First, she confirmed the order for the pavers and the sand. Next, she checked with the paving company she had always used. The job would be a large one, and she had already booked the work team.
“Monday next week,” she said, repeating the date, noting that the more she spoke, the better her voice. After concentrating for a moment, she realized she had hardly spoken to anyone in the past few weeks. Now with all her cat conversations, she almost sounded normal. Use it or lose it seemed to be the cure here, though when she forgot to drink she also did her voice no favors. To make sure of her hydration, she drank another two long cool glasses of water.
“You don’t have any water either,” she said to the cat, and she filled a large breakfast bowl with water for her scruffy companion.
“I’m off now. Keep yourself clean, or wash yourself, because if you aren’t shiny bright when I get back, some time tonight you are having a bath. No one ever got well lying around in their own dirt.” And she gave a reluctant laugh because she sounded like her mother.
After rinsing out her cup, she closed the door behind her and stepped back into a clouded spring day. For a moment she paused, glancing briefly at the dividing fence. The Tudor house remained silent, but a distant clank and the murmur of male voices could possibly be the gang discussing their next hit while rattling their numchucks. Or not. Whatever the business of the people next door, she could mind her own.
However, she was pleased to see that the gangster had left for the day. She knew this because his SUV hadn’t returned. Probably even thugs had regular employment. Nevertheless, her idle speculation about her tattooed, bottle-breaking neighbor could certainly hold elements of truth. He looked like a biker. Tattoos might be trendy, but his didn’t look arty, and the rev of the motorbikes last night had been threatening. Likely he had gathered together the other members of his gang to break bottles on a Sunday night, expressing an antisocial protest against recycling. She actually laughed aloud at her clever cycling pun as she pulled her gardening gloves back on.
Despite the gray sky today, this coming summer was predicted to be as dry as the last. During winter, the judge’s garden had dried out considerably. Calli couldn’t remember the last time she saw rain, and she needed to install a new water-saving irrigation system before the heat set in.
Since the whole garden would be changed, she would also need to change the hose grid. Although the old drippers had kept the garden alive, the new plan using less water would make the garden lush. In the meantime, she ignored the blockages and the leaks, managing to hand water the plants that showed the most wilt. Normally, she supervised the gardens she designed, leaving others to perform the hard slog. These days, she couldn’t afford laborers, but apparently venturing out of her comfort zone was doing her good.
As she had supposed, performing the work herself kept her mind on the job rather than on her woes, the worst of which was caused by her decision to bankroll her partnership with Grayson. The people who cared for her, friends and family, had queried his background, but after the failure of two personal relationships with men from the “right” backgrounds, she had seen this as snobbery. She thought she had made a sensible choice, but she hadn’t.
For the first time since the man she had trusted with her start-up business had left with her money and reputation, she realized that she had begun to relax. She appreciated being offered a chance, and she would certainly give the judge her best effort. He trusted her to do a good job despite her having such a pitiful record. All she wanted now was to reclaim her credibility with her family, friends, and anyone she had ever worked with or whom she knew.
Sighing, she marked out the spot for the fountain in the back garden.
Chapter 3
Kell inspected the ceiling in the old laundry room. Normally, on Mondays his appointment book was filled with visits to prospective customers who wanted kitchen estimates. He’d done two last Friday, freeing up part of this week so that he could help with the demolition while he plotted the changes.
“Good work,” he said to Trent who stood on the top of a ladder in the center of the old laundry building attached to the garage. Trent had been hired for a nominal wage and free board. “We should get a couple of hundred for this.”
Trent grunted and shoved his crowbar under the hole he had made to remove the ceiling rose, cracking off half a sheet of plastered horsehair, which dropped to the floor amid the cloud of dirt and dust that had accumulated over a hundred years. Like Kell, he wore a white disposable coverall.
Kell moved out of the way, his eyes covered with one hand while he adjusted his facemask. “Do you like the garden next door?” he asked, still annoyed the little dickhead had threatened him with a spray can.
“It’s okay if you like classy gardens.”
“That’s what I thought. He’s got a gardener, a young lad.”
“How young?”
Kell shrugged. “Eighteen, maybe. The kid is working there alone, if you believe that.” He glanced up at Trent. “He threatened to tag me, but he’s not such a smart-arse as he thinks. I got him to tell me the name of the neighbor. He’s a judge.”
“You don’t see him around much.”
“His cars haven’t moved from the carport since we’ve been here. The house looks deserted.” Kell took a leap to the side. The next plaster length thudded to the floor, scattering the accompanying detritus to the far corners of the room.
“And an eighteen-year-old is digging in the garden?” Trent waggled his eyebrows, almost concealed behind the layers of filth dropped on him from the roof cavity. “If you see him burying something, you might want to make sure it’s not a body.” He laughed.
“He doesn’t look tough enough to dig a hole, let alone drag a body into it,” Kell said sourly. “He’s a skinny little thing.”
“It’d be interesting, though, if we discovered a serial killer.”
Kell started stacking the shattered lengths of ceiling. “It wouldn’t be interesting to kill a judge. It’d be downright bloody stupid. I’d start out with someone less noticeable, like a handyman.”
“But if you were killing so that you could steal money, judges earn a bit.”
“There you are!” said a satisfied female voice. The doorway darkened as Vix Dee, Kell’s sister-in-law entered.
Kell straightened, removing his mask to smile at the pretty blonde wife of his older brother, Jay, the architect who had found this property and advised Kell to take out a mortgage to buy the best deal Jay had seen in years, or so he said. “I hope you didn’t hear Trent plotting a murder.”
“No. I heard you. Which particular handyman do you plan to kill?”
“Other than Trent? None of us earn enough to make the effort worthwhile.” He brushed the dust off the shoulders of his coverall.
“I brought lunch for you both.” She smiled at him. “It’s not often you take days off work and since you’re taking those days off to do more work, I thought I could help by supplying food.”
Trent backed down the ladder. “Great.” He removed his mask and wiped his sleeve across his dirty face. “I can’t tell you how much I didn’t want to buy a pie.”
“Why
