by Leslie Caine
“Oh, please! You think Jerk Face Hamlin didn’t pay off city officials so they’d approve of all his ridiculous-looking additions? Don’t be naive! This has everything to do with clout! But just because Pate Hamlin is some kind of hotshot multimillionaire doesn’t give him the right to destroy my home! We’re waging a counterattack,” she announced. “And you’re either capable of going toe to toe with that bastard, or I’m replacing you with someone who can!”
“I’ll look into this matter, too.” Sullivan intervened with extra vehemence—another obvious attempt to diffuse the tension. “A city official I spoke with earlier this morning said the ban extended only to the city limits. Maybe the building inspector David consulted with didn’t realize your house is outside Crestview limits.”
She took a noisy drag on her cigarette and narrowed her eyes at poor David. “Speaking of exceeding one’s limits, have you talked to that foreman of yours yet? There’s no way I’m going to allow you people to fraternize with the enemy, you know.”
“Yeah, I did. You’re sure it was Duncan you saw with Pate Hamlin?” David asked.
“I’m positive! The two of them were over here yesterday, sharing a beer and a laugh at my expense.”
“Duncan swears he doesn’t touch the stuff, Shannon. And I believe him. He’s a recovering alcoholic.”
“So maybe he was drinking soda, but Pate was guzzling beer. That’s not the point! I’m certain he took Pate on a guided tour of my home while I was out.” She looked at Sullivan and me and cried, “I could smell that vile man’s cologne throughout my entire house!”
Frankly, it was hard to believe a chain smoker’s sense of smell could be all that keen. (Considering Shannon’s current mood, however, that was another observation best kept to myself.)
David said, “My foreman swears he’s never taken anyone inside your house—”
“He’s lying.” She waved her lit cigarette inches from David’s nose. “A habit of falsification which he probably gets from you. You told me the front construction would be complete by mid-October, and it’s already November. Meanwhile, your work here is so shoddy, it’s like you’re getting paid to sabotage the construction.”
It was true that the construction was behind schedule, but that wasn’t uncommon, especially when the homeowner kept changing her mind about what she wanted. An ugly flush crept up David’s neck at her accusation, and he balled his fists.
“Before we order the one-way glass, Shannon,” I interjected hastily, “Steve and I will talk with Mr. Hamlin and his designer. Maybe we can call some sort of truce.”
She rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself, but you’ll be wasting your breath, Erin. Rebecca Berringer knows precisely what she’s doing. She’s a lot feng-shui-ier a designer than you two are. In fact, Rebecca was my first choice, until I learned she was working for Pate. No offense. It was Michael who wanted us to hire you.”
I was taken aback by this news but managed to murmur, “That was nice of him.”
“Oh, well, he was just trying to suck up to Audrey Munroe.” She took another anxious drag on her cigarette. She looked remarkably like the fire-breathing dragon she’d painted on her front door. “My husband knows how close you and your landlady are. He wants more money for his appearances on her show. Though I’ve gotten to be friends with Audrey myself lately. We share an interest in preserving Crestview’s character. Did she tell you about our committee?”
I shook my head, struggling to focus on this abrupt turn in the conversation; David was still red-faced and tense. He glared at her with raw fury. “Hey,” Sullivan said, laying a hand on the contractor’s shoulder, “let’s take a look at your plans and see how things are coming along.”
“Yeah,” he growled. “Sounds like a good idea.”
“We’ll be back soon, Shannon,” I said, seizing the opportunity to escape with them. Quietly closing the door behind us, I took some greedy breaths of the sweet crisp autumn air.
My “confidence and optimism” mantra would be getting quite the workout. Now that we’d finished some short-term jobs, we had more time to devote to Shannon’s home. That, unfortunately, meant we’d spend more time with feng shui designer Ang Chung, who we both suspected was either a flake or a con man. Meanwhile, Steve’s contractor, David Lewis, had missed one completion deadline after another. The brilliant client we’d been so ecstatic to land was swiftly turning into a whiny shrew before our eyes. I didn’t even want to think about the personal ramifications of having to persuade designer Rebecca Berringer, of all people, to cooperate with us; no ethical feng shui practitioner would have designed a porch roof like that in the first place.
