Applewhites at Wit's End Read online

  Fifteen minutes later, E.D. had found the regulations. They had not been exaggerated. Not only were they word for word what the messages had said, there were pages and pages more. On the department’s home page she had also found the phone number for customer relations, and that gave her an idea. If she pretended to be someone reporting violations, she might be able to find out exactly what the state could and would do about them. And maybe, even more important, how much time it would take them to do it.

  E.D. picked up the phone and put it down again. Calling a government office was scary. Then she remembered the improv exercise. As bad as she was at acting, she was really pretty good at improvising. I can do this! she thought. She would pretend to be somebody like Mrs. Montrose. She would call in to report violations at some anonymous camp and just see what happened. She took a deep breath, picked up the phone, and dialed the customer service number.

  When a friendly voice answered, E.D. lowered her voice, doing her best to sound like her mother. “I’d like to talk to whoever is in charge of regulating camps in North Carolina,” she said.

  “Resident camps?” the friendly voice asked.

  “Yes—resident camps.”

  “That would be Joseph Gant. He is out of the office at the moment, but I can connect you with his assistant, Daryl Gaffney. One moment. I’ll put you through.”

  It was working, E.D. thought. The woman hadn’t acted as if she was talking to a kid. “This is Daryl Gaffney, how may I help you?”

  “Mr. Gaffney,” E.D. said in her best Sybil voice, “I have some questions about possible rule violations at a summer camp.”

  “What sorts of violations?”

  “There are several. Vermin infestation, for instance.” She thought about Paulie in the kitchen while Aunt Lucille and her mother fixed meals. That was absolutely against the sanitary regulations. “Live animals in the kitchen during meal preparation. Unsanitary conditions in living quarters. I think your department should send an inspector to investigate this facility immediately.”

  There was a slight pause before Mr. Gaffney responded. “I missed your name, Ms… .”

  “My name is … Sybil …” E.D. looked wildly around the office for a possible last name. A dictionary was leaning against the printer. “Sybil Webster.”

  “Well, Ms. Webster, our department does not actually conduct those inspections. They are done by the county health department in the county where the camp is located. Such inspections are, of course, done for the state, which issues the camp permits, but not by the state. How large a camp is this?”

  “Sixteen acres,” E.D. said.

  There was a muffled chuckle on the other end of the line. “I’m sorry, ma’am—I meant how many campers are served by the facility?”

  “Six.”

  “Six? You mean six hundred? On sixteen acres?”

  “No. I mean six. Six campers.”

  Now there was no question that Mr. Gaffney was doing his best to suppress a laugh. He wasn’t quite succeeding. “I’m very sorry, Ms. Webster, but as you may know, the state of North Carolina, like most states, works under considerable budgetary restraint. We are snowed under with regulations—there’s the ban on smoking in public restaurants and bars, for instance—a nightmare, that one! There simply isn’t the staff to enforce them all. We do our best, but you really have no idea how many regulations we and the county health departments have to deal with! We are stretched very, very thin! Six campers! Has anyone become ill at this camp? Has anyone—died?”

  “Certainly not!”

  “Then, Ms. Webster, I suggest you begin by taking up the issue with the camp management. Ask them to clean up their act, as it were. Ask them to call in exterminators. And get the animals out of the kitchen. If you could see the load of casework we deal with at our end, you’d understand that a situation of this—this— Is there such a word as minitude? The opposite, I mean to say, of magnitude? Well, I mean, I just have to tell you that a camp of that size is not going to readily make its way to the top of our workload. Or that of the particular county’s health department, for that matter.” Daryl Gaffney was openly chuckling now. “Is there—is there anything else I can help you with?”

  “No, thank you,” E.D. said. “I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Mr. Gaffney said. “You’ve been a breath of fresh air in a very dull day. Six campers!”

  He was laughing outright when E.D. hung up. The regulations were real. But if the state—or the county health department—didn’t have the staff to enforce them, who was the man in the suit?

