“You should probably tell me your name if you’re thinking of hiring me,” Tara said.
“Malcolm.”
Hm. Tara had expected something tougher sounding, like Spike or Bruiser, the kind of name usually reserved for surly bikers and Rottweilers.
“Can I call you Mal?” she asked.
She was following him along a narrow forest trail and couldn’t see his face, but his shoulders tensed. A moment passed before he said, “No.”
And that ended that conversation. As they walked, the wolf meandered in and out of sight, sometimes trotting along the trail, and sometimes disappearing into the foliage. She eyed those leaves, damp from the previous night’s rain, and the rich loamy earth beneath the trees they passed, half-expecting to see the other half of the chicken sticking out from beneath something.
The trail wound through a patch of salmonberry brambles, passed a number of no-trespassing signs, then opened into a clearing carpeted by lush grass and clover. The log dwelling—she refrained from thinking of it as a shack—in the center looked like something one might camp in for the weekend, a short weekend. It did, however, appear to be in the middle of receiving repairs, or perhaps even upgrades. Many of the cedar roof shingles had been replaced recently, and a shed full of woodworking tools and half-finished projects stood open to the daylight.
They were approaching the cabin from the rear, and when Malcolm rounded the corner and the driveway came into view, he halted. A state trooper car waited on the gravel behind the black Jeep. An officer leaned against the door, a smartphone in his hand. He lifted his head, giving Malcolm a nod and her a curious look. A second trooper waited in the passenger seat, speaking into his radio handset.
Well, if there were poultry bodies to be found on the property, the police would be in a better position to seek them out than she. Or maybe they were here about something else. Had the glowering Malcolm tried to run someone else off the road that week? And succeeded?
“Ashcroft,” the trooper outside the car said. His nametag read S. Brenner.
Tara scooted around so she could see Malcolm’s face—he hadn’t said more than a few sentences to her, but he would have to be chattier with the police. Or they would arrest him.
“Brenner,” Malcolm said.
All right, chattier might not have been the right term...
“Your neighbors are complaining about you again.” Brenner spoke casually, as if he didn’t particularly care.
“Really.” Malcolm leveled a cool gaze at Tara.
It wasn’t hostile—not exactly—but it did make her want to lift her hands and proclaim that she’d just moved in, that the move was only temporary, and that she didn’t have anything to do with the arrival of the troopers.
“The computer’s inside,” Malcolm said, surprising her with the topic shift. “You can pull up those sites to show me.”
Ah, a dismissal. He didn’t want her around to hear the conversation. Afraid she would report back to Sam? Well, she probably would...
Tara climbed the steps to a tiny wooden deck. The door had an old-fashioned latch rather than a knob, and it didn’t look like it could be locked. Maybe he didn’t think burglars would trot past that many no-trespassing signs.
When she slipped inside, the men started talking. She left the door ajar so she could hear them. The cabin was cleaner than she expected, and there were a few handmade curtains, table mats, and other decidedly feminine touches that made her wonder if Malcolm had a wife. He didn’t wear a ring, and he didn’t seem the type to encourage the affections of women. Or anyone for that matter.
The cabin only had one room, so it didn’t take her long to find the... uh, was that the computer? No wonder he didn’t bother locking the door. The old Mac had a 3.5-inch floppy drive, and she was fairly certain that little screen wouldn’t have color capacity. What did he hook up to the Internet with? A 2400-baud modem? She wasn’t old enough to have seen such things in action, though there was probably a museum exhibit in Seattle somewhere. He hadn’t struck her as old enough to have such a relic, either. Though his perpetual scowl seemed like something befitting a curmudgeonly geezer, his face was unlined, and she guessed him to be in his mid- to late-twenties.
Maybe he was renting the place. That might explain the curtains. Yes, that made more sense than the idea of a wife. Or do you just not want him to have a wife, she asked herself. She snorted. What did it matter? He wasn’t her type, and he hadn’t given any hint that he found her interesting anyway. Annoying, maybe.
“I know,” came Trooper Brenner’s voice from outside.
Tara returned to the door so she could listen. Eavesdrop, she amended. One should use the proper terminology when spying on people.
