Starvation Lake Read Online Free

“Boynton ran me over last night,” I said.
    “Ted Boynton?” Her voice hadn’t yet lost its morning croak.
    “Just about beheaded me,” I said. I grabbed a
Pilot
off the counter.
    “Oh, pshaw, Gus. You boys have known each other forever.”
    “Maybe that’s the problem.” Checking the front page, I noticed we had used the wrong photograph for the local youngster who had speared a six-pound bass on Blue Lake. “Anyway, he’s coming in this morning.”
    She stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette. “Should I get doughnuts?”
    “No. This is a business meeting, and I think Teddy convened it last night.” I started back to the newsroom.
    “Hold on. You owe me a quarter.”
    NLP Newspapers Inc., the company that three years before had purchased the
Pilot
from its original owners, Nelson P. and Gertrude X. Selby, had started making employees pay for their paper.
    “Put it on my tab,” I said.
    “Gus.”
    I walked back and slapped two dimes and a nickel on the counter.
     
     
       At ten o’clock, Tillie ushered Teddy Boynton and another man toting a briefcase back to the
Pilot
newsroom.
    Buzzing fluorescent lamps lit the windowless room. It was just big enough for a watercooler, a knee-high refrigerator, a combination copier and fax, and four gray steel desks. The air tasted of stale coffee and copier ink. I cleared one swivel chair of grease-spattered chili-dog wrappers, another of a pile of newspapers. Teddy approached me with his big hand outstretched, flashing the smile I knew well from high school. These days it adorned refrigerator magnets advertising his real estate company. His eyes flicked over my bandaged jaw. “Hell of a game last night,” he said.
    “Really? I don’t remember much. Must’ve hit my head on the crossbar.”
    “It’ll sneak up on you. Meet Arthur Fleming.”
    Fleming, a short, pear-shaped man in thick glasses, was an attorney from Sandy Cove. He had represented the town the summer before when a movie-theater chain was deciding whether to close the theater there or the Avalon in Starvation Lake. Sandy Cove prevailed after offering twenty thousand dollars to rebuild its theater’s balcony. I shook his hand. “You’re not representing Sandy Cove?”
    His eyes wandered disapprovingly around the room. “Not on this matter.”
    Boynton grinned again. “He’s all mine,” he said.
    Boynton unrolled a blueprint and spread it across my desk. “You may think you’ve seen this before, but you haven’t,” he said. As big and broad as he looked in his hockey gear, he always seemed bigger in a jacket and tie. “We’ve tweaked a few things and, just between us, I’m not sure our zoned-out zoning board has absorbed it all.” I felt him peek to see if I was smiling. “Like here,” he said, pointing. “We’ve moved the Jet Ski docks farther down the beach so we don’t have kids shooting out in front of boats…”
    Teddy wanted to build the Pines at Starvation Lake, a marina with a luxury hotel, a restaurant, and a fifty-foot-tall waterslide. He had the land. He had most of the money lined up. He just needed a change to the local zoning ordinance. But the zoning board, five old men who seemed flummoxed by all the legal, financial, and environmental issues involved, was balking. Plenty of townspeople felt the marina was just what Starvation needed to steal business back from Sandy Cove. Others thought Boynton owned enough.
    I had written the editorial that led to the stitches on my jaw. I didn’t care how much of the town Teddy owned, and I thought the new marina was probably a good idea, but I argued that there were still questions about how the development might affect the lake. Unless Boynton offered more money to keep the water clean, I argued, the zoning board should think hard before approving the project. Besides, we already had Starvation Lake Marina, which Soupy had inherited when his father died the summer before. Although it was fifty-three years old and in need of