to eat fish or seafood of any kind that came from the North Hampton waters. Also, until further notice, no one should swim in any of the local beaches until the toxin was examined.
"Yikes," Freya said, to no one in particular, while the crowd in the bar began to murmur nervously among themselves.
"What I'm wondering is . . ." She heard a clear voice next to her, and was surprised to find Killian Gardiner sitting on a bar stool, watching the television and sipping his beer. He didn't seem to notice her either, as he only had eyes for the screen.
"You didn't finish your sentence," she prodded. It was the first time the two of them had spoken since the night of her engagement party, and she tried to keep her voice normal. She blushed to remember the other night - if he had truly seen her with Bran. And if he still thought about what had happened between them on Memorial Day.
"I'm wondering . . . how long has it been in the water?" He barely glanced at Freya as he gulped down the rest of his pint and left the bar without another word.
All weekend the disaster was all everyone in town talked about, and on Monday morning even Ingrid and her staff at the library were feeling jumpy about it. While North Hampton had its share of hurricanes, it was a lucky kind of place: no brushfires in the summer like in Malibu, no flash floods; it wasn't on a fault line. The underground earthquake and the resulting gray muck felt like an unlucky break, a jinx, a pox upon their little oasis. The library had one old television set in the back office, which they kept tuned to the news stations. They showed the grayish mass growing in the water, nearing the North Hampton shores. Whether the earthquake had kept clients away, Ingrid wasn't sure, but for once she was able to take her lunch hour outside the library. A familiar face was waiting for her when she returned.
"We were just watching you on television!" Ingrid said, unlocking the door to the back office.
Corky Hutchinson gave her a wry smile. "I'm on a break. I don't have to be back at the station until the four o'clock news this afternoon." The mayor's wife was a glamour girl, and her features were heavily made up and exaggerated for the camera. She looked out of place in the drab surroundings.
"Are you here for a consultation?" Ingrid asked. "I'm sorry but I have to ask you to return tomorrow, as I only do those between noon and one."
"I know, your girl told me." Corky sniffed. "But I'm hoping you could make an exception."
Ingrid frowned. She knew this was going to happen eventually. There would always be people like Corky Hutchinson who thought they were too good to wait in line. She also didn't like how Corky called Tabitha her "girl"; Tab wasn't a secretary. But Ingrid knew that women like Corky Hutchinson, with their BlackBerrys and their overstuffed schedules, did not like taking "no" for an answer. "Just this once, I suppose. Come on in," Ingrid said. "So do they know what that thing is yet?"
"They're still not sure. It's been sent to a couple of labs. There was a similar case out in the Pacific a few months ago, near the Sydney harbor. And the same thing happened in Greenland, apparently. The same symptoms: dead fish, some kind of poison in the water - decimated most of the local whale population. Underwater volcanic activity, but they weren't sure."
"Curious," Ingrid said. She dimly recalled reading about it as well but had not paid much attention. "Anyway, I know you didn't come in here to talk about that. How can I help you?" She knew a little about Corky. She and the mayor made quite the power couple. Their wedding had been the social event of the year, and when he was elected there was a five-page spread in a glossy magazine about their romance.
Corky hesitated then blurted, "I think Todd's cheating on me."
Ingrid wasn't surprised. The sisters sometimes gossiped about the secrets they discovered about the people they knew, and Freya had told her that the mayor had been a lot more intimate with his computer than his wife lately. It didn't make Ingrid feel any better to know salacious facts about her enemy, and in the past few weeks she had thought of Todd Hutchinson as nothing less