Of course, she wasn’t sure if it made much of a difference anymore, seeing as how she used to give this class at her bed-and-breakfast every single Saturday afternoon of tourist season to six people (the maximum number that would fit in her kitchen), and now, tourism had dwindled so greatly, it was by request only—and this was only the second request she’d gotten that summer.
She’d once had ambitions—or fantasies, anyway—of being one of those cooking show hosts on television. She often watched reruns of Julia Child shows on PBS and sometimes, when she was sure she was alone, she narrated her recipes, as though she were on camera, talking to a rapt audience.
“Are you sure that thing can hear me?” she asked, eyeing the tiny rectangular recorder with a microphone the size of a golf ball that Anders had placed on the counter next to the metal tin full of flour.
“Oh, yeah,” Anders assured her. “It’s more powerful than you think.”
Pearl had learned all about his little podcast, of course, long before he approached her after breakfast that morning saying Piper had recommended he take her cake-baking class, and could he possibly record the session? After he mentioned his podcast at breakfast that first morning, she had immediately called up Sue to ask her what a podcast was, who in turn asked Shirlene, who asked BobDan. The problem was nobody knew exactly what a podcast was. So Pearl called Lady Judy, and the two of them snuck over to the market under the cover of night—Pearl didn’t want to be caught dead using the very technology she eschewed aloud every chance she had—thankful that Mr. Garrison never locked up in case someone needed to use the computer.
It took some time for the computer to boot up and then even longer for the dial-up to connect. Judy helmed the keyboard, as she had taken a typing class in high school when she thought she might leave the island and become a secretary.
“I think you have to use the Googler,” Mrs. Olecki directed from behind.
“It’s Google,” Lady Judy said.
“That’s what I said.”
“What’s the name of his pod thingy again?”
Pearl repeated what Harold had told her in a whisper. “Have you ever heard of anything so vulgar? To twist the name of our little island like that.”
“I don’t know.” Lady Judy snorted. “I think it’s frickin’ funny.”
Pearl lightly slapped her on the shoulder. “Honestly.”
Between the loading time for the web page and buffering, it took them at least an hour to listen to six minutes of the first episode, but it was long enough to understand that Anders Caldwell wasn’t up to anything nefarious—he was just offering an outsider’s look at their island. To a little over a thousand people.
Bless his heart. Her niece on the mainland had more followers on her Instantgram, or whatever it was called, than he did on his podcast, and she was fourteen.
Anyway, she called off the alarm, letting everyone know that Anders Caldwell was harmless. Of course, he was still a journalist and a Come Here, so he couldn’t be fully trusted, but if he wanted to keep coming and spending his hard-earned money at her little bed-and-breakfast every weekend to, what?—do more podcasts on Frick Island and climate change, a story that had been done a million times or more?—she’d take it. And if he wanted to air her Frick Island cake lesson on his podcast to his very small audience, well, who was she to say no? Any publicity was good publicity.
But now, as the afternoon wore on, she got the feeling that the man she was teaching was interested in something other than learning how to bake the cake. She narrowed her eyes at Anders, the not-Mormon podcaster who had shown up for the third time at her bed-and-breakfast yesterday afternoon asking for a room, and waited patiently for the truth to out, as it always did if one waited long enough.
“Can I ask you something?” Anders said finally, when the first round of layers was in the oven baking.
She knew it. Here it was, the real reason he’d asked to take this class.
“Sure,” she said, trying to keep the smugness out of her voice.
“So I was down at the docks last week and Piper introduced me to Tom.” He was watching her carefully, and Pearl stilled.
“Tighter than ticks, those two are.” She kept her voice steady.
Anders’s eyebrows nearly flew off his face. “Yes, but—”
Pearl cut him off. “If you have any questions about the cake, I’m happy to entertain them. If you want to know more about that cell tower they’re building out here and how it’s going to give everyone cancer, I can talk at length about that as well.” She paused to let that sink in. Surely that was a far better story than climate change, but Anders’s expression didn’t reflect interest. She sighed. “But the personal lives of other people? Well, I’m no two-bit gossip—and I’d certainly hope that you aren’t either.”
Anders looked appropriately chagrined. After a few moments of silence, the warm scent of baking sugar and butter filling the air between them, he spoke up. “Do you ever need any help around here?”
She furrowed a brow at the abrupt change in conversation. “Help?”
“Yeah, with, like . . . I don’t know . . . cleaning the gutters or washing windows or yard work. Moving furniture? Things like that.”
She stared at him, waiting for the rest.
“It’s just . . . I’m probably going to be coming over here for a few more weeks at least, and I can’t really afford it on my salary. And BobDan and I already struck a deal for the ferry—I’ll be loading and unloading and doing a few other things around the marina for him, which is what gave me the idea . . .”
Ah. He wanted a discount. She eyed him carefully. Of course, she didn’t fully trust him—was any reporter honest?—but there was something about
