The Mysterious Disappearance of the Reluctant Book Fairy (6 page)

Soon enough—especially with carefully worded press releases distributed to carefully chosen media outlets—all of the major news networks from Seattle made the trek out to Whidbey Island. The national news, NPR, PBS, and—
mirabile dictu
—Anderson Cooper himself picked up on the story and hastily descended upon little Langley. Within very little time at all, every bed and breakfast in a twenty mile radius of Second Street was taking reservations one year in advance while the Inn at Langley—long ago listed as one of the ten most romantic places in America to kiss one's beloved—had no difficulty at all filling its extremely pricey water-viewing rooms rain or shine. Coffee houses, cafes, the village pub, three wine tasting venues, and Langley's two restaurants saw their cash registers fill quickly and so often that bank runs had to be made twice daily just to relieve the enterprises of cash. Gift shops, boutiques, and the village antiques store were regularly emptied of goods, and the four art galleries could not even keep up with the demand for what the island artists had found nearly impossible to sell for decades. “Business is booming” did not come remotely close to describing what happened to the village. The Gold Rush had been reborn on Whidbey Island.

Naturally, there were difficulties associated with this level of success, especially as the hooha was related only to the talent, the endeavors, and the willingness to be exploited of a single woman. Additionally, the increase in traffic was not universally celebrated, and the elevation of noise was not embraced. The newly born need for reservations at eateries— even at the pizzeria!—was soon deplored. One could barely move through the aisles of the thrift shop, for heaven's sake, because so many people “just wanted to take a bit of Langley home with me” and after having handed over up to—as we have seen—$625 to experience the great mother of all battle scenes in
The Far Pavilions
, some individuals were not left with the funds to purchase a souvenir more costly than a water glass sold at the thrift store.

Hours at Epic! had to be extended to service the hordes. Interviews had to be granted to massage the egos of important journalists so as to promote positive stories which would, in turn, promote more business. YouTube videos, Twitter feeds, Facebook likes, Instagram selfies—“Here I am ready to set off to Pemberley!”—created a global sensation. Within ten months Annapurna began to feel much like the sorcerer's apprentice, chopping wildly at those bucket-carrying brooms that were flooding the floors of his master's workshop.

For her part, Mildred began to have uneasy feelings about this venture she'd hit upon. Admittedly, it was a howling success. Every one of the 501c's of which she was chief fundraiser was swimming in money. But despite the obdurate nature of her personality when she hit upon a surefire money-making idea as she'd done when she'd learned of Annapurna's talents, she was not a heartless woman. She could see that Annapurna was looking rather rough around the edges as the months wore on. The calls upon the gifted woman's time had become such that eating regularly scheduled nutritious meals had morphed into eating peanut M&M's or not eating at all, while sleeping more than four hours a night was a thing of the past. As to such simple luxuries as moderately regular visits to the salon where her hair had once been cut … This was relegated to fond memory. Her presence was needed at Epic! to speed paying customers on their journeys and that was that. Anything less and a riot could easily ensue. With only two policemen in town to deal with trouble, there was little choice but to keep on keeping on, as they say.

It was Monie Reardon Pillerton who decided things had reached critical mass, this conclusion having been prompted one afternoon by her realization that only a ninety-minute wait would get her into the chocolate and gelato shop because of the hoards lined up outside. In that shop, the purchase of two scoops of coconut gelato in a sugar cone was the price Monie had agreed to pay her youngest two children for submitting themselves to a much-needed dental cleaning. The children's subsequent howls of protest—in spite of her apologies and her sworn promise to drive seven miles to the nearest grocery store and purchase each of them a Dove bar— made her firm of purpose. Something had to be done and when the next day she also had a glimpse of poor, haggard Annapurna for the first time in three months, she swore she was the person to do it.

