by Pat Henshaw
“Hey,” he whispered. I approved. He hadn’t shouted or talked out loud. Almost like he, too, respected the early-morning stillness. “I didn’t bring a rod or anything because I don’t have one.”
“S’okay. You can use one of mine.” I pointed the gear I was carrying toward his tree. “Always wanted to try from over there. Mind if we do?”
He nodded.
We stopped our soft conversation and walked silently to the tree. He had a light step, which made me admire him even more. Not many city folk do. Mostly they lumber around like everyone thought I should. Me? I’m light on my feet.
We got the blanket situated under the tree. Jeff pointed at the grungy bowl I’d put on the grass nearby.
“What’s it for?” he asked.
“Bait.”
He shook his head. “I don’t see anything in the bowl. Is something going to fall into it from the tree?”
I chuckled softly. “No. We’re putting the bait there until we need it.” I pointed next to him and asked, “How you feel about worms?”
His smile was radiant. “I love worms. When I was a kid, I dressed up as one for Halloween.”
“Yeah?” I thought it was funny and smiled. “Why’d you like them?”
“I don’t know. They’re slimy and wriggly and scared my sister. What’s not to like? Oh, yeah, and they’re dirty too. Everything good as far as I was concerned.”
Still smiling, which for me was probably a record, I pointed to the moist piece of ground under the tree, at the soil with the rotting layer of leaves on top.
“Well, you can get your hands dirty and search for worms. Be sure to leave some of the mud around them so they don’t dry out. Then I’ll show you how to bait a hook.”
We ended up spending both days talking in between fishing, lunching, and hiking. I hadn’t had such a good weekend in a long, long time.
ON MONDAY morning, Jeff came to the office before I left for the field. He was dressed in jeans, T-shirt, khaki jacket, and sturdy boots. He looked like a construction worker. He even had dirt under his fingernails. But I knew where it had come from.
“Can we talk a second before we head out?” he asked as I looked up. His tread in the office was loud and sure, not like his careful steps by the lake.
“What’s up?”
He closed the door and then leaned against it. I’d e-mailed the accounting files to him after I hired him Saturday afternoon.
“You were right. It looks an awful lot like someone inside is draining the business. One of the managers, probably.”
“So what do we do?”
His smile was low and mean. Just like me, he didn’t find this funny. It cut me to the quick. I was probably being betrayed by someone in my own family.
“What we do is we catch the son of a bitch and find out why he’d do something so goddamn disrespectful,” he said.
Jeff’s swearing seemed to slice through my office like a buzz saw.
I nodded, then frowned. In a way, I was shocked to hear him swearing, especially since I hadn’t heard him do it over the weekend. Not because I didn’t swear myself. It’s just I try to hold it down since I work with so many of my younger cousins and their friends. Swearing is common on sites. But it always seemed to me if one of my aunts or female cousins came to see how their sons or brothers were doing, they didn’t need to hear us yelling obscenities at each other. So I try to keep the sites as clean as I can. Doesn’t always work, but I try.
I explained about my watch-your-mouth policy.
Jeff’s expression brightened. “Okay by me. I only swear when I get really pissed. What someone is doing to you royally pisses me off.”
I agreed. “Yeah. Okay,” I said. “Let’s go catch him.”
As I looked at him, I was reminded of a special hire who had intrigued me a couple of years back. Scott, like Jeff, was tall, blond, and nice. We’d gone out to lunch a few times and to dinner once. If I was going to break my asexual lifestyle, Scott would have been my choice.
I was really upset when Scott accidentally fell from a roof. He was helping put in a skylight one day when I wasn’t on-site. My brothers acted quickly, though, and called 911. Ben and Connor stabilized him until the EMTs got there. Last I heard, Scott was back at home living with his parents and still in rehab. He never should have been on the damn roof in the first place. I blamed Cousin Gary, who was foreman of the job.