As we rounded the house, Sullivan said quietly to David, “Shannon’s something of a…crab at the moment. But she does have a point. The front’s finally coming along, but you haven’t even started on the back. What’s the holdup?”
“Problem’s with the new foreman I hired last week. Thought he’d work out better than he has so far. You’ll see what I mean when you meet him.”
Despite Shannon’s mention of Ang Chung’s having been outside with David, there was only the one person behind the house. My jaw dropped when I spotted the huge lumberjack of a man bent over the table saw with his back to us. The guy had the exact same build and brown hair of my half brother. It couldn’t actually be my half brother, of course. Taylor Duncan was only halfway through a one-year sentence in the county jail. The man turned.
“Taylor!” I cried.
He shut off his saw and removed his safety goggles. “Hey, sis,” he said.
chapter 2
You look less than thrilled to see me,” Taylor teased. He’d gone from baby-faced to ruggedly handsome in the three or four months since I’d last visited him in jail. His hair was now closely shorn, and his brown eyes seemed to be sadder, his gaze more penetrating.
“I’m just surprised, that’s all,” I replied. “When David mentioned his new foreman, I assumed Duncan was his first name, not his last.”
“Erin Gilbert is your sister?” David asked in surprise. Sullivan, meanwhile, was watching me with obvious concern; he and I had worked with my half-brother once before, and the experience had been miserable for both of us.
Taylor ignored David’s question. Instead, he said to me, “Guess Mom didn’t tell you I got an early release. Right?”
“No, she didn’t.” Which was both astonishing and discouraging. I’d had lunch with our mother only ten days ago, and we were trying hard to build a relationship. We had a lot of ground to cover. She’d put me up for adoption when I was a toddler—a source of tremendous pain for both of us. We’d located each other only last year. Until then, I hadn’t even known my half brother existed. Taylor was nineteen—ten years younger than me—and our personalities were complete opposites. “How’s everything going, Taylor?”
“Not bad. Boring as all get-out, but not bad.”
Does that mean you’re going to start using drugs again to liven things up?
“Don’t give me the evil eye, sis,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “I got time off for good behavior, and that’s how I want things to stay.” He gave David a sheepish smile. “Like I said, Boss—I’m off the stuff for good now.”
“Let’s keep it that way,” David replied.
Taylor smirked at Steve. “You’re Sullivan, right? We worked together on my stepfather’s house.”
“I remember.” Sullivan held out his hand. “Hi, Taylor.”
Neither man feigned any pleasure at seeing the other again, but at least they shook hands grudgingly.
Just then, a fit-looking fifty-something man with a full head of snow-white hair came jogging through the brushy, hardscrabble portion of Shannon’s property. Though I’d seen him only once before and at a distance, I recognized him immediately. Pate Hamlin, Shannon’s viciously despised neighbor. We watched in silence as he continued toward us, trotting carelessly through Shannon’s dormant flower bed in the process. “’Scuse me,” he said with a smi
le. “Needed to take a shortcut.” He winked at Taylor. My half brother gave him a thumbs-up.
“What was that?” Sullivan asked Taylor when Pate vanished around the corner of the house.
“What was what?”
“You just exchanged friendly greetings,” David piped in.
“With Hamlin? Why not? I like him. He’s kinda cool…for an old guy.”
“Shannon Young thinks he’s trying to make her life miserable,” I explained. “It’s not wise for you to make friends with him while you’re working for her.”
“No sweat. I’ll quit talking to him. Ain’t like he’s my best buddy or anything.” Taylor chuckled. “Told me he changed his first name from Pete to Pate, just to be more unique. You gotta like a guy who’s willing to make up a name just to be different, you know?” He grinned at me. “We should do that, too, sis. What would you think about me changing my name to Toylor Duncan? And you could be…Urin Gilbert.”
“If either of us is going to be called ‘Urine,’ I’d much rather it be you.”
