“I didn’t think he was. I’m not so certain about his father.” With that scathing remark, she opened the refrigerator again.
“What did you want me to do?” JD exclaimed. “I found out I had a kid I knew nothing about. I’ve got a madman trying to steal my business out from under me. And I was supposed to sit there and let the hound dogs rip me apart while leaving Jackie for his old man to beat into a pulp?”
He couldn’t believe he was demanding she understand his actions. Damn, but the heat in this place was rotting his brain. “Why don’t you have a damned ceiling fan in here?”
“We tried, but it kept shorting the fuse. So we put it in the living room. What kind of dressing do you want?”
“Like I have a choice,” he answered grumpily. “You have low-fat ranch and an ancient Thousand Island. I’ll mix some vinegar and oil.”
“You should have bought more at the store if you wanted something else.” She withdrew the ranch dressing and reached for the salad bowls.
They were bickering like a married couple. Damn. JD closed his eyes and shook his head, listening for the sound of Jackie in the other room. He’d been rummaging in the closet earlier. He was on the phone now.
“Laddie’s father will pick him up,” Nina said, as if reading his mind. “The boys camp out down there all the time. I haven’t figured out the fun of fighting off mosquitoes and burning marshmallows, but it keeps them occupied. There’s not much to do in Madrid otherwise.”
“It’s a good place to bring up a kid,” JD grudgingly admitted. “Back home, they all think it’s a parent’s duty to keep them entertained. Thanks for suggesting the camping. I wanted him out of here before I moved the boat.”
Jackie burst back into the kitchen. “Did you buy any cookies? We need grub.”
“Cookies aren’t grub,” Nina informed him. ‘Take some apples and that jar of peanut butter along with the cookies. At least you’ll get some nutrition.”
Jackie made a face but did as told. JD admired the no-nonsense way she ordered the boy around. If he’d said that, Jackie would have griped and complained.
They sat down with their cold meal and didn’t discuss anything of relevance again until they heard the truck pull up, and Jackie yelled his farewell from the front room.
“I’ll take a look at your wiring when I get a chance.” JD finally broke the quiet. “You could probably burn the place down with some of these sockets in here.”
“That’s what the electrician said when he installed the wiring in Hattie’s room. But he wanted the earth and two moons to redo it, so I figured he was just out to earn a buck.” She scooted her lettuce around in the bowl.
“I suspect you’d blow the place up if you installed air-conditioning. What did you decide to do about the incompetency hearing?”
“I’m going ahead with it. I can’t even borrow money against the equity in the house until I have legal authority. So I guess that means I’ll have to hire someone to fight the phone company before they condemn the land. I think my lawyer told them Hattie was in a nursing home and wouldn’t protest.”
She looked so dispirited, JD wanted to reach out and hug her. He definitely didn’t need that kind of complication right now, though.
“Let me check my resources for an attack lawyer. He’ll clean the phone company’s clock fast enough. You might want to junk the local guy, too, if you think he’s working against you.”
She jabbed a slice of tomato. “I went to school with him. He’s running for county attorney next election. I have to live with these people. I’ll give him the incompetency case, but I’d appreciate the name of a fancy lawyer if you can drum one up. I don’t think Matt would want the hot potato of the phone company even if he’s not in cahoots with them.” Finally, she looked up from her salad bowl and met his gaze. “How much danger are we talking about from your unfriendly Mercedes people?”
“I don’t know for certain it’s them,” he warned her. “I could just be paranoid.” He read the blink of agreement in her eyes and the slight relaxation of tension in her shoulders. So, she’d come to the same conclusion. “But I have a lot of evidence that says otherwise. I haven’t heard from my partner and I’m worried. I can’t keep moving on, setting up in new towns all across the country until I solve this puzzle. I don’t suppose you have any relatives you could visit for a few weeks?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “I have too much to do to leave now.”