  Chapter Thirty

  Destiny hadn’t gotten back from the library in time to swim, so Jake had been free to swim with the campers. He’d taken Winston along, and the dog was so exhausted that once he’d gotten a drink from the pond edge, he dragged his muddy body back, flopped down in the shade, and went instantly to sleep.

  Not once during the whole of optional swim did Jake catch Ginger staring at him with that look of adoration. As relieved as he was, Jake had to admit to himself that he was almost sorry. Nobody in his life had ever looked at him that way before. He pretty much doubted it would ever happen again.

  With Archie overseeing the water activities, they staged individual races, most of which Q won; relay races with endless arguments over who should be on which team and whether the fastest swimmers on a team should go first or last; a diving contest, which David won with a forward front flip that Jake could hardly believe could be done without a diving board; and finally a game of Marco Polo that went badly wrong when Samantha, Cinnamon, and Ginger accused David of cheating. The argument over that got so heated that Archie kicked everybody out of the pond fifteen minutes early.

  The twins said everybody should go see Samantha’s mural; David stormed off to the boys’ cottage by himself; and the others, except for Hal, who reluctantly went to keep an eye on David, gathered their sandals and towels and set off toward the barn.

  As Jake started after them, Harley hung back. “Can I talk to you?” he said. “Privately?”

  “Sure! What’s up?”

  “Well. Um.” Harley fiddled with the towel around his neck. “You know how I told you I don’t sing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “See, the thing is—I sort of do. I mean, I really do—I can—but I don’t. I mean I haven’t.” He rubbed his nose. “I’ve spent my whole life on the road with my folks, going from concert to concert. I was ‘bus schooled,’ is how my mom puts it. There were never any other kids in my life—just my parents and the band and their fans. I didn’t get much chance to be a kid.”

  Jake nodded. As different as his life had been from Harley’s, he sort of knew how that was.

  “So I decided when I was still pretty little that the way to be me was to not be them. I learned to play the guitar way back before I figured out the ‘me’ thing, but I don’t carry one around with me or anything. Since I didn’t want to sing, I was gonna be a painter till I found out I wasn’t any good at it, and then I decided to do photography instead.”

  “But you can sing?”

  “Oh, yeah. I can. So what I wanted to ask is, Is it too late to join your workshop?”

  Jake laughed. “As long as you don’t expect much from me as a singing coach. We just all sort of figure stuff out together.”

  “It’s not so much for the singing part. You know the music that came into my head for Ginger’s lyrics? Well, I was thinking she and I might be able to sing a duet at the end-of-camp show. I mean, if we have an end-of-camp show. If the state doesn’t shut us down or anything. Trouble is, I didn’t bring my guitar—”

  “Archie has one,” Jake said.

  “I didn’t know he plays the guitar.”

  “He doesn’t. He bought it a long time ago when he was going around the world on a tramp steamer. Thought he’d learn to play and use it to impress girls.” Jake chuckled. “He learned a few chords; but since he doesn’t sing, the whole thing ju
st never worked out. He’s still got it though. It’s in a closet in Wisteria Cottage. I’m pretty sure he’d lend it to you.”

  Archie had just swum across the pond from the diving platform and was climbing onto the dock. “Go ask him,” Jake said. “We could definitely use somebody in the workshop who can play live music for us! Are you any good?”

  Harley nodded. “The bass guitarist told me I was a prodigy.”

  “Be careful of that word,” Jake said. “Go ask!”

  After they’d all checked out Samantha’s mural, which was really big, really original, a little strange, and—everybody agreed—really good, Jake, with Winston tagging behind, went back to Wisteria Cottage to shower and change. When he got there, Archie had dug out his guitar and dusted off the case.

  “It’s about time this old thing got some use!” he said. “So Harley’s a guitar prodigy, huh? Lucille’s right. This group just gets more and more interesting. Have you seen Samantha’s mural?”

