Hiss And Tell

3

Since it was a work night, Sunny couldn’t stay out late to help Will figure out how to deal with this latest political curveball. By the time she got Mrs. Martinson home, it was just about time for bed. Sunny arrived at her house to see her father watching the late news.

“Somehow, Will’s speech didn’t make it into the national newscast.” Mike grinned at her. “How did it go?”

“As far as the speech went, that was pretty good. But afterward . . .” She recounted what happened with Frank Nesbit’s surprise visit.

“Not wanting to steal Will’s thunder? Of course he did.” Mike frowned. “And Nesbit’s shoveled enough happy horseflop with the Kingsburys to know damn well this isn’t the plum job he’s making it out to be.”

Sunny nodded. “Will already figured out it’s a heads-Nesbit-wins, tails-Will-loses situation. And it will keep him stuck in Wilawiport instead of campaigning.”

That got a deeper scowl out of Mike. “Just means we’ll have to pull up our socks and work all the harder to get the word out. Is Will taking it okay?”

“He knew from the start what he was getting into,” Sunny said. “And we all knew the sheriff wasn’t going to make it any easier.” She looked down. “I’d better get out of this outfit and into bed.”

She’d already spotted Shadow making a slow circle around her, watching intently. It wasn’t often that Sunny wore nylons, and she wanted to get safely out of reach before Shadow’s nosiness overcame his usual caution. Cat claws and pantyhose did not make a good combination.

Up in her room, she quickly changed into pjs. Shadow shouldered the door open and came in, looking relieved to find her back to normal.

Sunny sat on the floor, and Shadow crawled into her lap, arranging himself for a good petting.

“Yeah,” Sunny told him, “life would be so much easier if all any of us needed was a good belly scratch.”

*

The next morning Sunny breakfasted with her dad, who was already dressed for his daily hike. “Going up to outlet-land to walk in the air conditioning,” he said. “The weather guy last night said to expect some more hot air,” Mike winked. “He didn’t say whether to expect it from Will, Frank Nesbit, or any of the Kingsburys.”

Whatever the cause, the prediction was right. The air felt unseasonably warm as Sunny walked out to her Wrangler for the ride into town.

Monday-morning traffic flowed more freely than it had on the weekend. At least all the people visiting on Saturday and Sunday excursions had gone home. But Sunny saw plenty of vehicles with out-of-state plates, lazing along, enjoying the scenery—and clogging the roads. Considering her line of work, boosting tourism and booking accommodations at the Maine Adventure X-perience, Sunny realized that the waves of tourists were partly her doing. Obviously, not all—there were things like great scenery, discount goods in the outlets, and a state tourism bureau involved. But her promotional copy and the time and effort she put into the website made a contribution, too. So in a way, one could argue that the traffic-laden roads were a testament to her success.

Be interesting to use that as an excuse if I’m late, Sunny thought.

Either way, she beat the clock into the office, fired up the computer, and started checking e-mail. A few minutes later, Nancy the summer intern arrived and started a pot of coffee. Nancy was supposed to have been working on the local paper but had found publicity and promotional work more interesting than the nuts and bolts of journalism. Sunny didn’t necessarily agree with that herself, but having an assistant web lackey around had made life a lot easier—she’d miss Nancy when the girl returned to school in a few weeks. For now, though, they divvied up the morning’s tasks and set to work.

Around eleven o’clock, they had a real surprise when their boss, Oliver Barnstable, also showed up. Ollie was a local boy who’d left town to make good, then came back to spread his money around his old hometown. The MAX office wasn’t just about tourism, it also served as home base for a variety of his mysterious enterprises. The whole back wall of the office was lined with locked file cabinets containing all the dealings of Ollie’s mini-empire.

“Looking good, Ollie.” Sunny’s compliment was genuine as Ollie maneuvered inside with his walker. Although he was still undergoing in-patient rehab for his broken leg at a facility up near Levett, Ollie had wangled taking a few hours a week off-site, to take care of business. The rehab was doing him a world of good—he was svelter, his eyes were clearer, and his temper was much more peaceful.

