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Say what you will about my normal days. They don’t usually involve public speaking.
Listening quietly, as Nora gave her opening statement—which was a masterpiece of self-promotion and nasty insinuations about Velveteen, with a few moments of vitriol toward Mac thrown in for good measure—Mac sighed quietly.
Nora had gone all-out in her outfit tonight. It was a pristine red suit with red pumps and red lipstick, none of which quite matched her red hair, but Mac figured it was one of those occasions when the suit was more important than the person wearing it.
Standing there with her little handmade frog in a witch hat pin on her department uniform, which was well-kept but always a little lived in, Mac had to try not to look bored. Aside from the few attacks on her competitors, Nora’s speech could have been compiled by AI from an assembly of “greatest demagogue speeches of the century” and was hitting every ridiculous note, all of which actually said nothing. While she suspected that the woman would not stay silent during Mac’s speech, Mac did her the courtesy of not interrupting, nonetheless.
The church secretary for The Screamers—Ivy Knowles—was the one keeping the time for the debate and asking the questions, and she was staring at her stopwatch in a way which suggested that Nora was coming up pretty close on her allowed three minutes. Whether Ivy would allow her to go over was an interesting point. Somehow, Mac didn’t think she’d do so on purpose. She was quite new to town and hadn’t taken any obvious sides. But she was also rather sweet-natured and probably not the right person to put in front of the steamroller which was Nora.
Still, as Ivy was holding up her hand to attempt to stop the woman, Nora ended with, “And where is Miss Velveteen tonight? You would think she’d care enough about all of you to come here, but this is simply another example of her arrogance.”
At that point, there was a Ding! from Ivy’s bell, but Nora had stopped, anyway.
Sighing, Mac tried not to glare at her opponent and figured she was on.
“Sheriff Welles, would you like to give an opening statement for Mayor Dubois?” Ivy prompted her.
Man, this woman is ridiculously new to town if she refers to Velveteen by her last name.
But the stopwatch had already been started, and Mac was left to defend the best mayor the town had ever had.
Taking a deep breath, she tried to put her admiration for Velveteen into words in the way which would best fit into the heads of her fellow townspeople. While they were not big thinkers and wouldn’t be won over with appeals to the future, Mac did know them—as well as Nora’s kryptonite—so she decided to play on it. It might be slightly underhanded, but it wasn’t half of what Nora herself had gotten up to lately.
“Here’s the thing, y’all.”
It was definitely a time for folksiness, and, besides, “y’all” was a much more useful word than people gave it credit for.
“You know me. You know Velveteen. While she wasn’t born here, she’s been here for the whole of a lot of y’all’s lives, including mine.”
While a few of the older folks grumbled a bit, she played on them, too.
“And think about what this town would have been if Velveteen hadn’t brought the crafters to it. Y’all remember Pine Lakes?”
It was a town—or, at least had been one—about a half hour away. Her father had talked about it a lot when she was younger.
“No, probably many of the younger ones here don’t. Heck, I don’t, but my father, your sheriff-before-last . . .”
And the last one’s in jail, so . . .
“. . . used to tell me about it. Well, it was pretty and small but isolated, a lot like Prospector’s Rest, really. And once it got to be about, oh, 1970 or so, and it was easy for people to leave, the young ones mostly did. And they didn’t come back. Wasn’t much to the town, either, not that would bring in strangers, anyway. Not that would take their attention away from the Parkway and Asheville and other places which were bigger and better kept up and would cater to them.”
She knew she had them now. A lot of heads were nodding.
“And you know what happened to it? Pretty soon, it wasn’t ‘300 or Thereabouts’ living there.”
That phrase had been on the Prospector’s Rest town sign for about 100 years, and she saw it strike home with the crowd. She also saw Nora fidget slightly.
“Pretty soon, it was 100. Then 50. Then 10. Now, the only people who wander around there are the ones who like to see ghost towns.”
Glancing to the side for a second, she saw Di’s smile and took it to heart.
“But what did Velveteen do for us? Well, that ‘weird hippie,’ as she got referred to at first, got us visitors. Then more visitors. And you know what our town’s main sources of income now are? Visitors and crafts. And visitors coming to see the crafts.”
Leaning forward, she saw Ivy flash 20 seconds to her, and started to finish up.
“And you know who got us those visitors and is getting us even more and dreaming up ways to keep them coming through all the parts of the year we aren’t covered in snow? Mayor Velveteen, that’s who. She’s why all the crafts stores are here and why newcomers like Ms. Only-Been-Here-Five-Years Dugan ever came into town or have any chance of making a livin’ once they do.”
Ivy smiled at her, and Mac wrapped up.
“You keep Velveteen on and see where we’ll go from here.”
The bell rang, and Nora was obviously irate. The speech had focused on all the things the townsfolks actually wanted to hear and had pointed out Nora’s main failing in their eyes, which was that she wasn’t really “one of them.”
“Ms. Dugan, a rebuttal?” Ivy prompted, and Nora nearly exploded. Mac thought it a miracle she had lasted this long, and had probably only done it because she knew the town didn’t like rudeness, and she definitely didn’t need to be seen as a “rude Yankee” at this point.
