Free Shooting Star by Cynthia Riggs Page A

up her hands to ward off her grandmother. “Hey, Gram. I told him no. Anyway, I’ve got to work tonight.”

CHAPTER 9
    Elizabeth left for the afternoon shift at the harbor, where she was assistant dockmaster, and Victoria was alone again. She tapped her fingers absently on the space bar of her typewriter until the bell dinged. Where would she hide if she were eight years old?
    She went back to work on her column. Thunder grumbled in the distance. She heard a knock on the kitchen door, and she opened it to two girls wearing jeans, backpacks, and running shoes. They smiled uncomfortably.
    “Mrs. Trumbull?” the shorter of the girls asked.
    “Yes?”
    “I’m Tracy and this is my friend Karen.” Tracy was slender with short dark hair. She pointed to the taller girl. “Karen and me, we’re here for the summer and need a place to stay?”
    “Oh?” said Victoria.
    Tracy shifted her feet uneasily. “We stopped at the police station.” She glanced up at Karen. “And a woman, like, fixing their computer, told us you sometimes rent rooms?”
    “Come in.” Victoria opened the door wider. The clouds had begun to fill the sky to the northwest. A stiff wind tossed the tips of the cedars in the pasture and flipped the leaves on the Norway maple. “Looks as though you got here just in time.”
    As she spoke, lightning flashed, followed by a rumble of thunder. The girls stood uncertainly inside the door.
    “Have a seat,” Victoria suggested, indicating the gray-painted kitchen chairs.

    They took off their backpacks and set them on the floor, then perched, as though ready to take flight.
    Victoria seated herself at the kitchen table across from them. “Are you vacationing?”
    “We’re working at the Harborlights Motel?” said Tracy.
    Karen nodded. “Waiting tables.” Karen had great quantities of curly blond hair, disheveled in a way that Victoria, who was not usually critical of styles, wanted to brush into some kind of order. “We were staying in Chilmark, but …” Karen ran a hand through the mop of hair. She glanced quickly at Tracy.
    “It’s kind of far to commute,” said Tracy. “Your house is right on the bus route.”
    Victoria wondered where this was going. “Yes, it is convenient.”
    “We tried hitchhiking …” said Karen, and stopped.
    “It’s quite safe on the Island,” said Victoria. “I often get around that way.”
    The girls looked at each other, then at Victoria. Tracy sighed, then blurted out. “We were hitching last night and got picked up by, like, a really weird thing …”
    “I suppose it was covered with blood, with fangs and stitches and electrodes coming out of its head?”
    The girls stared at Victoria.
    “That’s our local drug enforcement agent, Howland Atherton …” Victoria started to say, but Karen interrupted.
    “We don’t do drugs!”
    Victoria held up a hand to reassure them. “The police picked up Mr. Atherton after you called nine-one-one …”
    “That thing was DEA? Undercover ?” Tracy blurted out.
    Victoria got up, filled the teakettle and plugged it in. “Mr. Atherton was in costume for a play. The police have been trying to locate you.”
    “Us?” Karen glanced uncomfortably from Victoria to Tracy. “Drugs ?” She ran her fingers through her hair again, and Victoria
thought about offering her a comb. “My parents would kill me if they thought … !”
    Tracy pulled a cell phone out of her jeans pocket. “Maybe the battery’s low?”
    The sky had darkened during the few minutes since the girls arrived. Victoria switched on the light.
    “Cellular phones have poor reception on the Island. Call Sergeant Smalley at the state police right away and let him know you’re safe.” Victoria showed them where the phone and directory were. “After you talk to him we can see about a room.”
    Karen found the number and Tracy punched it in. She explained to Sergeant Smalley about Roddie, the poet at Island Java who said it was okay to hitchhike, then