Just then, Ollie bumped his walker into the edge of a visitor’s chair and let rip with an expletive.

Well, comparatively more peaceful, Sunny amended. But really, altogether, her boss was much improved from the irascible guy who’d hired her, the one who’d earned himself the nickname of “Ollie the Barnacle.” Sunny suspected that was due to Elsa Hogue, an occupational therapist who had taken more than a professional interest in her patient.

Ollie gave Nancy a key and instructions to open one of the back file cabinets, and he soon had the contents of a folder spread out on a desk, reading them over.

They all worked in silence until an actual visitor arrived in the form of Will Price.

“How goes the campaign?” Ollie asked in the tone of someone with a vested interest. He’d surprised Sunny—and Will, too—by offering to switch his support from sheriff Nesbit to Will’s insurgent candidacy.

“Just dandy.” Will didn’t even try to keep the disgust out of his voice. “I just wasted my whole morning on what looks to be an enormous time-suck.” As Will explained the assignment Nesbit had stuck him with, Ollie’s eyebrows drew together.

“Clever, pushing you off to the sidelines,” Ollie said.

“No kidding!” Will burst out. “I was just up on Neal’s Neck, talking with the head of Kingsbury’s private security, a guy named Lee Trehearne. To put it as nicely as possible, the guy was patronizing. Besides his own guys, he has a detachment of Maine state troopers—the Senator still has pull—plus executive protection details from two other state police forces covering governors Lem and Tom. The way they see it, the contribution of local law enforcement lies in traffic control. I might as well have been assigned to be a school crossing guard.”

“Got to hand it to old Frank.” Ollie shook his head, still admiring. “He’s good at this stuff.”

Under the circumstances, Sunny felt it was only fair of her to take Will out to lunch to lick his wounds. But then another visitor arrived—Ken Howell, the editor, publisher, printer, and pretty much everything else on the local paper, the Harbor Courier.

Sunny assumed he was there for intern Nancy, but instead Ken came straight to Sunny’s desk. “Back when you first came back to town and talked to me about a newspaper job, didn’t you mention you could handle a camera?”

Sunny wondered where he was going with this, but nodded. “I was always pretty good, and after some papers began firing their whole photographic departments and expecting the reporters to shoot pictures, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look ahead. So I took classes in photography and media—not that it saved my job.” Even though it happened more than a year ago, it still irked Sunny that she’d gotten laid off while on leave taking care of her dad.

“Here’s the situation,” Ken said. “My regular photographer is away on vacation, and his backup managed to break an arm using a hand winch to pull a boat onto its trailer. There’s a press conference this afternoon on Neal’s Neck about the Kingsbury-de Kruk wedding.”

“Yeah, we’ve been hearing a lot about that.” Will still looked disgusted.

“I heard about what Nesbit pulled, and I’m sorry.” Ken’s long, bony face was serious. He was another member of the Kittery Harbor group backing Will. “But we knew he wasn’t just going to hand the keys over to you. You’ll have to pick your appearances for maximum effect—”

“And hope a picture of me directing traffic doesn’t turn up on TV or in a paper,” Will finished for him.

“Not in my paper,” Ken assured him. “At this point, I’m wondering if I’ll get any pictures at all. It’s one thing to cover an event with pictures and interview people later. But this is supposed to be a Q and A, and it’s kind of hard to ask questions while staring through a viewfinder. Can you help me out, Sunny?”

Sunny glanced over at Ollie, and so did Ken. “Can you spare her for a while?” he asked Ollie.

“I can handle things,” Nancy eagerly volunteered.

“You weren’t planning to strip down the computers and polish the insides—anything like that, were you?” Ollie asked Sunny.

Smiling, she shook her head. “Not for another couple of weeks at least. Besides, I won’t be that far away, and Nancy can always call my cell if there are any problems.”

