As down home and comfortable as an old pair of sneakers - my kind of town.
Back at the lodge, I detoured to the lake for a dip. Crazy on a May morning, but it certainly knocked any remaining dream cobwebs from my mind. By the time I headed up to the lodge, it was nearly nine. Waiting on the back deck was Emma Walden, the lodge's live-in housekeeper/ cook. Her husband, Owen, takes care of the grounds and buildings. They're both past retirement age and were when they came to work for me. As Emma says, this is their retirement.
"Anyone up yet?" I called.
"I made cinnamon buns."
The smell of Emma's rolls woke guests faster than a dunk in the frigid lake.
"You look like a drowned rat. I hope you're planning on drying off before our guests see you."
I leaned over and squeezed a rivulet from my hair onto her clogs. She snapped her dishtowel at me. I snatched it and quick-dried my shoulder-length curls.
"You know where that towel's been?" she asked.
"No worse than where my hair's been. Has Sammi started work yet?"
"She's here all right. But working?" Emma snorted.
I tried not to sigh too loudly. Sammi Ernst was Emma's part-time assistant, hired two months ago.
"About Sammi, Nadia, we had a problem with the York couple. They didn't mention it until they were checking out, after you left."
Emma explained that they'd complained about Sammi's baby, Destiny. They'd left their kids with their parents, and hadn't appreciated hearing a crying baby on their romantic getaway. I could point out that Destiny rarely cried - Sammi didn't put her down long enough for her to fuss - but I could see the couple's point.
"I know you feel sorry for the girl, Nadia. No job, no man, no one to help with the baby. But that baby is all she cares about. Stella Anderson offered to look after Destiny for free, just because she likes having little ones around, but Sammi won't do it."
"Maybe if I rework Sammi's schedule..."
"Maybe if you fired her pretty little butt - " Emma bit off the remark. "I'm sorry, but it burns me up, seeing you being so nice to her, and how does she repay you? Complains like you're her mother giving her chores."
"She's seventeen. At that age, my work ethic sucked, too. To get decent help from town, I'd need to pay more than ten bucks an hour, so I'm stuck with Sammi."
"We don't need the help. I just hate seeing you pay for nothing. She doesn't appreciate it. Save your charity for someone who does."
"I'll talk to her." I checked my hair. Dry enough for a few more minutes outside. I handed Emma back her towel. "I'm going to check the hot-tub chemicals before I come in."
She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. "Your messages. Mostly regulars, looking to book for summer, and wanting to talk to you directly."
None of the names on the list was my brother's. Not that I really expected Brad to call. Last time I heard from him was December 2002, when he'd wondered whether his little sister had two grand he could borrow. I didn't, but I'd scraped it together anyway. Wired him the cash. Never got so much as a thank-you.
Because Brad never called, Jack used his name when he needed to get in touch with me. It had been four months now since I'd heard from him.
After our joint job with Quinn, I'd realized that Jack himself had been financing it. So I'd refused payment. He insisted I take it and buy the gazebo and hot tub I dreamed of for the lodge. I'd said he could use my share to take me to Egypt, something we'd joked about. To my surprise, he'd agreed. He still wanted me to take some money, but the rest would go toward our trip.
As fall had dragged on, I'd heard from him only once, in November. He said exactly five words. "Everything okay?" and "All right then" when I said it was. No mention of Egypt. No mention of when he'd call again.
In early December, he'd shown up, bringing me the money. Twenty thousand. I took half, for the gazebos, but refused the rest. When I mentioned Egypt, still jokingly, sensing he'd changed his mind, he'd said his schedule was tight and that it might be a while. I said that was fine, I'd wait.
Then, at Christmas, a ten-person hot tub arrived at my door and I knew we weren't going to Egypt.
When he called a couple of weeks later, he'd muttered something about getting a good deal on the tub and we'd "work it out." That was the last I heard from him.
I found Sammi in the kitchen, rocking in a chair she'd dragged in from the front room. The best chair from the front room, I might add. She was cuddling Destiny and crooning to her. Mother and child. A scene to warm the heart... if the mother in question wasn't currently being paid to clean the guest rooms.
