Seventeen Against the Dealer Read online

  He shrugged, smiled, shook his head. “You’ve worked for Ken, so you must know something. You’ve worked for Jake, too. That’s recommendation enough. I like your looks, I’ve got a boat they’re building for me up in Norwalk, an ocean cruiser, and she’ll need a dinghy. I believe in supporting local industry—”

  “I’m from Crisfield,” Dicey told him.

  “What is it, you don’t want an order?”

  Dicey didn’t know.

  “Look, here’s what I’ll do.” He reached into an inner pocket of his vest and took out a thick leather folder. Opening it, moving to rest it against the side of the pickup, he took out a pen he kept fitted in it. “I’ll pay you fifteen hundred, five hundred down and the rest on delivery—say, the first week in April? How do you spell your name?”

  Dicey told him. She didn’t know why, but she didn’t know why not to. He wrote the check, tore it out, and handed it to her. “Take this with you, and think it over. Let me know what you decide. You can rip the check up if you decide not to. My address is on it. Ask Ken and Jake, they’ll vouch for me. I’ll meet you two in a couple of minutes; I’ll order for you,” he said, and walked away.

  Dicey had the check in her fingers. “He’s not serious,” she asked Ken.

  “He’s serious. He can afford to be. I’m not sure where his money comes from, I heard it was smart investments, but someone else told me he invented a gadget for sonar or maybe it was dishwashers.”

  “I heard he’d inherited it,” Jake said. “Or his wife did.”

  “Whatever,” Ken said, “he’s got enough, plus more than enough, to do exactly what he wants.”

  “I’d take the money and be grateful,” Jake advised.

  Dicey shook her head. “It’s crazy.”

  “Not to him. It’s only crazy to people like us, who have to earn our living,” Ken told her. He looked at Jake. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it? If I’d had a chance like this, at your age, Dicey—who knows where I’d be now. Not still here, that’s all I know. Not still scurrying around for orders. But if it makes you nervous, or you don’t think you can do it—”

  “Of course I think I can do it, I just don’t know that I can. I don’t like agreeing to do something if I don’t know I can.”

  “How else are you going to find out?” Jake asked her.

  Dicey folded Mr. Hobart’s check into the pocket of her jacket. “I dunno,” she said, biting her lip.

  “Hey, Dicey,” Ken said, “he’s okay, he pays his bills and right on time. Building a dinghy for Tad Hobart—that could be the making of you.”

  Dicey nodded. She understood. She just didn’t like it. She had thought—she thought she was planning to be the making of herself.

  “Think about it,” Ken advised her.

  “I will.”

  “Keep in touch,” he said. “Good luck.”

  She raised her hand in answer, climbing into the pickup.

  It wasn’t until she was off the Bay Bridge, driving through the light-spangled darkness across Kent Island, that it hit her: She was in business.

  In business, she thought, the recognition floating around inside her head, like a laughter you’ve had to hold inside and finally you can let free, and laugh out loud. With this check in her pocket, she was in business to build a boat.

  She settled down to think, moving along the road. She had some rough drawings she’d made; she’d better go over them. She didn’t know how to draw up nautical plans, but it was only a dinghy, it didn’t require the same kind of designing. But she’d never thought of a V-bottom, and she’d have to take a look at some, and then make a trip to the library up in Cambridge, to see what the books had to say. A couple of weeks, no more than a couple—she’d have the three boats in the shop done by then, but the supplies she’d need—white ash for the keel and frame, to begin with, and she had the tools but money was going to be a problem. It was expensive to build a boat.

  She wondered, following the truck’s headlights, as if the headlights were pulling the truck along the highway, if she should take on some of Claude’s boats. But, come April, she’d have been paid for this boat, so money would be fine again. If she had Claude’s boats, even only ten of them, she wouldn’t have the kind of time she needed, to do this one right.