Sunny was trying to play it cool, but she could feel her pulse starting to race. Much as she tried to convince herself that she’d closed the book on her journalism career, she was a reporter at heart. If she had a chance of making a living as a journalist, even on a tiny local operation like the Courier, she’d bag her job at MAX in a heartbeat.

But as Ken had explained, the job just wasn’t there. She’d thought at first he’d just been threatened by the idea of having a big-city reporter trying to horn in on his baby, but the honest fact was he was using print jobs on his presses, doing circulars for local stores and such, to keep the newspaper afloat.

Sometimes Sunny wondered if she’d made a mistake, seeking a career in a dying field. Then someone offered her a chance to go to a press conference, and she was immediately all fired up.

“Did I ever mention that I met Augustus de Kruk once?” she said.

Ollie asked what everyone else was thinking. “How did you get through to a big-bucks guy like de Kruk?”

“Well, maybe ‘met’ is pushing it a little,” Sunny admitted. “I was in the same room with him and about ninety other journalists once, when he talked about his latest building project.”

“Did anyone call him Emperor Augustus?” Ken was in full interview mode now.

“Not to his face. But from what I saw, the nickname suits him. He was pretty darn autocratic. No questions. It was a case of get into the room, take down what he had to say, and get out. I got the impression he wouldn’t bother even having a conversation with anyone who has less than a nine-figure fortune.”

That widened Nancy’s eyes. Ollie cleared his throat. “He’s a touchy old goat.”

Sunny laughed. “Like with his name. He tells everybody ‘de Kruk’ rhymes with ‘truck.’ It drives him crazy if anyone pronounces it ‘crook.’ I worked on a story about when Augustus tried to sue a little bar in Brooklyn out of existence, claiming they were using his name—and the wrong pronunciation. Turns out the place had been founded more than a century and a half ago by a distant ancestor who did pronounce his name ‘de Crook.’” Sunny grinned. “Augustus lost that one. The place wound up with landmark status because Walt Whitman used to drink there.”

“That’s great stuff,” Ken said enthusiastically, then paused. “Not that we could use it in this story.”

“Hey, I’d be happy just doing the pictures.” Sunny turned to look at Ollie. “If it’s okay with you.”

“Who am I to stand in the way of American journalism?” Ollie sighed and leaned back in his chair. Then he came forward again. “And if you get any more de Kruk stories, I’d love to hear them.”

“You’ll probably see more of the Kingsbury compound than I’ll ever get to,” Will complained.

*

So, not too much later that day, Sunny sat in the backseat of Ken’s old Dodge, fiddling with a freshly minted press pass and making adjustments to a camera that was probably even older than the car.

“They probably aren’t going to announce anything very important,” Ken said, loading an extra supply of batteries from a box on the car seat into his jacket pocket. Sunny knew about that from the older reporters she’d worked with, batteries had been the life’s blood for the all-important recorder. She’d used a rechargeable minidisk recorder herself, but Ken was more old school. “Probably they want to establish some ground rules, keep us at arm’s length while they relax before the wedding. I’m told everybody in the family has turned up already.”

“Will mentioned the Senator and both governors would be there,” Sunny told him. “And we saw Caleb Kingsbury’s yacht sailing by on Saturday.”

“There you go.” Ken had to pay a little attention to his driving. They’d taken the coast road, which made for a very scenic—albeit sometimes demanding—drive, as the highway hugged the rocky shores. In any event, Sunny wasn’t in a position to enjoy the scenery as she tried to familiarize herself with the equipment.

By the time she finally looked up, they had reached the outskirts of Wilawiport, a prosperous town, and found themselves at the end of a long parade of various news vehicles.

“Looks like the whole gang is here,” Sunny said when she spotted microwave masts on several of the vans ahead of them. “The networks, as well as the local affiliates, are getting into the act.”

