Heather Webber - Digging Up Trouble

We’re running behind here anyway.”

“Okay.” She turned slowly and walked away, her belly leading. Tam was due in five weeks, and I didn’t know what I was going to do without her while she was on maternity leave.

I thought back to my newest commandment and wondered if I should hire a temp through a reputable agency.

Only that might ruffle Ana’s feathers. My cousin Ana Bertoli was a probation officer who sent me her probationers when someone had trouble finding a job or if I needed a new hire.

Ana would live if I hired a temp. I’d live too.

Probably. Hopefully.

“Jean-Claude,” Kit reminded me when I looked down at my file.

Deanna twirled her pencil baton. “I can take over his workload for tomorrow’s makeover.”

“I can pitch in too,” Marty chimed in, picking doughnut crumbs from the napkin in front of him with dark fingers.

“Me too,” Coby offered.

I looked at Kit. “It’s a given,” he said.

And it was. I could count on Kit for anything. That’s why I had to be careful with this newest commandment. I had hired a lot of great people over the years, criminal records and all.

Digging Up Trouble

5

I still lumped Jean-Claude into that group. For now. Until a month ago he’d been a model employee. Sure, he had his dark side, but as long as I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell. It hadn’t affected his work, and that’s all I truly cared about.

I was lying.

I tended to do that, which was why I hadn’t made it a commandment yet. I knew I couldn’t keep it.

I cared about more than Jean-Claude’s work—I cared about him. Add that to my worrier nature and I knew I was in trouble. What was going on with him?

“Why is Mrs. Lockhart coming here? Don’t you usually meet clients at their homes, or rather their yards, for the final walk-through?” Deanna asked, tossing her pencil up in the air.

That pencil was seriously getting on my nerves.

“Usually, yes, but she requested the meeting here. I didn’t see why not.” It was just as well. Being here in comfortable surroundings might make it easier for me to quiz the woman.

She held the answers to some burning questions I had.

“Could be her husband was going to be home.”

Kit had a point. Surprise garden makeovers (surprise being the key word) were the objective of Taken by Surprise.

“Let’s not dwell on it,” I said. “Jean-Claude was in charge of the tree and shrub selection for this project, as well as accessories.”

Deanna balanced the pencil on the tip of her index finger.

“I think he said something about an old wishing well he’d found.”

“I saw it out in the shed,” Marty said.

Oooh. A wishing well would be a perfect complement to this project. The older and more rustic-looking, the better.

See, this was why I hated to lose Jean-Claude.

He’d better have a damn good excuse.

After checking my list, I turned to Deanna. “Azaleas, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, right?”

6

Heather Webber

“Right. To go with your blue and white theme, I picked up some bellflowers, belladonna delphiniums, blue balloon flowers, blue chip campanula, and butterfly blue scabiosa, white dragonflower, white bleeding heart, and Deutschland astilbe,” she said, actually using the pencil to tick off the list on the pad of paper in front of her.

“Sounds great.”

“Stanley checked in this morning. The deck is on schedule,” Kit said.

“And you’ll be helping him with that, right?”

“That and the seating once the excavating work is done.”

“Coby? What’re you doing?”

“Fire pit and lighting.”

That’s right. “Got everything?”

“Yes.”

“Kit, have you checked in with Ignacio? Is he all set?”

Ignacio Martinez was a floater. He and his crew of workers drifted between different jobs, working where there was money to be had. Sometimes they did landscaping, other times bricklaying or general construction. I hired Ignacio and his crew for particularly tough yards. They were worth every cent I paid them under the table.

I scanned my notes. “The sod and topsoil will be arriving at seven a.m.” I checked off bullet points in my head. “All right. I think we’re done here. The excavation work is going to be—”

“Painful?” Deanna cut in.

That worked. The Lockhart yard was one of the most overgrown, weed-infested yards I’d ever seen. And I’d seen a lot of yards. I’d have turned the project down flat if I hadn’t had ulterior motives for doing it. “Definitely. But once that’s done, it should be clear sailing.”

“You did it again,” Tam called out from the reception area.

Aha! I’d known she was eavesdropping.

Digging Up Trouble

7

I peeked at her through the open door. She shook her finger at me.

“Is ‘clear sailing’ a cliché?” I asked.

Five heads bobbed.

I had picked up the worst habit of sounding like my mother, using abridged clichés and trite expressions. Except lately I’d noticed she’d been using them less and less, and I’d been using them more and more. “Hey! It wasn’t abbreviated, though! That’s something.”

“It’s hard to abbreviate a two-word cliché,” Tam said, jotting something down. I imagined she had a notebook filled with my grammar transgressions.

Hmmph.

The small set of chimes attached to the front door rang out.

The door used to have a cowbell, but the clanging had apparently gotten on Tam’s nerves because I came in one day to find the bell flatter than a pan— I caught myself and stopped.

It was flat.

And there’d been a baseball bat nearby, namely in Tam’s hands. I hadn’t asked questions. The next day the chimes were on the door.

Heads craned to look out the conference room door to see who’d come in. Four sets of eyes then turned to me when Jean-Claude stumbled into the office.

“What?” I said to them.

“You need to take care of this.” Kit rose.

I looked up, up, up at him. “I will.”

He arched an eyebrow, and I noticed that he didn’t look nearly as scary with a fuzzy head. It was hard to look scary with baby chicken hair.

I wondered if he knew that.

Didn’t think I should be the one to tell him.

Jean-Claude froze when he spotted us. I think he spotted us, at least. Hard to say when he wore pitch-black Ray-Bans.

8

Heather Webber

Everyone remaining at the table stood and scattered, leaving me to deal with Jean-Claude in private. “Come on in,” I said to him.

“Was the meeting at eight? Thought it was at nine.”

“Seeing as how it’s almost ten, that’s beside the point.”

“You’re mad.”

I was. “Sit.”

He slumped in Deanna’s vacated chair, looking like Riley, my fifteen-year-old stepson, when he was in a mood.

In the reflection of his sunglasses I could see anger had darkened my already muddy green eyes. I noticed I needed a haircut too, my hair hanging past my shoulders. In my head it was easy to hear my sister Maria’s voice telling me to go blonde like she was, but I was happy to be a brunette.

For now.

I picked at the edge of a paper, folding it back and forth until it ripped. “What’s going on?”

Taking off his sunglasses, he looked at me. I held back a gasp but could feel my eyes go wide, my anger dissipating into worry. Dark circles rimmed his eyes and streaks of red marred the white part around his dark pupils. “Overslept.”

“You’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

“I know. Sorry.”

I jumped right in. “I think maybe it’s time you found another job, Jean-Claude. Something nocturnal maybe.”

His eyes grew wide, looking more bloodshot than before.