Сандра Браун - Thick as Thieves

“Doing what? Rehanging your closet doors?”

“Removing them. You see, I’ve changed my mind about restoring the house. I want you to take it apart. Piece by piece. Board by board. Nail by nail. Tear it down. To the ground.”

Chapter 16

Ledge stood there looking at her for what seemed an interminable amount of time. Then he turned, saying over his shoulder, “I haven’t eaten all day,” and walked out of the workshop.

Arden didn’t know what to make of his exit, but she couldn’t leave things up in the air, so she followed. As an afterthought, she went back for the bottle of bourbon.

He entered the house, and lights came on inside, illuminating the steps leading up to the back door. He’d left it standing open. Not quite an invitation, but not a lockout.

She went inside. His kitchen was surprisingly modern. It certainly showed hers up.

He was standing in the open door of the refrigerator and didn’t turn when she closed the back door to let him know she had followed him in. He sailed a deli package from the fridge onto the granite countertop, then a second landed there with a plop. After taking some items from the shelves in the door, he bumped it closed with his hip.

As he set a butter dish and jar of mayonnaise on the counter, he said. “Grilled cheese?”

“No thank you. But you drank my whiskey.” She lifted the bottle.

“Glasses are up there.”

She took a glass from the indicated cabinet and poured herself an inch of the liquor. “You?”

“No thanks.” He turned on the griddle section of the range and dropped a slab of butter on it. “Bad idea to drink straight bourbon on an empty stomach.” The butter began to sizzle. He came around to face her. “Makes your belly burn like hellfire. Makes your brain go to mush.”

He came toward her and, with the back of his hand at her waist, eased her out of his path. “For instance…” He went into a walk-in pantry and emerged seconds later with a loaf of bread in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other. He tossed the latter onto the dining table.

He hefted the loaf of bread in his hand as he came to within inches of her. “For instance, I thought I heard you say you wanted me to tear your house down.”

In defiance of his thunderous expression, she casually took a sip of the whiskey. As she lowered the glass, she said, “You look like you’re gauging the weight of that loaf of bread. Are you going to hurl it at me?”

He muttered something foul as, this time, he sidestepped to go around her without touching.

He kept his back to her and said nothing more as he slathered a slice of bread with mayo, then piled on slices of cheese he took from the two deli packages. He laid the stack carefully on the griddle in a pond of melted butter, which had filled the kitchen with a mouthwatering aroma that made her stomach growl.

He turned only his head to look at her.

Abashed, she said, “Maybe I’ll have a sandwich after all.”

He built her one and laid it on the griddle beside his. He topped them with slices of buttered bread and stared at them as they cooked.

She said, “Aren’t you going to ask—”

“Not yet.”

She set her drink on the table. “Would you like for me to set the table?”

“Plates are up there.”

With a brevity of words, he told her where to find things, and when the sandwiches were ready, they sat down across from each other. He plucked a paper napkin from the holder in the center of the table and began to eat.

She followed suit. The sandwich was delicious, and she told him so. “What kind of cheeses did you use?”

“One’s yellow, one’s white.”

That was the extent of their mealtime conversation.

When he’d demolished his sandwich and several handfuls of chips, he wiped his mouth and hands, balled up the napkin, uncapped his bottle of water, took a long drink from it, and returned it nearly empty to the table. Folding his arms across his chest, he stared at her for ponderous seconds, then said, “What the fuck ?”

“I know it seems an odd—”

“No. No, odd would be you wanting to put statues of cartoon characters along the expanded veranda. That would be odd . This,” he said, stabbing the table with his index finger, “seems calculated.”

Of all the words she had anticipated—crazy, fickle, addlepated, just plain dumb—calculated wasn’t among them. “Calculated?”

“Yeah, planned. Devised to make a fool of me.” His eyes were as hot as twin blue flames.

At a loss, she said, “Why would that have been my intention, when I didn’t even know you?”

“Who sent you to me?”

“What?”

“Who. Sent. Y—”

“I heard you. I just don’t know what you mean by it. Nobody sent me to you.”

“I’m supposed to believe that you picked me at random.”

“I did.”

“Off the internet?”

“Why do you doubt that?”

“Nobody referred you? Or suggested me to you?”

“No. But what difference would it have made if someone had?”

“You had never heard of me before you saw my name in that list of contractors?”

“No,” she said with force. “But clearly you suspect otherwise. Why?”

“Because this sounds like a cruel practical joke played by someone of my acquaintance who thrives on this sort of shit. You might have been an unwitting partner—”

“I didn’t partner with anybody.”

“Who have you talked to about me?”

“No one except the bartender, Don, and the woman, Lois, I met there. She approached me, not the other way around.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. Well, no,” she said, correcting herself. “Lisa.”

“Right, right. Sister dear. I overheard her opinion of me. She advised you to keep away. But here you are.” He extended his arms from his sides in a grand gesture that encompassed the room and beyond. “Why didn’t you take your sister’s advice and have nothing else to do with me?”

Before she could speak, he held up a halting hand. “You know what? On second thought, I don’t care what your game is. You want your house leveled, get somebody else. I suggest a wrecking crew. Efficient. Cost effective.”

“I considered doing just that. But I don’t want the demolition to be noticed. I don’t want anybody to know what I’m doing until it’s done.”

He laughed shortly. “Now that’s odd. But, whatever. I’m out. Thanks for wasting my time. The hour spent on the walk-through. The—”

“You came to me for the walk-through, remember?”

“—estimates I worked up.”

“Which you haven’t submitted.”

“I was going to bring them over to you in the morning.”

“Was that when you were going to show me the drawings?”

“I hadn’t decided.”

“My decision isn’t a reflection of your ideas. They’re excellent. The finished product would’ve been beautiful.”

He shrugged off the compliment.

“You put a lot of thought and time into those drawings. I’ll compensate you for doing them. And, as we agreed, you’ll get one hundred dollars for working up the estimates on the basic repairs.”

“Keep your money,” he said angrily. “We’ll be even-steven if you tell me why you changed your mind.”

“I’ll answer as I have to all your personal questions. None of your business.”

His features turned even more fulminating. “Right. It isn’t. As of now.” He scraped back his chair and carried his empty plate to the sink. “Hate to be rude, but today’s been a bugger. I’m going to bed.”

She made no move to leave.

Acting indifferent, he said, “Turn out the lights before you go.”

“First, talk me through that night when you were arrested and my father disappeared.”