  There were a dozen things to do, and she wanted to get to work on them right away, but first she had to go to the shop and unload this wood. She’d never felt less tired in her life. Besides, she was impatient to tell Jeff. She could call him from the shop. He’d be as glad as she was about it, and she couldn’t even imagine what Gram would say; Sammy, she could. He’d think it was only natural that Dicey should do something like get an order so easily. “Good-o,” that’s what Sammy would say.

  CHAPTER 5

  Winter nights, Crisfield went to bed early. As Dicey drove into town, the houses she passed were black shapes with squares of yellow shining on the second stories, or, in the case of ranch-style houses, at the far ends. The pickup was the only moving thing that winter night in the dark and silent town. Cars were parked along the street, motionless as statues—if, Dicey thought, you wanted to make statues of cars, if you didn’t have anything better than machines to make statues of.

  Statues couldn’t be like people, she thought, because people were always moving. If she met a person like a statue, she probably wouldn’t like him. Or her. Striking a pose, or staying in one fixed position, those were things she didn’t like in people.

  Not only that, she thought, turning right, pulling into the parking lot behind the shop, turning off the headlights, enjoying the silence and her own thoughts, a boat was a kind of machine, too. You couldn’t deny that. An older, simpler one, but still a machine. And a boat was beautiful. So she shouldn’t go around criticizing anyone who wanted to make a statue of a car.

  She shoved the truck door open with her shoulder. The night was cold, entirely still. The shop stood silent, deserted. No cars moved down the street, not at this hour of a winter night. No wind blew. If she stayed motionless and listened, she could hear the water moving gently, delicately, in continual motion like Gram’s knitting needles.

  Silent, solitary, content—Maybe that was why she didn’t see it right away. When she saw it—the door to the shop, standing open—she didn’t know why she hadn’t noticed it as soon as she drove up. For a millisecond, she kicked herself for carelessness. But she always locked up, last thing; she couldn’t remember doing it that afternoon, but she didn’t remember not doing it, either, the way you remember you haven’t done something you have the habit of doing—

  Dicey ran. Something crunched under her feet. When she got the light turned on, she saw glass all over the cement floor by the door.

  She didn’t want to look around, so she turned her back on whatever might wait for her, or might not wait. Instead, she studied the door. Someone had punched a hole through the glass, or had hit it with a rock or brick, more likely, because you could cut your hand putting it through glass, even thin glass like the door into the shop. . . . Someone had made that huge hole in the pane and then reached in to twist the little knob that locked the door. Someone had reached in, to open the door. Why would someone do that?

  Dicey turned around to answer the question. She felt as if she had only eyes, with no other parts to her body. She felt as if she were two big eyes and nothing else.

  The one light cast long shadows. She saw that the two boats in the center of the room had been shoved aside, left askew. But not, she looked carefully, not damaged. The row of paint cans against the far wall, by the door into the bathroom, had been knocked around, spilling white and green blotches onto the plastic sheet she kept under them. The jars in which her paintbrushes soaked had also been knocked over.

  Dicey felt like sitting down, in the middle of the floor, to feel bad for a while. Just a little while. She felt like getting angry and stomping around for a while. Why should somebody break in and mess up her shop, what was the point of it? It made her feel sick
and it made her angry. But there was picking up to do, so she went to do it; there were paint cans, and the brushes—she’d just roll up as much of the mess as was entirely ruined in the plastic sheet. She’d have to replace it all, which would cost her close to a hundred dollars. When she thought about that, anger began to be the only feeling she had.

  Dicey stood looking down at the mess on the plastic sheet, trying not to think, and thinking she was glad she’d put that sheet down because it sure made cleaning up easier. If the paint, for example, had soaked into the cement floor, how would she have gotten it out? Claude would probably be able to make her replace the whole floor, and she could about guess how much that would cost. So it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. It was bad, but it could have been worse. A lot worse.

  She studied the shop, figuring out what needed doing first. Standing at the far wall, she could see what she hadn’t noticed before, and the sick feeling in her stomach swelled up to push at her heart. It was as if what she saw didn’t even hesitate at her eyes but went straight down to her stomach, as if her stomach had the eyes that saw this.

