Wicked Fix

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Sarah Graves - 03 - Wicked Fix

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Wicked Fix

by

Sarah Graves

WICKED FIX

SARAH GRAVES

BANTAM BOOKS

New York Toronto London

Sydney Auckland

A Bantam Crime Line Book / April 2000

Copyright a 2000 by Sarah Graves.

ISBN 0-553-57859-6

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada bb

WICKED FIX

"I don't see why Reuben Tate had to come

back to town at all," Ellie White complained,

digging into her lobster tortilla.

We were at La Sardina, Eastport's Mexican

restaurant. The menu was south-of-the-border

with a downeast Maine twist--thus the lobster--but

the atmosphere was all laid-back Key West:

Strings of tiny, twinkling colored lights framed the

tall front windows. White gauze beach umbrellas

slanted over the old wooden tables. And potted plants

grown to enormous sizes lent a tropical flavor: palm,

spathiphyllum, a flowering bougainvillea like a tree full

of purple butterflies.

With her tortilla, Ellie was having a tomato and

mesclun salad with blue cheese dressing, and a Dos

Equis. "And I don't see," she added, "why he had to

come now."

Beside me, my son, Sam, went on attacking his

combination plate. "You could strip varnish with this

hot sauce," he remarked appreciatively; at seventeen,

Sam thought flaming coals weren't quite hot enough

unless you doused them in Tabasco.

"Reuben's like a bad rash," Ellie's husband,

George Valentine, said. "He comes back."

He cut a slice off his well-done ribeye steak; to

George, the French fry is about as foreign as food

needs to get, with the possible exception of the English

muffin.

"The trick," he added, "is getting rid of him again.

But this time I hear he means to stay."

At which my friends all sighed sorrowfully. Reuben

Tate was the sly, grinning worm in the apple of

their happiness that autumn, and it seemed unfair just

when everything else in town was looking up:

Summer had come and gone but we still had the

taste of it in our mouths, tart and sweet as a drop of

lemonade. Dahlias with bright shaggy heads big as dinner

plates bloomed in the perennial beds; ripe tomatoes

loaded the vines in our back gardens, and the rosebushes

massed along the seawall bowed low under

their heavy burden of rose hips, huge and juicy as Bing

cherries.

Also, for once the town had cash. Sea urchins and

sardines had been freakishly plentiful that season, the

boats coming back half-capsized by the unaccustomed

weight of their catches, and scallop harvest promised

to be as bountiful. Until then, foreign freighters--their

names, unpronounceable, stenciled in white, rust

mottled Cyrillic letters on their towering sterns--

loomed at dockside, loading paper pulp and particle

board from the mills up in Woodland, making overtime

for the stevedores and truckers.

Finally, at September's end came the annual

Eastport Salmon Festival, the last outdoor bash of the year

on our little island in Maine, which meant that cash

registers in the cafes and shops on Water Street would

soon be jingling with tourist money.

So we were content. Only the thought of Reuben

with his quick, twitchy ways, his pale, wandering eye

and odd laugh--a harsh, painful-sounding bark like a

strangled cough; when he uttered it, he meant to hurt

someone--kept putting a damper on people.

"Could be this time Reuben's luck will run out,"

said my main squeeze, Wade Sorenson.

Just off the water after guiding a cargo vessel into

port--it's what he does, as Eastport's official harbor

pilot--Wade wore a navy turtleneck, jeans, and a

cable-knit sweater the color of vanilla ice cream. His

gray eyes reflected the light of the candle stuck in the

neck of a wine jug on the table.

"Not soon enough," my ex-husband, Victor

Tiptree, said sourly, and I glanced at him in surprise.

"Reuben Tate's luck," he emphasized, "can't end

soon enough for me."

"How do you know Reuben?" I asked, and the

others around the table looked inquisitively at him,

too.

Six months earlier, Victor had moved here to

Eastport from the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and in

remote, thinly populated downeast Maine his arrival

had of course been newsworthy. But I hadn't thought

any of the local people were newsworthy to Victor, and

especially not a ne'er-do-well like Reuben.

Tonight, Victor's dinner had consisted of the olives

from his martinis. "It's not important," he muttered,

and gulped the melted ice from his glass.

