Bunker 01 - Slipknot Read Online Free PDF Page B

back once again and waited for Ginny to complete this call before I delivered my preliminary findings of the plant’s safety features.
    “Hello. This is Diane from Scudder Investments. Is Blaine Hamilton there, please?” Fascinated with Ginny’s disguising her voice as well as her identity to the party on the other end, I nearly fell out of the chair, straining to get my ear closer to the door. Wasn’t Blaine Hamilton a primary player at last night’s now infamous town meeting? If I remembered correctly, he was the primary proponent of the construction of the offshore wind farm.
    My landlords, Alice and Henry Vickerson, had encouraged me to attend the meeting, which they’d said could lead to a defining decision for my new hometown. They had warned me that the wind farm proposal was a bitterly fought battle currently dividing Green Haven’s community. Even with their warnings, I was surprised at the amount of anger demonstrated in the small town’s public forum. I had never imagined the meeting would turn into a near-brawl instigated by the town drunk, who was now dead. The corpse, I was certain, had sported a button with a slogan that appeared to

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    be in support of the offshore power generation, in spite of what I’d witnessed as his boisterous opposition at the meeting. Had the button been pinned to his sweatshirt after his death? Ginny Turner was the one who had found the body.
    And now she was carrying on a secret conversation with Hamilton, who I gathered had the most to gain by pushing through the project.
    The tiny town keeps on shrinking, I thought. Ginny’s physical appearance denied the most logical conclusion—an illicit affair. I held my breath through an endless pause indicating that Ginny had been placed on hold. As she continued with a greeting in her own voice, just above a whisper, the door at the foot of the stairs burst open, letting in Cal Dunham and all of the noise of a busy working dock.
    Cal stood in the doorway, calling orders to a man in a diesel truck whose engine rumbled, annoyingly drowning out any information I might have overheard. The door banged closed behind Cal, who climbed the stairs purposefully while leafing through a handful of loose pink pages that I assumed were orders or receipts or something of that nature. Cal nearly tripped over my feet in the small alcove, then greeted me with the familiarity and warmth of an old friend and ally.
    “Any leads yet?” he asked playfully.
    “Not looking for any. Accidental death, right?”
    “Right. Someone accidentally bashed Nick’s head in,” Cal said as he twisted the knob of Ginny’s office door.
    “I’m on it,” I confided.
    “I know.” Cal opened the door wide and dropped the pink sheets in the middle of a cluttered desk, behind which s l i p k n o t
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    sat his boss, who was no longer on the phone. “Almost one thousand pounds short,” he reported to Ginny. “How could we lose ten crates of lobster?”
    “Arrrrr! We didn’t lose them! We’ve been ripped off,”
    yelled the fat lady as she slammed a fleshy fist into the middle of her desk, upsetting a box of gaily colored paper clips that pattered like sleet on frozen grass as they fell. “Maybe I’ll hire a security guard. Who do you know?”
    Cal thought for a few seconds before responding with a slight smile, “Clydie’s looking to sign back on.”
    “That halfwit! I wouldn’t hire him to guard seagull crap!”
    Ginny sounded disgusted with Cal’s attempt at humor.
    “You’ll have trouble hiring anyone in their right mind, with dead bodies washing ashore here and all. The insurance gal’s here to see you.” Cal left the door open and smiled and nodded to me as he left. I was even less eager to speak with the seething mound of irate female than I had been before.
    Cal descended the stairs carefully and vanished into the bustle and bright sunlight.
    “Come right in, dear,” Ginny said, her voice softer than I