He laughed heartily at that. His rich chuckle was infectious and I couldn’t help but chuckle as well. David Lewis interposed firmly, “Like Erin said, Hamlin is feuding with the homeowner you and I are working for, Duncan. At a time when she’s accusing our construction crew of sabotaging this job! That makes me look bad!”
Taylor shrugged. “Not my problem.”
“It is your problem if it’s true,” David fired back.
“Hey! I already said I’d quit talking to the guy! What more do you want me to do? Shoot him?”
David’s cell phone was ringing. He snarled a gruff, “Just don’t let me catch you fraternizing with him again,” in Taylor’s direction, then snapped, “Yeah?” into his phone as he stalked away. Sullivan gave me a quick glance then followed David, probably to have a private word.
I wished Taylor wouldn’t be so confrontational with his boss, but held my tongue. I was about to ask him where he was living now when he stepped closer and said quietly, “Erin. Something’s…not cool. About this job, I mean.”
“There are a lot of ‘not cool’ things going on here. The work’s behind schedule. The neighbor you’ve been palling around with is trying to force Shannon into selling. We’re running a feng shui war to send poison arrows back and forth between the two houses.” Not to mention that the homeowner would have preferred to hire the neighbor’s designer.
Taylor snorted. “You left out how your ex-con half brother is the foreman on the job.”
“That too,” I replied with a smile.
“Plus Pate Hamlin’s designer has the hots for me.”
“Rebecca Berringer!?”
He lifted his palms and gave me a crooked grin. “Hey, what can I say? Some chicks really go for the rugged cowboy type.”
He could be telling the truth. From what my landlady had told me, Rebecca Berringer flirted with every guy in Colorado. Audrey had little regard for Rebecca for other reasons, however; Rebecca had started a TV show, one copying Audrey’s, on a rival station. And Audrey was taking a beating from her “younger and hipper” counterpart. “Taylor, Rebecca’s probably just trying to cozy up to you to keep tabs on our progress. She’s supercompetitive and wants to prove to everyone that she’s a better designer than Gilbert and Sullivan.”
“Whatever,” he agreed, sounding disinterested. “In any case, I think someone’s playing for keeps. You know?”
“What do you mean…‘playing for keeps’?”
He hesitated. Then he said: “Mom’s worried.”
“What does this job have to do with Emily?” I wasn’t comfortable calling her “Mom” we’d agreed upon my calling her by her first name.
“Mom heard about that ratings war between your landlady and Rebecca. She figures you and your landlady are such close buddies, you’re going to let that mess up your own career.”
“How could Audrey’s and Rebecca’s conflicts interfere with my work?”
“Mom says that Rebecca talked on her show about the battle between Pate’s and Shannon’s houses. That Shannon started using ancient Chinese…fungy shoe stuff to tick off Pate.”
“It’s pronounced fung shway, Taylor. And Shannon says Pate was the instigator.”
“Whatever. Mom figured you and me should stick together and watch out for one another.”
I was more than a little skeptical of that. Taylor was not the most trustworthy of sources. Besides, if Emily had told my brother that he and I should “watch out” for each other, she would have told me the same thing. Yet she hadn’t even seen fit to mention that Taylor was working on the construction site of the very same job I was overseeing. Maybe he was trying to tell me, without bruising his male ego, that he was worried.
He went on, “According to what Mom said, Shannon and Pate are using their houses like two businesses in China did, ten or twenty years back. They were, like, sending out these negative funk sway vibes to hurt the competitor’s business and get more customers for themselves.”
“Well, I guess if it’s good enough for businesses in China, it’s good enough for two houses in Crestview, Colorado.”
“Yeah. But I’ll bet nobody was making death threats back in China.”
“Death threats?” I cried.
He shrugged. “Not literally. But everyone around this joint sure seems mad enough to kill me. David says: ‘Make it eight feet.’ Then what’s-his-name, Chang Chunk…that crazy Italian guy who thinks he’s Chinese, comes along and says: ‘Make it nine feet.’ Then Shannon yells: ‘Why isn’t this seven feet?’ These clowns all think they’re top dog.”
