Page 19 of Carry on Wayward Son

The lobby of town hall smelled of industrial carpet cleaner, recycled air, and the faint ghost of decades of coffee. Eau de municipal building. Once we’d cleared the metal detectors and the security officer had checked her purse, I started toward the elevator.

Layla’s pace slowed slightly. “Are there stairs? Koa’s not a fan of small spaces.”

I didn’t think it was the dog. I’d known a lot of people who’d developed that particular aversion, and none of them owed me an explanation for it. “Stairs are right this way.”

She said nothing to that, and neither did I.

Peggy Garrett sat behind the desk just outside the mayor’s office. She’d occupied that position for every mayor since I’d been a boy, and probably even before that. Somewhere north of sixty, with reading glasses on a beaded chain, she radiated the no-nonsense confidence of a woman who didn’t care who’d been elected. She knew she was the institutional memory behind them all.

She looked at us over the glasses, clearly in gatekeeping mode. Then she took a second glance at me, and her smile spread wide. “Jace Hollingsworth.” She circled the desk. “Good Lord, look at you. How long has it been?”

“Too long.” Well aware of my role as island son, I let her hug me and hugged her back. “You haven’t aged a day, Peggy.”

“Oh, stop.” She swatted my arm and meant it as a compliment. “What on earth brings you into my office?”

“Hoping to catch Chelsea for a few minutes if she’s available. I know I should have called ahead.”

“She’s on a call right now, but it shouldn’t be more than twenty minutes.” Peggy glanced at Layla, then at Koa, then back at Layla, obviously trying to catalog where she fit in the hierarchy of visitors. Also, probably trying to decide whether we were here as colleagues or something else. “And who’s this?”

She stepped forward. “Layla Murphy. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

As she didn’t volunteer anything about why she was here, I didn’t add to that. “Layla, this is Peggy Garrett. She’s kept this office running since before either of us was born.”

Peggy shook Layla’s hand, obviously still curious, but she didn’t press. “And your pretty pup, here?”

Layla smiled. “Koa. He’s friendly.”

As if to emphasize the point, his tail wagged gently.

“Hello, Koa. You’re a handsome boy.”

The dog absolutely flashed a grin before he offered a soft, “Woo,” of agreement.

Peggy laughed and gestured toward the chairs along the wall. “Sit down, sit down. Can I get y’all anything? Coffee? Water?”

We thanked her and declined, and settled in. After a minute or two, Peggy drifted back toward her desk, and I drifted with her the way you did when you’d grown up somewhere and understood how these conversations moved.

“I haven’t been back all that long, but I heard about everything with Miles.” I kept my tone sympathetic.

Peggy’s expression compressed a little as she decided how much to say. Ultimately, the sympathetic ear won out. “It was a shock. A real shock. I worked for that man for years, and I never—” She shook her head. “Well. You never know people the way you think you do, I suppose.”

“I imagine he left a hell of a mess to clean up.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” She straightened a stack of folders that didn’t need straightening. “Things weren’t kept the way they ought to have been. Record keeping wasn’t always what it should have been under his tenure. Some things have been very hard to account for.”

“Has Chelsea been able to get a full picture of it? Done any kind of formal audit of his time in office?”

Peggy glanced toward the closed door of the inner office and back. “They’ve been working to piece things together. City council’s been involved. But it takes time, and Lord knows they’ve had their hands full with everything else going on this past year.” She lowered her voice slightly, more from habit than necessity. “I don’t think anyone’s proven anything improper. But there are things that don’t quite add up, if you know what I mean. Miles had a way of moving things along that didn’t always leave a clear paper trail behind.”

Before I could follow that thread any further, the inner door opened and Chelsea Tate came out, already smiling in the way of someone who’d been told who was waiting for her, though I had no idea when Peggy would’ve had time to do notify her.

“Jace.” She came forward with a smile.

Because it was expected, I eased in for a one-armed hug with the girl I’d once dated in high school. A sign of the affection we’d once shared, with no implication I was looking to pick back up where we’d left off.

She wore the authority of the office comfortably, which suited her. By all accounts, she was good at this job, and the island was lucky to have her in it right now. Her gaze traveled past my shoulder to land on Layla.

“Chelsea, this is Layla Murphy. Do you have a few minutes to meet with us?”