by Brenda Novak
She sent Levi an apologetic grin. “But he is a veterinarian.”
“Who’s mostly retired,” the guy said with a note of exasperation.
“Still good at his craft.” She patted his shoulder with obvious affection. “This was my grandfather’s friend and next-door neighbor. Now he’s my friend and neighbor. Godfrey Blume, meet Levi McCloud.”
* * *
“So what do you think?” Callie shooed Rifle out of her way so she could pour the coffee she’d put on a few minutes earlier. Levi McCloud was asleep in her bed, but Godfrey was sitting at her kitchen table.
Every time her neighbor yawned she felt bad about waking him in the middle of the night. He was nearing eighty. But she hadn’t expected providing Mr. McCloud with medical attention to take several hours. She’d been so caught up in helping to wash and bandage his wounds, she hadn’t noticed the passage of time until she saw the break of dawn. Now her rooster was out in the yard, crowing for all he was worth.
She couldn’t help smiling when she caught sight of the old bird strutting past her kitchen window. She loved early mornings. They reminded her of summers with her grandparents and awaking to the smell of frying bacon.
“I did what I could,” Godfrey said. “But I wish he would’ve let us take him to the hospital. Or even to a real doctor. I’ve never seen an attack like that.”
And her neighbor had worked with animals his whole life! She frowned as she set the sugar and cream on the table. “We did what we could.”
“Mr. McCloud is a surprisingly stubborn man, given the extent of his injuries.”
Once Godfrey had ascertained the large number of stitches their patient required, they’d both tried, once again, to get him in her car. Godfrey could only offer him a topical analgesic to ease the pain—and Tylenol. But there was nothing they could do to overcome Mr. McCloud’s resistance. He tried to leave on his own power when they insisted, and would’ve done so if they’d pushed it any further. At that point, Godfrey had relented and agreed that some care was better than none.
“We should report the dogs to animal control,” she said. “They need to be restrained before they hurt someone else—a child, for instance.”
“I plan on looking into it.” Her neighbor had been the only veterinarian in town for most of his life. He’d officially retired three years ago, when the newly licensed Harrison Scarborough opened his practice. But some people still brought their animals to Godfrey.
“Do you have any idea whose pets they might be?” she asked while pouring herself some cranberry juice. She was on a strict diet that precluded alcohol, salt and coffee, among other things.
He smoothed his shirt over his belly. “My bet? There’s a couple of pit bulls down the road, around the bend.”
“Really?” Callie had never seen any, but she’d been pretty preoccupied of late. Adjusting to the shock of her diagnosis, especially since she’d never consumed much booze, hadn’t been easy. She’d thought only alcoholics had to worry about cirrhosis. “You think it’s them?”
“I can’t imagine what other dogs it could be. I know all the rest of the animals in the area, and they wouldn’t do something like what we saw.”
“Whose pit bulls are they?”
“Belong to a couple of young men, maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine, who are renting the old Gruper place. They’re here for the summer, doing some prospecting.”
Gold panning and dredging had become popular pastimes. A lot of tourists visited “the heart of gold country” to relive the history of the ’49er. Coloma, where gold was first discovered in California, was an hour away, but the entire area had been rich in ore. At 5,912 feet, the nearby Kennedy mine was one of the deepest gold mines in the world.
“So you’ve met these men?” she asked.
“Just last week. I was selling my gold dredge. They saw my flyer on the bulletin board at the diner and came over to buy it. I guess they weren’t finding anything using the panning method.”
“Did you like them?”
“Not a bit.” Godfrey spoke with his usual candor, but she’d already guessed his feelings from his sour expression.
“Why not?”
“They’re unruly braggarts with big mouths and no respect. If I hadn’t known better, I would’ve thought they were related to the Amoses.”
The Amoses weren’t as bad as they’d been immediately after their father went to prison. As a matter of fact, she really liked Cheyenne’s husband. But she didn’t mention that she now knew Dylan and cared about him. She didn’t want to veer off topic. “I’m surprised they didn’t hear their dogs growling and barking. You’d think they would’ve gone out to see what was going on.”
He shrugged. “They were probably passed out, drunk.”
“They’re big partiers?”
“That’s the impression they gave me.”
“Great.” She rolled of her eyes. “Just who you want living so close—and with a couple of unsafe pit bulls, too.”
He acknowledged her sarcasm with a tip of his cup. “Fortunately, it’s only for three months.”
Rifle brushed up against her, wanting some attention, so she bent to scratch behind his ears. “Short-timers or no, they still have to keep their dogs from biting people,” she said. “Mr. McCloud could’ve been killed.”
Godfrey sipped his coffee before responding. “I plan on heading over there later.”
Knowing he’d do whatever needed to be done, she changed the subject. “Will Mr. McCloud be okay?”
Her neighbor’s hands were oversize, like her injured guest’s, except that Godfrey’s were also thick. When he was stitching up Levi’s bite wounds, Callie had been impressed by how dexterous his sausagelike fingers could be.
“As long as those bites don’t get infected, he should be. He’ll have a few scars, but I made the stitches very small. That’ll help. In my opinion, he should get a tetanus booster, but he claims he was in the military, that his shots are current.”