JD slumped back in the kitchen chair and examined the pale face of his hostess in the sunlight from the big kitchen windows. She was made so delicately, a man couldn’t be blamed for thinking her weak. She had her chin thrust out, as if daring him to turn her out of her own home. The spiky hair added its own perverse vision of strength.
“I’ve pretty much concluded the villains have run into the same snag as I have. Until the problem is solved, the program is essentially useless. The danger will come when they think I have the software ready for market. Are you ready to play the game with me?”
“I don’t want Jackie going back to an abusive father,” she warned.
JD understood. She didn’t care what happened to him, but she would watch out for the boy. Nodding, he took his bowl to the garbage can and scraped it out. “I’ll try taking the boat back to the marina and picking up your car later. If the Mercedes is still there, I may have to make other arrangements. But I suspect they’re looking for easy alternatives. In the meantime, I’ll see if my partner has left any messages.”
He put the bowl in the sink and left her with the sunlight playing through her nimbus of silvery hair. She didn’t look happy with his solution. He wasn’t particularly thrilled himself. Despite a lifetime of transience, he didn’t want to pick up and run this time.
A few minutes later, when he discovered Jimmy’s e-mail box was too full to accept more messages, JD reconsidered his decision.
Chapter 14
Nina listened to JD’s frantic pounding on his keyboard. He hadn’t even bothered closing his door. When she’d gone outside to pick up the mail, she’d seen him hunched over the computer in her aunt’s room, notes scattered on the floor all around him, and a pen crunched between his teeth. She suspected he hadn’t moved an inch for hours.
His thick hair had grown long enough to pull into a small ponytail in back, and he’d apparently grabbed a rubber band and jerked it away from his face. It made him look more like a motorcycle thug than ever. To her utter dismay, she liked it that way.
Not wishing to contemplate the knot of tension or whatever it was she felt when around JD, Nina retreated to the garden. It hadn’t rained in days. Everything needed watering.
Once upon a time she could have lost herself contemplating rows of corn in the vegetable garden, new climbing roses for the fence, a trellis for the walkway. Her mind would focus on which plants were thriving, which seemed to be failing, and she would wonder what foul insect had skeletonized her geraniums. Today, she scarcely saw where the water fell.
The incident with the Mercedes had puzzled more than terrified her. JD’s behavior, on the other hand, churned her stomach. Either he was insane, or someone was really after him. Neither alternative appealed.
She’d known kids in school who lied about everything. They just made up stories as they went along, making their lives more exciting, more interesting than anyone’s around them. It got them the attention they didn’t receive at home. Surely a grown man wouldn’t do the same. But she could think of one or two women around town who were prone to exaggeration. Maybe a man would think it made him more attractive.
But the Mercedes had been there. She found it hard to believe anyone driving a Mercedes would have any interest in a motorcycle bum or a battered Toyota. The possibility that everything JD had said was true did not make her any happier. How much damage could one computer programmer do to another? Surely they weren’t violent.
The van “accident” implied otherwise.
Gritting her teeth and glaring at an i
nnocent lily, Nina set the whole idea aside. JD “Smith” rented her front room and played with computers. That’s all she needed to know.
At dusk, he sauntered down from the back porch, tucking in his T-shirt as he glanced around, looking for her. Nina contemplated remaining hidden behind the fence, but she supposed she should see if he needed anything. Southern hospitality demanded an awful lot of a person.
She liked the way his bronzed face lit up when he smiled. She liked it when he smiled at her approach. She liked it altogether too well. She couldn’t manage a scowl in return, but she kept her voice neutral. “Did you need anything?”
His smile became a crooked grin, but he didn’t tease her for a change. “I’m taking the boat back. You’ll need your car. We can’t leave it parked at the marina. Is there a barn or something on the property where we can at least keep it hidden?”
She definitely didn’t like these games. She pointed at the next stand of trees. “There’s an old equipment shed over there. The roof is falling in, and half the slats are gone from the side. I won’t be responsible if it falls on your head. But it’s deep.”