I'd let Sammi bring Destiny to her job, even picked up a secondhand playpen. But the baby was never in it. Sammi worked holding Destiny on her hip, which made for very sloppily made beds and crudely chopped vegetables.
With her long blond hair, trim figure, and big violet eyes, Sammi Ernst was the prettiest girl in White Rock. When I walked in, her face was glowing with an inner beauty that would have made Revlon sign her up on the spot. Then she saw me and the light went out.
"I heard we had a complaint," I said.
"Emma couldn't wait to tattle, could she? Mr. and Mrs. Toronto Yuppies abandoned their kids, then bitched 'cause I'm taking care of mine."
"I hear Mrs. Anderson offered to look after Destiny for you."
"That old bag? She's so fucking senile she'd probably put Destiny out with the recycling and feed her milk to the cat."
Inhale. Exhale.
I reached down to pat Destiny on the head. Sammi swatted my hand away.
"That's her soft spot, you know."
"No, I don't know. I don't have kids, as you're quick to remind me. I don't understand babies. But I do understand this business. Whether or not that couple should have complained doesn't matter because the cus tomer - "
" - is always right," she muttered, rolling her eyes. "You take too much of their shit, Nadia. You wouldn't see me letting people walk over me like that."
"No? Maybe you're right. The next time I've just sat down to a meal and a guest demands after-dinner drinks served by the lake, I'll hand them a beer and point them to the path. Then they'll write an online review complaining about the lousy service. After a few of those, our bookings will drop, and I won't be able to keep a housekeeping assistant on the payroll."
She said nothing, but that told me I'd made my point.
"Do you want this job, Sammi?"
"Fuck, yeah. You think I'd take everyone's shit if I didn't need the money?"
"You don't need to take anyone's shit. You could apply for welf - social assistance - until Destiny is old enough to go to school."
She glowered up at me. "No fucking way. I am not winding up like her." From the venom in her voice, I knew she meant her mother. "I'm going to show Destiny how a real mother acts. I'm going to work for a living and look after us."
"All right then, tell me if this would work out..."
I outlined some changes to her schedule, bringing her in later and having her leave before dinner. Most of her hours would be midday, when guests were out.
"That means fewer hours a day, but you'll be working five days instead of four. And if we have a full house, I may need you for serving at dinner hour and cleanup after. You'll need someone to pick up Destiny during that time."
A long pause. Then, "I guess Tess or Kira could..."
"I also want to see Destiny in her playpen now and then. And when I was in Toronto, I saw someone wearing this sling for carrying babies. It would keep your hands free - "
"I can't afford any more stuff."
"I'll buy it. If you want to take it home, you can pay me back. How's that?"
She complained more about accepting "charity" than my other conditions, but eventually we came to an agreement. I prayed it would work out.
In the brochure for the Red Oak Lodge, there are four seasons. "Summer Sizzle" runs mid-June through August. "Fall Foliage" goes until mid-November. Then "Winter Wonderland" runs through
March. The lowest priced one is "Spring Savings," so named because "Dismal, Muddy, and Black-Fly Infested" really doesn't have the same marketing oomph.
Being early May, we were in the "Muddy" section of that season, with the damp chill fading and the black-flies moving in, but slowly. For people wanting a deal or looking for a break after a long winter, May is a decent enough month. On weekdays we were lucky to have any guests, but weekends we usually ran close to capacity. The lodge has a dozen rooms - including mine - so at full occupancy we can host twenty-two. By Friday evening, we had seventeen, enough to keep one elderly couple, one hostess/ guide, and one teen girl busy.
For once, Sammi pulled her weight. She didn't turn into a cleaning dynamo, but she did her "chores" with less complaining and even put Destiny in the playpen for her naps, snapping at me that I'd better not wake her with my "thumping around" or it'd be my own fault if Sammi had to rock her when she should be working.
