“Is he working today?” Olivia looked around for Laurel’s spouse.
“No. He’s racing.” She pointed at a small motorboat anchored off to the right of the end of the dock. “That’s his team from the office. Their boat is that giant toothbrush.”
Shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun, Olivia watched as Steve and two other men eased their cardboard boat into the water. Carefully, a man wearing a baseball hat climbed into the bow while Steve took up the captain’s position in the stern. “They’ve entered the Oars Only category, I see. Harris is in the Sail-Powered Race, but I have yet to spot his boat. I figured he’d have made a Star Trek ship or a floating robot.”
Laurel also began scanning the harbor. “He’d better get here soon. The judges need to examine his boat before the race. Poor Millay’s been pacing the docks since I got here, sending Harris text after text. I’ve never seen her this anxious.”
The two women secured a place to watch the first race. The twins, whose bellies were full of soft pretzels, apple juice, and cheese crackers, had fallen asleep in the stroller.
Olivia dug a pair of binoculars out of her purse and watched the contestants line up the bows of their boats until they touched a rope slung between two buoys. She’d never seen such an assortment of cardboard vessels. There were pirate ships, canoes, catamarans, and submarines, but there were also floating hot dogs, crocodiles, smoking cigars, sea serpents, sharks, dolphins, and rubber ducks.
A horn blasted and the contestants surged forward, their oars creating swirls and white froth in the water. Steve’s toothbrush boat took an early lead, but it became clear that the vessel was too long to make quick turns around the course’s buoys and they began to lose their advantage.
“Oh, dear.” Laurel watched her husband through a pair of hot pink binoculars. “His partner said they should have made the boat shorter, but Steve insisted on adding more bristles to the brush.”
A bright blue boat resembling a congenial killer whale passed by Steve’s toothbrush and a snarling shark to capture first place. Steve’s boat came in third, but he and his first mate were too busy shouting at one another to notice. Watching Laurel’s red-faced spouse, Olivia wondered if he had serious anger issues.
As though reading her thoughts, Laurel spoke hastily. “He’ll shake it off. This is supposed to be just for fun, right?”
Olivia ignored the question. “Laurel, what did you tell the editor of the Gazette?”
“That I needed more time to finish a major story,” Laurel answered after a long pause. Lowering her binoculars, she met Olivia’s stare. “I said that I had to interview April Howard before I could write a complete piece about the robberies.” She looked back out at the harbor. “Several papers have sent crime reporters to speak to April, but she’s refused to talk. I’ve been thinking about calling her. I feel like it’s my duty to do what I can to stop these crimes, that it’s my responsibility, just like caring for my kids or keeping the house clean. Does that sound ridiculously self-inflated?”
Shaking her head, Olivia said, “No, it doesn’t. You’d like to wear more than one hat. You want a rich home life and a fulfilling career too. That doesn’t make you a self-centered person. It simply means you wish to share your gifts with a wider audience.”
Laurel blinked away tears. “Why do you have so much faith in me? No one else does. I told Steve that I wanted his parents to watch the twins so I could be a reporter and not Paula Deen and he just laughed.”
“Look at those boats,” Olivia replied soothingly. “They’re made of cardboard, tape, and glue. They don’t look like they’d float, let alone speed through the water, but with a little ingenuity and determination, there they are.”
“Who would have thought being compared to a piece of corrugated cardboard could be so flattering?” Laurel managed a grin.
At that moment, Millay dashed through the crowd toward Olivia and Laurel, her face glowing with excitement. “Harris is here! And you will not believe his boat! It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Where is it?” Olivia asked, raising her binoculars.
“I see him! He’s tacking toward the starting line!” Laurel shouted. “Oh, Millay! It’s breathtaking!”
Irritated to be the last to know what her friends found so amazing, Olivia took a step forward and adjusted the focus on her binoculars. She found Harris’s glimmering boat.
The bow was a gracefully curved griffin’s head with a sunflower yellow beak and shining black eyes. A pair of lion’s legs formed the stern and the vessel’s rudder was in the shape of a tail. The entire boat had been painted gold, and Harris had added rhinestones to the griffin’s feathered neck and had made a set of sails out of an iridescent fabric.
“I sewed the wings,” Millay whispered. “I didn’t even know what I was making. Harris gave me the material and a bunch of instructions. I thought he’d totally lost it using that filmy-looking stuff, but now . . .”
“He painted Tessa on the stern!” Laurel bounced up and down on the dock. “What a lovely tribute to your character.”
Grinning, Olivia watched the wind catch the griffin’s sails. The golden boat soared through the water as if it could truly take flight. “I know I’ve said this before, Millay, but I’m going to say it again. That boy has got it bad.”
Millay rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. But guess what? If he was trying to get my attention, then he’s got it. For once in my life, I am seriously impressed by a man.”
Chapter 12
Widow: that great, vacant estate!
The voice of God is full of draftiness,
Promising simply the hard stars, the space
Of immortal blankness between stars
And no bodies, singing like arrows up to heaven.
—SYLVIA PLATH
Millay sulked through the length of their Bayside Book Writers’ meeting, and Olivia sensed her foul mood had less to do with the minor criticisms she received and more to with her response to seeing Harris receive the adulation of his pretty coworker.
Harris’s griffin boat had crossed the finish line yards ahead of the competition. During the awards ceremony, he was handed not one, but two cash prizes. He’d won the Sail-Powered Race and had secured a runner-up position in the Most Beautiful Boat category. Ironically, it was another bird that beat his craft: a peacock. The colorful vessel hadn’t been designed for speed, but its graceful lines and showy tail had earned its builders a tidy sum. Still, Harris was the event’s cash king. Olivia figured he’d earned several thousand dollars that morning.
Olivia, Millay, and Laurel had watched in surprise as Harris accepted his winnings and then was promptly mauled by a young woman wearing a Harry Potter Team Gryffindor T-shirt and a pair of denim cut-offs. She pushed her way through the crowd and threw her arms around Harris. Her display of affection nearly knocked him right off his feet, but he reacted with a look of amused bewilderment.
“This is Estelle. We work together,” Harris told the other writers and stood by uneasily as Millay and Estelle sized one another up.
“I don’t think Harris has ever mentioned you,” Millay said coldly, veiling her dislike with a plastic smile.