Shooting at Loons

menhaden’s only worth about four million and dropping. But from what she said to Barbara Jean, I think it’s more than just gentrifying Carteret County. She wants that particular piece of property where the Neville Fishery sits, doesn’t she? Is that part of the investment deal she’s trying to get you to buy into?”

Lev looked thoughtful. “As you say, she’s very persuasive. I did think things were a little further along.”

“Like claiming title to property she doesn’t have?”

“Oh no. She’s too sharp for that.” He gave me a quizzical look. “You still haven’t learned to play chess yet, have you?”

“I remember the moves,” I lied.

“Well, Linville Pope has the makings of a natural chess player—always looking eight moves ahead. She sees the ramifications, knows that what happens on this move makes what happens later absolutely inevitable. I’m going to have to watch her closer than I realized. Interesting lady.”

That I would never take chess seriously was one of the things that had rasped him. He loved the game’s complexity and admired deviousness in his opponents.

I personally think that bridge and poker call for just as much deviousness. Of course, they also call for more than two players. Was that a fundamental difference?

“So how interesting would you say she is?” I asked, pushing my plate aside. “Would she kill?”

“Not for any reason you’ve laid out here. The woman’s bright, beautiful and seems to work hard and smart. Maybe she’s a little too cute about the way she acquires property, but what she’s offering your friend sounds like a good deal to me. I’ve looked that factory over from the outside and even if the fishing continues, it’s probably going to need a lot of capital repairs. I bet her whole operation wouldn’t bring a half-million, if that, on today’s market.”

How casually he tossed off half a million dollars. I was suddenly remembering the tons of pasta we ate because his fellowship money always ran out before the month did.

“Do you still have that book—A Hundred Ways With Pasta?”

“Is that another dig about my current living standards?”

“Not to mention current moral standards if you don’t see anything wrong with coercing someone to sell.”

He went into his Daniel Webster mode. “You don’t think your friend might have exaggerated?”

“Barbara Jean can go off half-cocked,” I conceded. “But not without something to light her fuse. She certainly didn’t dream up that thing about a boat ramp and storage next door to her ancestral home.”

“But accusing Linville of murdering a fisherman sounds like wishful thinking to me.”

First it was poor Linville and then it was Linville the bright and beautiful. “Just how long have you known this woman anyhow?” I asked nastily.

“Long enough to know she wouldn’t do something that vicious or stupid.”

“Coffee?” chirped our waitress.

I nodded; Lev said, “Cappuccino?”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Espresso, then.”

“I’m sorry sir, we just have regular and decaf.”

“Decaf then,” he said ungraciously; and when she’d brought it, he grumbled, “If this town hopes to keep tourists coming back, it’s going to have to get serious about its coffee.”

“If the whole world turns into Manhattan, how will you know when you’re on vacation?” I asked sweetly.

In a familiar gesture of exasperation, he ran his hand through his hair and wiry tufts stood up angrily. Some things even a fifty-dollar haircut can’t change.

He saw my amusement, started to bristle and then suddenly smiled. “Why the hell are we talking about Linville Pope and Barbara Jean What’s-her-name and fishmeal factories when we should be talking about us? You know, I pictured a thousand times running into you again. I never expected to find you sitting on the bench in a little town on the Intracoastal Waterway.”

I was willing to play and smiled back at him over my coffee cup. “How did you imagine it?”

“That we were both back in New York on a visit and we bumped into each other over the cheese counter at Zabar’s or standing in line for Cats or—”

“Only in Manhattan?” I teased gently.

“Nothing brought me down to Raleigh and I couldn’t picture you in Boston. Were you?”

I shook my head.

“What about the Clara Barton Rest Stop on the Jersey Turnpike seven years ago near the end of August?”

His big hands toyed with the glass candleholder as he tried to make his tone light.

“Were you really there?” I asked, incredulous. “Why on earth didn’t you speak to me?”

He shrugged. “You were with some other women.”

“Three of my brothers’ wives,” I remembered. “We probably were on our way to see Cats.”