Sand Witches in the Hamptons (9781101597385) (21 page)

“But Dad—”

“We'll invite him if we have to, but I bet the jackass won't leave his playmates for his own daughter's engagement party. We'll send him the bill, though. Gotta go, Willy. That new dog isn't socialized enough yet.”

Grr.

That was me. Not the new dog.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN

I
had a big mouth and a bad reputation and goose bumps about walking into that council meeting.

So I let Carinne and Dr. James Everett Harmon go in first.

I heard all the greetings from the door. Congratulations, good wishes, about time. Carinne halted in front of me, bewildered. I hadn't spoken to her about the engagement, only that we were going to get her presence—and her obvious relationship to me—out in the open, all at once, then never again. I hoped.

Harris shoved me through the door. Now the good cheer turned to shock, confusion, and a little anger that they'd been shocked and confused and tricked. I stepped beside my half sister.

“Yes, Carinne O'Dell and I are related on my father's side. Yes, Matt and I have an understanding. Yes, I have pink hair. No, I am not going to speak further on any of these matters. None of which is this council's business.” I headed toward the empty rows of chairs facing the council. “And no, my mother does not know. I was hoping you”—nodding toward my grandmother—“would speak with her.”

My grandmother went pale, and I think she mumbled something about how nice Italy was at this time of year.

“Too late. She'll be here midweek.”

Everyone knew who I meant. No one volunteered to pick Mom up at the airport. Mrs. Ralston, the village clerk, fanned herself. A few others had beads of sweat on their foreheads, despite the cool temperature in the meeting room.

Mayor Applebaum banged his gavel. “We have a great deal of business, people. I call this emergency session of the Paumanok Harbor village council to order.”

I guess he forgot my mother's temper, or how she could have every dog in the Harbor running amok.

I hadn't realized this was to be an official local government meeting, thinking it was the para-council only. All the elected officials sat at the front table, though, being filmed by a video camera on a tripod as they gave their names and positions, which never would have been permitted by the espers, lest copies fall into the wrong hands. Maybe they didn't start filming until the mayor called everyone to order. I could hope.

Jimmie, Professor Harmon, sat between Carinne and me. “This should be informative. My first encounter with everyday American government, you know.”

Lou sat behind us with old Doc Lassiter, the cyber shrink from Shelter Island who was staying at my grandmother's. Monteith from Rosehill sat nearby. Now I noticed Colin and Kenneth at opposite corners of the room. Harris stood at the door, checking IDs of anyone who entered, after they passed through a metal detector. Uniformed police guarded the other exits. This was not your everyday American town hall meeting. Or maybe it was, these days.

I saw why we were following more formal procedure this morning when a gray-haired man in a shiny gray suit stood up and carried a sheaf of notes to the speaker's lectern. The mayor introduced him as a representative of an independent contractor company, working with the Army Corps of Engineers, to see if Paumanok Harbor could be declared an emergency zone due to threats of loss of income and property from the beach erosion.

We could not. Therefore, he suggested, we should consider hiring a dredging company—with which he was not and never had been affiliated—to remove the new shoal that impeded boat traffic from entering or exiting the harbor area, and use that sand to restore the beaches as protective barriers.

As if we hadn't considered that option, and how much it would cost. Paumanok Harbor simply did not have that kind of money or any way of borrowing it after the embezzlement scandals in the summer. Now the Feds wouldn't help us pay for the work. They might consider adding us to the list of areas needing attention, the man said. We might see them back here in three years, barring a catastrophic hurricane.

The speaker added that we could plant native grasses whose roots helped anchor the remaining sand, erect snow fences to trap it, or build revetments and rock-filled gabions to buffer it from the next storm. He referred to pages of research, with projections of tides and winds and damaging storms. He quoted statistics on ocean currents and rising water levels and damage to areas downwind of the barriers. Most people stopped listening as soon as he said no money was coming our way.

I'm sure he had graphs and charts and big scientific theories. What it all meant, I gathered from what I understood, was that we would be wasting our own time and money on a losing proposition. The ocean always won. We'd do better to think about moving the town to higher ground.

