Again, a small smile. “No, I don’t imagine he would be. One of the things I’ve learned, when I was in a law firm, and being mayor of a town as small as Braynor, your personnel problems are always your biggest headaches.”
“I don’t know what the protocol might be, but you might want to see whether you can get any help from other law enforcement agencies. And I don’t mean this as a slap at Orville. There may be things going on that are beyond the expertise of any small-town police chief.”
“Well, all I can say is—”
The phone rang. The look on Alice Holland’s face suggested that her heart had stopped. She looked at the phone mounted on the wall next to the door, let it ring once without getting up. Let it ring a second time.
It wasn’t any of my business whether she answered her phone or not, but I couldn’t help watching her while she let it ring.
Then the door burst open and George grabbed the receiver. “Hello?” He only listened a moment, then slammed the phone back down.
“Death to the dyke bitch again?” the mayor asked.
George nodded once.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“All this over a goddamn fucking parade,” Alice Holland said.
20
“HAVE YOU TOLD HIM?” George Holland asked his wife. “About the other calls? This nonstop harassment?”
Braynor mayor Alice Holland sighed and settled back into the couch. “George is very worried about this,” she told me.
“There’s so many freaks living up here, it could be anybody,” George said. “But I tell you who I blame. I blame that crazy redneck son of a bitch Charles Henry for stirring things up with his petition, that’s who I blame. That motherfucking bastard, I’ll never buy so much as a carton of milk in his store again. I don’t care if we have to drive an hour to get our groceries, he won’t be getting a dime from us.”
“I don’t think I can go in there either,” I said, not bothering to explain.
“He has stirred things up,” Alice said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s him who’s been calling here.”
“Is it the same person every time, or different callers?” I asked.
George said, “I think there’s a couple of them, but I can’t be sure. Now, we just hang up soon as we know what kind of call it is. And I always answer the phone now.”
“What kind of threats?”
Alice Holland, very matter-of-factly, said, “Sometimes, they just say I should die. Other times they call me a lesbian, ask me the name of my girlfriend. One gentleman offered to use a lit stick of dynamite on me in a very personal manner.”
George, seething, looked ready to kill somebody.
“So, Mr. Walker,” Alice said, “I would have to say I share your sense of foreboding, that there’s something in the air, something not very good.”
“I think you should cancel the parade,” I said.
Alice Holland considered that for a moment. “I don’t like caving. Although it would be nice if Mr. Lethbridge would offer to back out. I wouldn’t ask him to, but it would be worth pointing out the risks.”
For a moment I’d forgotten the name. Then I remembered the story in The Braynor Times. Stuart Lethbridge, head of the Fifty Lakes Gay and Lesbian Coalition.
George said, “The more risk, the less likely he’d be to pull out. It’s like he wants something to happen, so he can be a martyr.”
Mayor Holland nodded. “I suspect there’s some truth to that. Any other suggestions, Mr. Walker?”
“I have a friend coming up tomorrow. He might have some ideas. And like I said earlier, you might want to make some calls to other agencies, see if you can get Orville some help.”
She nodded, then stood up. This, I quickly understood, was my invitation to leave.
“Keep in touch,” the mayor said. “But don’t be surprised if we don’t always answer the phone.”
The morning of my fourth day at Denny’s Cabins, I was up early, and when I emerged from my cabin to head over to Dad’s for breakfast, I spotted Bob Spooner and diaper magnate Leonard Colebert getting ready to go hiking. I was guessing Bob had run out of ways to say no to him.
“Thing is,” he said to me quietly while Leonard went back into his cabin for another water bottle to tuck into his backpack, “he’s not that bad a guy, once you get past his extremely annoying personality.”
“I saw the mayor last night,” I said to Leonard when he came back out with a couple of bottles of Evian in his hands. “She doesn’t seem all that fired up about your resort proposal. She seems to think it’s a bit over the top.”