“And where is Ms. Velveteen tonight? What does she find more important than being in front of these fine folks?”
Granted, it was the only thing she could say after Mac’s speech, but Mac decided to lay her cards on the table.
“As I’m sure some of you have heard, there’s been some sort of error down at the Ladies Aid meeting.”
A few townspeople rolled their eyes, as the Ladies Aid were not entirely popular.
“Velveteen went to speak to them when they asked, and something got into their coffee.”
This started the murmurs, which Mac immediately jumped on.
“Velveteen is fine, as are the other ladies, and we don’t know how something accidentally got into the coffee, but, until whatever it is wears off, she can’t be here with you. Believe me, when she wakes up, she’s going to be livid that she missed this, as I know she wanted to talk to y’all.”
It wasn’t an easy situation, but Mac figured she’d handled it the best she could. With that many women passed out, the rumor would have already started, and there was no way to keep it hidden. Better to address it as a simple—if unlikely—“mistake” than admit that there were evildoers out there, too.
Still, Nora clearly saw her opening.
“But that’s exactly the issue, isn’t it? Ever since Velveteen’s been mayor, there’s been a murder and dognappings and now mass druggings, and even a theft!”
Granted, the murder had happened before Velveteen was mayor, but Nora wasn’t letting reality into her rant.
“That’s right! She’s let the election machines get stolen, people! Who knows what she’s going to try to do with your righteous vote?”
This, though, finally gave Mac the opening she needed.
Putting her head on her hand and staring at Nora, Mac wondered, “And how did you know about the theft, Ms. Dugan? That’s only been revealed to the Sheriff’s Department right now.”
Nora’s eyes widened just slightly, as Mac went on.
“Well . . .”
Mac shrugged.
“. . . the Sheriff’s Department and whoever’s behind it.”
Although Nora was clearly floundering, Mac didn’t actually have any idea how to bring this home. She had zero evidence against the woman besides a few high school vandals of Velveteen’s signs, but that wasn’t at all the same level as the rest of what had been going on here.
At that moment, though, her cellphone rang, and Mac cursed herself for not turning it off or leaving it with Di.
Still, as she looked at it, and Nora started to try to turn the audience against her for her rudeness, Mac saw that the call was from Fitch. Immediately, she answered it.
“Fitch, where are you?”
“Sheriff, I . . .”
He sounded out of breath and there was a sound of baying dogs behind him. Mac’s heart started to pound.
Oh good Lord. What did I get him into?
“McCardle went to VanRowe’s house, but there’re these big guys and . . .”
Partly because she needed witnesses and partly because she didn’t want to walk off stage to tell Di and the other officers what was going on, as it would give Nora much too big an opening, Mac put the phone on speaker and held it up to the microphone.
“Tell me who’s behind this again, Deputy Fitch.”
Although he was clearly running, Fitch answered.
“VanRowe hired some goons.”
“The ones who stole the election machines and shot Bernie Goldschmidt . . .” Mac put in for her audience, who were starting to look quite upset.
“Yes, I saw the machines at his house. He’s got a computer expert there who’s tinkering with them.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Di calling someone, probably the department to start coordinating finding and helping Fitch.
They shared a nod, as he ran off, and Mac had to tell herself firmly that she had to stay here. As much as she wanted to, she couldn’t surround Di in bubble wrap and keep him safe all the time. After all, one of the things she loved about him was that he would always do the right thing. She couldn’t make him stop that and have him be himself.
But all of this was in one part of her brain, while the other part was focused on poor Fitch and letting the community know what was going on.
“And who’s working with him?”
Although poor Fitch clearly didn’t understand, he answered, and she wished she had the time to explain.
“McCardle was giving him the inside scoop on the investigation. I didn’t see Nora there, but VanRowe has pictures all over his house of the two of them together.”
While the crowd’s ire was turning on Nora, Mac’s heart nearly stopped. There’d been a very loud noise on the line.
“Fitch. Was that a shot?”
“Uh, yeah, they’re getting pretty close.”
Taking a guess, she added, “You’re in the woods near VanRowe’s? The one with the stream?”
“Uh, yeah, and . . .”
But at that point, a rather scraggly figure in the audience stood up. He was kind of the picture of inbred meanness.
While what he said would have been incomprehensible to outsiders, it translated to something like, “That idiot billionaire is on my property? Aw, hell, no!”
Apparently, the “hick Cryptkeeper” and owner of Prospector’s Rest’s least-popular campground didn’t take to trespassers, which wasn’t much of a surprise.
“Jackson, if you harm my deputy . . .” Mac warned him.
“I don’t care about some kid, but ain’t no billionaire taking my property!”
Again, this was a translation for those who spoke actual English. Also, what VanRowe would want with the rundown campground was beyond imagining, but, at the moment, Mac figured they needed all the help they could get. When Jackson and his cousins ran off, she didn’t stop them.
The debate, then, ended in utter chaos, especially after Mac suggested that she needed to ask Nora a few questions back at the station. Sadly, the woman snuck off somewhere in the hubbub.
Still, it was a little late by that point for Mac to run off and try to help.
At the end of the evening, then, it was only Mac and two worried dogs left staring at a cellphone, hoping for good news.