Even on a staff of three, Sammi was never going to make Employee of the Month. But living out here meant Sammi didn't have a lot of life choices. Having Destiny at sixteen meant no high school diploma. With her family reputation, no one would hire her. Even if they did, there wasn't any day care in town. She couldn't even move out of her mother's home; there were no rental units around. If I could help her make enough money and get enough job experience to leave White Rock, it was the best thing anyone could do for her.
Chapter Three
Quinn e-mailed me Sunday. Just a quick note to apologize again for taking off early and to thank me again for helping him... and to ask whether I'd have time for an IM chat that evening.
I said yes to the chat... and spent the rest of the day mentally preparing for the "Let's just be friends" speech. But it never came. We chatted as we always did. There was a case in the U.S. that week of a man charged after beating to death a guy he'd found raping his girlfriend. Quinn wanted to know if I'd heard about it and what I thought. We talked about that for a while, debating the circumstances and the ethics. Then he asked a few spelunking questions and we got into that, swapping stories until I had to sign off.
So nothing had changed. Maybe "the speech" was still coming. Or maybe he'd decided, since I hadn't seemed disappointed that nothing romantic happened in Toronto, that I was okay sticking with friendship and there was no need to discuss it.
Was I okay with friendship? I did feel a pang of disappointment. Was that because I'd wanted to be seduced? To feel what I had last fall, Quinn's enthusiasm sweeping aside my reservations? To enjoy the passionate, reckless affair I'd imagined?
Or was that pang just bruised ego? Maybe more than that - a slap to a still-tender part bruised when I'd been rejected by friends, family, and lover after I shot Wayne Franco.
But I'd been thinking the same thing about Quinn - that we'd be better off as friends - and it didn't mean there was anything wrong with him. There just wasn't enough of a spark to take the risk. Normally when a potential lover says "let's just be friends," it really means "I don't actually like you that much," and the promised friendship never materializes. Quinn still sought my company, still wanted to chat... and chat and chat.
Maybe it would deepen into more someday, when both of us were ready. For now, I could use a friend more than I could use a lover.
Tuesday morning, I was returning from a walk with our only guests - an elderly couple - and saw Emma on the porch, ostensibly filling the bird feeders. That was Owen's job, meaning she was waiting to talk to me.
"Did you let Sammi go?" she asked after our guests had gone inside.
"What? No. What'd she say?"
"Nothing. She hasn't shown up, and whatever her faults, she's punctual."
My first thought was that she'd messed up her new schedule and thought she had Mondays and Tuesdays off. But before she left Sunday afternoon, she'd double-checked with me on what time to be in today. "Have you called her place yet?"
"Yes, and I got a mouthful of Janie's cussing for my trouble. She hung up before I could even say why I was calling."
"Maybe the baby's sick. You know what Sammi's like. If Destiny's temperature hits a hundred, she's off to the hospital. It would be nice if she called to say she couldn't make it, but I'm sure she'll be here tomorrow."
My elderly guests had forgone the campfire Monday night - in early May, I don't blame them - but they'd helped themselves to the beer and drunk more than I would expect for a lovely pair of schoolteachers in their seventies. Fresh air does that to people. I didn't notice that the beer case was empty until late afternoon. We had only two rooms booked that night, and I wasn't sure either would want the bonfire, but if they did, they wouldn't appreciate a dry one.
The White Rock liquor store closed at six on Tuesdays in the off-season. I got there at five minutes past, just as the manager, Rick Hargrave, was backing out of the parking lot.
When he saw my pickup tear around the corner, mud flying behind me, he pulled back into his spot, opened the store, and gave me a case of beer to be paid for next time I was in town. You don't get that kind of service in a big city.
Before I left, Hargrave mentioned that his daughter, Tess, wanted to hold her eighteenth birthday party out at the lodge next month. Tess was Sammi's best friend, which reminded me that I hadn't heard from my errant employee.
The Ernst place was just around the corner. Technically, I should say the "Ernst house," but that elevated the structure to a status it didn't deserve. For my first six months in White Rock, I thought the Ernst place was deserted. No one could possibly live in a hovel so dilapidated that a rumble of thunder would surely reduce it to toothpicks and dust.
