5. Chapter Five
Chapter Five
Maggie
I had finished taking Tyler and Emily through all the ways I needed their help for the celebrations when Ruth knocked on the partially open door. I glanced up from the parade planning, Tyler and Emily flanking me at the desk.
“What are you doing here, Ruth? It’s Saturday.”
“I know.” Ruth came forward with a sheet of paper outstretched in her hand. “Kelvin Brown dropped this off at the close of business yesterday, and I forgot to put it on your desk. Seems he and Grady Castillo put together a little float.”
I found the ends of my long auburn hair as I read through the dimensions of their parade idea. “This is bigger than the finale at the very end.”
“I know. I told Kelvin I wasn’t sure it would get approved. He hauled out the parade regulations and said their float didn’t contradict any of them.” Ruth backed out the door. “I have to go meet my family to get the perfect spot. Have a good day, everyone!” She waved and then drew the door closed behind her.
“Kelvin would know.” Tyler held out his hand for the application and drew a lollipop out of his pocket. “Where’s Lila? I thought she’d be here.” He ripped off the wrapper and stuck it into his cheek.
I frowned and shuffled papers on my desk until I located my phone. There on the screen was a message from Lila. “Running late. As always.”
“Once again, I’m really sorry my real estate agency sold him the Whittaker place.”
“You didn’t sell it to him, someone who works for you did.” I shrugged. No one could have predicted how events would unfold from there.
“I know, but…” Emily frowned and rubbed her forehead before seeming to gather herself. “The parade starts in two hours. You can’t deny Grady’s request without people thinking you’re trying to prevent him from getting votes.”
“Oh,” I said, dragging out the word. “I’m fairly convinced Grady will do a fine job of not getting any votes without my interference. The campaign has been running for almost two weeks. No signs. No platform. People keep asking me why I have signs up everywhere when I’m going to be declared the mayor. No one knows he’s running. I sure as hell am not spreading the word.”
Tyler’s shoulders hunched, and he ran a hand through his dark-blond hair, tinged with red. He removed the lollipop from his cheek and gave her a sheepish look. “There is a chance I’ve told a few people.” When I glared at him, he continued, “I didn’t want people thinking you were so starved for attention you were advertising yourself when you didn’t need to.”
Emily, her campaign manager, raised her hand. “I told a few people too.”
“Great. My campaign is doing more work for Grady than he is.” I gave a snort of disgust. “I thought with Kelvin involved Grady might be a bit of a challenge. But he’s the same guy he’s always been.”
“Knock, knock.” Lila opened the door, her knuckles grazing the dark wood. “Did you guys get the text from Pete? Sabrina Kim filed a noise violation complaint about tonight’s fireworks.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I closed my eyes.
Tyler chuckled to himself, the lollipop clicking against his teeth.
“What’s so funny?” I snapped.
“Uh…” Tyler looked around at them, waving the lollipop in the air. “Isn’t Sabrina Kim Grady’s old high school girlfriend?”
Lila gasped. “Grady’s playing dirty.”
I collapsed into my chair. Sabrina had been at the open mic night a few weeks ago, and I’d seen her getting cozy with Grady at the bar.
“She used to get noise violations all the time in high school for the parties she threw,” Tyler continued. “I smell a rat.”
“What time are the fireworks slated to end?” Emily came around the desk to peer over my shoulder.
“Eleven fifteen,” I confirmed. “We didn’t publish the finish time, only the start.”
Lila bit her lip. “The Little Falls bylaw starts at eleven, right?”
“Yep,” I said. “I have to talk to Pete.” Rising, I gathered all the parade papers together and handed them to Lila. “Can you please keep this organized while I figure out how to fix our timing problem?”
“Can she file a complaint about something that hasn’t happened? And about the Fourth of July Fireworks no less?” Emily tightened her strawberry-blond ponytail, readying herself for battle.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Pete will know. Sabrina or Grady or whoever must have gotten the idea from someone.” I grabbed my purse off the table near the door and scooped my keys out of the front pocket. “Text or call with any other problems.”
“Got it,” Lila called after me as I shut the door.
****
At the warehouse, I stared at the boxes beside Pete. In my head, I counted them again. Then, out loud, I counted them a third time.