“They make sure soldiers stay up on that sort of thing, don’t they?”
“They do. If he was really a soldier.”
Apparently, Godfrey was taking nothing for granted. The people of Whiskey Creek could be suspicious of outsiders. But Callie believed at least that much of McCloud’s story. He had a tattoo on one shoulder depicting an eagle with the word Freedom. A tattoo on the other arm said R.I.P. Sanchez, Williams, Phelps, Smith. The names were in different fonts, as if they’d been added as he’d lost friends.
She preferred not to consider how hard that would be to cope with.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help, G.,” she said, using the nickname her grandfather had given him. Poppy had coined a nickname for everyone. It was usually a shortened version of that person’s first name but Godfrey became a little tricky. Only his wife sometimes teased him by calling him God.
“Happy to help. You know how much Mina and I care about you.” Although his words were kind, he shot her a warning look from beneath his hairy eyebrows that indicated she might not like what was coming next.
“But...” she said, giving him the opportunity to speak his mind.
“But I’m going to stick my nose into your business and tell you that I think you should send this man on his way.”
“I will, of course. As soon as he’s better.”
“I mean as soon as he wakes up.”
Rifle wandered off as she sat down at the table. “G., he just got over a hundred stitches!”
“That’s okay. In a few hours he’ll be able to walk well enough to vacate the premises.”
But how far would he have to go? Godfrey had mentioned infection as if it was a serious concern. Certainly heading off into the wild blue yonder wouldn’t minimize that risk. And what if Levi couldn’t find his motorcycle? For all she knew, the cops had impounded it. Even if the bike was exactly where he’d left it, it wasn’t running. That was the whole reason he’d been in a position to be attacked in the first place. “He n
eeds time to recover.”
“We don’t know anything about him, Callie. We don’t even know if his version of what happened is true. Having him here might not be safe.”
Callie sipped her juice. “But he has no home.” And he had no mode of transportation. “Where will he go?”
“Wherever he was going before he met you.”
His protectiveness wouldn’t allow him to consider any mitigating factors, so she didn’t argue further. “I’ll send him off as soon as I can,” she promised.
Godfrey finished his coffee and got up to bring his cup to the sink. “I’d better go. I’m sure Mina’s wondering where on earth I am.”
“Of course. Thanks again.” When she ushered him out, she put Rifle into the fenced part of the yard so he could get some exercise. Then she returned to the house and stiffened in surprise. Levi McCloud was no longer asleep. He was coming out of her bedroom.
3
“Those clothes were in the tub for a reason,” she said.
Careful not to tear out the stitches in his leg, Levi hobbled toward the door, eyeing the petite blonde who’d given him the help he needed. What was her name? She’d told him last night. Callie something... Anyway, he appreciated what she’d done for him. He also appreciated that she’d kept her word and hadn’t called the police a second time. He doubted there were many women who would’ve taken such a risk and he admired her courage. But he didn’t want her to get in his way now that he was ready to go. “I rinsed out the blood the best I could. I have to get my bike and my backpack,” he explained.
“And if you manage to do that, then what?”
“I’m out of here.” He never stayed in one place long. But how fast he could leave Whiskey Creek would depend on his bike. If the repairs cost more than elbow grease, he could be in trouble. He’d never find work in his current condition. With all the stitches in his arms, he looked pieced together, like Frankenstein’s monster.
“Where’s your backpack?” she asked.
He could smell coffee, wanted a cup but figured he could buy one along the way—provided he found his bike and was able to fix it. “I hope it’s where I left it.”
“What’s in it?”
“Everything,” he said simply. Everything he owned, anyway. That didn’t consist of a lot, but he didn’t need a lot.
She sidled over as if moving slowly would make it less apparent that she was cutting off his path to the door. “If you’ll go back to bed and get some rest, I’ll retrieve your bike.”
She had dark circles under her eyes, looked as tired as he felt. But then, he’d kept her up all night, so that was to be expected. She was still damn pretty. She reminded him of Charlize Theron. Maybe even Marilyn Monroe.
“You don’t know where it is,” he said.
“You could solve that by telling me.”
Her size relative to that of his bike didn’t make her suggestion very plausible. “I had to drop it when the dogs attacked. Even if it’s not in the ditch I was trying to avoid while I was pushing it—which it might be—you wouldn’t be strong enough.”
“But if you exert yourself, you could ruin everything we just accomplished with your stitches!”
She had a point. Medical help wasn’t easy to come by, especially for someone like him. But, as he’d said, she couldn’t lift his bike. “I don’t have any choice.”
She started to argue, to say nothing was worth risking further injury, but he cut her off. “What about the dogs that attacked me? They could still be around, licking their wounds. If they feel anything like I do this morning, they won’t be in a good mood.”
Her confidence seemed to falter. “I don’t have to go alone. I have a friend who could help.”
“A male friend?”
“Yes.”