Driving by one day, I'd seen a preteen girl walk out and had assumed the local kids were using the place as a hideout. I'd mentioned this to the grocer, expressing my concern that the roof could fall in and hurt them. When he told me that the girl, Sammi, lived there, I'd walked out without remembering what I'd come for.
I parked on the road, walked up the weed lawn, and rapped at the door. When it opened, the stench of garbage and unwashed dishes nearly made me gag. Janie parked herself in the gap. If she had once possessed an iota of her daughter's beauty, it had long since vanished. Her leathery skin was enough to make me want to slather on SPF 60 every time I so much as sat in a sunny window. Add a lifetime of booze and cigarettes, and Janie Ernst didn't look like she was about to keel over; she looked like she'd risen from the grave.
"What the fuck do you want, cop?"
The words flew out in a hail of booze-drenched spittle. To someone like Janie, the biggest problem with me wasn't the circumstances surrounding my departure from law enforcement, but the fact that I'd been a cop at all.
"Sammi didn't come to work - "
"And now you're her parole officer?"
"I was concerned because she didn't call. May I speak to her, please?"
"May I speak to her, please?" Janie mimicked.
"Whoa, that's good. Taking insult lessons from third graders, Janie?"
"Bitch."
"What you say is what you are. Oh, wait, what's that other one? 'I'm rubber and you're glue. Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.' "
The door hit my hand. I grabbed the edge, holding it fast as I leaned inside.
"Why don't I just come in and talk to Sammi?"
"You got a warrant, cop?"
She threw her weight against the door, catching me off guard. It hit my nose and I jumped back, eyes watering. The door slammed shut.
I stepped off the crumbling cement slab and tried peering through the front window, but grime as thick as a blackout blind blocked my view. A blare of noise from within made me jump. I stepped closer to the door. Gunfire rang out. The television.
I returned to my pickup. Even with the doors closed, I could still hear Janie's TV. I glanced at the house one last time, but there was no sign of Sammi, so I started the engine and pulled away.
When Sammi came back to work, I'd make sure we worked something out. Sure, she w
as smart-mouthed and resentful, but what did I expect? The kid had been raised by dust bunnies.
The next morning, I came in from helping Owen in the boathouse and found Emma stripping the beds, alone.
"Sammi's not here again?" I said.
She shook her head.
"Did she call?"
Another head shake.
Now this was really bugging me. Sammi had said she didn't want to lose her job, then after we'd come to an agreement on better hours, she stopped showing up - giving me just the excuse I needed to fire her. Something was wrong. Time for another run at Janie.
Chapter Four
Twenty minutes later, I was banging on Janie's front door. I didn't expect her to answer - she wasn't known for getting up before noon. But I was reasonably certain babies didn't sleep that late, so Sammi should have been awake.
"Sammi? If you're in there, open up! We need to talk."
I jumped down to the dirt patch in front of the window, a garden that likely hadn't been a garden in fifty years. I rapped on the dirt-encrusted glass.
"Sammi! It's Nadia. Look, I'm not here to chew you out. I just need to know if you're coming back to work."
Silence. I put my ear to the window, but couldn't hear so much as a baby gurgling. I rapped harder.
Nothing. I stalked back to the pickup. As I was getting in, I heard a soft voice behind me.
"She's not there. She's gone."
I turned to see Tess Hargrave. Her face was wan and splotchy, eyes rimmed with red.
"Where is she?" I asked.
Tess cast a nervous glance at the Ernst place. After a series of bounced checks years ago, her dad had stopped serving Janie, so Tess was no more welcome at the hovel than I was, even if she was Sammi's friend.
"Climb in," I said. "Let's grab a coffee."
"I can't. Stock arrived this morning and Dad needs my help. Can I catch up with you later?"
"Lunch?"
She nodded. Again, her gaze flickered toward the Ernst place. "I told Don about it, but he doesn't seem to care."