Last Licks

1

The midsummer sun was finally going down—not that the brilliant afternoon sunshine had given him much in the way of trouble. He’d found a good patch of shade to lounge in when the sun was still high overhead. It not only kept him comfortable, but allowed him to stay inconspicuous as he checked out the area around him.

Now it looked as if that had paid off. He kept still, only his eyes moving to follow her. She took silly, flouncy steps, her head bobbing in time with her skinny legs as she wandered along in her haphazard way.

She came right past him, not even looking in his direction. He wondered how far she could run on those ridiculous legs—and how fast.

Doesn’t she know it’s dangerous to come down around here, especially when it starts to get dark? His eyes narrowed and he dropped his head a little, taking a couple of slow steps after her. Well, I guess she’s going to find out she’d have been better off staying with her little ones.

She paused to examine something on the ground, completely unaware that she was being stalked. He looked right and left. No one around to stop him, no place for her to run . . .

He made his move, uncoiling powerful muscles, leaping for her, reaching out for her back . . .

She unfurled her wings and took off, leaving his claws a bare inch short of her tail feathers.

He recovered before he sprawled on the ground and rose up to sit on his haunches, his tail flicking around in annoyance as he glared upward. The prey that had gotten away fluttered to a branch high, high out of reach, dropping for a landing onto those absurd-looking legs.

Stupid bird, he thought, sulkily licking the back of his paw and then running it along his whiskers. Maybe she learned her lesson and won’t come around here again.

An unexpectedly cool breeze ruffled his gray fur, and he glanced at the house behind him. Where were his people? Hanging around in the yard was fun, but he’d just missed out on a picnic supper. There was a stout door between him and his bowl and dish in the kitchen. He needed a two-legged type to open that for him.

Where were they?

*

Sunny Coolidge puffed a little as she trailed her father around the cinder track. They’d made six circuits of the quarter-mile track and had as many more to go before Dad finished his daily three-mile walking quota. That was a pretty good showing for a guy who a year and a half ago had been flat on his back after a heart attack.

Mike Coolidge moved easily, his unruly white curls bobbing with each step, his face only a little pinker than usual from his exertions.

Sunny, however, found herself falling farther behind.

Too much time in front of a computer and too little time on your feet, that annoying voice in the back of her head scolded. Well, it was an unfortunate fact. Her job kept her at the keyboard most of the day. Despite an active-sounding name, the Maine Adventure X-perience, MAX for short, did most of its travel-booking business online. If Sunny wasn’t receiving e-mails and organizing responses, she often wound up tinkering with the MAX website to fix problems or update software that seemed to change every time she turned around.

Even when she managed to escape from the world of virtual business, she found herself answering the phone or organizing packages of tourist information to go off via snail mail. All in all, not the most physical line of work.

Still, that wasn’t any reason for letting her dad walk her into the ground.

Mike looked around, stopped, and pulled loose an earbud. Sunny got a brief snatch of a song from about forty years ago, sounding as if it were played by an insect rock band.

“What’s the matter?” Mike asked. “Got a pebble in your shoe?” He frowned, looking at her more closely. “You’re sweating off your bug repellent, Sunny. Keep that up, and the mosquitoes will fly off with you.”

That wasn’t quite an overstatement. Maine had a lot going for it in summer: quaint villages, camping, boating, pretty scenery. But the infamous Maine mosquitoes were definitely not a drawing card for tourists—or natives, for that matter. Sunny should’ve pointed out that exercising at dusk put them outdoors at a peak time for the bloodthirsty critters, but Mike had had a busy morning dealing with all sorts of errands, and then had wanted to wait until the afternoon heat had died down a little.

“Maybe we should have tried taking this walk in one of the malls over in outlet-land,” she suggested, trying to keep the faint croak out of her voice. “At least they’re air-conditioned.”

In addition to the other enticements of summer in Maine, Kittery Harbor also boasted mile after mile of outlet stores. That alone brought an impressive number of potential tourists to the MAX site.

“I’m stuck in those stores all winter,” Mike complained. “This is the time of year to get some nice, fresh air.”

Sunny shook her head as something went whining past her right ear. “I think maybe I could do with a refresher on the repellent—and maybe some water, too.”

“We’ve got both in the car,” her dad said. “You can catch up with me.” He continued at his usual pace while Sunny headed to the parking lot. Sunny felt a little weird being here, at her old high school, now a community center. This place was supposed to have been the launching pad to her future. She’d pretty much left Kittery Harbor behind after graduation, moving on to college, journalism school, and then a job at a New York City newspaper.

But after her dad’s heart attack, she’d come home to take care of him, got laid off from the paper in absentia, and was forced to deal with her old hometown—even when it seemed to be erasing her own past. Sunny reached her Jeep Wrangler and opened the bag of supplies her dad had (rightly) insisted on carrying along, taking a long sip from the water bottle and then reslathering on the insect repellent.

She was just closing the car door when her cell phone went off. The screen identified Will Price as the caller—a nice surprise. Sunny knew his schedule as town constable meant he’d be working this Friday evening, so she hadn’t expected to see him, much less hear from him.

“What’s up?” she asked as she put the phone to her ear.

