Miriam scrawled another message and held out the pad with a twinkle in her eyes. Don’t order the special. It feeds an army. Owen once made that mistake, and it wasn’t pretty.
An image of the deputy stuffing his face with a whole lot of knockwurst made Lydia giggle. It lightened her mood as she hefted her tool kit to the place she was supposed to meet the sheriff.
Down the street and onto the boardwalk, a row of stores and restaurants welcomed her.
The two restaurants were on either end of the boardwalk with a long row of storefronts and alleyways sandwiched between them. The Underground Küchen was closest to her and built right into the side of one of the rocky cliffs. She stepped up to the glass window, intrigued to find out if she could see the cliff inside on the back wall.
She couldn’t see a cliff, but she did see hoards of people inside. Breakfast at the Underground Küchen bustled, and her stomach went all queasy at the sight. She had to go in there and converse with all those people. She’d never been good at basic conversation. She’d much rather talk about the molecular makeup of the human body, but most people glazed over as soon as she said the words chemical composition.
Had the sheriff arrived yet? She hoped so and searched for Wesley’s long, silky strands in the crowd. At the sight of her silly grin in the reflection of the glass, she backed away from the window and headed to a wooden bench. She couldn’t believe how girlish she was acting over the surly man. Even if he was a very beautiful, surly man.
Lydia imagined the tall, strong sheriff and practiced her newly acquired hand sign for the word beautiful as she moved toward the bench. Just as she was about to sit, her arm was yanked back as her tool kit was nearly ripped from her hands.
She whipped around, tightening her hold on the handle with every ounce of muscle in her. As she wrenched her case back, she took notice of a pair of black leather gloves on the thief’s hands. Gloves that resembled the ones the sheriff had worn yesterday.
The person pulled harder, but Lydia held on as though a life depended on it. And it did. Hers. Without her tool kit, she couldn’t do her job.
She raised her gaze to see who she fought so hard, but all she caught was the pulled down bill of a black baseball cap. Big black sunglasses covered more than half of her assailant’s tilted-down face. She wanted to rip the hat off, but getting her tool kit took precedence.
With all her might, Lydia pulled up. In the same moment, her arm was yanked forward. She refused to let go and gave one more yank back. The force sent her body twisting and flying back into the air, the case out in front of her, still attached to her hand and leading the way.
She had no time to think more on it as her time of flying airborne came to an end after mere seconds. She fell hard on the splintery planks of the boardwalk, her chin taking the brunt of the fall, her teeth jarring in her mouth.
But the pain had to wait because her tool kit kept moving!
On the impact of her landing, she’d let go! The case that contained everything she needed flew from her hand and now skidded away from her on the wood—heading straight for the edge of the pier and the sharp rocks far below.
Lydia pushed up on her hands and knees and scrambled across as fast as she could to save it. Tears pricked her eyes as the edge drew near. She couldn’t lose her kit. Dr. Webber would kill her. Or at least humiliate her to no end. He would be sure to note that her father would never make such a mishap.
Lydia threw herself into the air to make one final leap at catching the case before it disappeared into the ocean. She landed hard on her elbows, the case centimeters from her grasping fingertips. The kit continued to approach the edge, and just as she was about to watch it disappear, a black boot came down hard, cracking the wooden planks and stopping the kit dead in its tracks.
“Fall again, Doc?” a man’s voice called from above, halting her scrambles. The only person who called her Doc was the sheriff. Slowly, she lifted her gaze from the boot in her face for confirmation.
“Did you attack me?” she asked, looking up and down the empty boardwalk. Then looked for his gloves. Bare hands. But he could have taken them off.
“Attack you? No. I just walked down from the road and saw you going after your case. You didn’t fall?”
Lydia stood on shaky legs, her case held close to her chest. She shook her head in answer to his question and observed various pain points settling in. “Someone tried to steal my case. I managed to stop them, but in the process got thrown to the ground.”
“Stay here,” Sheriff Grant said in his deep, commanding voice, but somehow it sounded more comforting to her now. He ran down to the other end of the walk, looking into the alleyways as he passed them. After a few minutes of searching, he came back with palms up. “I don’t see anyone.”
“Well, I’m not making it up.”
“If you say so, Doc.”
“Well, I do.” Lydia hiked up her case, perturbed with this guy’s quick switch from helpful to skeptic. “I’m not lying,” she huffed. Something in the sheriff’s life made him really distrustful, and that was too bad, but she wasn’t here to fix it. She was here for one thing only. “Can we just get started?”
“Don’t you want breakfast?”
Lydia glanced at the restaurant. “It’s too crowded. There’s not an empty table anywhere in there.”
“Doesn’t matter if there was an empty table, you wouldn’t be seated at it. That’s not the way Tildy runs the place. Nobody sits alone.”
“Tildy?” Lydia rubbed her throbbing elbows, grateful her plushy parka absorbed some of the shock.
He stopped in front of the glass door. “The owner. And the local news reporter.” He made quotation marks with his fingers around news reporter. “You want to know something about the goings-on here on the island, all you have to do is ask Tildy. She’ll be happy to explain it all to you. And I mean all.” He opened the door and waved a hand. “After you, Doc.”
“Lydia,” she corrected him, not moving from her place. “My name is Lydia.”
He paused for a few beats. “All right. I guess since we’ll be working together, first names are fine. I’m Wes.” He waved again for her to enter.
Her knees locked and her heart rate sped up. She could hear her own breathing and it didn’t sound so good.
“What’s the matter, Doc...uh, Lydia?” He shut the door.
“Nothing. It’s just—”
“Just what?”
“I—I don’t do well in crowds. I think I want to try the other place.” She jutted her burning, scraped chin in the direction of the restaurant at the end of the boardwalk.
“The Blue Lobster isn’t open for breakfast. Plus, I think there’ll be a lot of people disappointed if the island’s first anthropologist visitor didn’t come to be welcomed appropriately.”
“What’s the big deal? I’m not some spectacle at the zoo.”
His hands went up surrender-style. “Whoa, I didn’t say you were, Doc. They’re good people. I know they’ll want to meet you. Come on. I’m going in with you.”
“I don’t know you any more than them.”
He smiled a Cheshire Cat grin. “You’re right. Maybe I should hold off introducing you and sell tickets in a big-top tent. I could put out flyers inviting one and all to the greatest spec—”
“Stop it, Wesley.”
He froze. His icy blue irises pierced her through his long strands. His Adam’s apple bobbed a couple times before he jerked a nod. “Sorry.”
“You know, I’m not even hungry. Let’s get over to the site