  Her tools. They’d taken her tools. The rack above the worktable was empty, just a couple of long pieces of wood nailed into the wallboard. Adze, broadax, saws—they were all gone.

  The shelf under the table was shadowed, so she couldn’t see from where she stood if they’d noticed it or not. She didn’t want to go down the length of the shop and find out, but she made herself.

  And the shelf was empty, too. Hammers, screwdrivers, planes, straightedges—gone, all of them. The boxes of nails and screws had been left, but everything else—

  All the tools she’d found, and stripped down to refinish, and taken apart and put back together, polished and honed, and the ones Jeff had given her, too—

  Dicey leaned her hands against the worktable. Her head kept wanting to bend down and rest on the wood. Her body wanted to fold up. She didn’t even have the energy to get angry.

  Who would do this to her? And why would they? And what was she going to do?

  Clean up, that was what. First things first. First she’d clean up and that would clear up her mind.

  No, first she better call Gram. It was late and Gram would be wondering. She kept her back to the room while she made the call. If she wasn’t looking at what wasn’t there, it wouldn’t creep into her mind. The phone rang only twice before Gram answered. “I’m back, at the shop,” Dicey said.

  “And you’ve eaten.”

  “Not yet. But I’ll be a while yet here, so I wanted you to know that I’m back.”

  “Jeff wants you to call him,” Gram’s voice said into her ear.

  “Yeah, okay, thanks. I’ll see you in the morning, Gram.”

  When she’d hung up, Dicey got to work. First, she gathered up the brushes and jars, took them into the little bathroom, and lined them along the back of the toilet. She’d need to get turpentine in the morning, because if the brushes hardened up they’d all have to be replaced, too. Whoever it was hadn’t gone into the bathroom, she guessed; a dozen clamps were still piled under the sink. They hadn’t found the clamps. So at least they hadn’t taken everything. They must have opened the bathroom door and decided it was so small and grungy, there couldn’t be anything worth taking out of it.

  Dicey rolled the plastic sheet up, from the outside edges, rolling up the empty cans inside it. She hefted it over her shoulder and took it out to the Dumpster. The quiet of her empty building, with all the other empty buildings around and the empty water beside, and the empty sky overhead, came creeping at her. She went back into the shop and closed the door, even though with the smashed window it couldn’t keep anything out. It wasn’t even keeping the cold air out.

  She dialed Jeff’s number and listened to the short buzzing rings. He’d be playing his guitar, probably, with a fire burning in the woodstove; or maybe reading, studying. The phone rang once, twice, and she almost hung up: She had to call Claude. After all, the shop belonged to Claude. But if she hung up and Jeff was halfway to the phone; and she didn’t know how late it was, if Claude would be in bed already, and she didn’t know what difference it made if Claude found out tonight or tomorrow, anyway.

  Jeff picked up the phone on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Ten of nine. Why?”

  “Can I call you back?”

  She could hear his smile, as clear as if his face was in front of her eyes. She could see why he thought it was a funny conversation, but she wasn’t finding anything particularly amusing.

  “Sure. Or I’ll call you.”

  “Okay, bye.” She hung up. Claude’s number was on the inside of a notebook she kept on the table, with numbers and prices and ideas for designs in it. His wife answered the phone. When Dicey asked to speak to him, Mrs. Shorter demanded, “Who is this?” But when Dicey told her, all she said was a bored “oh.” Dicey told Claude that the shop had been broken into. “That’s too bad,” he said. She reported that her tools had been taken and the glass in the window smashed. “That’s tough, girlie. I don’t know why you’re calling me, though. You should be calling your insurance agent. Although, I guess, the window’ll come under my policy. Tell you what, why don’t you take the cost of repairing it out of the next rent check? Did you change your mind about those boats?”

  “No,” Dicey said. She didn’t have an insurance agent. She didn’t have insurance.

  “Well, don’t take a break-in personal,” Claude advised her. “It just happens sometimes.”