He hadn’t gotten the impression she was in any kind of serious relationship. He was pretty sure it was just her and her dog living here. She had extra bedrooms but, as she’d mentioned to the vet who’d stitched him up, they were full of storage. The only bed was in her room, and there were no men’s clothes or belongings in there.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t have a boyfriend, however... “Is he a mechanic?” he asked hopefully.
“No. But he has a truck and a trailer. We could load your bike up, bring it here. And I could wash your clothes. You can’t be comfortable in those.”
She obviously thought she’d overcome all objections, but Levi had reason to be worried about one more thing. “What is this male friend going to say when he finds me here—in your bed?”
Folding her arms, she raised her chin. “There’s nothing he can say. This is my house. I make my own decisions.”
That was good news, at least. The last thing he needed was to get into another fight. “Then maybe I should go with the two of you—”
“Rest.” She made a shooing motion with her hands. “If you’ll go back to bed, I’ll make buttermilk pancakes for breakfast when I get back.”
He was hungry. And it’d been forever since he’d had a home-cooked meal. His father had had a girlfriend once who could make the best pancakes he’d ever tasted. He missed her, like he missed some of the others who came and went. Pancakes shouldn’t have been much of a draw, but Callie couldn’t have offered anything that would’ve tempted him more.
Well, maybe there was one thing. It had been a long time since he’d had that, too. “Buttermilk pancakes, huh?”
Her lips curved into a smile. “You’ve never had better.”
He studied her, trying to figure out why she was being so nice.
“What?” she said, sounding a bit self-conscious.
“Why aren’t you in more of a hurry to get rid of me?”
Her smile faded. “Maybe it feels good to focus on someone else’s problems for a change.”
* * *
“Let’s go over your plan.” Kyle Houseman, one of Callie’s best friends and part of the clique she’d grown up with since grade school, drove his work truck slowly along the road where Levi said they should be able to find his bike.
“My plan?” Preoccupied with searching the shoulder and the ditch that ran alongside it, Callie wasn’t paying a lot of attention. “What are you talking about?”
“Once we get this vagrant’s bike back to your place. What then?”
She was fairly sure the motorcycle was gone. If not, she would’ve spotted it by now.
“Callie?” Kyle prompted when she didn’t answer.
“Go slower, would you?”
“I’m barely creeping along as it is!” he complained but did as she asked.
“It has to be here.” Pressed up against the harness of her seat belt, she gripped the window ledge as she searched. “If it’s not...I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“He’ll pay a hefty impound fee,” Kyle said.
Would some guy with only the clothes on his back have the money for that? “Someone other than the police could’ve taken it. Maybe it’s been stolen,” she mused. But she thought that would be the worse of the two possibilities.
“If so, his insurance will cut him a check. If he has insurance.”
Kyle had spoken her concerns aloud. She doubted Levi carried any more insurance than was legally required, and liability didn’t cover theft. “I don’t want him to lose his bike.”
Easing the truck over to the side, Kyle waited for a car coming up from behind to get around them. “Why are you so concerned about this guy?”
His surprise irritated her. Having a liver that no longer functioned properly made her look at certain issues differently. For the first time, she wondered how people could be so callous about certain things.
“Why are you not more concerned?” she countered. “We’re talking about a human being who was attacked by dogs. He’s already full of stitches. Doesn’t seem fair that he should lose his only mode of transportation.”
Kyle scowled at the censure in her voice. “There’s no need to overreact. I just don’t think you should get persona
lly involved.”
She blinked at him. “What should I do, then? Throw him out?”
“Why not? He isn’t your responsibility. For all you know, he’s an ex-con. Even if he’s not, he could rob you blind—or worse!”
Before her diagnosis, both possibilities would’ve frightened her so much she probably wouldn’t have taken the chance. But she didn’t feel that way anymore. It wasn’t that she didn’t care to enjoy what time she had left. It was more that she wanted to take the opportunity to do good before she was gone.
“He’s not dangerous,” she said.
“You don’t know that, Callie. Even if he isn’t violent, or a thief in the usual sense, he could take advantage of you in other ways—play on your sympathies, sponge off you.”
“He’s not the type.”
“You can recognize the type?”
Levi had been far too eager to handle his own problem with the bike for her to believe he expected her or anyone else to look after him. On the contrary, he gave her the impression that he was determined not to need anyone.
“I won’t have trouble getting rid of him when the time comes,” she insisted.
“You don’t know that, either.”
She met Kyle’s gaze. He cared about her well-being. She trusted that—but there were other issues at play here, too, including, possibly, some jealousy. While trying to help him recover from his divorce a year ago, she’d gotten a little too close and wound up in his bed. After a few isolated incidents, they’d agreed to end all sexual activity. They didn’t want to ruin their friendship. So far, that friendship had lasted more than twenty years.
But since moving to the farm, and knowing she was probably facing the end of her life, Callie had been so terribly lonely she’d slipped back into sleeping with Kyle a few times. “Stop acting like a jealous boyfriend, okay?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Sounds like it.”
“Some would say I have that right!”
She swatted him on the shoulder. “Oh, come on! You don’t love me in that way, and you know it. You’re still in love with Olivia.”
“Since she’s married now, it doesn’t do me a lot of good.”
