Sandcastle Beach (Matchmaker Bay #3) - Jenny Holiday Page 0,1

said.

“I’m not sure what part of Benjamin Lawson giving free drinks to people who vote for me sounds like democracy to you, but okay.”

“Here’s your tail, hon.” Eiko handed over the green-and-blue-sequined creation. “The nice thing about your dynasty is we haven’t had to get this altered for years.”

Art, the least vocal of the quartet of town meddlers, patted her sympathetically on the shoulder. “Long may you reign.”

Maya walked them out and reminded herself that as annoying as Moonflower Bay’s meddling old folks could be, she loved them. Her affection for her hometown and its quirky residents was the reason she’d come back after college to start the theater company. It wasn’t their fault her dream was withering on the vine—or that Benjamin Lawson, her nemesis, was so steadfastly committed to throwing the mermaid election in her “favor.” The old folks were just keeping the town traditions alive, and its traditions were part of what made this town great.

“What’s going on here?” Karl pointed to a bucket in the lobby she’d positioned under a persistent drip.

“One of the toilets in the ladies’ room on the balcony level is leaking.”

Karl frowned. “Who are you getting out here to deal with it? There’s a new plumber up in Bayshore who came into the store last week.” Karl ran Lakeside Hardware. Some towns had beauty parlor–based gossip networks. Moonflower Bay had the hardware store. “He left a card. You want me to drop it by later?”

Does he take Monopoly money? Will he plumb in exchange for theater tickets? “Sure,” she said, leaving out the part where her plan was actually to stick an “Out of Order” sign on the stall in question, leave the bucket where it was, and hope for the best.

“He’s just starting out, so he’s probably cheaper than Marco Garretson,” Karl added, naming the plumber most people in town used.

Hmm. Maya was pretty sure they hadn’t seen that rejection letter, but the budget plumber recommendation made her wonder if the old folks knew about her financial problems anyway. But that was impossible, because she hadn’t told anyone. Not her parents, not her friends Eve and Nora. No one.

“I’m sure he can fix you right up.” Karl tilted his head back again to look at the water-stained ceiling, which caused Maya and everyone else to do the same.

“Great!” she said with manufactured enthusiasm. “Looking forward to being fixed right up!”

And with that, a chunk of plaster fell on her head, bounced off a prong of the tiara she was still wearing, and shattered into dust on the floor at her feet.

A week later

“Where the hell is Carter?” Law muttered. He’d intended it as a mutter, anyway. It came out more like a shout.

It was a rhetorical question. He had a pretty good idea where Carter, who’d been due in an hour ago, was. Sleeping it off. Carter had closed last night, and when Carter closed, he tended to be late the next day.

Law flashed his everybody-knows-your-name smile at the tourist seated at the bar in front of him, a thirtysomething woman he did not, in fact, know. He’d startled her when he yelled, and she’d sloshed some of her drink onto the bar. “Sorry about that. Let me make you a new one on the house. Vodka soda, extra lemon, right?”

He whipped up her drink and slid it across the bar, smiling absently at her thanks—she was trying to engage him in conversation and he was trying to avoid being engaged—as he angled himself to try to see out the bar’s propped-open front door.

He couldn’t see anything, but he could hear. The high school marching band, which always led the parade, was playing “Under the Sea.” Which meant it was starting. Dammit.

The Mermaid Parade was one of the two big annual festivals that lured outsiders to town, and the weekend was a mainstay of the Moonflower Bay economy. The bar had been busy before the parade and would be slammed after it—so Law’s desire to duck out and watch it aside, Carter needed to get his ass in here.

Law had two employees. Carter, who was full-time, and Shane Calloway, who manned the outdoor pizza oven when it was open, which was from five until eleven every night except in the winter. When the young Grizzly Adams type wasn’t at the bar, he was out shooting deer or pulling fish out of the lake with his bare hands or figuring out ways to get the remote cabin he lived in even further