Annoyed but determined not to argue--the rule,

when dealing with Victor, is never wrestle with a pig;

you both get dirty and the pig likes it--I turned away,

as a voice from the next table rose in worried complaint.

"Did Reuben really say that?" Paddy Farrell, who

ran a textile design studio out of an old canning

factory building he'd rehabilitated down on the waterfront,

had clearly been listening in on our conversation.

Sitting with Paddy was his longtime companion, Terence

Oscard.

"Did he?" Paddy demanded, his close-clipped salt

and-pepper head coming up pugnaciously as he caught

my eye. "He's staying?"

Paddy wore a navy blazer and a tailored button

down shirt, a maroon silk scarf at his throat.

"George?" he persisted as George stolidly went on

chewing. "Did you actually hear him say that?"

"What I said," George confirmed after a sip of

Miller Lite. "Stayin' in his mom's old place out in

Quoddy Village, got the little trust fund she left him to

live on. It ain't much, but I guess that's nothing new to

Reuben. He's never had any job at all, that I've known

of."

Terence Oscard, a big-boned, pale-haired man with

a beaky nose and a big, pointy Adam's apple, wore a

light blue chambray shirt, khaki slacks, and Topsiders.

Good-looking in the way some very ugly men can be,

his jutting features regularized by intelligence and kindness,

he sat listening with his usual thoughtful attention.

But Paddy seemed agitated. "Reuben can't do that.

Why, the town won't be worth living in. It'll be the bad

old days all over again."

Terence leaned over to me. "I've got a new Red

Cross first-aid book," he confided. "I'll be glad to lend

it to you when I've finished it."

He was a martyr to numerous imaginary ailments

and, perhaps on account of these, a self-taught first-aid

expert. I liked him a great deal; everyone did.

"Thanks, Terence, I'll look forward to it," I said,

and he sat back, pleased.

"Doesn't anybody," Paddy demanded, "remember?"

He glared at us, fists clenched as if he might

punch someone just to refresh people's recollections.

"Don't see as there's much we can do about Reuben

sticking around if he wants to," George said, his

tone unperturbed as he went on eating his steak and

potatoes. "Still a free country."

I noticed, though, that George didn't raise his eyes,

a sign that he wasn't enjoying Paddy's conversation.

Paddy was intense, quick to anger, and inclined to

pound the table, while George was the opposite: the

quieter he became, the more tactfully and carefully

you'd better go, or eventually he would lower the

boom on you.

"Unless," George added to Paddy, "you've got

some brilliant new idea."

At this, the air around us seemed to grow darkly

electric, charged with some knowledge I didn't share.

Silence lengthened as the three Eastport natives at our

table--Ellie, Wade, and George--went on eating their

dinners, concentrating on their plates. Sam and I

looked puzzledly at them, while Victor continued

drumming his fingers on the table, wanting the drinks

waitress.

"No," Paddy said at last. "No new ideas. Finished,

Terence?" Shoving back his chair, he flung down his

napkin furiously.

Nodding agreeably, the big man got to his feet.

Then he staggered, briefly but unmistakably, placing

his hand on the table to steady himself. But he recovered

smoothly, dropping some money by his plate and

smiling his farewell to the rest of us.

He hadn't been drinking. Terence never did; the

faint muzzy feeling induced by even a single glass of

wine always made him think he had some rare neurological

condition. And as they left together, he seemed

fine again: bending as always to hear whatever Paddy

was saying, Paddy accompanying his words with his

usual energetic gestures.

Watching them go, I sensed an ongoing liveliness of

interest undimmed by the comfort of habit; they were

by all accounts a devoted couple. I thought they were

lucky, and that Terence had somehow simply missed

his footing.

But Paddy's comments had dropped a pall over our

table, with George, Ellie, and Wade looking suddenly

even more dismal.

"Come on," I said. "How bad can it be? I'm sure a

few of the boys from the dock can take care of Reuben

Tate, if he gets to be too much trouble."

Ellie's lips pursed. "You only know him by reputation,"

she began, and was about to say more.

But just then a harsh bark of laughter was followed

by the warning rasp of barstools being shoved back.

Next came the voice of Ted Armstrong, La Sardina's

formidable bartender and bouncer.

"Okay, now, that's enough. We don't want to be

breaking any expensive glassware, make the price of a

beer go up another half-buck just to pay for it all."