The coffee cooled rapidly in the chilly air, and her cup was soon empty again. She was reaching for the thermos to refill it when she realized she was going to have to pee again, and soon. What to do? She suspected that the moment she finally freed herself from her clothing and squatted down to relieve herself would be the very moment the drug dealer decided to make his appearance. She was simply going to have to hold it, she told herself, noticing that a chickadee had now perched on the handle of her tote bag and was cocking his black-capped head one way and another, apparently believing she kept sunflower seeds in there.
“Shoo!” she hissed, afraid that the little birds gathering around her were probably used to begging from swimmers and picnickers and would give her away. The birds were unmoved, which was probably for the best. A cloud of birds rising all at once would certainly have tipped off the drug dealer. Not that there was a drug dealer or any customers in the parking area.
Lucy checked her watch and discovered she’d been watching and waiting for over an hour and nothing had happened. Maybe drugs were only sold on Tuesdays and Thursdays but never on Fridays. Maybe the delivery had been late. Maybe the dealer had been arrested. Maybe it was time to call it a day, head home, and have a nice, long pee in the comfort of her downstairs powder room.
It was a tempting idea, especially since she was beginning to shiver in the cold. She was stamping her feet and waving her arms, trying to warm up, when she heard the purr of an engine. A car! This was it! She grabbed the camera and raised it to her eyes, clicking away as the black BMW came into view. It was followed by an aged orange pickup truck, a truck that she recognized because it had been parked in her driveway many times last winter.
Lucy watched with dismay as she recognized the familiar figure of Hank DeVries leaning down from the window of his truck to give something to the person in the BMW. The deal completed, the BMW zoomed off, but Hank lingered, sitting in the truck.
Horrified, Lucy broke cover and marched right over to the truck. “Hank! What do you think you’re doing?” He’d grown thinner, she saw, and needed a shave and a haircut. It looked as if he’d been wearing the same clothes for too long. His hooded sweatshirt was grubby and shapeless.
Startled in the act of rolling up his sleeve, Hank jumped and dropped the bit of rubber tubing he was holding. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“Bird watching,” said Lucy. “What are you doing?”
Hank hesitated as if trying to think up a plausible excuse, then gave a big sigh. “You know what I was doing. I was going to shoot up.”
“That’s terrible. You have to stop. You’ll end up killing yourself.”
“I’d like to stop. Believe me,” he said.
Lucy did. “I know it’s hard . . .”
“It’s more than hard. It’s impossible.” His eyes were dull. He’d lost the sparkle and energy that had made him so attractive last winter.
“You should go to rehab. There are places that can help you.”
He snorted. “They’ll help you if you’ve got ten thousand dollars. I don’t.”
“There must be a way,” said Lucy. “What about your folks?”
Hank was fidgeting. Dirty fingers picked at the worn, frayed cuff of his sweatshirt. “They’ve got their own problems. They don’t need me to add to them.”
Lucy guessed that he didn’t want his parents to know about his addiction and she understood why. He wanted them to be proud of him, to approve of him. “There must be programs—”
“Ten thousand dollars. That’s what they want. Then they’ll let you in.” He was beginning to shake, and Lucy realized he needed his fix.
She wanted to help him but knew it would be cruel to prolong his agony. “Well, I gotta go. But do you really mean it? Do you really want to go to rehab? If I find something for you, will you go?”
He was wrapping the rubber tube around his fingers. “I’ll do it,” he said.
Her heart sinking, Lucy walked away, picturing Hank injecting himself with heroin like the actors she’d seen faking it in countless TV shows. This was real, though, and she knew that sooner or later he’d overdose.
But please, God, not today.
Fearful that he might overdose, she went back to her post behind the bush and waited until he drove off. Then she picked up her tote bag and walked slowly back to her car, determined to find a way to help him.
CHAPTER 8
“Lucy Stone, you never made those donuts yourself,” accused Sue Finch when Lucy proudly presented them at the festival. Sue had dressed for the Harvest Festival and was wearing a professional chef’s apron over her chic buffalo plaid flannel shirt and skinny black jeans.
Transporting six dozen donuts had presented quite a challenge, and Lucy was proud of her solution. She’d borrowed the Legos she kept for her grandson Patrick to play with and had constructed a six story tower which she’d placed inside a sturdy picnic cooler. She was carefully unpacking the trays of donuts, arranging them in a neat pyramid on the baked goods table, which was already loaded with a mouth-watering assortment of homemade cakes, cookies, and pies.
“What do you mean?” she protested. “I’m a good cook.”
Once her donuts were safely arranged on the table, she took a look around. The entire fellowship hall at the Community Church had been turned over for the festival and was filled with row upon
