27

SARAH ARRANGED TO HAVE DINNER with Garrett and the two women who lived next door to Roland. Ingrid’s husband was away.

“They want to thank you for getting that compressor turned off, and I think you’ll like them, Gar. Besides, Ingrid is a great cook.”

Garrett arrived about six in the evening, sinking down into the seat of his car as he passed the Cribby household. He’d almost never seen Roland or Rose outside or even at a window. They appeared to hunker down in the back of the house in their respective warrens and never expected visitors. Still, he thought it would be the better part of diplomacy if Roland didn’t see him fraternizing with the neighbors. That would simply add fuel to the fire.

Sarah was waiting for him by the wharf, and they went in together. They were greeted warmly, both women insisting on hugging Garrett and thanking him profusely for his efforts on their behalf. As they were led into the sunken living room for the mandatory Manhattans, Garrett was surprised to see his neighbor Keith sitting in a comfortable chair in front of a low table filled with papers and maps. On the edge of the table was a frosted glass that Garrett knew held Pepsi. Keith never drank alcohol. There was no time for it. He took the business of recording the history of the Eastern shore seriously.

Ingrid thrust a Manhattan at Garrett and offered a toast.

“To our whale slayer,” she said. “We are forever in your debt and shall sing your praises each night at bedtime for all eternity.”

“Wow,” said Garrett. “Things must have been getting pretty tense around here.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” said Grace.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why am I a whale slayer?”

“It’s what we call Roland,” said Ingrid. “Because he’s such a whale of a liar.”

Garrett nodded his understanding. “I might call what he does embellishment, but it’s a small point.”

“Embellishment,” Ingrid said. “There’s a quaint notion. Back before he stopped talking to us altogether, he told me how he used to water-ski around the islands when he was a kid. Said he came around a point once at full speed and there was some sort of catamaran bearing straight down on him, so he bounced off a wave and flew over it. That’s one. Want to hear another?”

Garrett laughed and held up his hands. “God, no. I’ve heard stories like that since I was twelve years old. For the record, Roland has never water-skied in his life. I was just trying to be diplomatic.” He stared at the mass of papers on the table. “What on earth are you up to, Keith?”

“Our hosts asked me about property lines, so I brought along some tax maps and aerial surveys of the cove.”

“You’re looking to buy more property?” Sarah said to Ingrid. “I thought you might be selling out and looking for a new neighbor.”

She shrugged. “We like it here, despite the whale. But I thought it might be wise to know precisely where the boundaries are between Roland’s land and ours. He was furious when we dug the drainage ditch. Said it was on his property, but we had a survey done to prove it wasn’t.”

“Roland spent a lot of time on surveys of the bogs,” said Keith, “back when he was planning his boglands country club. He knows the area inside out. But he was wrong about the location of the drainage ditch.”

“I always thought the bogs were crown land,” said Garrett.

“Some is, but not all of it. Anyway, when the women bought their extra lots, it pretty much put the kibosh on Roland’s plans, crazy as they were. It’s why he’s been so hostile to them.”

“Sheesh!” Ingrid said, “He ought to get down on his knees and thank us for saving him from wasting all his money on that cockamamie scheme.”

“Roland knows the cove too well,” said Grace. She pointed out a window to the spruce-covered hill above the house. “I think he’s been spying on us from up in the trees. It’s the only spot that provides a view right down on our deck.”

Garrett stared out the window. “You actually caught him doing that?”

“No, but I’ve walked up there myself when he wasn’t around. There are several places where someone cut tree branches to improve the view.”

“Who owns the land?” Garrett asked Keith, who just shrugged.

“It’s his land, Garrett. Nothing says he can’t walk on his own land and trim the trees if he wants to. Much as I don’t like it if that’s what he’s doing, Grace is the one who just admitted to trespassing.”

“Can’t you do something about it, Garrett?” Sarah asked.

He spread his hands. “Pretty hard if he owns the land. If you actually caught him looking at your house with binoculars … maybe … but he’d just claim he was bird-watching or looking at the architecture or something.”

“I know the bird he’s watching,” said Ingrid. “It’s Grace. As for the architecture—look, we weren’t crazy about the design of this place either. It’s pretty far out for this neck of the woods. We recognize that, but the price was right and the view is spectacular—at least on the ocean side.”

Garrett sighed. The relaxed evening he’d been looking forward to was turning into a legal primer. He met Sarah’s eyes and knew she understood how he felt. “I suppose you could build a fence to shield the deck,” he said dubiously.