“But we have to come out,” Brenner went on.
Tara peeked through the crack she had left. The trooper had moved closer to Malcolm, but there was nothing threatening about his stance. Indeed, he reached out and clapped Malcolm on the shoulder. What was this? Some brotherhood-of-men thing? Sam would be irked to see her complaint treated so cavalierly.
“You should see what their damned pigs did to my property,” Malcolm grumbled.
“You know the saying. Good fences make good neighbors.”
Malcolm snorted. “I’m too busy trying to figure out how to make a living out here to spend weeks building a fence around forty acres.”
Forty acres? That was all his? If he had that much land, why not sell it to solve any financial problems? Even out here, a lot that size ought to bring over a million dollars, especially if there was a view of the water.
“Yeah,” Brenner said. “You ever think about going back to work out there?”
Tara lifted her eyebrows. It definitely sounded like he and the trooper knew each other. Sam wouldn’t be pleased to hear that at all.
“I think about it,” Malcolm said, “and then I think about how I’m too much of a pussy to face that hell again.”
“Aw, man, don’t say that. Nobody else thinks that. Maybe you could teach or something. Not have to be out there.”
“Maybe. I gotta fix this place up first, figure out a solution for the land.”
“Sure, I get you.”
“You going to charge me with anything, Brenner? ’Cause I got work to do, otherwise.”
The trooper snickered. “I saw. She’s cute.”
Heat flushed Tara’s cheeks.
Malcolm only grunted and turned toward the door. Tara ducked to the side. Not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, she grabbed a book off a shelf. She would pretend she had been engrossed the whole time...
“Yo, Brenner,” Malcolm said from the door, his hand on the latch. “Why don’t you tell them to fence their property?”
“I did suggest it. Apparently, it’s high gardening season or something, but they’ll get on it eventually.”
“Eventually. Right.”
“Oh, and Malcolm? Keep an eye out. That Jackson woman was talking about hiring a P.I. to get to the bottom of things.”
“What’s she going to pay him with? Chicken eggs?”
“Half of those people had engineering or biotech jobs in Seattle before going all Malthusian over here,” Brenner said. “They have money.”
Malcolm grunted again, then pushed the door open. Tara found herself reading about... the reproductive biology of mushrooms. Though she didn’t look up when the shadow fell across the page, she could feel his eyes upon her.
“Are you a habitual snooper, or do you find me particularly fascinating?” he asked.
It was one of the longer things he had said to her, and it was also something she didn’t particularly want to answer. She lifted a finger. “Do you mind? This is engrossing.” She dropped her finger and pointed to a random paragraph on the page.
Malcolm tilted his head to read. “Spore dispersal via the forcible ejection from a fungus’s reproductive structures?”
Tara’s cheeks warmed again. She could have picked a more... bland chapter to flip open to. “Yes. I never knew how mushrooms... made more mushrooms.”
“It varies. Some are asexual, some sexual, and some reproduce through spore dispersal.”
Well, at least he seemed to have forgotten his suspicion that she had been snooping. She risked glancing at his face. He didn’t appear any more perturbed with her than usual. “Are you a...” Damn, what was the name of someone who studied mushrooms? Fungologist? No, that sounded stupid. “Mycologist?” she asked aloud. Was that right? It sounded right.
“No,” Malcolm said.
“What do you do?” Tara asked, curious as to what he didn’t want to face again.
His face grew cooler. “The computer. You were going to show me your clients.”
“Yes, I’d be happy to do so.” She returned the mushroom text to its shelf, noting that there was a whole row of tomes on the matter. There were also titles on gardening, weaving, knitting, and other handicrafts—none of them particularly masculine—but the mushroom books occupied the most space. “But can your... computer—” she had a hard time not calling it a relic or a fancy typewriter, “—actually call up webpages? It looks... black and white... and not very fast.” She had her smartphone in her pocket. Maybe she could simply show him a few sites that way.
Malcolm walked over to the computer desk and picked up an object in a black leather cover. He opened it and revealed a tablet.
“Oh,” Tara said. “That should work.”
