Клэр Донелли - Last Licks

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.