Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

.
     
    Okay, bad idea. After the mess he’d made of his marriage, Caleb knew better than to fall into another relationship based on loneliness and convenience.
     
    But at least for those few minutes on the beach last night, he’d felt alive again.
     
    A tap sounded on his door. Edith Paine, the town clerk, stuck her smooth gray bob into Caleb’s office. Edith had been running town hall since before the current building’s construction. She handled the town’s billing and permits, scheduled appointments for the mayor, and served as the island’s dispatcher during the day. Caleb never walked past her desk in the outer office without feeling like he ought to wipe his shoes first.
     
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    She sniffed. “Bruce Whittaker to see you.”
     
    Edith hadn’t taken Whittaker’s complaint last night— after-hours calls to the police were bounced to Caleb’s cell phone. She wouldn’t like being out of the loop.
     
    Or maybe, Caleb thought, she just didn’t like Whittaker.
     
    “Thanks. Tell him to come in.”
     
    “You’ll need to let him out,” she warned. “I get off at four.”
     
    “Can’t miss Oprah ,” Caleb joked.
     
    Edith looked down her nose at him. “I have a four thirty kickboxing class at the community center.” Turning her head, she spoke over her shoulder. “You can go in now. He’s not doing anything.”
     
    Nothing that couldn’t wait. Caleb tossed away a catalog advertising high-tech SWAT equipment and glanced up.
     
    White male, six feet, wiry build, Bruce Whittaker wore his brown hair short and his shirt sleeves rolled. Caleb put his age in the mid-forties and his income considerably higher.
     
    “Mr. Whittaker. What can I do for you?”
     
    "You can do something about those trespassers on my beach.”
     
    The point was public land, but the question wasn’t worth disputing.
     
    Caleb raised his eyebrows. “They’re back?”
     
    “They came back this morning to pick up their vehicles.”
     
    “Then what’s the problem?”
     
    “You should have arrested them.”
     
    Caleb relaxed his hands on his desk blotter. “I wrote them up. And Stowe will have to appear in court.”
     
    “I want to see him in jail,” Whittaker said.
     
    15
     
    Caleb nodded toward the steel and glass doorway that separated the chief’s office from the island’s two small holding cells. “We don’t have the space or the manpower for me to play Barney Fife. I lock somebody up, we’re both spending the night in jail. I don’t mind sleeping on a cot if somebody’s committed a serious crime. But I don’t give up my bed because some kid bought beer for his buddies.”
     
    “They were trespassing,” Whittaker insisted. “My beach rights extend to the low water mark.”
     
    Lawyer , Caleb thought.
     
    “Within your property lines, yes,” he said. “These kids were just outside, on public beach.”
     
    “They were still violating the law.”
     
    “Yeah, they were,” Caleb agreed. “But I’d bet they won’t now they know you’ve got a nice view of the party. I can drive by the next couple of nights, see if they show up again.”
     
    Or if she did . The woman . Margred .
     
    Caleb shook his head. He’d already tried to track her down. Edith had never heard of her. Nobody at Island Realty had any record or recollection of a dark-haired Margaret, last name unknown. As chief of police, he had better things to do with his time than chase after some fantasy woman on the beach. But the lack of information about her aroused his professional curiosity.
     
    Along with other things.
     
    “Let me know if you see anyone,” Whittaker said. “You catch them lighting fires again, I’ll take care of them.”
     
    “You let me take care of them,” Caleb said. “I’m not calling an open season on tourists or kids.”
     
    “An uncontrolled burn could destroy the ecosystem of this island.”
     
    The son of a lobsterman, Caleb understood how fragile the island’s environment was . . . and how shaky its economy. The islanders, the real
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    islanders, depended on both the sea and tourism to survive. Something a newcomer like Whittaker would never understand.
     
    He saw him out and began his evening swing through town.
     
    A tumbled line of weathered gray shops and houses divided the hard, bright blue of the sky from the deeper, wilder blue of the sea. A half-dozen high school kids straggled up from the ferry, the boys in boots and flannel shirts, the girls in flip-flops