Mayor. If I did, you would charge me commercial taxes.”
“Did Todd inform you that the fiver was a voluntary contribution?”
Harry had no intention of getting in the middle of a local inter-governmental squabble. “Ah, he may have. I don’t rightly recall.”
The mayor took the fiver out of the pot and handed it back to Harry then opened his wallet and replaced it with a couple of bills. “Two bucks is fair; consider it a welcome gift to a newcomer.”
“Is there anything else you want?” old Todd asked the mayor.
“No.”
The old guy turned to Harry. “Do you get offended by foul language?”
“No, not usually.”
“Good,” Todd said as he shuffled back to the stairway. “Fuck you, Mayor.”
“And good morning to you, Todd,” the mayor replied.
“Are you the mayor that dabbles in real estate?” Harry asked.
“I’m the real estate agent that dabbles in being a mayor. You must be Mr Cull; Trooper Cirba told me to keep an eye out for you.”
“Harry,” Harry said extending a hand.
“Charlie Boyce,” the mayor said, shaking it. “So, you a cop?”
“No.”
“So, how do you know Cirba?”
“We’re drinking buddies.”
“Oh, right. I got it all wrong then. I thought you were up here helping with the murder investigation.”
“I heard something about a murder. Who was it?”
Charlie sighed and shook his head. “Local kid; actually, he wasn’t a kid. I just knew him for a long time. He used to work for me in winter. He was a good guy but always seemed to wind up with a bad crowd. You know?”
“What happened to him?”
“They found him in the woods. Paper says he was shot.” Charlie thought for a moment then shook off the mood. “But I wouldn’t worry about it. People ’round here are real nice, and that’s no lie.”
“Except for Todd, of course,” Harry said.
The mayor laughed. “See, you’re getting to know the place already. I’ve got a sweet little lakeside cottage for you. If you’re finished with your coffee I’ll take you over.”
On the way out the door the mayor picked up a loaf of bread, a half a dozen eggs and a pint of milk, stuffed them in a bag and handed them to Harry. “Now that’s worth a fiver.”
Harry added a tin of Spam and a bag of cookies to his shopping and dropped twenty into the pot. He didn’t want to give old Todd anymore reason to dislike him.
* * *
Harry followed the mayor on the potholed lake road that was only wide enough to let two medium-sized cars squeeze past each other. The mayor strictly obeyed the fifteen miles per hour speed limit – when you’re the mayor you have to.
The slow pace gave Harry the chance to take in his surroundings. The houses around the lake were an eclectic mix. At one end of the spectrum were the old A-frames. An A-frame house was available mail order, just four long pieces of wood stuck in the ground like a big triangle, with pitch roofing tiles nailed to the sides. It gave you one large room with sloping walls downstairs and a cosy little bedroom upstairs. Back in the fifties some families of eight would spend the entire summer in one of them and they would get to know each other – very well. These days most of them had a more modern extension tacked on.
In between there was a variety of different sized homes all the way up to proper multi-storey luxury hunting/skiing lodges built by New Yorkers who spent their Wall Street money on a mountain dream.
Harry parked his car next to Charlie’s in the driveway of one of the in-between-sized houses and went inside. It was a quaint bungalow with comfortable furnishings and an oldfashioned kitchen that could be described as clean but not gleaming.
“Now before you decide whether you like it or not,” Charlie said as he searched for the rope that operated the curtain that covered the length of the living room wall, “check this out.”
The curtain opened to reveal that the entire side of the room was glass with a doublesliding door in the middle. Beyond it was a sloping lawn ending with a small wooden dock that jutted out onto the glorious Ice Lake. It was the kind of vista that forced one to say “wow” and that’s just what Harry said.
“Ah the view always gets ’em,” Charlie said with a real estate agent’s grin. He walked back to the kitchen. “There’s a coffee maker and a little coffee, tea, and sugar in the cupboard. My number is in here,” he said lifting a folder from the counter. “Questions about the house, like the water heater and such are in here too. Please, read it before you call me. When the phone rings in the night it drives my wife loopy. Well loopier. Especially when the answer’s in here.”
“I’ll study it thoroughly.”
“Oh, if all my renters were as good as you, my life would be harmonious – and that’s no lie. I’ll leave you to your view.”
Harry walked him to the door.
As he was getting into the car he called back, “Feel free to call me if you need anything.”
“As long as it’s not in the folder,” Harry said.
Charlie touched his nose and then pointed with a smile.
* * *
Harry had a good snoop around his new abode. The bedroom was down a hallway from the living area. It was a pleasant size and featured a brass bed that was a bit softer and definitely squeakier than he liked. No matter, Harry thought with a sigh, it’s not like I’m going to be disturbing the neighbours with any extra-curricular bedspring squeaking.
In the kitchen Harry found an old teapot high on a shelf. The owners had probably only bought it as an ornament but as Harry’s old Irish mother always said: “A home’s not a home unless it has a hot teapot in it.”
He set water to boil and cleaned off the years of dust from the pot. Then just as his mother had taught him, he warmed it with boiling water and added three tea bags and just-boiled water. Then he wrapped the pot with a tea towel to keep it warm and set up a tray with a cup, a little milk pitcher, and some of old Todd’s cookies.
He carried it all outside, left it on the picnic table to brew up strong like he liked it and approached the water’s edge. It really was, as Trooper Cirba had said, “a little corner of paradise”. At less than two miles around you could almost see the whole lake from where he stood. To his right a light breeze danced on the water making the sunlight sparkle on the surface. To the left the lake thinned and dog-legged around a corner. There it was darker and less inviting, hemmed in by knurled trees and water filled with dark green lily pads. Harry could make out ducks in the distance and then a little splash at his feet brought his attention to several
