Read Online Bunker 01 - Slipknot by Linda Greenlaw - Free Book Online

a speeding car with the windows rolled up tight. My fingers found the envelope on the back of which Cal had drawn a primitive map of the area, with arrows leading to a boldly printed g.b. I held the map in the center of the Duster’s steering wheel while navigating the route through a maze of tiny shops lining the narrow Main Street, and headed out of town the “western way.”
    The road twisted and turned up and down small rolling hills strewn with granite boulders, sun-dappled blueberry fields, and patches of spruce trees grown so thick that as I cruised through their shade cast over the road and back into splotches of bright sunshine, I was intermittently cooled and warmed. Entry into each black shadow was saluted by sun-glasses pushed from nose to forehead and back to nose at exit.
    Up and down the glasses went until I was convinced that I had missed the Hamiltons’ driveway. I wondered why people of s l i p k n o t
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    their stature would choose to live so far from civilization.
    Then I recalled something I had read in researching Maine prior to my move. New money desired addresses such as Bar Harbor or Kennebunkport. Old money stayed where it was born. If Audrey had her history straight, the Hamilton fortune had been born in Green Haven. I had already noticed that Green Haveners referred to the more touristy Maine towns with the same derogatory adjectives used in Miami about South Beach.
    Slowing the Duster to a crawl and looking for a place to turn around, I calculated how much time and gasoline I had wasted in getting lost. I completed a seemingly endless series of steep turns that bent sharply one way, then the other. A straightaway and large clearing on the left, divided by a private drive marked on either side by granite pillars of intimidating size, elicited a sigh of relief. It was precisely as Cal had described. A sizable brass plate framed by intricate masonry on the right-side pillar read, granite bluff—1879. Quite formal, I thought, and stopped between the pillars. Perhaps I would announce my arrival with a quick, courteous phone call. The Hamiltons were not expecting me for another two hours.
    Pulling a cell phone from one of the many caverns of my bag, I was surprised to see a strong signal but not so surprised to read “low battery” on the phone’s display. Yet another reason to travel to Ellsworth, I surmised. My landlords had warned me of the cost of electricity and cautioned me to use it sparingly. Given my tendency toward frugality, I’d heeded this advice. I simply must invest in a twelve-volt charger to be

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    used in the Duster, I thought. But this would require running the car’s engine at three dollars per gallon. Electricity was thirty-two cents per kilowatt-hour. Outrageous! Perhaps the Old Maids carried car chargers. There was a Wal-Mart in Ellsworth. Forty miles round-trip . . . The path of my daily existence was scattered with what I had come to call my
    “Scottish dilemmas.” I tossed the phone back in the bag. I would arrive unannounced and ridiculously early. Oh well, I thought, it might serve my ulterior motive to catch the clients off guard.
    One quarter of the way into the mile-long drive to the Hamilton estate, I was taken with the swells and gentle grades of earth and shallow grassy troughs connecting perfectly sculpted mounds on either side of me. I felt as though I had been magically transported to the Old Course at St. Andrews. This was exactly how I had imagined it on my many total submersions into every written work on the subject. A raised plateau overgrown with a distinctly different hue of green and distinguishing texture easily could have been a tee box anywhere in Scotland. Not that I’d ever been there; I just knew. Rolling down a window, I took a deep breath, confirming that the ocean was near.
    Cresting a long, slow climb to the highest peak in the vicinity, I eased the Duster to a stop and reveled in the rare sensation