She lay in wait the following morning. When she saw Mildred Banfry coming up the street from the direction of the post office, heading toward Epic! and another day of raking in the dough, she set upon her. She quickly and efficiently strong-armed that individual into the women's rest room at Useless Bay Coffee House, and it must be said that Mildred— seeing what was coming and knowing, at heart, the truth of whatever Monie was about to say—didn't raise a voice in protest. There was no “Unhand me, woman!” on her part because Monie Reardon Pillerton's hissed words were, “It's time you took a seriously long
look
at her, you cow.”

Mildred took no offense although she didn't embrace being called a cow. She knew that
her
referred to Annapurna and, as we have noted, she had
already
taken a look at Annapurna. Mildred had endured more than one sleepless night worrying about her Epic! partner, and she'd spent the great majority of those slumberless hours trying to work out what could be done to improve the conditions that were dominating Annapurna's present life. She'd not gotten much further than
Could someone else be taught this talent?
, however. So she was more than willing not only to forgive the soubriquet with which she'd been addressed but also to exchange ideas on what could be done to get things back under control and to improve Annapurna's health so that their business could continue to prosper albeit with a slightly scaled back nature.

“
That
ship has sailed,” Monie announced tartly. “If you think you can say ‘sorry folks but we're only doing eight journeys a day' from now on, you're wackier than you look.”

Mildred, determined not to be sidelined by slings and arrows of outrageous anything, took a breath and said, “Perhaps a holiday …? There's that spa at the Tulalip casino over town. I've never been—can you see me at a spa? Ha ha—but a few days there, and she'll be right as rain.”

“And then what?” Monie Reardon Pillerton demanded. “
I'll
tell you then what: It starts all over again. And do you really expect no one to follow her over there to that casino? Someone shows up in Langley desperate to … I don't know … hunt the hound of the Baskervilles—”

Not a bad suggestion
, Mildred thought.
And a
very
good replacement for the occasional elderly woman wishing to experience the sleuthing of those terminal dullards Poirot and Marple. No overt violence in Sherlock Holmes and certainly no sex to offend—

“
Are
you listening to me, Mildred?”

“Of course, of course,” Mildred told her. She couldn't, she reassured herself, help it if her mind went commercial so easily. It was how she was wired. “You're saying she'd be followed.”

“By smart, phone-wielding, wannabe travelers eager to post selfies online. Me and Annapurna in Langley. Me and Annapurna in the ferry line. Me and Annapurna on the ferry. Me and Annapurna waiting for our massages at Tulalip Spa. And, oh, while you're waiting to be called for your massage, Annapurna, couldn't you just send me to Venice to watch that little gnome or whatever she was knife the poor narrator who
only
wants his little daughter to come back to life?”

“
Don't Look Now
?” Mildred said. “That could be a fine replacement for that insipid
Pray, Eat, Vomit
or whatever it's called. You know the book I mean, I'll wager. Whatsername traveling to exotic places to mend her broken heart and incidentally meet the next man to break it. Puhleez.”

“Stop it! We're talking about Annapurna. We're talking about her having a life. We're talking about
saving
her life, which isn't going to happen if you can't get your head out of the cash register for a minute.”

But the sad truth was, with all the very best intentions in the world, Mildred Banfry could not do this. It wasn't long into their abortive conversation—just about the time that a woman in grave need began to bang imperiously upon the rest room's door—that Monie Reardon Pillerton recognized this. She also recognized her own responsibility in what had befallen not only her old friend but also the entire village. Had she not begged, cajoled, inveigled, and whatevered Annapurna into giving her a few minutes with Max de Winter and the eternally unnamed narrator, none of this would have happened. Thus she knew it was up to her to unhappen it in whatever manner she could.

Monie decided that only something like the FBI's witness protection program would do, providing Annapurna with a new identity in a place far, far, away from Whidbey Island. Only if Annapurna vanished into thin air could Langley and all of South Whidbey actually go back to the quiet, rural, lovely little place it once had been. Making this happen wouldn't be easy, but it also wouldn't be impossible. There were a billion and one places into which Annapurna could disappear: from Boseman, Montana, to Bangladesh. All Monie needed was the dark of night and Annapurna's cooperation.