“That’s what happens on a slow news day,” Ken said. “But I don’t intend to let them slow me down.” The public road ended at a sawhorse barrier with the notice, NO TRAFFIC BEYOND THIS POINT, and a couple of Maine state troopers nearby to back up the message. Their blue gray uniforms with the black pocket flaps were unmistakable—not to mention the black Mountie hats they wore. Ken made a turn onto a side street. “Figured this would happen. That’s why I called ahead to a pal in the area.”

He pulled into a driveway and parked his car a few blocks away from the beginning of the private road that led onto Neal’s Neck. Lugging their equipment, Sunny and Ken approached the official roadblock on foot. As they came to the last intersection, Sunny spotted a very harassed-looking Ben Semple trying without much success to unsnarl the traffic.

A beefy-looking trooper waved them down, checked their credentials, and even took a cursory glance inside Sunny’s camera bag. Finding nothing more lethal than a couple of extra lenses, he let them in.

“Pushing things a little, aren’t they?” Sunny looked from the barrier to the last two houses facing the public road. “They’ve cut off access to both of their neighbors here.”

“Those aren’t neighbors. The Kingsburys bought both those places in order to keep prying eyes at bay. They also serve as extra guest quarters when a lot of people are visiting the property,” Ken explained, politely stepping aside as a pair of young women dressed in about as little as Robin Lory had worn on Ben Semple’s boat emerged from one of the houses and strolled ahead of them. “From what I hear, today’s get-together is supposed to introduce the families and the members of the wedding party to one another.”

“How nice for them.” Sunny watched the girls go off to the left while a guy in a dark Windbreaker with “Security” in large white letters on the back turned to watch them. As Ken and Sunny approached, however, the security guy directed them down a path to the right.

Sunny glanced over her shoulder as she followed Ken. Mr. Security was still checking the girls out.

They joined a growing crowd of newspeople facing an improvised outdoor stage, and Sunny began worming her way through the assembled camera people and press photographers to find a decent vantage point.

As it turned out, she really didn’t have to kill herself. There wasn’t much worth photographing. Ken had predicted correctly, this was just a preliminary press conference, conducted by Fiona Ormond. No famous—or even semi-famous—Kingsbury faces were in attendance. Fiona repeated several times in different ways that this was just a social gathering, a chance for the families to spend time together well in advance of the wedding itself. In spite of her attempt to downplay the visit, she also tried to lay down some press ground rules, stressing the security arrangements around the nuptials both now and months in the future.

Either they’re afraid of party crashers or paparazzi, Sunny thought as she nevertheless dutifully shot various angles of Fiona as she spoke on the stage, turning a bit to catch some of the cameras and press people as well. For Ken’s purposes, just having all these media people converging on the county would make for a good story. Asking a question would just be icing on the cake.

But Ken did speak up, making a rather pointed inquiry about how many local businesses would be contributing to the upcoming nuptials. Good one, Sunny thought, fighting her way around to get a picture of Ken as Fiona launched into a speech similar to the one Sunny had already heard her give at the 99 Elmet Ladies event about looking into local sources for services like catering, transportation, flowers, and so forth. “We’re even inviting local bakers to submit designs for the wedding cake,” she finished.

“Are the de Kruks staying here for the wedding preparations? Have they arrived yet?” a new voice cut in, brashly asking what everyone really wanted to know. The Kingsburys were big fish, especially in Wilawiport, but there was no doubt that it was the nationally prominent de Kruks who had drawn all this attention.

The questioner’s voice sounded familiar, and it seemed to be coming from over near Ken. But when Sunny spotted the speaker through her viewfinder, she nearly dropped her camera. It was Randall MacDermott, her old boss from the New York Standard. He looked the same as ever, still tall and slim, with a ruddy face—“like a map of Ireland,” as the saying went. His generous jaw held a trace of dimple, his expressive lips set in an impish half smile. Oh crap, Sunny thought, quickly turning away. The fact of the matter was that they had once become something more than editor and reporter. Randall and his wife had separated, their marriage was finished, all that was left was signing the divorce papers, he’d told her. So she’d dated him. But while she’d been away taking care of her father, things had changed. The paper got a new owner, heads were rolling, and the next thing Sunny knew, Randall was back with his family—and she was out of a job.