Angry mumblings came from the audience. Easy for him to say. He didn't have a home and a business, his parents' pasts and his children's futures here. Besides, the town needed the harbor and the beaches to survive economically. If they went, higher ground wasn't going to matter.

The mayor banged his fist on the table in front of him. I guess he forgot he had a gavel. The amazing thing was he remembered to come to the meeting at all. Mrs. Ralston must have felt the session important enough to send the police for him. Uncle Henry Haversmith, the chief of police, had a place at the front table, too, along with the village financial officer, its staff attorney, and several others whose functions I hadn't paid attention to. I could tell which ones were psychics because the Royce folk didn't look worried at the dire predictions. They mostly looked in my direction and smiled.

They thought I could fix what the Feds couldn't.

Next up was Ms. Garcia of the Centers for Disease Control. She walked past me on her way to the podium without acknowledging my presence.

She reported that her department had not been able to identify a causative agent for the rashes, although they eliminated airborne bacteria, known viruses, insect-borne diseases, water and air contaminants, plus plant emissions or poisons from the native flora. To justify her job and the money spent, she read from a list several pages long of what we did
not
have. The results were not conclusive, she said, because she and her staff had received little cooperation in gathering data. Even now, affected people claimed they had no rashes. She turned in my direction and pointed to the tie wrapped around my neck.

“It's a hickey!” came from one of the board members, Mrs. Hargrove's son-in-law, I assumed.

Everyone laughed, except Ms. Garcia and me.

Mayor Applebaum called for order.

Ms. Garcia gave more dire warnings about untreated epidemics, drug-resistant illnesses, mutant viruses. And how the government could quarantine the entire village as a health hazard. No one in, no one out.

Again, some listeners fretted. Many looked toward me for the cure. I looked at my watch, wondering how soon we could get out of here. Matt might need help at the vet office. Harris' car might need new upholstery if I didn't get Little Red out of it soon. I hated leaving him in the car, even with the windows cracked, a bowl of water, and a new rawhide chewie. But I couldn't trust him with the cleaning people, and bringing him inside the meeting with me, which was outlawed anyway, made him more of a target for crazy people. Harris' car had tinted windows. He'd made me pull up the hood of my sweatshirt anyway, but Red should be safe. The car was another story.

And I had to talk to Oey. And my mother.

Mayor Applebaum called for the next speaker, another man in a suit, an out-of-town lawyer who wanted permission for his nutcase client to build a new lighthouse on a hill overlooking the bay, right above where the sand was rapidly disappearing. The head of the planning board cited zoning laws, the natural resources chairman referred him to the map of unbuildable wetlands and fragile dunes, Mrs. Ralston had a secretary hand the lawyer a copy of the engineer's beach study that he obviously hadn't listened to, and the village attorney noted that only the federal government could authorize or build a new lighthouse.

The audience laughed again, more cheerfully this time. No disasters, no diseases, just some rich bastard who thought he could build anything, anywhere, simply because he had enough money.

The lawyer shrugged. “I only do what my clients pay me to do. I tried to tell them they were wasting their time.”

Voices shouted out asking who.

Privileged information, the lawyer replied, and he couldn't say if it weren't, because everything had been done electronically. No names, untraceable holding companies, and bank codes only. They did pay on time.

Weird. But I could understand in a way. If you were rich enough to buy that tract of land, you wanted privacy. Ditto if you wanted to build a lighthouse. I'd always thought living in a lighthouse might be ideal, as long as it was attached to the mainland, avoiding the need for boats. Of course, in my daydreams, no shipwrecks, hurricanes, or undermining erosion occurred. Lighthouses were secluded, scenic, important. A writer could have important ideas in a place like that.

Mayor Applebaum consulted the notes Mrs. Ralston handed him and called up the next item on his agenda. I missed the name of the bronzed youngster who stepped to the podium, because my phone vibrated, indicating a text message. I know the signs said to silence all cell phones, but text messages didn't count, did they?

The screen showed a message from Russ, who was monitoring my computer. Several others, including the police chief, also carefully checked their phones, so I knew it had to be bad.