“Pete,” I said carefully. “There aren’t enough fireworks here.”
“I realize that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday or, I don’t know, any other day we’d been shortchanged?”
“I didn’t know. Our summer students counted the boxes.”
I eased my hands down my face and crouched so my knees almost touched my chin. “I suppose the only good news is the noise complaint is a nonstarter. We will barely have enough fireworks to light up the sky for five minutes, let alone finishing late.”
“I can make some calls and see if any other towns have extra we can buy off them.”
I closed my eyes and let Pete’s voice wash over me. There had always been something about the way Pete spoke that I found comforting. His slow, careful drawl was different than the way most people spoke in Little Falls, and the rhythm calmed my anxiety enough for me to focus. He was an implant, a Southerner who’d moved here because his wife had fallen in love with Little Falls as a kid. Right now, I was grateful he was the one delivering this second blow to my day.
“Take photos of all of this. We’ll have to go after the shipping company or the supplier later.” I rose and rubbed my face one more time before squaring my shoulders. “If we do get them, what about Sabrina’s noise complaint?”
“I was duty bound to tell you, but she can’t make her complaint until it actually happens. She raised quite a stink on the phone with me today, talking about how the noise would wake up her sleeping children.”
“She has three, right?”
“Yep, all by different daddies.”
“Not so lucky in love.”
“Or birth control.”
“Pete!”
“I’m just saying, she didn’t even know the rule was a bylaw when she called. When I explained to her there was an amendment in the bylaw for the Fourth of July and other civic holidays involving fireworks, she told me she didn’t know what any of those words were, but she’d raise hell if we went past eleven.”
I stifled a laugh. “Sounds like she needed a better complaint coach too.”
“Must have been Grady. Kelvin would have tattooed the words and definitions on her skin.”
“Grady’s like her. He probably doesn’t even know what those words mean.” An unkind statement. Grady was smarter than he let most people see, but he’d seemed to enjoy his slacker image in high school and beyond. I’d never understood why he and Sabrina Kim, who was not faking her lack of intelligence, had spent so much time together.
“Seems odd to me, him running for mayor against you. You reckon that’s got anything to do with what happened with you and Trent?”
With anyone else, I would have bristled at the implication there had been something foul about me and Trent. But with Pete, he was simply trying to puzzle Grady’s motivation out, not being malicious. There might be other people in town who’d come to this conclusion, too, and wouldn’t have the guts to ask.
“You mean about Trent going to jail?”
“Yeah, and a certain faction of the public who thought maybe Trent wasn’t capable of what he was convicted of doing.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Trent cooking meth and selling it. That’s a schedule two narcotic. It carries, as we all now know, a mandatory sentence in New York State. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that.”
“Sorry, Mags, I didn’t mean to imply you did. Only wondered if Grady might’ve thought Trent wasn’t clever enough to do it on his own.”
And he hadn’t been, of that I was sure, but I hadn’t willingly helped Trent either. Thinking about what happened back then caused a rush of anger. The fallout had been such a debacle, and I hadn’t seen any of it coming. In hindsight, I’d been na?ve. Forgiving myself had taken a while, but I’d only been seventeen. The things that don’t occur to you at seventeen are endless.
“One of the things I like most about you, Pete, is your bluntness.” I smiled and then picked my words carefully. “Trent was the mastermind of that scheme, not me.”
“What do you reckon Grady thinks?”
Unbidden, the look on Grady’s face after Trent was arrested entered my mind—disgust, betrayal, and underneath it all, like me, the guilt over something we’d never speak of. “He doesn’t like me. I’m certain of that.” If I’d had any doubts, Grady’s behavior since he’d returned made his feelings clear.
“He’s running out of spite.”
I gave the tiniest shrug and head shake. “Who knows? Grady probably doesn’t know. He’s a drifter. Even if he wins, he won’t stay.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Four years in one place? According to Penny, since he left here, he’s spent a year at most anywhere before moving on.”
“What’s she think of him running?”
“She’s his mom.” When my phone buzzed, I dragged it out of my pocket. “The parade starts in half an hour. I have to go.”
“I’ll see what I can do about getting us more fireworks.”
A deep sigh escaped. So far, today wasn’t going as I’d expected. It could only get better, right?