As the press conference ground to an end, Sunny tried to blend in with the crowd, slouching a little so her distinctive mane of red hair wouldn’t be as visible. She risked a glance over at Ken. If I go over there to join him, we’ll be right under Randall’s nose, she thought, frantically looking for someplace to take cover as the crowd began to disperse.

The only spot she could see was a clump of decorative bushes. Moving crabwise with her head down, she darted behind the foliage—and collided with someone who was already there. A strong arm caught her as she bounced back and nearly fell. Sunny looked up to see another face she recognized—from photos, at least.

It was Caleb Kingsbury, uncle of the bride.

His hair was longer and shaggier than it had been in his Congress days. Grayer, too. But even with lines grooved in around his eyes and mouth, he still looked like a mischievous kid. Maybe it was those bright blue, innocent-seeming eyes.

“I’m so sorry!” Sunny said, checking that she hadn’t dropped her camera or any of the other equipment.

“No harm done.” Kingsbury cocked an inquiring eyebrow. “You know, when this hoedown is done, the security people will want you to go thataway.” He gestured toward the crowd of media types and the road off the peninsula which lay beyond them.

“I know,” Sunny said, “but if I go thataway, I’m going to bump into someone I really don’t want to meet. An old colleague—”

“More than that, judging from the look on your face.” Kingsbury laughed. “Or that look either. Hey, I used to be a politician. I learned something about reading people.” His impudent blue eyes twinkled. “I could help, you know. What say I give you the nickel tour of this place?” Kingsbury looked a little embarrassed as he added, “But you’d have to put your camera away.”

He offered his arm, and Sunny shrugged, putting her camera in its case. Why not? The alternative was facing Randall, and besides, this way she’d get a story she could dine out on with Ollie, at least.

As they stepped out from behind the shrubbery, Sunny spotted Ken Howell looking for her. But when he recognized Caleb Kingsbury beside her, he gave her a quick thumbs-up and walked away. Not that either of them could have foreseen this, but like all good newspeople, they both understood you had to follow the story. Even before they’d set off for Neal’s Neck, Ken had made sure she had cab fare to get back home if necessary.

“I don’t need to tell you,” he’d said. “You’ve got to be ready for any eventuality. Who knows? You might wind up in conversation with somebody and get some useful background.” Sunny couldn’t help cynically wondering if this had been Ken’s plan all along, though how could he have known?

Still, Caleb Kingsbury was pleasant as he led her around to the rear of the stage. A guy in the usual black security Windbreaker moved to stop Sunny, but Caleb waved him off. “It’s okay, George. She’s with me.”

They came upon a miniature parking lot with several golf carts lined up. Kingsbury brought Sunny to the second in line. “It’s a little easier to get around in these. They’re free for anyone in the compound, except for that one.” He pointed to the cart he’d bypassed. “See the U.S. Senate seal on the windshield? That one’s just for my dad.”

“The Senator,” Sunny said.

Caleb shrugged. “Yep, that’s even what I call him. Families have their ways—odd names and such. For instance, I’m Cale.” He gave a little laugh. “And it’s not because some folks think I’m just a bitter vegetable. My brother Lem started calling me that when we were little kids. And my niece Priscilla christened herself ‘Silly,’ although we spell it C-I-L-L-I-E. It could have been worse. You should have heard what she came up with before that, when we tried to call her Prissy.”

“Been there,” Sunny told him. “My mom was a music lover who named me Sonata, but I go by Sunny. Last name Coolidge, no relation to the president, sorry.”

Cale nodded. “There you go, then.” He followed a path that took them past a large, professional-looking tennis court. “Do you play? Between us, I think my family’s real religion is tennis. God help anyone who picks up a racquet against us.” Farther along, they came to the big house Sunny had heard about, a large, rambling shingle structure that looked as if it had thrown out several wings in the course of its existence.

