Cadan hadn’t yet seen a hair of either Ben or Dellen?Santo Kerne’s parents?but his arrival had coincided with Alan Cheston’s and when Cadan brought Alan into the picture about his employment at Adventures Unlimited, Alan said he’d fetch someone at once to see what Cadan was meant to be doing. He’d strode off to do so, after unlocking the front door, letting them both in, and pocketing the keys with the air of a man who knew exactly where his place was in the scheme of things.
The old hotel was as silent as a graveyard. It was cold as well. Cadan shivered?he felt Pooh do likewise on his shoulder?and he waited in the new reception area, where a bulletin board displayed the words “Your Instructors,” along with head shots of the six staff members so far hired. These all pyramided down from a picture of Kerra Kerne, who was identified as “Director of Instruction.”
It was, Cadan thought, a decent picture of Kerra. She was no great beauty?ordinary brown hair, ordinary blue eyes, and stockier than Cadan fancied in a woman?but there was no doubt she was in the best physical condition of any female her age in Casvelyn. It was just unfortunate that her roll of the genetic dice had given Kerra her father’s looks instead of her mother’s. Santo had inherited every one of those, a fact which some might refer to as lucky. Cadan, however, reckoned most blokes didn’t fancy being pretty like Santo. Unless, naturally, one knew how to use it.
“Cade?”
He swung round. Pooh squawked and shifted position.
Kerra had materialized from somewhere. Alan was with her. Cadan knew they were a couple, but he couldn’t reconcile the matter. Kerra was sun and sinew with, unfortunately, tree-trunk ankles. Alan looked like someone who’d take exercise as a last resort and then only if threatened with disembowelment.
A few words among them had sorted things. Although Alan on the surface might have looked like small change, it turned out he was on top of almost all that was going on at the place. So before Cadan knew enough to make a spurious excuse about the delicate condition of his lungs should they ever be exposed to paint fumes, he found himself with drop cloths and a paintbrush in one hand and two gallons of glossy white in the other. Alan made an introduction between Cadan and the project, and that was that.
Four hours later saw Cadan deciding he was owed a break outdoors. Pooh, he noted, had grown ominously silent. Likely the parrot had a headache as well.
The ground was still sopping round the crazy golf course, but Cadan didn’t let that deter him. Guiding his bike, he climbed the slope to hole number one, where he quickly saw that doing a few tabletops just now in this location had been something of a pipe dream. He set his bike to one side, established Pooh on the handlebars, and gave the crazy golf course a closer look.
This wasn’t going to be a simple project. The course looked at least sixty years old. It also looked like something that hadn’t been maintained in the last thirty of those years. This was too bad because otherwise crazy golf could have been a little moneymaker for Adventures Unlimited. On the other hand, this was also a plus because an unmaintained course made it far likelier than otherwise that anyone in the position of making a decision about the future would climb onboard once Cadan laid out his plans. But the idea of laying out plans necessitated having plans, and Cadan wasn’t a having-plans sort of person. So he walked round the first five holes of the course and tried to reckon what needed to be done aside from ripping out miniature windmills, barns, and schoolhouses and filling in the holes.
He was still considering all this when he saw a panda car pulling from St. Mevan Crescent into the car park of the old hotel. The driver?a uniformed constable?got out and went inside. A few minutes later he departed.