wobbled to the finish line, it was dark and everybody had gone home, but I still raised my arms in a victory salute and shouted: “I’m a sinner! I mean a whiner! No—a winner—that’s it!” Fade to black.
Poor Coach Rigby. He had no idea what sort of seeds he planted in my overactive imagination.
There was no sign of Nana at breakfast. She did leave me a note.
Gone to a U-pick up the road for strawberries. Eat.
P.S. Snooping is not polite.
Great. What did that mean? I wasn’t tempted to open up that bone closet. The key was gone, and truthfully, even in the light of day, images of what I’d read the night before gave me a pain in my heart. So I studied my morning’s routine, laced up my sneakers and headed out.
As I approached the hill near Poplar Grove, I spotted the limousine. I was a bit sweaty, but my nose was clean. I decided to face the car head on. Maybe there’d be a chance to see in the smoked-glass window. If it was some little old lady, I could forget about the foolishness of Hardly being around these parts.
The chauffeur bodyguard saluted to me. He slowed down. I kept running on my side of the road but he stopped in front of me. He left the car idling, got out, folded his arms, leaned against the door and waited for me to reach him.
My entire Mountie-daughter training told me to keep on going. He was, after all, a stranger. Limousine or no limousine, he could still be a pervert, a murderer, a thief or a kidnapper. Not that he would get much money from my folks seeing as they weren’t exactly rolling in dough.
I stopped and eyed him up and down.
“You lost or something?” I shouted over.
“I’ve got a question for you.”
“Yeah?” I was doing my tough voice. Carolina taught me that voice. It went with the don’t-mess-with-me look. I struck my boxer’s stance and clenched my fists by my side. Corporal Ray, despite my mother’s protests, had insisted on basic boxing lessons. When I was eight. My left hook wasn’t bad.
“How old are you?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I do.”
“Who are you?”
“Long story.”
“Why do you want to know my age?” I sniffed and started to run on the spot.
“Are you Ida Hennigar’s granddaughter?”
“I don’t talk to strangers.”
He laughed. “You already are,” he said with a grin wider than a pumpkin’s. He certainly seemed friendly enough. Then again, that’s how they lure their victims, said a warning voice inside my head.
If only he’d take off those sunglasses. They made him look sinister. Pervert or? Maybe he was Mafia or a Hells Angel, leader of a drug ring. Lots of drugs were smuggled in along the coast. Just last summer Corporal Ray had pored over the newspapers when we were here. Not twenty miles away from Boulder Basin there was a big drug bust.
“A little too close to home for comfort,” he said to my mother and grandmother. “Things weren’t like that when I was a kid.”
“For heaven’s sake,” said Nana. “It’s always been like that! Haven’t I told you about your great-uncle Bob Countaway? Made a fortune as a rum-runner during Prohibition. Yes, everyone knew too, but even the police made the odd visit now and then to oldGordie, the bootlegger your uncle Bob kept well supplied. Yes. So now it’s drugs, and if you ask my opinion alcohol’s just as dangerous in the hands of those who’ve got the sickness.”
My father nodded at her with a grin.
“Did you ever make a trip to old Gordie’s yourself, Ma?”
“Stop your foolishness. You know my blueberry wine’s about the strongest thing I’ve ever poured down my gullet. Even then, only on special occasions, you know that.”
My father winked at me and went back to the paper. All this came rushing back to me as I stood face to face almost—but not in grabbing distance of—the man who could be a drug smuggler. Yes, my O.I. was working just fine that morning. “Get your head out of the clouds,” Corporal Ray always teased.
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