He followed the direction of her finger. “That’ll do for now. I don’t know if they have any way of breaking into court computers and obtaining your address from license plate records, but I’d rather not take chances.”
“Even if they got my name, it’s a rural route address on the records. I’ve never persuaded the clerk to correct it to the new post office numbers. The only way they can find me from a rural route address is by asking at the post office. I’ll talk to Joe Bob tomorrow, tell him not to give out my directions to strangers. Beyond that, I can’t promise. Everyone knows where I live.”
And they would all think someone driving a Mercedes was the financier behind the garden plan that didn’t exist. Nina could kick whoever had started that rumor. She didn’t think JD had strayed anywhere outside the farm without her. Jackie must have said something. How could she tell a whole darned town not to talk to strangers?
JD obviously didn’t like the idea that everyone knew where she lived. He frowned, but there wasn’t anything the mighty JD Smith could do about it. Shrugging, he said, “There’s only so much we can do. I’ve hidden the program, so even if they break in, they won’t find it. Will you be all right until I get back?”
Stupid question. As if she hadn’t lived here alone this past year. Nina nodded and watched him walk off with the easy stride he managed even with a cane. He took the rough field and broken ground through the trees with a muscular gait that had him disappearing into the woods within seconds.
The air seemed suddenly still. Not even the mockingbird sang its silly song. Nina listened for a bobwhite or a catbird, a car engine, anything. The heavy humidity weighed on her skin like a soggy blanket as she watched the place where JD had disappeared. She should get back to work. She had plenty to do. But she stood there until she heard him start the boat engine, then waited a while longer until the sound grew fainter.
She finished watering the garden, but her heart wasn’t in it. She’d fought this depression when Hattie had gone to the nursing home and she’d rattled around the empty house alone. She should be over it by now. Hattie was safe and comfortable where she was. If she’d stayed here, she could have wandered into the lake and drowned. Sometimes, Nina wondered if her aunt wouldn’t have preferred that, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to allow it. At least this way, Hattie had her lucid moments. It wasn’t as if she were gone entirely.
The mosquitoes became too thick to endure. Nina gave up and returned to the house. The old rooms were ominously silent without Jackie’s boom box or the click of JD’s computer keyboard. She should be used to silence. Even when Hattie lived here, it had been quiet in the last few years. Her aunt had been too ill to make much noise. The rush of water as Nina turned on the faucet couldn’t fill the vacuum.
She fixed a sandwich and turned on the TV news. She received the local channel without cable. She supposed she should ask about cable sometime, but she’d never particularly missed it. The garden and lesson plans usually occupied the majority of her evenings, and she didn’t want more wires littering the countryside.
She brought out her notes on the landscaping project and studied them. She’d scarcely begun listing the possibilities. The costs escalated with each new idea. She didn’t know why she was wasting her time, but it gave her something to do. It wasn’t as if the plans would be totally wasted. Someday, she would find the funds for Hattie’s garden. Maybe she would win a lottery.
* * *
JD saw the gray flicker of the television through the front window as he strolled up the walk. It was past midnight, and it had just occurred to him that he hadn’t asked his absentminded landlady for a key. He hadn’t needed one until now.
Nina didn’t look up as he entered. Deeply engrossed, she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the TV, scribbling like a crazy woman across the notebook in her lap while sorting through the pages of notes and drawings scattered on the rug around her.
She’d waited up for him. JD knew it instantly. He supposed he could call it arrogance, but he knew her habits. She was waiting for him to come home safely. No one had ever waited up for him before. No one. He didn’t know if he liked the idea or not. It was kind of like the air he sucked in between his two bottom teeth when the dentist gave them a good cleaning. It took some getting used to.
“Can I fix you some warm milk or anything?” JD asked awkwardly, not knowing how else to intrude upon her reverie.