  She hadn’t even thought about insurance. She didn’t even know how you went about getting insured. The Tillermans didn’t have anything worth insuring, except the truck. Dicey dialed Jeff’s number again.

  He answered on the first ring. “Dicey? What’s wrong?”

  “How do you know something’s wrong?”

  “You sounded—funny.”

  “Oh. I didn’t think I—Someone broke into the shop,” she told him.

  He waited. “And?” he asked.

  “They broke the window in the door. To get in.”

  “But that wouldn’t bother you. Are the boats all right?”

  “Yeah. And they took my tools,” she admitted.

  He didn’t say anything. He felt the same way she did about her tools, she guessed. “I’ll be right over,” he said.

  “No,” she told him, “don’t. I’ve got to clean up and then go home. I bought that wood, but I’ll leave it in the truck overnight, I think. I’m not going to leave it here.”

  “That sounds smart. I’d like to come help out.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t, Jeff.”

  “If you say so. But tomorrow—we’d better go out and replace them, or you won’t be able to work. You’re covered against theft, aren’t you?”

  “How would I be covered?” she demanded.

  “Your insurance policy.”

  “I don’t have one.” He should know that. She didn’t know why everyone thought she had an insurance policy when everyone who knew her should know she didn’t. “I gotta go.”

  “Dicey? You know how sorry I am, don’t you?”

  She did, although what good sympathy did she didn’t know. It just made her feel worse. She got off the phone and got to work.

  It wasn’t ten minutes later that she heard a car. She was trying to get broken glass up off the rough cement floor, practically scraping at it with a broom. She heard the engine, heard it approach, then idle, then stop. She’d told him not to. If she’d wanted sympathy she’d have asked him over, but it wasn’t sympathy she wanted. Sympathy just made you feel worse and she didn’t need to feel any worse. She stood up, ready to let him know how she felt about being ignored like that, being treated as if she didn’t mean what she said. She stood there with her fingers clenched around the handle of the broom, ready to give Jeff an earful.

  But it was Mina who walked through the doorway. At the sight of Mina, in a baggy sweatshir
t, with flannel-pajama bottoms hanging out of the legs of her jeans, the crossness that had been puffing Dicey up evaporated. Mina stood just inside the door, looking around. “Yep,” she said, “somebody broke in, for sure.”

  Dicey didn’t see any need to comment on that.

  Mina turned around slowly, to look at the empty worktable and at the empty rack above it. When she turned around again, her lips were stiff. “I gotta admit, I was hoping I’d heard Jeff wrong. Don’t you ever wonder about people?” She put her hands on her hips, angry. “I do. Sometimes I could just—knock some heads together. We better finish this glass first.” She pushed up the arms of her sweatshirt, as if getting ready for a fight. “What’re you standing around dumbfaced for like that?”

  Dicey shook her head. Mina stood right in front of her, big and dark and strong, with her sleeves pushed up, dressed out in her anger. “I’m glad to see you,” Dicey said.

  “Hunh,” Mina answered. She pulled down the right sleeve of the sweatshirt, stretching it over her hand and then catching the overhang with her fingers, from inside. When she’d done that, she walked out to the open door and hit at it with her elbow. Pieces of glass fell out, then shards and sprinkles, as she ran her forearm around the window frame. Dicey stood, watching Mina punch at the broken window, elbow it and shoulder it and finally beat at it with her protected fist to beat all the glass out of it.

  “Well, that makes me feel better,” Mina said. “How about you?”

  “I thought you wore nightgowns,” Dicey said, which was the only thought in her mind.

  Mina laughed. Her laughter was as rich as soup. Like Gram’s beef-and-vegetable soup, her laughter warmed and filled Dicey’s stomach. “You’re right, I do. That is, when I haven’t just dumped my long-time guy. All right. The only question is, what do we do next? You finish up the glass and I’ll get some more lights on.” She went down the room, reaching up to turn on the lights. “Where do you keep cleanser? There’s wet paint on the floor here. What happened, did they dump cans of paint?”