“Grandfather Neal built the place more than a century ago. He was a real pistol—and I mean that literally. There are a couple of bullet holes in the dining room ceiling where he tried to shoot a wasp that had stung him. Those must have been the days. During Prohibition, the story is that he had his own private rumrunner delivering right to the wharf. Not that he sold the stuff. It was all consumed on the premises, in parties that I hear would’ve put Great Gatsby to shame.” Cale paused for a second. “After my father inherited the place, there was a lot more decorum than rum.”

Sunny got the feeling Cale wasn’t a hundred percent behind that notion.

He drove on in a large loop that took them to the point of the peninsula where carefully tended green lawns abruptly ended in a rocky drop to the sea. “You have to admit, it’s a hell of a view,” Cale said. “On days when the water gets really rough, you can catch spray from the rocks even up here. When I was a kid, this was my favorite place. I used to sit here and imagine I was steering straight out to sea.”

“And now you get to do that for real. Your yacht came past us on Saturday by the Isles of Shoals.”

“You saw the Merlin?” Cale asked in surprise.

“A beautiful boat. And an interesting name—for a privateer,” Sunny said.

Cale laughed again. “You know that story, too, eh? It’s just a reminder. The Kingsburys started out as preachers. Sometimes I think that politics is just another form of preaching for them. The Neals, though, they were always pirates in one way or another, whether on the sea or on Wall Street.”

He leaned back in the golf cart’s seat. “People always tell me I’ve got a little too much Neal and not enough Kingsbury.” He grinned. “Works out fine if you’re going to be the family’s eccentric uncle.” Then he started up the golf cart again. “So now you’ve seen the famous compound. Hope it wasn’t a big disappointment.”

They rounded a curve, and all of a sudden a swimming pool appeared ahead of them, where a party was apparently underway. Sunny spotted the two girls she’d seen on her way to the press conference. One of them, a tall brunette who seemed in danger of falling out of her violet bikini, was dancing with a glass in her hand.

“The young people,” Cale pointed out. Sunny recognized the sandy-haired girl, in a much more sensible bathing suit, before Cale nodded toward her. “That’s Cillie over by the springboard. Carson’s the blond guy beside her.”

Carson de Kruk was tall and slim, throwing his head back to laugh at something Cillie was saying. With her fair coloring and more refined features, Priscilla didn’t look much like her uncle Caleb; maybe, like Carson de Kruk, she took after her mother’s side. Or maybe she represented another genetic string. It had to be more than twenty years since Priscilla’s father had died in that accident while campaigning. Sunny only had blurry memories of a guy with Kennedyesque hair on political posters. She couldn’t remember Mrs. Lem Kingsbury at all, except that the woman had suffered a breakdown and later died.

Cale waved, and Priscilla waved back. “Put on a suit and join us, Uncle Cale!” she called.

“No way,” he replied. “The last thing your party needs is an old fogey hanging around.”

He drove past the pool, shaking his head reminiscently. “Used to have a lot of fun there, back in the day.”

Soon enough, they arrived back at the little parking area. “Your inconvenient fella should be long gone by now,” Cale said.

He was right. As they came back up to the makeshift stage, the area was empty except for a few Kingsbury security staffers who gave Sunny surprised looks as Cale escorted her past them. “The troopers take their job really seriously,” he said, as they reached the roadblock. “No cars allowed to stop. I hope they didn’t scare off your ride.”

“I’ll be fine,” Sunny replied. “I’m a local, from down in Kittery Harbor.”

“Well, then, good luck, neighbor.” Cale smiled. “It was nice to meet you, Sunny.”

Sunny smiled back. “Thank you for being so gallant—and gracious.”

She waved good-bye and passed the troopers . . . then saw Will Price, fuming, in a Kittery Harbor patrol car.