As Jeff and I left the office, I reminded myself to watch him carefully. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to him. Especially since he was growing on me.
4
TODAY I was subbing for my distant cousins Bobby and Tony. Bobby was driving Tony to the DMV to change the title over on his old truck. I told them they didn’t have to go into the DMV. But they didn’t listen.
Jeff and I would frame the Winters’ family cabana. The foundation and roughed plumbing and electrical were already in place. The small building made a right angle at the end of the pool. One side had a changing room and shower for guys, the other side the same for ladies.
While we drove to the Winters’ house, I talked Jeff through the steps we’d be doing. He’d never done framing before. It wasn’t hard, so I figured he’d catch on fast. Hell, I could do it by myself when I was twelve.
We ran into Mrs. W the minute we stepped out of the truck. I always try to avoid clients’ wives, but sometimes there was no getting out of it.
“Oh. Oh my,” she said and stopped about six feet away from me on the driveway. “I thought Ben or Connor were coming today.”
“Nope. Just me and Jeff.” I hung a thumb behind me. Jeff had rounded the truck and was standing there. We had to get our belts and stuff out of the truck bed before we began.
“Oh. Well, all right.” She acted like she had some say in who worked today. I found humor there. “I just wanted to remind them—you—about the flowers. Last time one of the boards destroyed a corner of the bed.”
After a long silence, Jeff poked me in the back. I turned. He walked around me.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Jeff Mason. I’m sorry to hear about the flowers. Did you remove them already?”
He looked concerned, like someone had died. I was a little pissed he’d done an end run on me. But Mrs. W’s frown had disappeared. She was smiling. Blushing? God, no.
“No, no, I haven’t removed them yet,” she answered.
Jeff’s smile grew bigger. “Good. Then I’ll take a look at them. Maybe they can be saved. I have a way with flowers.”
What? A way with flowers? What the hell?
But she was eating it up.
“Oh. You’re so kind,” she answered.
He just bowed a little. She turned and walked back up the driveway to the house.
“What the hell?” I growled.
He gave me his sassy grin. “She was flustered and scared of you because you were scowling at her. You didn’t look like you were going to take her flower problem seriously.”
“I don’t.” I was buckling my tool belt and feeling around to make sure I had everything I needed.
“Yes, you do.” I looked up at him, probably scowling again. “The flowers mean something to her, so they mean something to you. She didn’t want you to replant the entire yard. Just do something about the few flowers that were flattened.”
I grunted. He had a point. Behr Construction was all about service. What were a few flowers? “You’re right.”
He grinned again.
I eyed his new gear. Stiff tool belt. New shoes. Rangy swimmer’s arms sticking out of a clean T-shirt. Crisp jeans. It was like leading a baby to slaughter. I rubbed a hand over my face. God, this was going to be a long day.
We walked to the backyard. I showed him the stack of lumber. Talked him through framing again. Left him with a stub of a pencil, tape measure, and framing square. All he had to do was mark the lumber.
I went to the cement pad. Checked the water and sewer rough-ins. Looked at the electrical posts. Everything seemed ready to go.
When I got back to Jeff, he’d finished marking all the lumber. Since little of it needed cutting, we were ready for the first wall. Something was nagging me. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t figure out what. With a shrug, I joined him to nail the studs in.
Mrs. Winter’s voice as I bent over startled me.
“Mr. Mason?” Jeff looked up at the same time I did. Mrs. Winter’s face broke into a smile as she looked away from me.
“Yes, Mrs. Winter,” he said to her, glancing at me. I nodded. “What can we do for you?”
I figured he was the golden boy. He could talk to her. If he couldn’t answer her question, I could. It was probably about flowers anyway.
“Are those the bad ones?” she asked, pointing at the four boards we’d culled from the bigger pile.
“Bad ones?” He gazed at me, his eyebrows up. His look asked me what she meant. I shrugged.
