that a car door slamming?
She gave her hair a last hurried squeeze with the towel and then felt in the top drawer with one hand for a pair of socks. Having long since gotten out of the habit of matching her socks and rolling them together, she came up with a short and a long in two different colors. Tossing them back, she raced for the stairway, bare feet thudding on the hardwood floors.
At least she no longer reeked of polyurethane. If the cinnamon had done the trick, neither would her house.
The phone rang just as she hit the third step down from the top. Swearing under her breath, she wheeled and raced back to catch it in case it was her carpenter asking for instructions on how to find her address.
“Hello! Where are you?”
“Is he there yet?”
Her shoulders drooped. “Oh, Sasha.” If there was an inconvenient time to call or drop by, her best friend would find it. From anyone else Marty might think it was a power thing. “I thought you were someone else. Look, I don’t have time to talk now. Can I call you back?”
“You’re talking, aren’t you?”
“But I’m in a hurry—so can it wait?”
“Is he there yet?”
“Is who there—here?”
“Your carpenter, silly! Faylene said Bob Ed said he was going to call you yesterday. Didn’t he even call?”
Marty took a deep breath, drawing on the lessons of a lifetime. Patience was a virtue, right up there with godliness and cleanliness. At various times, she’d flunked all three. “Somebody’s here, I just heard a car door slam. It might be him—he. Listen, later I want to know exactly what you two have been up to, but not now, okay?”
If you couldn’t trust your best friend, whom could you trust?
“Wait, don’t hang up! Call me as soon as he leaves, okay? Faylene said—”
Marty didn’t wait to hear what Faylene had said. The trouble with a small town like Muddy Landing was that aside from fishing, hunting and farming, the chief industry was gossip. By now probably half the town knew what she planned on doing to her house, who was helping her do it, and how much it was likely to cost her.
Slamming the phone down, she peered through the front bedroom window to see a ratty looking pickup with a toolbox in back and a rod-holder on the front bumper, a description that fit roughly half the vehicles in Muddy Landing. There was probably a gun rack in the back window, too, and an in-your-face sticker peeling off the back bumper.
Well, so what? If the guy could read a blueprint and follow simple instructions, she didn’t care what his politics were or what he drove or what he did in his spare time.
Not that her drawings bore much resemblance to blueprints, but at least she’d indicated clearly what she wanted done. Not only indicated, but illustrated. If he could read, he should be able to do the job. If it weren’t for all the red tape involved with permitting and such, she could probably have done it herself, given enough time. There were how-to books for everything.
She watched from the window as a long, denim-covered leg emerged from the cab. Putty-colored deck shoes, Ragg socks, followed by leather clad shoulders roughly the width of an ax handle. Judging by all that shaggy, sun-streaked hair, he was either a surf bum or he’d spent the summer crawling around on somebody’s roof nailing on shingles. All up and down the Outer Banks, building crews were nailing together those humongous McMansions on every scrap of land that wasn’t owned by some branch or another of the federal government. She’d like to think of all the tourists who would pour down here once the season got underway as potential customers. Trouble was, there were enough bookstores on the beach so that few, if any, tourists were likely to drive all the way to Muddy Landing, which wasn’t on the way to anywhere.
She was still watching when her visitor turned and looked directly at the upstairs front window. Oh, my…
As she flicked the curtains shut, it occurred to Marty that living alone as she did, inviting all these strange men into her home might not be the smartest thing. This one, for instance, looked physically capable of taking out a few walls without the aid of tools. He’s a construction worker, silly! she told herself. What did you expect, a ninety-seven-pound wimp?
She was halfway down the stairs when the doorbell chimed—three steps farther when the smoke alarm went off with an ear-splitting shriek. “Not now, dammit!”
She galloped the rest of the way and reached the bottom just as the front door burst open.
“Get out, I’ll take care of it!” a man barked. He waved her toward the open front door.
Swinging around the newel post, Marty collided with him in the kitchen doorway. She stood stock-still and stared at the billowing smoke that was rapidly filling the room.
“Try not to breathe! Where’s your fire extinguisher?”
“Beside the drier!” Marty yelled back. Racing across the room, she jumped and slammed her fist against the white plastic smoke detector mounted over the utility room door. The cover popped off, the batteries fell out and the ear-splitting noise ceased abruptly.
In the sudden deafening silence they stared at each other, Marty and the stranger with the shaggy, sun-bleached hair and the piercing eyes. The stranger broke away first, wheeling toward the range where clouds of pungent smoke rose toward the ceiling.
“Get out of my way!” Marty shouldered him aside and grabbed the blackened pie pan with her bare hand. Shoving open the back door, she flung it outside, took two deep breaths and hurried to turn off the burner.
The stranger hadn’t said a word.
Trying not to inhale, she clutched her right hand and muttered a string of semi-profane euphemisms. God, she could have burned her house down!
“You want to tell me what’s going on here?” Fists planted on his hips, the stranger stared at her warily.
He wanted answers from her? She wasn’t the one who’d burst into a house uninvited and started shouting orders. At least he wasn’t wearing a ski mask over his face and carrying an AK-whatchamacallit—one of those really nasty guns.
Of course, she’d been expecting a carpenter. And he did have a toolbox in the back of his truck. But for all she knew, the thing could be full of nasty weapons of mass destruction.
A big fan of hard-edged suspense, Marty often let her imagination get the better of her. Not only that, but she’d been under a growing amount of stress, which always tended to affect her common sense.
“Sorry about that,” he said quietly, pulling her back to reality. “I thought you had a real fire going.” He waved away the pungent fumes with one hand.
Trying not to breathe too deeply, she leaned over the sink and held her stinging fingers under cold running water. Ow-wow-ee!
She felt him right behind her and tried not to react. He had to be her carpenter—either that or a fireman who just happened to be passing by 1404 Sugar Lane and smelled smoke.
Or the answer to a harried maiden’s