Will was definitely in cop mode as he replied. “Just got news of a car accident along Woodcrest Road. Ollie Barnstable is in County General.”

“Yikes,” Sunny said, frowning in thought. Ollie the Barnacle, as she’d nicknamed him, was her boss . . . and a very difficult man. “He hadn’t been drinking, had he?” Even this early on a Friday night, that was strong possibility.

“I wasn’t there, I only got this secondhand from one of the sheriff’s guys,” Will told her, “but according to him, it seems Ollie got struck while trying to assist an injured deer off the road.”

This didn’t sound like the hard-nosed employer Sunny knew, not even after a couple of cocktails. “Was the deer blocking his way?”

“Barnstable claimed he just saw the injured deer and stopped to help.”

Definitely not normal Ollie behavior.

Will cleared his throat, trying to keep a chuckle from his voice. “Evidence at the scene, however, suggests that Ollie wasn’t so much the discoverer as the perpetrator. There’s a suspicious dent on his Land Rover.”

“Ah.” That was more in character.

“Anyway, while he was trying to get rid of the evidence, another car came along. The deer shook off both accidents and took off, but Ollie went down.”

“He’s not really hurt, is he?” A little belated concern crept into Sunny’s voice. Cantankerous as Ollie was, he had given her a job.

“They think he broke a leg.” Will said. “At least, that’s what the ambulance guys said.”

“And he’s at County General now?” Sunny glanced over at where her father completed another circuit on the old high school track. Mike wasn’t a fan of Ollie’s. He complained—probably rightly—that Ollie underpaid Sunny. But the gig at MAX was the only paying work in town that had some connection to Sunny’s skills. Oh, there was a local newspaper, the Harbor Courier, but Ken Howell put it out almost single-handedly, right down to the printing. Sunny knew only too well that he had no budget to pay a reporting staff. Kittery Harbor was a nice little town, but it was heavily blue-collar. If Ollie hadn’t taken her on, Sunny would probably be flipping burgers or running a cash register in outlet-land.

“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Sunny told Will. “I’ll check in on him.”

“Maybe we can get some pancakes or something on Sunday,” Will suggested.

Not the most romantic date, but still . . . “Sounds good,” Sunny said. “Give me a buzz in the morning, and we’ll make plans.”

After a quick good-bye, she clicked the phone shut and sighed, trying to figure out how to tell Will that their dates needed more moonlight and less maple syrup. Not coming up with an answer, Sunny set off across the track to her dad. “Ollie Barnstable’s in the hospital,” she announced.

“I’m not surprised, the way he takes care of himself,” Mike grumped. “Stroke, heart attack, or galloping gout?”

“He got hit by a car.” Sunny watched her father’s stern expression change to shock.

“That, I didn’t expect,” Mike admitted. “So, do you want to get going?”

“I suppose I’d better,” Sunny said. “Do you want me to drop you off at home?”

“What?” Mike almost looked offended. “Of course not.” Mike might not particularly like Ollie, but if he was in the hospital, he was supposed to be visited. That was the Kittery Harbor Way, the tradition that Sunny had grown up in, even if afterward she’d taken off for foreign parts like New York City.

Back in the Jeep, heading north along tree-lined roads, Sunny put on her headlights. In the woodsier areas, it had probably been dim even while the sun had still been higher in the sky. She could see all too easily how an accident could have happened.

Sunny kept a careful eye on the road ahead, fighting her impulse to hurry. Ollie was already in the emergency room by now. There was probably nothing they could do but offer moral support.

Elmet County General was up near the county seat in Levett. As they drove northward and inland, Sunny passed along the info Will had told her.

“Broken leg?” Mike repeated. “Could be worse. A fella can get killed, stepping out onto a road.”

As a former long-distance trucker, delivering road salt all over the Northeast, Mike knew what he was talking about. He’d lost friends to accidents like that, pals who’d left the cabs of their trucks, trying to warn others about dangerous situations—an accident ahead, a flooded-out road, black ice. Some had been struck even while they were laying out safety flares. And the worst, when Sunny was in college, her mom had died in a road accident during a huge ice storm.

Neither of them brought up the topic now. Instead, Mike went out of his way to shrug off Ollie’s situation as inconsequential.

“Eh, a broken bone? That used to get people laid up. But nowadays, they’ve got all sorts of new stuff they do—putting in pins and suchlike. He might not even get a cast.”

Sunny was willing to take her dad’s word for it. Certainly a lot of their older neighbors had suffered broken hips and made decent recoveries.

“Yeah, the way they do things now, he’ll be back on his feet fast enough. But walking is another thing. I betcha he’s going to need physical therapy. Rehab. The boss probably won’t be back in the office to bother you for at least a month—maybe two.” Mike grinned at her as they arrived at the hospital.

They walked over to the security guy at the emergency room entrance, who wasn’t exactly helpful. “Supposed to be family members only,” he told them. Sunny inflated her position at MAX to almost-partnership with Ollie, but that still only got them into the waiting room.

After a while, though, a harried-looking doctor in surgical greens and her hair pulled back in a bun came out to talk with them. “You work with Mr. Barnstable?”