“Oh, Bobby explained how some of the boards were bad and he had to keep them in the garage overnight. I just wondered if I should move my car.” She looked like a perky bird who was proud she’d gotten with the program.
Now both she and Jeff were staring at me. Bad boards? Okay, yeah, we bought in bulk and sometimes pieces in the pile weren’t straight enough to use. But not as many as you’d think. Why would Bobby have talked to her about bad boards? Why store the unusable ones in the garage instead of carrying them away in his truck?
“There are boards in your garage?” I asked her.
“Oh no. Not now. They came and picked them up on Sunday.” She was happy to report this, like I was going to get pissed if my cousin Bobby left them here. I was pissed. What kind of scam was Bobby running?
She backed up a couple of steps as I thought about this.
“Did I do the wrong thing?” she asked Jeff.
“No. No, you’re okay,” I growled, not liking what I was thinking about Bobby. I could feel the tension in my eyebrows as they snapped together. I hoped to God Bobby hadn’t been ripping the Winters off over the weekend. What did the couple have in the garage? Or more to the point, what was now missing from the Winters’ garage?
As I was thinking, Jeff jumped in. “Can we see the garage?”
Her face scrunched up like she was confused. “All right. But I don’t understand—”
“Just want to make sure they got all the boards and cleaned up after themselves,” he cut in soothingly. “We wouldn’t want there to be some stray nails or anything left behind to do any damage.”
Her hand went to her chest.
“Oh my. My husband parked there afterward.” Now she was getting worried.
I wanted to punch out my cousins Bobby and Tony. What the hell were they doing?
Mrs. Winter looked at my face. She took another step or two back.
Jeff was now standing next to me. I heard him sigh. He gave me a slight headshake. He turned to Mrs. Winter.
“Like I said, there’s probably nothing to worry about. But we’d better check. Then we can decide if we need to call your husband or not.” He gave her a reassuring smile, which she returned. He put a hand on my arm and gave me a squeeze. I jumped. “Why don’t we just check out the garage?” he asked me softly. I nodded.
Of course, there was nothing in the garage that we could see. The lumber was gone. No nails were on the floor. Why would there be? Where’d Jeff gotten the idea anyway? Mrs. Winter didn’t scream and point to an empty spot. Everything looked on the up-and-up.
Jeff escorted Mrs. Winter out as I gave the space another look. Nothing. I couldn’t see anything out of place. He and Mrs. W walked out into the sunshine, talking in low voices.
“You don’t say?” Jeff asked. “That much lumber?”
Mrs. Winter nodded.
“Well, it obviously was a particularly bad load,” he added with a big grin. “By the way, can you show me the flower bed?”
She brightened and nodded again, leading him away. I watched them walk to the side of the garage.
Why the hell were Bobby and Tony stacking lumber here? The pool area was in the opposite direction. None of this made sense. Both guys were visiting my office this week to explain.
JEFF AND I had gotten the fifth of the seven walls laid out when we realized we’d run out of lumber.
“What the fuck?” I said to him. We were looking down at the last board after laying out the fifth wall. “Where the hell are the rest of the studs? Not to mention the header and footer?”
“Language,” Jeff muttered. He too was looking down at the single board.
“Huh?”
“No swearing policy?”
“Uh, yeah. Pissed off.”
I was wondering why we were whispering when Jeff raised his eyes. He was looking behind me.
“Would you like beer, iced tea, or water with your sandwiches?” a Latino woman asked.
She held her head down slightly, but she was staring at me.
“What?”
“With you lunch. What would you like to drink?” she asked, this time enunciating precisely. She acted like I didn’t understand English.
“Uh. We take our lunch off-site.”
“No here?”
“No.”
Her face scrunched in confusion. “No here? No want lunch?”
I must have scowled because she let out a little “eek” and stepped back. Her gaze hit the ground.
I cleared my throat. “Thank you for the offer.” I tried to make my voice lighter, but it didn’t work. Now she looked scared. “We’ll eat off-site.”
