Black Tide (53 page)
Another half dozen meteors burned their way through the atmosphere before she yawned and said, "I dozed off there."
"So you did."
"Well, can you blame me?" she demanded. "I had a hell of a busy day. Up at dawn with a phone tip that those Winslow Homer paintings were at St. Donna's Cemetery, and my God, Lewis, when I got there it was just me and your cop buddy, Diane Woods. I got the particulars from everybody else who showed up and I got an exclusive, photos and everything else."
"Congratulations," I said, glad that in the darkness she couldn't see what my face looked like.
"Mmm," she said. "Not only that, but I got on the phone and started doing freelance, and I sold stringer stories to the Associated Press, the Boston Globe and a couple of radio stations. Even Channel 9 interviewed me."
"I saw you. I was impressed. If you ever want a career as a meat puppet, you can have it."
"Hunh," she said. "Not likely. Nope, I got bigger and better things ahead of me, Lewis. This afternoon I called up the head of security at the museum, some guy named Dix, and he was so happy to talk to me he was crying on the phone. I've got an interview set up with him tomorrow."
"You do?" I said. "Then tell him I said hello."
Paula squeezed me again. "You know him?"
"Just a little, but he'll know me. Tell him hello, and that I'm glad everything worked out."
"Hah," Paula said, nuzzling under my chin. “Anybody else at the museum I should say hi to?"
I remembered a long-legged woman on this back deck in a skimpy bathing suit and the way she had looked at me, and how she had walked out, full of life and confidence. I smiled gently. "No one else, Paula. No one else."
She giggled slightly. "You weren't making any phone calls to the
Chronicle
this morning, were you? Seems like the cops got the same call. So one call was for Diane and the other was for me. And you know the two of us and the museum director. Pretty cozy, Lewis."
"Stop complaining," I said. "Just be glad you got called, and stop asking so many questions."
"Hmmm," she murmured. “All right, you secret-keeper you. And you know who else I called today?
Yankee
magazine. I called their articles editor and pitched her a story about the painting recovery, and she's interested. Can you believe that? Me in a national magazine!"
"Nice way to end up another boring summer at Tyler Beach," I said.
“Absolutely.”
"So you're doing better."
"Yep."
I gave her a squeeze. “And how are we doing?"
"Hmmm," she said, gently kissing my neck. "I think we're doing better. We're starting over in a way, Lewis, and I think that's best."
"No arguments here."
"I'm glad." The meteors went on, each one seemingly brighter than the one before it, and Paula kissed me and whispered, "Lewis, I should be going. I'm falling asleep here."
I thought about my response, and I carefully said, "You're welcome to spend the night. On the couch, if need be, Paula."
She kissed me again. "No, I should go home. And don't you get up --- you'll ruin your night vision or something. You stay here and enjoy the show."
I squeezed her hand and there was the soft noise of the glass door sliding open. After a minute or two, she went out the front door and I could hear her walk up my dirt driveway. I waited until I caught the sound of her car engine starting and then heading away. Then I pulled the blanket up and lay back and stared up at the vastness of the evening sky, looking at my old constellation friends, running their names through my mind. Soon it seemed like with every passing minute meteor after meteor streaked across the sky, filling me with an ancient and wonderful joy, of being alive and breathing in such a huge and glorious universe. I took a deep breath and my side felt fine and I smelled the clean air of the ocean waves, and there was no scent of oil, rot or decay.
The black tide was gone.
# # #
Afterword
Thank you again, dear reader, for not only purchasing my second published novel, but also purchasing the second work in my Lewis Cole series, and an artifact from a time where computers and what they could do was just starting to make an impact in fiction.
In re-formatting “Black Tide,” boy oh boy, was I tempted to edit it and tighten some scenes up. There were a number of scenes that in re-reading nearly twenty years (!) later, that I thought contained too much thinking and brooding. And my word, I winced every time one of my characters winked. Gad, was there an epidemic of eye blinking going on in my fictional universe back then? But in the end I decided to let it be, for better or for worse.
But one thing I’m proud of is the plot behind “Black Tide,” concerning the theft of valuable paintings from a museum in Manchester, N.H. Obviously these thefts are based on the actual thefts that occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardener museum in Boston that took place in 1990, five years before “Black Tide” was written. In coming up with my plot, I used the slim possibility that organized crime was involved.
Flash forward nearly twenty years… a few months ago the FBI announced that they believed the thefts were the work of… organized crime.
So it’s true, that fact can be stranger than fiction, and other times, they just mirror each other.
# # #
Brendan DuBois of Exeter, New Hampshire, is the award-winning author of 130 short stories and sixteen novels including his latest, “Deadly Cove,” part of the Lewis Cole mystery series (Pegasus Books) which will be published in May 2014. His short fiction has appeared in Playboy, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous anthologies including “The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century,” published in 2000 by Houghton-Mifflin, as well as the “The Best American Noir of the Century,” published in 2010. His stories have twice won him the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America, and have also earned him three Edgar Allan Poe Award nominations from the Mystery Writers of America. He is also a “Jeopardy!” gameshow champion. Visit his website at
www.BrendanDuBois.com
.