Crap, he thought, crap, crap, crap. He caught the gleam in Hildy’s eye. She was a savvy mayor, knew her people, her politics, and didn’t suffer fools.
He’d better not make a fool out of himself at the town hall.
He walked to the front of the room, scanned the few dozen faces of those who’d bothered to show up.
“I’m Reed Quartermaine, formerly a detective with the Portland police department.”
“Why ‘formerly’?” somebody called out. “You get fired?”
“No, ma’am. I don’t think Mayor Intz or the town council would’ve offered me the job if I had. I guess the best way to say it is, like a lot of people I know in Portland, I spent some time in the summer on the island. I liked it here.”
“Summer’s one thing,” someone else shouted. “Winter’s another.”
“I found that out.” He added a smile with it. “I bought a snowplow from Cyrus at Island Hardware and Paints, and I learned how to use it. I bought a house on the island last fall, when I was here for a couple weeks, because I remembered the house from when I was a kid, and because when I saw it again, when I went inside it, I knew it was the one. I’d been looking for a home for a while, and I found it on the island, in that house.”
“The Dorchet place is a lot of house for a single man.” A woman with steel-gray hair wound in a braid eyed him more than a little dubiously while she continued to knit something out of bright green yarn.
“Yes, ma’am. I’m working on finding enough furniture so it doesn’t echo. A lot of you don’t know me, but I’m around. Chief Wickett’s showing me the ropes, and when he leaves, I’m going to continue his open-door policy. I’m going to do my best for you. This is my home now. You’re my neighbors. As chief of police, I’m sworn to serve and protect you and this island. That’s what I’m going to do.”
He started to go back to his seat, stopped when a pudgy guy with a gray-speckled beard stood up in the front row.
“You’re cozied up with CiCi Lennon, aren’t you?”
“If you mean that in a romantic sense, I can only say: I wish.”
The answer brought some laughter, and gave Reed enough time to flip through his mental files and identify the questioner. John Pryor, he recalled—year-rounder, plumber, owned a couple of summer rentals with his brother.
“It seems to me you wouldn’t have this job if CiCi hadn’t pushed you for it.”
“Now just one minute,” Hildy began, but Reed held up a hand.
“It’s okay, Mayor. It’s a fair enough question. It’s true I wouldn’t have known about the job or the house coming up for sale if CiCi hadn’t told me. I’m grateful she did, so I had a shot at both.”
“You got shot back in Portland. Maybe you figure being chief of police here’s going to give you a safe, easy ride.”
Mutters rose up, disapproving ones, and Pryor’s face only hardened.
“It’s not about me getting a safe, easy ride, John. It’s about doing my duty, about ensuring a safe ride for the people who live here, for the people who come here during the season to fill the hotels and B&Bs. You and your brother—that’s Mark, isn’t it?—own one of those B&Bs. You’ve got a nice place,” Reed added. “If you have any trouble after March, you give me a call. Meanwhile, if you’ve got any more questions for me, we can head over to Drink Up after the meeting. I’ll buy you a beer.”
*
Pryor didn’t take him up on the beer, but others did throughout January, including his four year-round deputies, his dispatcher, and two of the three part-time deputies who came on from June through September. The third spent six weeks every winter on Saint Lucia.
His only sticky beer came with the sole female deputy. Matty Stevenson had served four years in the Army, put in three years with Boston PD before moving back to the island where she’d been born. She’d taken another eighteen months to work as full-time caregiver to her mother, a widow, when her mother contracted breast cancer, before becoming the first female full-time deputy on the island force. She’d served as deputy for nine years.
Her mother, nine years a cancer survivor, owned and operated a seasonal island gift shop.
Matty sat across from him at a two-top, her hair short, straight, ashy blond, her eyes blue and hard. She wore a flannel shirt, brown wool trousers, and Wolverine boots.
He’d done his research, which was as much a matter of talking to people as reading her file. So he knew, after an angry marriage and divorce, she’d “taken up with” or “started seeing” longtime bachelor John Pryor.
He didn’t have to do any research to glean she wasn’t particularly pleased with her new, incoming boss.
He decided to play it straight and to the point.
“You’re pissed they’re bringing me in as chief.”
“They snuck you in from the outside. I’ve got close to ten years on the island force. Nobody so much as asked if I wanted the job.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Doesn’t make a damn bit of difference now.”
“I’m asking you,” he repeated. “I’m not chief yet.”
“You’ve got the contract.”
“Yeah. I’m still asking you. You’ve got four years military, a dozen years with the police, and a long time on the island. You’re probably more qualified than me.”
She sat back from her beer, folded her arms over her chest. “I am more qualified.”
“Why do you figure they didn’t offer you the job?”
“You’re male. You took a couple bullets. You’re one of the heroes of the DownEast.”
He shrugged. “All that’s fact—except hero’s a stupid word for what happened that night. You served in Iraq. You’ve got a Purple Heart. Hero’s not a stupid word for that. I’m male,” he repeated. “Are you telling me you think they passed you over because you’re not?”
She opened her mouth. Shut it. Picked up her beer and drank. “I want to say yes. I want to because they never gave us a heads-up. The chief never let us know he planned to retire until it was a done deal. I went at Hildy about it, too, went right at her. I dated her brother when we were in high school, goddamn it.”
She drank again. “But I can’t say yes because I’m not a liar.”
“Then why?”
“You already know why.”
“I don’t know what you think.”
“I’ve got a temper. I got written up a few times—in the Army, in Boston, and here, too. Not in the last couple years. Not since I got rid of the asshole I was stupid enough to marry. I freaking meditate every morning now.”
He stopped himself from smiling, only nodded. “Does it work?”
Now she shrugged. “Most of the time.”
“Good to hear. I don’t care how you button your shirt.”
She smirked at him. “This is a man’s shirt.”
“Don’t care. Other than the chief, who’s leaving, you’ve got more time as a cop than any of the other deputies. I’m going to need to depend on you, and I’m going to need you to give me a chance before you write me off as a dumbass off-islander.”
“What if that’s my conclusion after I give you a chance?”
“Then I won’t last long as chief.”
She considered. “That’s fair.”
“Okay. One more thing? If I need a plumber and call John Pryor, is he going to fuck with me?”
Now she snorted. “He shouldn’t have given you grief at the meeting.”
“It wasn’t that much grief.”
“He shouldn’t have anyway. Makes us both look like assholes. And bringing CiCi into it made him look like an even bigger asshole. The answer’s no. He takes too much pride in his work.”
“Also good to know.”
*
Thinking of CiCi, he drove over to her house on his next day off. When she didn’t answer, he walked around, as he often did, to her studio.
He could see the art through the glass, but not the artist.
He felt a little tug of worry, told himself it was just the cop always looking for worst-case, but he walked around to the patio. He’d try the door, he thought, just step in and call out.
Then he spotted the woman sitting on the rocks on the snowy beach.
He made his way down, enjoying the slap of the wind, the sound of the water, and the look of it. As hard a winter blue as the sky overhead.
She heard him, turned her head. That face, he thought. That instant sucker punch in the chest.