid for Mary's divorce lawyer.”
I thought about it a minute. “Which leaves me in danger?”
“We think so.”
“He'd never hurt the baby. Would he?”
“Who knows what's in the mind of a sociopath? He blames the whole town for his troubles. I told the chief I'd stay close, in case they need me in the village, but I think he'll come after you for keeping the baby from him. God only knows what he'll do if he finds you gone.”