“We’re back here, Sam!”
“Josie, I heard about what happened today. I can’t believe it!” he said, not bothering to greet her properly.
“I know, Sam, I-”
“You sit right down and eat this pasta,” Risa interrupted. “You think better on a full stomach.”
Momentarily startled, Sam stood still. “What in particular should I be thinking about?” he asked.
“About how to make sure Josie and Island Contracting are on TV. To make sure they still get good covers.”
“She means coverage, Sam. And I’m not so sure I want to be on Courtney’s show if she is going to pull stunts like this.”
“Stunts? You think this is a stunt?”
“Yes. No one has talked about the handwriting of that note. I’ll bet she wrote it herself.”
“Why would anyone pretend to be murdered?” Sam asked.
Josie had thought about it for a while and come up with what she thought was a logical answer. “For publicity. Everyone knows how television people are always after publicity.”
“Sì. She just hiding.” Risa nodded vigorously.
“That’s not what the police think. They seem to be taking this very, very seriously.”
“Really?”
“I was told they were talking of bringing dredging equipment to the island.”
“What? Dredge the ocean? They are mad!” Risa exclaimed.
“No, the bay,” Josie said. “That’s what they’re talking about doing, isn’t it, Sam? They’re planning to dredge the bay.”
“That’s what I’ve been told.” Owning the largest and most exclusive of the two liquor stores on the island, Sam was in a position to hear most of the gossip going around.
“Is there any evidence at all that she was killed?” Josie asked slowly. “More than the note, I mean.”
“Well, what I heard was that she hadn’t been seen since doing the interview with you.”
“Really? Cara, what are they saying about you?”
“Were you two alone together for the interview?” Sam asked.
“Alone? Are you kidding? I’ve only been exposed to this stuff for a few days, but, believe me, it takes more than one person to do anything for television. It almost takes a crowd!”
“Was the interview done in the house? Or on some sort of set?”
“It was done in a corner of the deck in front of the house. They wanted to see me, the house, and the bay in the background. That, apparently, was the best place to see all three.”
“And how big was the crowd it took to do this?” Sam asked. There was a smile on his face, but whether it was from Josie’s answer or Risa’s pasta, she didn’t know.
“Well, there were only the cameraman, the producer, Bobby Valentine, Courtney, and me. But there were lots of people milling around. And it wasn’t the first time I’d been interviewed. Bobby Valentine had asked me a bunch of questions earlier in the day. He told me that Courtney would use the information he got to figure out what to ask me.”
“Perhaps this Bobby Valentine made up the questions and gave them to Courtney. It’s not unheard of for on-air personalities to work from scripts provided by other people.”
“No. She made up these questions herself.” Josie stopped and glanced at Risa. “I’m sure they were her work.”
“How do you know?” Sam asked.
“I just know,” she answered.
“Woman’s intuition,” Risa suggested.
“Oh?” Sam looked at Josie for confirmation.
“I guess.” She shrugged and changed the subject. “When is the dredging supposed to begin?”
“As soon as possible, is what I heard. Of course, knowing the police on this island, that could mean anytime in the next decade. There were two guys talking about it in the store when I left. I got the impression that they were summer cops.”
“I don’t suppose one of them was named Mark.”
“I don’t know either of their names. But they were buying soda and complaining about having to work late and, more significantly, go without beer for the evening while they figured out how to get the dredge into the bay without calling the Coast Guard for help. Although I don’t understand why they wouldn’t want to call the Coast Guard in. I don’t understand the delineation of duties here, but it seems to me that a missing person, presumed to be in the water, is exactly the type of thing the Coast Guard does get involved in.”
“On any other island, yes. But the local police and the Coast Guard have a history of… um, of not getting along.”
“Isn’t that a bit foolish?” Sam asked.
“Sure is, but you’ve been around long enough to not be surprised by it.”
“What happened?”
“You didn’t hear about it? It’s a great story.”
“So tell it.”
“It happened one Fourth of July. You know what a big deal we all make of that day. It’s pretty much the height of the summer season. All the tourists are here. When I moved here, there were fireworks shot off the old drawbridge at the south end of the island. Then someone suggested that an even bigger and better display could be created from the new causeway up north. But the smaller display at the other end of the island was a tradition and, well, you know how things go around here. We ended up with what we have now.”
Sam nodded. “Fireworks at both ends of the island.”
“Exactly. And you know how people head out to sea in their boats so that they can see both displays at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“Well, a year or two before you arrived, one of the party boats that had been hired for the evening lost its engine and couldn’t get back in after the shows ended. Unfortunately, the people in the boat were so drunk, they didn’t notice they had a problem until they had drifted almost twenty miles out to sea. And then there was a storm that night and the boat drifted back toward land and ended up stuck on a sandbar about a mile off the coast. Well, to make a long story short, the Coast Guard rescue the next morning was very dramatic and could be seen by everyone sunning on the beach.”
“So what does this have to do with the police?” Sam asked.
“They were the police,” Risa explained. “In the boat. They were our police.”
Sam grinned. “The island police were in the rescued boat? Surely not all of them. What about crowd control and traffic and all the other things they’re supposed to do before, during, and after the fireworks?”
“Exactly the question everyone else was asking. And you can imagine how Chief Rodney reacted.”
“Badly.”
“And publicly. He accused the Coast Guard of incompetence for no reason at all. And he was quoted in the island newspaper. And the next week a reporter interviewed the captain of the rescue ship and that was the first mention of the empty beer kegs found in the hold of the boat.”
“At least they didn’t toss them overboard and pollute the ocean,” Sam suggested.
“Sam, you own a liquor store. You know they didn’t want to forfeit their deposit on the kegs!”
“Good point. So the police were embarrassed by the interview with the Coast Guard.”
“Yes, but it didn’t stop there. Some enterprising reporter went back to Chief Rodney the next week. Well, you can guess what happened. That man never has the sense to shut up. And since the Coast Guard had right on their side, they continued to respond to whatever idiocy he uttered. This went on week after week until the reporter went back to college for the fall semester. Everyone on the island was amused. Until there was a real crisis during one of the big fall storms and Rodney refused to call the Coast Guard for help.”
“That man can be extraordinarily stupid,” Sam said. No one in the room was inclined to argue.
“Definitely. Well, obviously that couldn’t continue. The Coast Guard is equipped to deal with lots of problems that the police can’t help. So they call them in an emergency. But not until they’ve tried to do everything themselves.”
“Well, that’s what’s going on now,” Sam said. He had finished his pasta during Josie’s explanation and he passed the plate over to Risa for a refill.