Fernando Street ran for five miles along the beach, and next to the dunes and the ocean it was lined with a mix of old and new rentals, budget motels, fine new homes, condos, and an occasional bed-and-breakfast. Across the street, there were more homes and rentals, shops, a few offices, more motels, and restaurants offering up bar food. As she puttered along, adhering to the strict limit of thirty-five miles per hour, Mercer thought nothing had changed. It was exactly as she remembered. The town of Santa Rosa maintained it well and every eighth of a mile there was a small parking lot and boardwalk for public beach access.
Behind her, to the south, there were the big hotels, the Ritz and the Marriott sitting beside high-rise condos, and the more exclusive residential enclaves, developments Tessa had never approved of, because she believed too many lights interfered with the nesting of green and loggerhead turtles. Tessa had been an active member of Turtle Watch, as well as every other conservation and environmental group on the island.
Mercer was not an activist, because she couldn’t stand meetings, which was another reason to stay away from campuses and faculties. She entered the town and eased along with the traffic on Main Street, passing the bookstore with Noelle’s Provence next door. She parked on a side street and found a small café with courtyard seating. After a long, quiet lunch in the shade, she browsed through the clothing stores and T-shirt shops, mixing with the tourists and buying nothing. She drifted toward the harbor and watched the boats come and go. She and Tessa came here to meet Porter, their sailing friend who owned a thirty-foot sloop and was always eager to take them out. Those had been long days, for Mercer anyway. As she remembered things, there was never enough wind and they baked in the sun. She had always tried to hide in the cabin but the boat had no air-conditioning. Porter had lost his wife to some horrible disease; Tessa said he never talked about it and had moved to Florida to escape the memories. Tessa always said he had the saddest eyes.
Mercer had never blamed Porter for what happened. Tessa loved to sail with him and she understood the risks. Land was never out of sight and there were no thoughts of danger.
To escape the heat, she stepped inside the harbor restaurant and had a glass of iced tea at the empty bar. She gazed at the water and watched a charter boat return with a load of mahimahi and four happy and red-faced fishermen. A gang of jet skiers set off, going much too fast in the no-wake zone. And then she saw a sloop easing away from the pier. It was about the same length and color as Porter’s, and there were two people on deck, an older gentleman at the wheel and a lady in a straw hat. For a moment it was Tessa, sitting idly by, drink in hand, perhaps offering unsolicited advice to the captain, and the years disappeared. Tessa was alive again. Mercer longed to see and hold her and laugh about something. A dull pain ached in her stomach, but soon the moment passed. She watched the sloop until it disappeared, then paid for the tea and left the harbor.
At a coffee shop, she sat at a table and watched the bookstore across the street. Its large windows were packed with books. A banner announced an upcoming author signing. Someone was always at the door, coming or going. It was impossible to believe the manuscripts were in there, locked away in some vault hidden in the basement. It was even more far-fetched to think that she was somehow supposed to deliver them.
Elaine had suggested that Mercer stay away from the store and wait until Cable made the first move. However, Mercer was now her own spy, making her own rules, though still without a clue. She wasn’t exactly taking orders from anyone. Orders? There was no clear game plan. Mercer had been tossed into battle and expected to adjust and improvise on the fly. At 5:00 p.m., a man in a seersucker suit and bow tie, undoubtedly Bruce Cable, walked out of the store and headed east. Mercer waited until he was gone, then crossed the street and entered Bay Books for the first time in many years. She could not remember the last visit but guessed she was either seventeen or eighteen, and driving.
As she always did in any bookstore, she drifted aimlessly until she found the shelves for Literary Fiction, then scanned quickly through the alphabet, about midway down to the Ms, to see if either of her books might be in inventory. She smiled. There was one copy of the trade edition of October Rain. There was no sign of The Music of Waves, but that was to be expected. She had not found her short story collection in a bookstore since the week it was published.
With a partial victory in hand, she wandered slowly through the store, soaking up the smells of new books, and coffee, and, from somewhere, the hint of pipe smoke. She adored the saggy shelves, the piles of books on the floors, the ancient rugs, the racks of paperbacks, the colorful section for bestsellers at 25 percent off! From across the store she took in the First Editions Room, a handsome paneled area with open windows and hundreds of the more expensive books. Upstairs in the café, she bought a bottle of sparkling water and ventured outside on the porch, where others were drinking coffee and passing the late afternoon. At the far end, a rotund gentleman was smoking a pipe. She flipped through a tourist guide for the island and watched the clock.
At five minutes before six, she went downstairs and spotted Bruce Cable at the front counter chatting with a customer. She seriously doubted if he would recognize her. His only clue would be her black-and-white photo on the dust jacket of October Rain, a novel that was now seven years old and had generated only pennies for his store. But she had been scheduled to sign here during her aborted book tour, and he allegedly read everything, and he probably knew her connection to the island, and, most important, at least from his viewpoint, she was an attractive young female writer, so perhaps the odds were even that he would spot her.
He did not.
2.
Ash Street was one block south of Main. The house was on a corner lot at the intersection of Fifth. It was old and historic with gabled roofs and two-storied gallery porches on three sides. It was painted a soft pink and trimmed in dark blue on its doors, shutters, and porches. A small sign over the front door read, “Vicker House 1867.”
From her past, Mercer could not remember a pink house in downtown Santa Rosa, not that it mattered. Houses get painted every year.
She tapped on the door and a pack of yappy dogs erupted on the other side. A beast of a woman yanked open the door, thrust out a hand, and said, “I’m Myra. Come in. Don’t mind the dogs. Nobody bites around here but me.”
“I’m Mercer,” she said, shaking hands.
“Of course you are. Come on.”
The dogs scattered as Mercer followed Myra into the foyer. In a screech, Myra unloaded a “Leigh! Company’s here! Leigh!” When Leigh failed to instantly respond, Myra said, “Stay here. I’ll go find her.” She disappeared through the living room, leaving Mercer alone with a rat-sized mongrel that cowered under a knitting table and growled at her with all teeth flashing. Mercer tried to ignore him or her as she sized up the place. In the air there was a less than pleasant odor of what seemed to be a mix of stale cigarette smoke and dirty dogs. The furniture was old flea market stuff, but quirky and engaging. The walls were covered with bad oils and watercolors by the dozens, and not a single one depicted anything remotely connected to the ocean.