I squinted at Winnie’s Wishing Well. Someone had added a sign to the fencing around it:No Dancing, Climbing, or Jumping Down the Well.
Good to know we were covering the essentials.
“This used to be a quiet town, you know,” I muttered.
Astrid gave me a glance, softer this time. “And it will be again. After Friday. This is for Dean, remember. He’s one of you.”
The knot in my stomach tightened at the sound of his name. Yeah. Dean was one of us. More than she knew. “Just promise me you’ll leave the place exactly how you found it.”
Astrid held out her hand. “Scout’s honor.”
I hesitated for a moment, then shook it. Her grip was firm. Bold. Sharp. No surprises there.
At that moment, the subwoofers fired up a bass test so deep my teeth rattled. Somewhere in my guts, a small, vulnerable part of me wondered if my spleen had just moved to a new neighborhood.
Astrid turned away to bark another order into her headset, and I took that as my cue to retreat before anything exploded or collapsed or blasted off like a skyrocket.
I barely made it ten feet before I heard someone yell, “The fog pony is back!” followed by the wheezy growl of the mobile smoke machine kicking into life and half a dozen crew members hacking and coughing as the first thick plumes of fog rolled out across the grass.
I didn’t even look back.
This was happening.
Our park was turning into a battleground of cables, lighting rigs, and questionable pyrotechnics.
All I could do now was call my people to help supervise, stay the hell away from anything that sparked, and pray that out of the ten thousand strangers about to swarm my little town, the one person we didn’t want showing up—the sick bastard stalking Dean—wasn’t among them.
* * *
On the edge of the park, I found Maggie hunched over a compost bin, dry-heaving like a cat coughing up a hairball.
“Maggie? You alright?”
“Oh, hey Harry. Yeah, I’m okay. I just got a little close to that smoke machine as it fired off a shot. There’s chemicals inside me now that will outlast time, but unless I turn into Spider-Woman in the next few minutes, I think I’ll be okay.”
I rubbed her back in little, slow circles, and she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and gave me two thumbs up.
“This is all pretty chaotic,” I said. “You think you’re okay to help me out? We need some volunteers to make sure these guys don’t permanently wreck our park. You good with that?”
“Hell yeah! Bud already decided to close the store today and help out Pascal in the patisserie, so I’m all yours.”
“Great. Why don’t you go rustle up some locals. Folks we can trust not to knock over a lighting rig or electrocute themselves.”
I told her we needed people we could trust, people who wouldn’t already be run off their feet trying to keep the hordes fed and sheltered. That pretty much ruled out Pascal and his staff members, Lonnie and Ronnie, and Maggie already said that Bud would be donning a waiter’s apron to help his boyfriend out. It also meant that Benji, Bastian, and Connie would be flat out busy at the BnB, as well as Bea who would no doubt need Gage to help tend bar. River Raven would probably be busy either helping Clarry in the ice-cream parlor, or his old man at the general store, or both. Which left Mitch and Ginny, Bo Harlow if he was back in town, Brooks from the bookstore, and of course Andy and Madeline.
Maggie gave a wild salute. “On it, bossman!” Then promptly tripped over a coil of cable and fell behind a crate with a loud thud. Quickly she jumped back to her feet. “Ope! Guess my Spidey senses haven’t quite kicked in yet.”
I gave an exhausted sigh.
By seven-thirty, I had what passed for a ragtag crew of local volunteers slowly trickling in.
First to show was Mitch, pushing Ginny across the grass in her wheelchair like it wasn’t the bumpiest terrain this side of Mount Whittlesey.
Ginny, as usual, looked like she was here on official business, clipboard balanced on her knees, tablet in hand, pigtails braided tight.
“Morning, Harry,” Mitch called out, steering Ginny clear of a particularly precarious tower of crates. “Maggie-pie said you needed some help.”
“At your service,” said Ginny, proudly waving her clipboard at me before I could even respond. “I brought a site map. I did some googling, found the staging company online and copied the blueprint off the AV producer’s email thread.”
