She knew she needed to just keep her head down. Not rock the boat. But that was easier said than done—especially when people were going around destroying property that didn’t belong to them.
And she couldn’t pretend for another second that it didn’t bother her. Piper knew she had a reputation in town for being perpetually happy, kind, unruffled. And if she was telling the truth, she rather liked the way people saw her. But more recently she was finding—disconcertingly so—that when she was sad or downright filled with rage (like right now), she was having more and more trouble holding it in. She was tired of pretending. And with that, she left her house, letting the screen door slam shut behind her, and stormed toward the docks.
* * *
—
“I’ll just put these bags right here.” Anders stood in the room adjacent to his own on the second floor of the bed-and-breakfast on Saturday afternoon, trying not to stare at the hat crowning the guest’s gray curls, looking more like a dead peacock than a fashionable fascinator. “If you need anything, Mrs. Olecki will be happy to help. Oh, and there’s fresh lemonade and chocolate chip cookies downstairs if you’re hungry.”
“Thank you, dear.” The woman smiled, her yellowed dentures poking through her thin lips. “I think I’ll take a short rest first.”
Anders nodded, and with one last glance at the hat, he ambled down the stairs to help himself to one of the cookies Mrs. Olecki had just taken out of the oven. He’d only been on the island for an hour, but he couldn’t shake the jittery feeling he’d had since stepping foot off the ferry and onto the dock. Was he sharing the same tiny strip of land with a cold-blooded killer? It didn’t seem possible. For one thing, Jess was right, the police report had seemed pretty cut-and-dry—but still, something didn’t add up. Who had set the boat on fire? And why? And what about the rumors in town that Tom’s death wasn’t an accident? Anders knew he had to be missing something, but he’d rolled the pieces around in his head all week and just couldn’t seem to make anything fit.
“There you are.” Pearl Olecki’s voice cut into Anders’s thoughts. “Only take two—the rest are for the guests.”
Anders wiped crumbs off his chin with the back of his hand and started to remind her he was a guest, but realized he hadn’t really felt like one in weeks.
“When you’re done, can you help Harold move our china cabinet to the back shed? He’s going to sand and restain it. This salt air wreaks havoc on the wood.”
“Sure.”
She nodded once and then opened the refrigerator and stuck the top half of her body in it. Anders heard the clanking of her moving jars around.
“Hey, can I ask you something?”
Pearl made a noise that sounded like assent.
“Do you ever worry about crime out here?”
While her chest remained perpendicular to the floor, Pearl peeked her head out just enough to look at Anders with eyebrows raised. “Crime?” She let out a hoot. “Heavens no.” Back in the fridge she tutted, mostly to herself. “Crime. As if we’ve got drug dealers and street fighters running amok out here. Crime. Ha!”
Anders paused at her mention of drugs, remembering Mr. Gimby’s senile ranting about a drug ring.
“So there’s never been a crime out here? Not even once?” Anders found that hard to believe. Especially when the island had been home to more than five hundred people back in its heyday. There was no way five hundred people could be upstanding citizens at all times. It was Frick Island—not Pleasantville.
“Well, there was that one time,” Pearl said, straightening up and shutting the refrigerator door with her hip, a bunch of celery and a head of lettuce clutched in either paw. “Lady Judy got her wallet stolen.”
“Really? What happened?”
“She stomped all over this island, in a full-on fit, screeching to anyone who’d listen that whoever had taken her belongings had best be putting it back in its rightful place.” The side of her mouth curled up. “And so Preacher Norm showed up on her front porch that evening, wallet in hand.”
“A preacher had stolen it?”
“No. She’d left it in his house, when she’d stopped by to drop off her offering that she’d forgotten to take to church that morning.”
Pearl chuckled and Anders joined in. He took the last bite of his second cookie and chewed, considering his next question thoughtfully. He knew Mrs. Olecki enough to know if he asked anything off-limits it would just shut her down. He decided to go for it: “What about Tom’s boat?”
He stared at her intently, expecting a reaction of some kind, but she remained unruffled as she ripped leaves of iceberg lettuce apart and dropped them in a bowl. “Oh, you heard about the fire, huh? Yeah, that was terrible.”
“I didn’t just hear about it. I was there. Helped them put it out.”
At this she looked up. “You did? I didn’t know that. It’s a good thing, I guess. Unlike BobDan to be so careless with his cigarette butts, but accidents happen, I ’spose. Maybe if he didn’t try to hide his habit from Shirlene—as if she doesn’t know—he wouldn’t have to dispose of the nasty things so quickly, but it’s none of my nevermind.”
Anders stared at her, not hearing her opinionated ramblings. His brain had shorted out, stuck on the first thing she said—BobDan had told everyone the fire was an accident.
BobDan had lied.
And Anders wanted to know why.
* * *
—
Clouds hung low in the sky, painting the town with a dreary brush—making every storefront and house appear even more dilapidated and depressed, if that was possible—and Anders shuddered in his cotton shirt, wishing he’d brought a jacket with him. It was the first weekend in October and it reminded Anders a little of home—how the blistering heat of summer seemed to never end, until one day it was fall, just like that. And then the cold of winter blew in right on its heels. Autumn in the south wasn’t so much a season as a stopgap between summer and winter.
After helping Harold move the china cabinet (and feeling as though the muscles of his lower back had ripped apart from each other like Velcro in the process), Anders had set out from the bed-and-breakfast, his stomach rumbling. He had half a mind to confront BobDan about the fire, but knew that would get him precisely nowhere. So he set his sights on the One-Eyed Crab for a bite and maybe another conversation with the waiter Jeffrey, who, while not overfriendly, was the only person who didn’t seem to completely shut down when Anders pressed him with questions. He didn’t outright answer anything, of course, but his snide, sarcastic commentary made Anders think he had a torrent of anger running just under the surface and might one day burst.