While some of the board members listened to the surfer-type, and some admired or despaired over the tattoos on his bare arms, others read their messages from their laps, under the table.

We'd heard from Deni. He hadn't taken the bribe, or the bait. He hadn't sent his manuscript, just another threat. “T
OO LATE, BITCH.
I
HEARD YOUR MOTHER'S A WITCH.
Y
OU KNOW HOW THEY GET RID OF THEM, DON'T YOU?
B
URN, BABY, BURN.
”

I wanted to jump up and run out of the meeting room. I had to beg my mother not to come north. Not till we found this monster.

Lou leaned forward to tell me, “We're on it. She'll have an agent with her.”

That was not reassuring when someone might be planning to burn up her house or her car. I needed Piet, the fire-damp wizard. I needed the National Guard and a pack of Rottweilers.

Doc Lassiter put a hand on my shoulder. Calm immediately spread from his hand to my racing heart, the way it always did when Doc touched anyone. “She'll be fine. They're tracing the email now. They'll get him this time. Breathe, Willow.”

He was right. No one knew where my mother was, not even me. Like the lawyer and the lighthouse dude. No one could say what plane, what rental car, what state she'd be in. And Harris had Mom's house so wired for security a shadow couldn't get past it. Unless, of course, Susan let in another delivery man, one with a bomb. D
O NOT LET MY COUSIN GO NEAR THE HOUSE,
I sent to Harris.

Next I sent a text to my mother, typing as fast as I could, warning her to beware of unknown messages, strangers, anyone with a match. T
HREATS
, I wrote. S
ERIOUS THREATS ABOUT WITCHES AND BURNINGS.

She sent back: S
TOP LISTENING TO YOUR FATHER.
B
EEN CALLED A LOT WORSE THAN A WITCH
.

I turned and whispered to Lou, “Try to convince her the danger is real and to stay where she is for now. And tell her about Carinne.”

“Me? Hell, no. I don't even know the woman.”

Maybe she'd listen to my father, even if he got things half-assed backward some of the time. He didn't text, and I couldn't step outside to call him, so I sent my mother another message: C
ALL
D
AD.
W
ARNINGS?
A
ND NEWS.

She sent back: A
LREADY HEARD ABOUT THE ENGAGEMENT.
W
HAT COULD BE BETTER?
T
TYL.
D
RIVING.

She would have killed me, driving while talking. But texting? Good grief! I didn't have to wait for Deni to find her. Some highway patrol car would find her in a ditch first.

Doc Lassiter put his hand back on my shoulder.

Right. She had a dog in the car. She wouldn't take chances. Most likely someone else was driving, or she'd pulled over. I'd call her later, her and my father. I put the phone away.

Right now, my attention switched to the high schooler's complaints that the town had nothing to offer its young people. They'd shut down the skatepark and put in a curfew. The community rec center stayed open only a few nights a week now that it was the off-season, and the high school cut back on sports and clubs, to save money.

Too late I realized that Carinne wasn't listening to his speech; she was wheezing, gasping for air like an asthmatic. Oh, lord, a teenager. I'd thought we'd overcome her anguish of “reading” a younger person by channeling it into pictures so the voices in her head quieted. How arrogant of me to think I'd fixed my half sister in half an hour.

How selfish of me not to think about who might be at the meeting and what effect they'd have on Carinne. All I could do now was thrust a pad and pencil at her. She shook her head. “He's not here. He's not here when he's thirty-seven!” She started crying and holding her hands over her ears.

Jimmie appeared too upset or too frightened to help. He'd turned pale and trembly. I turned to Doc. “Do something!”

He put his arms around a sobbing Carinne, and he and Lou led her out of the meeting room. Monteith followed, looking concerned. I would have gone, too, but I had to stay with Jimmie, who appeared too shaken to move.

The kid at the podium said, “She's right. I won't be here when I'm thirty-seven because there are no jobs here, no affordable houses, no future unless I want to wait on tables for tips and collect unemployment in the winter.”

He did not understand. I did, and almost cried. Jimmie had a tear rolling down his cheek, but I did not know if it was for the boy or for Carinne. Then members of the audience started calling suggestions to the teenager.