This last, alas, was not to be. While Annapurna was fully on board with Monie's conclusion that the wild success of Epic! was going to do her in, she was not about to begin life all over again, a stranger in a strange land. Her family was here—“You never see them!” did not move her—and her friends were here—“I'm the only friend you have!” did not reassure her of her ability to establish social connections elsewhere—and once Annapurna had made these declarations and accompanied them with a gentle but pointed reminder of “Let's not forget how this all began,” Monie knew she had to come up with another plan.

One cannot, as it is said, put the genie back into the bottle, although Monie and Annapurna did try, once Mildred agreed to the plan, of course. But they quickly discovered that a reduction in hours did not soothe the savage breasts of those who wished to experience the stillsuits and the sand worms of
Dune
, and closing for a day of rest did
not
please a particularly insistent group of elderly women with great sympathy for Miss Havisham, who were not to be denied since they'd traveled to Whidbey all the way from Fort Lauderdale on what they declared to be an exorbitantly priced excursion. These among others
would
have their way, and if their way was denied … well, the owners of Epic! knew all about AARP's history of successful litigation based on false advertising, didn't they?

In short, Monie and Annapurna learned that she couldn't go, she couldn't stay, and she couldn't have a moment to herself. Which meant she would either die with her metaphorical boots on—although Annapurna was given to wearing only sandals due to bad feet in need of surgical correction— or she was going to have to disappear. And since she refused to disappear into regions unknown to her, she was going to have to do it right there on Whidbey Island, if only Monie could figure out a way to make this happen.

It came to her, like a bolt from Zeus, one evening in the First Street Langley Tasting Room, where she and Dwayne Pillerton had gone for the one-date-night-each-month that was supposed to keep them romantically charged, attuned to each other, desirous of each other's tired body, and all the rest. Mostly, at the end of each day and particularly on their date nights, they just wanted to sleep. But they knew the cost of not tending to the garden of their marriage and while each secretly hoped the other would cancel the date night, neither ever did.

First Street Langley Tasting Room was teeming with people. Monie and Dwayne huddled over their table. This was the infuriating size of a bottle cap, one of twenty replacements for the once reasonably sized café tables that had occupied the space prior to the tasting room's wild increase in custom. Dwayne made sad note of how things had radically changed in the little village they loved, and Monie told him then and there that she intended to change things back to what they once had been.

She didn't need to guard her words or the volume at which she spoke them. Customers packed the wine bar cheek to jowl and elbow to elbow, and the noise was such that only a near shout sufficed to make oneself heard. She could tell that Dwayne wasn't attending to her, and she couldn't blame him. Everyone around them was exclaiming over the magical journeys they'd recently taken, and they were hard to ignore. The air was filled with
Make her do Sergeant Havers meets Salvatore Lo Bianco! … Try that scene where Mariko sneaks into his room in the dead of night! … She'd do Tommy and Tuppence, wouldn't she? … When Albert Campion realizes that he loves Amanda, my heart totally swooned!
, all of it underscoring the veritable monster that had been created in the village.

Dwayne knew this was all due to Epic!, of course. What he didn't know was Monie's part in creating the monster. She preferred it this way as she felt guilty enough already without having her husband discover that she'd been inside Max de Winter's hotel room during his morning ablutions, no matter how innocent her intentions. Dwayne was, after all, a man dedicated to all things concrete. Not for him was the world of imagination which, as he'd been taught at the knees of his Baptist mother, was the devil's own workshop and best avoided.

She said to him, “We've got to get Annapurna away from Langley. This whole Epic! enterprise is going to kill her.”

“Monroe's a nice town,” was his sage advice. “And it's got a Lowe's.”

Monie felt her spirits sink. Monroe? What on earth was he thinking? There was no there there, and even if there had been, did he really expect that a suburb within an hour's drive of the ferry to Whidbey Island was going to suffice? And anyway, she wasn't
talking
about Annapurna's leaving Whidbey. Annapurna had said she wouldn't go. Which was what Monie next asserted.