“Things will calm down soon. Sullivan and I will get everyone on the same page. We just finished another job. Now we can spend more time here.”
“Well, I’m just saying, Erin, you’d better hurry. Chang Chunk and my boss are doing their best to make me the fall guy while they screw up.”
“His name is Ang Chung, Taylor. If you want to get along with him better, you should learn the man’s name.”
“Yeah, sure. Blame it all on me,” he grumbled. “That’s what everyone else always does.” The back door creaked open. Taylor stared past my shoulder and muttered, “Speak of the devil.”
Ang Chung was striding toward us. Although his brow was creased in anger, his every movement was characteristically self-aware. It was as if the man envisioned himself in a never-ending tai chi session. I hoped a swarm of bees would swoop toward him one of these days. My hunch was he’d drop that phony measured glide of his and run as awkwardly as an overweight businessman trying to chase down a bus.
Ang seemed to own just two outfits. Today it was his white karate gi underneath his unbuttoned camel hair wool coat. On warmer days he would wear black satin pants and a matching robe with a red dragon embroidered on the back. In spite of his name, Ang did indeed have the olive complexion, dark brown eyes, and the dark curly hair of someone with Italian ancestry, as Taylor had noted.
At the edge of Shannon’s rock garden, Ang gave us a slight bow. With his typical careful diction, he said, “Please come with me, Mr. Duncan and Miss Gilbert.”
I headed toward him. “Is something—”
“What’s your problem now?” Taylor interrupted, staying put.
“I would say it is more your problem than mine, Mr. Duncan,” Ang replied.
“Come on, Taylor,” I said with a sigh. “Let’s get this handled.”
Taylor waited a beat, but then lumbered after me.
“I’ve been taking readings of our surroundings with my geomancer’s compass for the past hour.” Ang’s jaw was tight, and his eyes flashed in anger. “There are no two ways around it. The addition was built in the wrong place.”
“What?!” Taylor and I cried in unison.
“Come along and I’ll show you.”
Muffled tones emanated within the house, and I recognized Michael Young’s deep, consolatory voice. He must have returned home just now; the attached garage was on the opposite side of the hou
se, where we wouldn’t have seen or heard his arrival. The back door banged open and Shannon rushed toward us. “Well, Erin? Has Ang told you what’s happened now? Are we going to have to rip everything down and start over from scratch?”
“No,” I answered, just as Ang was saying: “Probably.”
Michael followed his wife onto their worn-out redwood deck and put his arm around her. “Let’s give the professionals a couple of minutes to discuss this, shall we, dear? Okay? Then we can scream at them to our hearts’ content.” He winked at me, then ushered his wife back inside. As the door closed behind them, I saw him nodding at her continued protests about what a potential catastrophe loomed before us.
Steve Sullivan was in the front yard, holding what appeared to be a hand-drawn map. He mustered a smile as we approached and waggled his thumb over his shoulder. “Hamlin says his porch roof stays, and Shannon can move if she doesn’t like it. David had to leave to—”
“Who authorized this framework in the first place?” Ang snarled at Taylor.
“You did!” Taylor fired back.
“I did no such thing! The cornerstone of this room is off by six inches from where I wanted it! This structure is still directly in front of hostile energy lines!”
“You know, Ang,” Steve said, still eyeing the map, “I’ve worked with geomantric charts before, but this one—”
“I use my own notations. To simplify.” He snatched the sheet of paper from Sullivan’s hands. “Look. You see this triangle? That’s the symbol for a dragon. Dragons are good. They protect the house.” He pointed at the Rockies’ Front Range, rising in the distance behind the house. “There’s the dragon. We want to chase the dragon, yes?”
“Uh, yeah, we do, but—”
“Ideally, for the best protection, you want your dragon to be the high ground found to the left, and your white tiger to the right.”
Sullivan and I both looked to the right, where Shannon’s extensive property included a small marshy area. “Well, the milkweed gets white and furry this time of year,” I offered.