A few minutes later, Mrs. Winter was back, bustling across the lawn toward us. We’d nearly got the fifth wall framed out and put up.
“Mr. Behr,” she called. Steel was in her tone. “Juana says you’re not eating lunch here today?”
“Uh, no, Mrs. Winter.” I straightened from my crouch over the frame. I groaned as my back unknotted. Mrs. Winter flinched but didn’t step back this time. I sighed. “Thanks for offering, though. We appreciate it.”
She put her hands on her hips. She was about to light into me.
“I thought it was part of the deal, Mr. Behr,” she said sternly, as if I was breaking the conditions of the agreement.
What the fuck?
I cleared my throat.
“We need to go by the lumberyard and pick up a few more boards,” Jeff broke in. He gestured to the lumber on the grass. “And check on a few other things.”
She glared at me, but gave him a smile.
“Well, you could have told us sooner,” she huffed to me. If I routinely ate at clients’ houses, she’d have a point. But it had never been a policy at Behr Construction. Never.
So the question remained. What the hell was going on?
5
“WHAT WERE you doing back there?” I growled as Jeff buckled up and I started the truck.
“With Mrs. Winter?” He looked so innocent, as if he couldn’t see the top of my head was about to explode.
“Thought you were along as an observer.”
“Oh, so you’re mad at me now.” He was smirking. I wanted to hit him, but I never hit anyone. Ever. Everybody is smaller than me.
“Observer means looking. Not speaking.”
“Can I ask you something?” He waited for me to nod. “If I hadn’t been here, how would you have handled it?”
“I would have spoken to her husband.”
“He wasn’t here.”
“He would have called me,” I answered with a shrug. I didn’t know what he was getting at.
“Why would he have called you?”
“His wife would have talked to him,” I said with another shrug. The point?
“So you would have been okay with her calling her husband at work and complaining? You would have been okay with him putting off what he should be doing this morning at work and calling you to talk about flowers and boards and lunch?”
I glanced at him. Yeah, he was right. Seemed kind of stupid to ask Stu Winter to interrupt his day just because I’d
irritated his wife. But it was the way I’d always worked. Nobody’d ever complained. “Okay, yeah, I get it. So, you’re saying it would be better to just talk to her and get it figured out here and now?”
“What do you think?” He was smirking again.
“I think you’re earning some of the money I’m paying you.” He quirked an eyebrow. “By helping me save time at work.”
“Smoothing ruffled feathers,” he muttered.
“That too,” I grunted.
WE DROVE to Mitchell Lumber and Hardware, a valley business almost as old as mine, Stonewall Saloon, and a few others. The old businesses were having to make way for the new these days. Some said it was because the new ones are more efficient, with quicker in and out. I don’t know. I was just trying to keep Behr updated as every innovation came along.
I knew by going to Mitchell’s, Jeff and I would spend some time talking to Owen Mitchell, a great-grandson of the founder. Owen’s my age, married, with three kids, two boys and a girl. We didn’t have much in common except living in the same damn place our whole lives and working in businesses with our relatives. He was a churchgoer and Elks Lodge member. I wasn’t prone to either.
“Abe. How ya been, buddy?” He always reminded me more of a used car dealer than the CEO of a lumber and hardware store.
We shook hands and I introduced him to Jeff.
“So what do you think about all the faggots turning up everywhere these days? It’s all everybody’s talking about,” Owen said as we walked into the lumber-storage building. “Got the community stirred up, that’s for sure.”
“I think the term you’re looking for is ‘gays’ or ‘queers,’” I said with a shrug. “Far as I can tell, they’ve been here the whole time and we’ve never had a problem with them.”
He stopped and put a hand on my arm. “No, I don’t mean Stone and Max. I mean those other two fairies who changed them, that Fredi character and that Jimmy Patterson.”
I removed his hand from my arm. “Like I said, they aren’t causing any problems. So it’s none of my business.”