It didn’t look like he had wifi, but there was cell reception, however slow, and she called up Susan’s page for a candle-making business, one that was doing so well this year that Susan had quit her day job and hired two helpers. She didn’t know if the website itself would suggest that to Malcolm—the tablet browser didn’t show a site’s traffic ranking the way the plug-ins on her laptop did—but there were quite a few comments on the blog posts. That ought to suggest a degree of popularity. She handed it to Malcolm.
“She teaches a class and sells an ebook in addition to fulfilling physical orders,” Tara said as he studied the page. “I helped her get more visitors to the site, and she does really well with the book. The payment processing and delivery are automated, so she makes money whether she’s working that day or not.”
“An ebook,” Malcolm mused and gazed at the shelf.
He was handsome when he wasn’t scowling. Some romance novelist would describe him as having rugged and chiseled features. And a dexterous tongue and fingers that could turn a woman into a quivering pile of goo, no doubt.
“How much do those sell for?” he asked.
“Ebooks? Depends on the topic. You can find thrillers for 99 cents, but non-fiction tends to go for more, especially the sort that answers a burning question for a person. Do you have something written that you want to sell?” Tara wondered if he was a writer as well as an artist.
“Nothing that I wrote, but yes.” Malcolm fetched a binder from a bottom shelf. “She did three books, I think, and meant to publish them, but didn’t know how.”
“She?” Whose cabin was this, anyway?
“My grandmother.”
“Ah.” The feminine touches made sense now. “She... passed away and left you the land?” Tara asked.
“She left it to—it doesn’t matter. Yes, it’s mine now.” His tone grew dry. “As well as the back taxes owed on it.”
“How much?”
His eyes narrowed. “Enough.”
Right, snooping. Not everyone appreciated that. Not when one was obvious about it anyway.
“Can I take that then?” Tara pointed at the binder.
His hand tightened around it.
“To look through it,” she explained. “I can come up with a marketing plan in a couple of days and run it by you. I’ll see what she wrote, look up keywords in the search engines, and do a little research. Hobby stuff doesn’t usually make a lot, but you never know. There might be an avid interest.”
He stared at her for a long moment. Did he not trust her? True, they hadn’t known each other long, but he was the one who had nearly knocked her on her ass—twice. What had she done to him?
“How much would your marketing plan cost?” he finally asked.
Maybe trust wasn’t the problem after all. Yes, if he had inherited a property that he owed thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of dollars on, he wouldn’t be in the mood to toss cash around.
“You don’t have to pay me for that,” Tara said.
His eyes grew suspicious again. What sort of agenda did he think she might have? Come to think of it, what agenda did she have? It was a lot of work to volunteer for. Why do it? She had originally come over to see if she could verify that he was causing the village’s dead-animal troubles. Was that still what she wanted? Or did she hope for something else? For him to like her? Why on Earth should she care?
“How much does it cost?” Malcolm repeated.
“Why don’t I come up with the plan, you see if you like it, and then we can discuss a deal if you need more hours from me?” Tara lifted a hand toward the binder. “But I’ll need that. May I?”
Malcolm let her take it from his grasp, but he caught her by the wrist, his grip firm—like iron. “If you don’t return it, I will come and get it.”
“Why wouldn’t I—”
“I have no idea what your motivations are here. You’re not the first spy that Jackson woman has sent over.”
“Spy?” Tara stepped away, yanking her arm back. He released the grip of his own accord, and she almost stumbled backward, having expected more of a fight. “Why would you think I’m a spy? I just got here. I’ve spent more time with you than with any of them. Though, I can’t fathom why. You’ve got the personality of a, a big fat mushroom head.”
Tara stalked for the door, already rolling her eyes at herself. Mushroom head? She’d come up with better insults than that in third grade. How pathetic.
Malcolm didn’t say another word as she strode off his porch and toward the trail, but she could feel his eyes boring into the back of her head. Maybe she should tell Sam everything she’d seen over here, such as the fact that he had the law in his back pocket... Bastard.
* * *
I'll be posting the rest of the novel, one chapter a week. If you don't want to wait, you can grab the ebook at Amazon, Smashwords, and other online bookstores. Thanks for reading!
http://www.amazon.com/Wounded-Lindsay-Buroker-ebook/dp/B00I6M9EXS/