“Damn it, Garrett,” said Ingrid. “Reason we moved here was because of the ocean view and the big spruce on the hillside. I don’t see why we have to shutter ourselves off just because we live next door to an asshole.”

“A whale,” said Grace.

“I stand corrected,” said Ingrid. “A whale of an asshole.”

“I kind of doubt Roland would be quick enough to come up with either the bird-watching or the architecture excuse,” said Keith. “He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean. Remember when he burned his boat?”

“He what?” Garrett asked.

“It was the highlight of last year’s season,” said Ingrid. “He’d been doing something in his boat on his way back in after a day of scalloping and the engine caught fire. He tried to make it back to the wharf and almost did, but the fire was nearly out of control. He opened the sea cocks thirty feet from the wharf to try to drown the flames. The boat sank in the shallows but not before it blew against the wharf and set the dock on fire as well.”

“How did he get off?” Garrett asked incredulously.

“Jumped into the water at the last moment, swam ashore, and called the fire department. They managed to save most of the wharf. He had quite a time with the insurance company though, figuring out who had to pay for what.”

“Only thing not underwater in his fishing boat were the WSR and GPS antennas,” said Keith. “He had to bring in a crane and have the thing lifted out, and he spent the whole summer rebuilding and drying out the engine. Had to buy all new electronics.”

“My god!” Garrett stared at them. “If it was anyone but Roland, I’d say that was utterly unbelievable.”

“Story was all over Misery Bay,” Keith went on. “Fishermen were winning drinks in every tavern up and down the coast with that one.”

“Can we please stop talking about Roland,” said Sarah, coming to Garrett’s rescue. “I thought you invited us here for dinner, not a Cribby seminar.”

“To turn a phrase,” said Ingrid.

“You’re right,” said Grace. “Enough about the whale. We’re celebrating the renewed silence of the cove.”

So they settled back and talk turned to the wet summer weather, cove news, and as always, with Keith in attendance, local history. He told them about one of the more obscure shipwrecks off Lighthouse Point. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands of shipwrecks off the rocky coasts of Nova Scotia.

“It’s how Misery Bay got its name,” Keith said. “The shoals and offshore islands here were a ship’s graveyard back in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Wrecks were so common that bodies sometimes washed up by the score, the way bales of marijuana do today.”

“I remember when we were growing up,” said Garrett, “Keith found a Native American dugout down in the bay. It had been sunk with big rocks, probably as a way to hide it.”

“Really?” said Grace. “That’s fascinating. Who do you think it belonged to?”

“Well, we actually raised it from the lagoon,” said Keith, “and gave it to the Maritime Museum in Halifax. They determined that it was Mi’kmaq in origin and was close to six hundred years old.”

“That what got you so interested in local history?” Sarah asked.

Keith broke into a broad smile. “It was the first thing,” he said. “I just sort of got hooked on it after that.”

“Maybe Roland sank his boat as a way to hide it too,” said Ingrid. “Too bad he wasn’t aboard when it happened.”

“Can’t sink a whale,” said Grace.

The conversation threatened to deteriorate into another anti-Roland tirade, but Keith saved the day by beginning one of his patented soliloquies, this one on an elderly woman who lived in the next cove.

“Abbey Whynot,” he announced, as though answering someone’s question. “Related to the Voglers, you know. Her ancestors were the first settlers at Ecum Secum. Old Martin Vogler built himself a hut on the shore near Balcomb’s Lake. I was actually walking around the foundation a while back.”

Sarah glanced at Garrett, her face a question mark. He just shrugged. There was no stopping Keith once he got on a roll. Non sequiturs were his specialty.

“Her husband was a whaler,” Keith continued, as if this comment justified the conversational turn.

“I met her once,” said Ingrid. “A lovely lady. She must be ancient now.”

“Ninety-eight … last Thursday,” said Keith. “It was also her eightieth wedding anniversary. Church had a little celebration and cake for her. Her husband didn’t participate. He was killed at sea seventy-five years ago at the age of thirty-four. Whaler went down off the Grand Banks in the blow of ’39. Sixteen men killed. Storm hit late on a Friday afternoon and blew for three days.”

Garrett couldn’t repress a smile. Keith’s memory for obscure dates was a thing of wonder. The man had to have a photographic memory and must have spent his evenings pondering old church records and recorded deeds. Of course, it was possible he just made this stuff up, knowing no one would ever question him or try to verify anything he said. But Garrett knew that wasn’t the case. Keith simply loved history and enjoyed nothing more than being the dispenser of information.

He let the historian rattle on, relieved that Roland was no longer the topic. But he had a bad feeling about the long-term consequences of the local neighborhood feud.