Eighteen
Mayor Shipp was a retired welder who’d been elected ten years ago on a platform of boosting tourism. Along with a deerstalker hat, he wore steel-toed boots and camo suspenders. He was huge; his outsized muscles and belly seemed to bulge in every direction. Rumor had it he’d once wrestled a bear in Lost Souls Wilderness and won. Ruthie had only ever seen him from a distance—at high school graduation, for example. Up close, she found herself fascinated by the gold crown that kept flashing from his mouth as he spoke.
“We need to get on the same page here,” he boomed in his deep voice. “Before things get too out of hand.”
His impressive bulk dwarfed the folding chair Ruthie had offered him at the table in the lighthouse. After that unsettling conversation with Alastair, Ruthie had
