When she got out onto Main Street, she looked up at the Congregational church and the clock on its spire, and realized she’d spent more time than she’d thought she had watching the news vans. She’d left Jack’s room at one—she knew because she’d checked her watch while she was waiting for the elevator—and it was now almost quarter to two. Main Street was as deserted as it would have been if this were an ordinary winter. She passed Cuddy’s, looking through its tinted-glass windows while she walked. It was dead empty. Only Dora Malvern, who worked the afternoons as a waitress, and Chuck Verle, who did the same as a bartender, were inside. In a way, that was surprising. There were “real people” bars in Oscar-town, on the back streets and down near the ferry, but during the off-season the fishermen took possession of the places the summer people liked to go. It was a matter of pride.
She passed the front of the Oscartown Inn, which was also deserted. She supposed Mr. Demarkian must be inside, doing whatever consultants did when they were called in to a crime the police couldn’t solve. She didn’t see the point of it. The police had Arrow Normand under arrest. If Arrow Normand had been any ordinary girl from the island, she’d have been locked up for serious and on her way to a trial without calling in con sultants from as far away as Philadelphia. Linda had an editorial about it, set and ready to go in the next issue of the Home News. It was taxpayer money Clara Walsh was wasting on this Gregor Demarkian, and taxpayer money she was wasting on her attempts to tie herself into a pretzel so that the world wouldn’t think she was being unduly harsh to Little Miss Pantyless Wonder. Or something. It was so very cold now. The wind was coming in off the ocean. It chased down Main Street and made the signs shudder and sway. Jack was up there at the hospital. He might never be able to use his right hand again. He would almost certainly never be able to feel anything with his fingertips.
She got to the Home News and let herself in the front door. This was not something she usually did. She usually used the side entrance, which had stairs directly up to her office. She stopped in the big front room and looked at displays of last week’s edition. The lead story was about the proposed new system of charging for sewer services. It was the kind of thing people who lived on the island really needed to know. The story of the murder was below the fold. There were no pictures of Arrow Normand or Marcey Mandret or any of the rest of them, and the headline said: “Crime Scene on Beach.” There was a picture of Mark Anderman, lifted from a wire-service story, but it was tiny, so tiny you’d need a magnifying glass to make out the features. Linda suddenly felt enormously satisfied by the whole thing.
She was just about to go upstairs when the door to the street opened, and instead of her usual customers—somebody from the IGA with this week’s ad; somebody who wanted to advertise a used lawn mower for sale or a litter of puppies in need of a home—a too-well-dressed middle-aged man came in, wearing a serious city coat instead of a parka. It took her a moment to recognize him. It was obvious to her, from the way he looked at her, that he didn’t expect her to recognize him at all.
“Carl Frank,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Linda Beecham said. “You’re Michael Bardman’s hit man.”
“I’m the publicity director for the movie,” Carl Frank said.
Linda turned away from him. It was time to go upstairs and get some work done. Without Jack here, there was a lot of work to do, a lot of work she had forgotten had to be done. It was odd how you got used to things like that.
“I came to see you,” Carl Frank said. “If you wouldn’t mind. We could talk.”
Linda turned back. “I do mind,” she said. “I don’t see what we have to talk about. I don’t print stories about the movie. I don’t even print stories about the people who are in the movie. Except for the one about the murder, and that was only because it was inevitable.”
“I know,” Carl Frank said. He looked around the big front room, at the two young women taking telephone calls, at the blown-up covers of old editions of the Home News in their stainless-steel frames. The covers were from before Linda’s time, but she had kept them because she remembered them. The time JFK and Jackie had come to Oscartown. The time Amanda Kay Adams had made it all the way to the U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. Carl Frank didn’t seem to be impressed. “Couldn’t we talk,” he said, “somewhere out of the way?”
Linda turned her back on him and headed upstairs, but she didn’t tell him he couldn’t come, and she didn’t protest when she heard him behind her. She let herself into her big second-floor office. This was still her favorite place in town. She could see everything from here, or at least everything on Main Street. She took off her parka and put it on the coat tree. She pulled out the chair behind her desk and sat down. Time seemed to be oddly warped. The clock on the Congregational church now said two fifteen.