“Yes.” Sunny wasn’t about to get all editorial and suggest for instead of with. “I’m Sunny Coolidge, and this is my father, Mike. We just heard about what happened to Ollie—Mr. Barnstable. Is he all right?”

“Physically, he’s doing about the best we could hope for. We’ve given him something for the pain, and if he lies quietly, he shouldn’t suffer.” The doctor took a deep breath. “Otherwise . . . well, he’s threatened three times to buy the place and have us all fired.”

“Only three times?” Sunny managed a smile. “For him, that’s being fairly mellow.”

“Well, a lot of the other patients—and staff—would appreciate it if he were a little less loud.” The doctor pulled back a wisp of hair that had gotten loose from her bun and fallen onto her forehead. “Does he have a wife? Any family?”

Sunny shook her head. “He was an only child, and his folks died years ago. He never married”—for obvious reasons, that snarky voice in her head chimed in—“and the only relations I know of are a couple of cousins who live several hours away.”

From the look on the doctor’s face, several hours was longer than they could put up with. She came to a sudden decision. “I’m going to let you in,” she said. “Maybe you can calm him down.”

Sunny and Mike followed the doctor into the emergency room proper—a good-sized area with flooring, tiles, and walls in various shades of muted green. Maybe the color was supposed to be calming, or maybe the doctors hoped their surgical scrubs would blend with the walls and make them invisible. But if the colors were quiet, the ambiance wasn’t. Machines gave off all sorts of blips, blurps, and beeps; doctors, nurses, and aides all seemed to be talking together; and of course, visitors and patients had questions and requests for help. And then the public-address system came on, announcing some mysterious code.

Gee, I can’t imagine why Ollie couldn’t calm down in the middle of all this serenity, Sunny’s sarcastic side commented.

The ER patients all lay on gurneys separated by curtains with suitably soothing patterns (in green, of course). The curtains didn’t do much to block out sound—like the moaning that got louder as the doctor led them to a completely curtained-in space.

Pulling the curtain open, the doctor announced, “Some visitors for you, Mr. Barnstable.”

Ollie responded with a “Hanh?” He tried to see over his big belly, which mounded up the hospital sheet like a minor hill, then winced and let out a loud groan, reaching his hand down to his right thigh. “Why don’t they do something? This leg is killing me.”

At least, that’s what Sunny thought he was saying. The words came out awfully mushy—like when he actually recognized her. “Shunny! Wa’ry’doonere?”

Sunny correctly interpreted that into, “Sunny! What are you doing here?” But then, she had the advantage of having dealt with plenty of peremptory phone calls from Ollie the Barnacle after one of his multiple-martini lunches.

“We heard you got hurt and came to see how you were doing,” she said. “You remember my dad.”

“Hiya,” Ollie said to Mike. “S’awful here! Tryna kill me!” He attempted to shift on the skinny mattress and let out a howl. “My leg!”

“You have to keep still,” Mike advised. “Otherwise, you aggravate the broken bone.”

“From the looks of things, I’d say they gave you something for the pain,” Sunny said.

“Yeah.” Ollie’s big, round face had paled to a light pink from its regular red. “Shtuff makes m’soun’ thrunk!”

Ollie assured them, however, that he’d been sober as a judge during his accident. “I shaw th’deer lyin’ there, an’ I wash tryna help ’im off th’ road.” His look of civic responsibility might have been more convincing if he hadn’t been peering blearily up at them.

He blinked and suddenly sounded a little less drunk . . . and a lot more scared. “They want to cut into my leg.” Again, he pointed to his thigh.

“They probably want to put in a plate to hold everything together,” Mike said, his voice calm and soothing. “You know, the femur is one of the strongest bones in your body. It has to bear a lot of weight.”

Sunny couldn’t help glancing at Ollie’s bulk on the gurney. Then she turned to her dad. “How do you know about all of that?”

Mike shrugged. “When you take friends to appointments with orthopedic surgeons, you hear a lot.”

“They said if I go along with this surgery thing, I could be out of here in a couple of days.” Ollie looked hopefully at Mike. “Is that true?”

“Yes, but you won’t be going home,” Mike warned. “You’ll probably have to put in some time at a rehab facility—not to mention a lot of work.”

Ollie’s face stopped looking loopy and became honestly confused. “Rehab? Where?”

“If you want my advice, I’d say you should go with Bridgewater Hall,” Mike promptly replied. “They’ve got a good reputation, do a lot more therapy work with the patients. Also, I hear the food is decent.”

“Bridgewater Hall,” Ollie repeated, sagging back against the folded blanket that was serving as his pillow. Maybe the painkiller was finally kicking in. “Couldja tell ’em that for me?” He closed his eyes and was out like a light.

“Well, you managed to calm him down,” Sunny told her dad. “That was pretty impressive. How did you know about Bridgewater Hall?”

“It was my first choice after I had the heart attack and didn’t know if you were coming up to help out,” he replied a little grimly. “Sounded great to me, except for one little thing.”

“What was that?” Sunny asked.

“They told me I couldn’t afford it,” Mike replied. “But I figure Ollie is loaded. He should be able to swing their fees.”