  Jake nodded. “It seems pretty good to me. I don’t know that much about art—”

  “One thing’s for sure: when it’s done, we’re going to have ourselves the most unusual barn in the state! If the government doesn’t close us down, I’m thinking we could sell tickets to the end-of-camp show. Would you take this to Harley?”

  E.D. was heading up the steps of Wisteria Cottage when Jake and Winston came out later. “We have to talk,” E.D. said, waving at the rocking chairs on the porch. “Sit!” Winston sat. So did Jake. From the look on E.D.’s face, there was just no point in arguing.

  “So, if this guy isn’t a state inspector,” Jake said when she finished telling him about her call to the department, “who is he?”

  “That’s what I want to know!”

  “We should tell your folks. No sense letting them go on worrying that the state could come swooping down on us any minute.”

  E.D. didn’t answer at first. She just stared off into the trees for a while. Then she smiled in a way that looked to Jake more conspiratorial than cheery. “I’m thinking it wouldn’t hurt to let them go on worrying awhile. After all, they’re the grown-ups here—the talented, creative, famous grown-ups! And not one of them thought to check with the state before they put everybody to the trouble of creating the camp! And bringing in the campers! Now that I know we aren’t in danger, I don’t mind at all that they still think we are. Serves Dad right when you come right down to it. All I want is to find out who this guy really is.”

  “After what happened to him today, you expect him to come back?”

  E.D. shrugged. “Let’s see if the messages keep turning up in the mailbox. If so, it means the charade continues. So we go on keeping watch. Then—if he comes back—instead of chasing him off, we need to catch him and get the whole story.”

  Jake looked at Winston, who was asleep again, snoring noisily. “Winston’s practically worn to the bone tromping around the whole of Wit’s End four times a day. He’s so exhausted that a butterfly actually landed on his head this afternoon and he didn’t do a thing.”

  “It’s about time he figured out he’s never going to catch one. Winston’s not worn to the bone; he’s just lost a little weight. That dog’s in better shape than he’s been since he was a puppy.”

  Jake thought about what had changed since E.D. had found the threatening messages and caught sight of the guy in the suit. When they’d thought there was a threat to the camp, everybody had started pulling together. Even David and Q had begun cooperating, at least occasionally. The threat really had turned them—adults and kids alike—into an ensemble, all focused on the same thing. “Okay. So what do we do instead of distraction and delay?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Harley’s joining my singing workshop, so if you bring Hal and Cordelia to the next one, we can tell everybody together.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  For almost a week the messages went on showing up with the mail, and E.D. took guilty delight in watching her father prowl around Wit’s End obsessing over mess and looking for signs of vermin infestation. He was the only one who still seemed to be taking the threat seriously. When the results of Plan C had been reported at a staff meeting, Zedediah said they might as well just go on taking things a day at a time. “We haven’t heard directly from the state, after all. I doubt that we’ll see the man again. It’s hard to imagine that a little operation like ours will seem worth risking life and limb over.”

  Lucille insisted there was no need to worry in any case since they were so clearly under the protection of cosmic forces. She had taken to keeping her camera with her all the time and taking sudden flash photographs without warning. “We are positively surrounded by orbs!”

  Then, very early on the morning of July 17, when all the campers were at yoga, Sybil was in the kitchen getting breakfast, and E.D. was putting up the daily schedule in the dining tent, the plain black car came up the drive and pulled to a stop by the front porch with a squeal of brakes. The man, this time wearing a light blue suit, emerged from the car with his clipboard in hand and leaned on the horn.

  E.D. flipped on her walkie-talkie. She hoped Jake was awake and that wherever he was, he had his walkie-talkie with him. “Jake! Jake, are you on? 9-1-1. Repeat. 9-1-1. Come to the Lodge. Right now!”

  At the sound of the horn, Paulie, in the kitchen, had begun screaming like someone being attacked by an ax murderer. The horn, beeping over and over, had apparently sent him into a frenzy. Sybil hurried to the door and came out on the porch, wiping her hands on her apron. “May I help you?”

