I’d never thought of Chief Michaels as indulgent, but I kind of agreed with him about Chief Peabody, especially given Peabody’s frosty reception of Kevin and me this afternoon. I glanced around the room, looking for Kevin—he seemed to be gone already. I didn’t see Shayla either. Best not to go there.
Instead, I helped Nancy clean up and put away all the extra chairs as people ambled back to their homes and businesses.
“Kevin was good tonight, huh?” Nancy asked. “He made people think about something they could do instead of everything they couldn’t do. I’ll have to look through my Duck memorabilia and see what I have. I think this is something we could all get behind.”
“And maybe the chief will solve the case while we get behind it,” I added.
Councilman Wilson coughed as he wandered up behind me. “I hope there are no hard feelings, Dae. You know I think the world of you and your grandfather. But politics is a tough business. You had it easy the first time around. It could get ugly this time. Better think before you take me on.”
It was a mystery to me why Mad Dog Wilson would give up his voting privileges on the council to be the mayor. I didn’t bother asking. I knew I’d find out at some point. Instead, I smiled at him—my big, mayoral smile. “With all respect, Councilman Wilson, you might want to think again before you take me on.”
Wilson nodded in an absent manner, wandering away as he always did, examining the chairs and tabletops for dust. Clearly he hadn’t expected me to talk back.
Nancy laughed. “You set him back a peg or two.”
“The incumbent is hard to beat. At least that’s what I’ve always heard.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Speaking of spirits, I was wondering if you’d be willing to do some research for me?” I told her what I knew about Adelaide and her death.
“So we’d be looking for someone named Adelaide who drowned on the Atlantic side.” She wrote down the name on a scrap piece of paper. “Any other info you can give me?”
“No. That’s all I have. I think this would’ve been in the 1950s. But I’m not sure about that either.”
“I’ll be happy to research that, sweetie. You know how I love a mystery.”
The parking lot and the streets were mostly empty by the time I finished helping Nancy and left town hall. She offered me a ride home, but I wanted to walk. I waved to her as she pulled out on Duck Road.
I wasn’t worried about Mad Dog Wilson. I knew Max’s death and the destruction of the museum on my watch probably made him think I was vulnerable. He might be right, and he might even win the election. The one thing I had learned as mayor was that you could order more trucks of sand to build up the dunes, but you couldn’t save Duck from the people who live here. And people were as unpredictable as the Atlantic.
I walked down to the spot where the museum had been, hoping to find some clue I’d missed that had been left behind by the thorough investigation. Not a single piece of wood, artifact or rock was there. Only the bare concrete pad, blackened by shadows and the fire, remained as mute testimony that the museum had once stood there.
It would’ve been a good time to contact Max’s ghost—I had no doubt it was hovering close by his favorite spot. Maybe he had some idea about what had happened. Maybe he even knew who’d killed him. If wishing could make it happen, one of those shadows chasing the breeze would be him and he would tell me what I needed to know.
But I wasn’t Shayla, and even if I were, it wouldn’t necessarily mean I could contact him. The dead seemed to like to keep their own secrets, leaving us to discover them as best we could.
I walked back home to find Gramps in his chair with his feet up. He was watching Dancing with the Stars—one of his favorite shows. My mother had told me that he and Grandma had loved to dance when they were younger. They had even won several trophies. “Well?” he asked when he saw me.
I filled him in on what happened during the meeting—and after.
He laughed. “I guess Mad Dog thought he could get you to give up early before he had to work too hard.”
“Why does everyone call him Mad Dog? He seems pretty tame to me.”
“He used to be a stock car driver. He was fearless—until his car caught fire after a wreck. He was in pretty bad shape for a while. Never raced again. Maybe that’s why he went into insurance.”
“Well, I don’t plan to give up. He might beat me, though, if we can’t figure out what happened to Max. You know he’ll use that against me.”
“Ronnie will figure it out,” he assured me, eyes on the figures dancing across the TV screen again. “You’ll see.”
“Thanks.” I kissed his cheek. “Good night, Gramps.”
“Good night, honey. Sleep tight.”
I had just started up the stairs to my room when there was a loud knock on the front door. Being mayor meant my office moved to my home after hours, giving any resident the opportunity to call or drop by. Mostly to complain. “I’ll get it.”
I opened the front door to find both Chief Michaels and Chief Peabody on my doorstep, their police cars in the drive. Brad Spitzer, the arson investigator, was with them too. “Better put on some coffee, Gramps,” I said, turning back into the living room. “It looks like it could be a long night.”
Chapter 11
The five of us sat around the kitchen table with mugs of coffee and a platter of stale donuts. It was all I had to offer. I didn’t want to run to the grocery store—I was pretty sure they weren’t here to eat.
Chief Michaels and Chief Peabody glanced at each other as they came in, sat down and put their caps on the table. I noticed, despite the other differences, that both men took their coffee black—and wisely decided against a donut.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Chief Peabody started. “I don’t know what you were doing out in Corolla today, Mayor O’Donnell, but we haven’t been able to find any trace of Sam Meacham. There’s been no record of his credit cards being used after he rented the Segway. No trace of him doing anything since the day after the Duck museum blew up.”
“On the other hand,” Chief Michaels cut in, “we found out today that the cannon from the Corolla Historical Museum is the weapon used to destroy our museum.”
Both men looked at Brad, who had helped himself to a donut and was dunking it into his coffee, which was heavily laced with cream and sugar. “Sorry,” he muttered with a full mouth.
He wiped powdered sugar on his napkin. “Yes. The results show that the piece of cannonball we found in the museum here matches the cannonballs used by the Corolla museum. They fire their cannon on holidays and so forth, which gave us a good comparison. The cannon had been fired recently, and the wheel length and size of the carriage match the wheel tracks the police found on the hill overlooking the Duck museum.”
“That only means the cannon did it, right?” I asked, looking at the two police chiefs. “Not that Sam did it.”
Chief Peabody slurped his coffee. “What do you know about Meacham?” he asked me. “How did you know he rented those scooters? We went over his place real careful. We didn’t know.”
Chief Michaels cleared his throat. “The mayor is gifted.”
“What do you mean gifted?” Chief Peabody demanded, glaring at us. “What the hell does that mean?”
Gramps poured more coffee. “Dae is psychic. She can see things the rest of us can’t.”
“Oh well, in that case, we’ll step aside and let her figure out the rest of it.” Chief Peabody sat back from the table and folded his arms across his chest.