She glanced up in wide-eyed surprise, and he fell once again for those elfin features. He remembered them now, staring down at him from the pickup, all puckered with concern. He’d made some stupid remark about clowns because he hadn’t believed what he was seeing. He still didn’t. But he knew better than to offer facetiousness now.
“Warm milk sounds appalling,” she replied without inflection, leaning over to turn off the TV. She didn’t own a remote either. JD suspected the ancient TV could receive twelve channels at most. How could anyone live in such a technological backwater?
“I thought that’s what people recommended when someone couldn’t sleep. Are those notes on the garden?” He nodded at the papers in her hand.
She started gathering the pages and snapping them into a three-ring binder, the kind he used to carry in high school. “I want to be prepared when the professor calls back. Did you get the car?”
She didn’t ask where he’d been all these hours. She probably wouldn’t have liked it if she knew, which was probably why she didn’t ask. Miss Nina Toon had a very perceptive head on her shoulders. “It’s in the shed. I didn’t see any sign of the Mercedes. Maybe it was all a fantasy. I’ll hit the sack now and start early in the morning. The sooner that program is running, the sooner I can get out of here. That’s probably best for everyone.”
She nodded, not taking her gaze from him. The look made him itchy, but she didn’t say any of the things she was obviously thinking. “Did you have supper?”
“I stopped and had a bite. I can take care of myself.” Damn, now he sounded surly. If he could just get his hands around her for a few minutes, pull her into his arms for a little while, kiss her until both their heads spun, maybe he would lighten up. But he didn’t see any chance of that happening before the world ended. He didn’t want to be accused of buying her “services” again.
“All right. Good night then. I’m just picking up here before I turn in.”
Realizing he’d been right, that she’d waited up for him, JD felt a moment’s smug satisfaction. So, she wasn’t entirely invulnerable. A person had to care just a little if they worried, didn’t they?
Not wanting to carry that thought too far, JD strolled off to his room, whistling.
***
“I heard about that botanical garden your fancy boarder is helping you plan.” Matt bounced the eraser end of his pencil against his shiny desk. “Do you think that’s a good idea before this cellular phon
e business is settled?”
Nina skimmed her fountain pen across the bottom of the pages he’d given her to sign. She wouldn’t take her anger out on Matt. He wasn’t worth the effort. Capping the pen, she straightened and faced him coolly. “There is no garden, my boarder has nothing to do with anything, and none of it is any of your business. You should know by now how rumors grow. The kids just got to making something out of nothing. Wishful thinking, I guess. How soon will this go to court?”
“The docket’s pretty full. It might be next session,” he admitted with a shrug.
Her temper soared. So far, she hadn’t vented it on anyone but the imbeciles from the phone company, but if she’d had her shotgun here right now, she might rethink that position. “If you can’t get it in any sooner than that,” she replied bitingly, “I’ll go over to Hopkinsville and find an attorney and file it in that district. Don’t play politics with me, Matt Home. I don’t care what the damned phone company is paying you. File that paper now or I’m taking my business elsewhere. And it won’t just be the incompetency hearing when I do.”
His baby-blue eyes widened. “Are you threatening me with something, Nina? You know I’ve always handled your aunt’s affairs. Do you have a problem with the way I’ve carried them out?”
“Not until now. It shouldn’t take two seconds for the judge to sign that sheet of paper. Are you going to get it on the docket or not?” Heaven help her, she sounded like JD. No wonder Matt looked at her as if she were losing her mind.
“I’ll see what I can do, Nina. I didn’t think you were in any hurry. Hattie’s been in the home for a year now.”
“I foolishly hoped she would improve, but now I know better. There’s no sense hoping anymore, and the place needs repairs. I can’t do it until I have her power of attorney. I need it this summer, not after school starts.”
He stood, patted her hand soothingly, and murmured reassuring sympathies as he walked her out of the office. Nina wanted to throw a bucket of manure in his face. Did he really think her a flighty old spinster with no brains in her head? She hoped JD had the name of a good attorney by the time she got home. Gad, but she hated politicians.
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