“I’m all about loving you, Ben. Now, there’re some things we really need to talk about.”
Ben smiled again. “Absolutely. When’s your lease up in Crisfield? We can bring anything you want from there to here. Have to get rid of some of this crap. That old mattress, for one. It’s so uncomfortable I’m pretty sure it was passed down direct from the Inquisition. And Reverend Mosby. Have to call him. We have to set a date. When are you thinking? Maybe May or June next year?”
LuAnna waited until Ben’s sweet flood of logistical prating ebbed.
She said, “Sooner than June. Sooner than May.”
He said, “Why not May? Mosby’s got the Thanksgiving service, and the Christmas Pageant on his brain. And there’s Lent and Easter yet. Go easy on the poor man. We’ll get to it now we’ve decided.”
She said, “We need to move the date up smartly if we don’t want folks to talk. I bet they will anyway if we come at it so suddenly. Before Thanksgiving would be the best.”
Ben was puzzled. “This is the only wedding you’re ever going to get. Are you saying you don’t want to plan it to death, with the showers, and bachelorette orgies?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t. You know I hate all that claptrap.” She looked vexed, said, “Ben, here you are running around all night wearing yourself to a frazzle, and you’re about to be a daddy.”
Without another word, she took her coffee mug to the parlor.
Instead of displaying the least happiness, Ben defended himself. “I told you I’d be daddy to your babies, and pop-pop to theirs. I promised you. It’s all I want.”
Now LuAnna was truly annoyed. “Are you listening to me? Put it like this, Ben. You get to keep your promise a little earlier than expected.”
Ben followed LuAnna into the parlor. She sensed the primeval thrill rising in his chest. “Hold it. You’re pregnant.”
LuAnna beamed ear to ear. She said, “One of your spats got cultch in my poor defenseless suzy, and that’s all she wrote.”
LuAnna sat on the couch. “Ow! Damn! What in God’s name—”
Before Ben could stop her, LuAnna was on her feet yanking the cushion back. There it was. She froze, staring. Then she reached out and touched the slab to be sure it was real. Ben’s couch was always good for a little loose change now and then, but this was ridiculous.
She looked at Ben for an explanation. “Seems you have a few surprises of your own.”
Ben gave LuAnna his best smile. “You found your wedding gift before I had a chance to wrap it.”
PART II
INTERLOPERS
CHAPTER 15
It was a simple matter for Maynard Chalk and company to ditch the van and steal a workboat in Crisfield. People around there were trusting, and marina security was nonexistent. He wanted to reach Smith Island before dawn. Crossing ten miles of Tangier Sound turned out to be the problem. The craft they’d grabbed started sinking the minute they put out. There was no way to know that the boat’s plywood hull had been smashed too often against the stump of an old sunken piling during the storm. The automatic bilge pump kept up with the influx of water while the boat was in its protected slip, but only just. Once out in the sound, the wringing action of the chop sprung the boat’s seams. Then the bilge pump shorted out. Despite valiant efforts at bailing, the vessel sank ever deeper into the water as they went.
Chalk’s trusted lieutenant Simon Clynch was proving useless. He was completely green, and seasick. Annoyance became anger when Clynch committed the ultimate landlubber’s sin, puking to windward and lightly shellacking his squaddies with a mist of vomit. Almost an hour later, a very pissed-off Chalk abandoned the boat, leaving it struck hard on a sandbar a hundred yards from shore. They waded onto the Smith Island beach with his team, their gear held aloft out of the wet.
Hiram and Charlene Harris, a sweet couple in their sixties, were surprised to find so many late-season lodgers on the stoop of their bed & breakfast, in spite of the weather, too. And so early in the day. Even before the first scheduled boat from Crisfield. The Harrises were happy to have the windfall business. Soggy trousers and boots were understandable in such weather. The Harrises graciously overlooked the lack of reservations, and made the strangers welcome. This was a mistake.
Chalk kicked off his questioning of these natives with some rope, duct tape ligatures, and a box cutter.
After an hour or two in Chalk’s hands, he secretly liked to think a quick death was something worth begging for. If the victim had nothing to offer. Or especially if, as in the case of the Harrises, the subjects plain refused to talk.
During the bloody proceedings, Chalk held forth for the benefit of his men. “You know, back in Rwanda during the genocide, a Tutsi with about thirty bucks still had options, even if he was about to get himself killed. See, he could pay the Hutu who was about to hack him to bits to finish the job with a gun instead of the standard issue machete. Yep. Woe betide the Tutsi short of cash, or the Hutu without a gat. The ol’ snickersnee is a hard way to die, and those Hutu bastards did not take Diner’s Club. Way I see it? Even up to the brink of the void, there’re deals to be made.”
Chalk was tempted to finish Hiram when he thought the waterman’s last fragment of comprehension was shattered. He decided against. Keep him alive for now. He might rebound and get chatty in a little while.
Chalk glanced at Dar Gavin who amused himself with an incoherent Charlene. Chalk slashed a finger vaguely along the line of his collarbone and said, “Hurry up and do her.”
Gavin sighed. He zipped up his pants, rolled Charlene onto her back, and shot her in the chest.
Chalk sensed that Hiram and Charlene had salient information, but they refused to sing no matter what. Nellie Vickers, while in extremis, had even tried making up bullshit about Dick Blackshaw just to save herself.
Coercive interview techniques often resulted in false intel. No problem. Chalk had his reliable gut instinct and Black Widow to help sift facts from desperate verge-of-death offerings. The Harrises were so pig-headed that, against all reason, they had refused to dime Dick Blackshaw out, even though he had lived for years within a mile of where they were dying by inches.
In the end, feeling like a jackass, Chalk resorted to the phone book; an actual paper phone book, to get the Blackshaw address. He’d hoped for more. So much more. Who are these damn people? He wanted to get to know them, to get a sense of what made them tick. If everyone on Smith Island was this tough, he was in deep trouble.
CHAPTER 16
“A wedding present?” This stopped LuAnna, but only for a moment. “Ben, it’s wonderful. Where did you get this?”
Ben knew the best lie fell as close to the truth as possible. Once again, it hardly occurred to him that he should not lie. There was an alien character working within him. He started backpedaling his integrity down a steep moral scree, and the footing was treacherous. “Found it oystering a few days back.”
She said, “That’s a lot of precious metal there. Got to be worth something. I wonder who—”
“That’s salvage. Free and clear to the finder.” Marriage. A baby. Gold. Ben cut her off a little too sharply for the happiness that was due the moment.
Confused and stung, LuAnna threw on her hat and slicker. She stepped out the back door. Walked toward the path leading to the Smith Island hamlet of Ewell. Ben found her standing at the edge of the small yard under the gray sky. The wind whipped her hair around her face.