  “I’m from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources!” the man shouted over the sound of Paulie’s screams. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “Well I suppose I am at the moment,” Sybil said. “I’m the associate director.”

  He waggled an official-looking name tag at her. “I’m Thomas Timmons, and I’ve come to inspect this camp.” He looked at his clipboard. “Eureka! Is that the name? Strange name for a camp.”

  “Inspect the camp?” Sybil said as if she’d never heard of such a thing. “We’ve had no call about an inspection!”

  “Of course you haven’t had a call. This is an unannounced inspection, as per Section 15A of the North Carolina Administrative Code. What is there about the term ‘unannounced’ you don’t understand?”

  Paulie’s screams subsided, and he began instead a series of his most colorful curses.

  “Am I correct in assuming that someone at this camp is swearing at an agent of the government? I will not be sworn at!” Brandishing his clipboard, the man stormed up the steps of the porch, and Sybil retreated until she was backed up against the screen door.

  “That’s just Paulie,” she said. “My father-in-law’s parrot.”

  “Parrot?” The man pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and jotted something on the clipboard. “A live bird on the premises. Clear danger of psittacosis. I hope this bird does not reside in the kitchen. That would be a serious violation of regulations!”

  Sybil’s face drained of color. “Reside? Well, no! Paulie resides in Maple Cottage. He was just brought over this morning to be—”

  “This is to be a full inspection: food preparation area, lodging facilities, sanitation and bathing facilities, drinking water, vermin control, recreational waters. All of it. The future of this camp will depend on the results. I wish to begin with food preparation. Take me to your kitchen!”

  “What is that infernal racket?” Randolph’s voice could be heard now amid Paulie’s gradually diminishing shrieks and curses. “Doesn’t anyone down there know what time it is? It is barely past dawn!”

  At that moment Winston came around the house barking his terrorist protection bark. Jake hurried after him, walkie-talkie in hand. Destiny, still in his pajamas, followed.

  “Someone put up that dog!” the man yelled over the tumult. “It is against the law for an unrestrained animal to be present during an official inspection.”

  “Jake!” S
ybil said. “Take Winston somewhere else, would you please?”

  “Is that the bad man, Mommy?” Destiny demanded. “The destruction and delay man?”

  “Hush, Destiny. Of course not,” Sybil said.

  “Come on, Winston!” E.D. called. “You too, Destiny.” If they were to put the plan they had come up with into effect, she had to let the others know what was going on. “Let’s go watch the campers do yoga!”

  “Oooh, goodie! Can I do it, too? I’m really, really good at yoga,” Destiny told the man as E.D. grabbed his hand and tried to aim him toward the barn, “but they never lets me do it. They say I’m too loud. Am I too loud, do you think?”

  By this time Randolph, in undershorts and T-shirt, had come to the door, smoothing his tangled hair. “What’s all this? Who are you?”

  “Thomas Timmons, from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources!” the man repeated, glancing over his shoulder from time to time at Winston, who was now growling menacingly and uttering the occasional woof as he followed E.D.

  “Then I suggest you go look after the environment. Get out there and protect some of our natural resources and quit intruding on the affairs of the citizens of this state whose taxes are responsible for keeping you employed.”

  The man waved his clipboard again. “I demand to be taken to your kitchen. Immediately!”

  Jake hurried to the porch steps. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “But the campers haven’t had breakfast yet, so the kitchen is very busy at the moment. I’d be happy to take you to see the lodging facilities, and we can come back to the kitchen when the campers are eating. The food preparation area won’t go anywhere while we’re gone, I promise you.”

  “I want you to know that I’m calling your superiors!” Randolph blustered through the screen door now. “It’s a crime to send anyone here before normal work hours. Eureka! is not open to the public until ten o’clock, I’ll have you know!”

  “Randolph! Go upstairs and get dressed,” Sybil was saying as E.D. pulled Destiny away.