had gone a little thin-lipped and slit-eyed when she’d answered his question, but there was no way on earth she was going to tell him the truth when the mere mention of the name Hammerman tended to make people sweat and develop uncontrollable tics. Even people as big as Sam Zachary.
For every one of his reputable businesses, Art “the Hammer” Hammerman probably had two or three disreputable ones. He was a landlord whose buildings often inexplicably burned down. He was a land developer whose notion of eminent domain included threats, poisoning family pets, and if necessary a well-aimed rifle shot through a kitchen window. A labor leader who had an endless supply of thugs to do his bidding and just enough cops and judges so he never got caught, or if caught, he certainly never went to jail.
But worst of all right now in Laura’s view, the Hammer had a son who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
She was following Sam into the house now after he’d told her it would be a good idea if she stayed here at least for a day or two until he could come up with a more suitable plan. That had sounded reasonable to Laura. She was even relaxing a bit, having come to the conclusion that if Sam had intended to assault and rape her, the man had already had ample opportunity and hadn’t made even a remotely devious or lecherous move. At least none that she was aware of.
Anyway, she wanted to stay.
The inside of the house turned out to be even more inviting than the exterior. The ancient hardwood floors had been lovingly cared for. So had the lace curtains at the windows, although they did look as if they could use a quick little dip in some bleach. There was a Victorian sofa with a carved mahogany back and fabulous claw feet, which was heaped with at least a dozen plump tapestry and needlepoint pillows into which Laura could’ve done an immediate swan dive.
Everywhere she looked were wonderful knickknacks and gewgaws and bits of kitsch. They sat on shelves, on crocheted doilies atop tables, on the antique what-not in the corner. Paperweights and porcelain figures. Vases and glass animals and Kewpie dolls. They marched across the mantel and formed chorus lines on all the windowsills. It was a collector’s paradise.
“I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Laura heard herself saying. “Look at all this magnificent stuff!”
Sam, with one foot already on the bottom step of a staircase, came to a standstill, then slowly turned to face her. “What? All this junk?”
“It’s not junk,” she said, almost indignantly. “What a marvelous place. It’s like living in…”
He snorted, interrupting her. “Secondhand Charlie’s Garage and Used Furniture Outlet.”
Laura shook her head. “No.” Her voice sounded disembodied, almost dreamy, even to her. “No, it’s like living in my Nana’s house. It’s perfect.”
“Perfect,” he muttered. “You’re kidding, right?”
She shook her head again. “It’s wonderful, Sam. How long have you lived here?”
“All my life.”
Edging back one sheer lacy curtain, Laura lifted a small white pot of violets from the sill and inspected its five, no, six deep purple blooms. She had a sudden vision of her grandmother’s fingers, stiff with arthritis and freckled with age, poking into the soil below the dark, velvety leaves of African violets. She could almost hear Nana’s chirpy voice. Don’t let their little feet dry out, Laura, honey.
Only then did she notice that there was moisture in the saucer attached to the pot. Sam Zachary, Private Eye, watered African violets! Why that pleased her so much, Laura couldn’t have said. It was just…well…sweet somehow and far more domestic than she ever would have given him credit for, especially considering his ratty, run-down office in the city.
“You should probably feed this little guy, too,” she said almost to herself, putting the pot back on the sill, then turning to the man who was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. “All your life here. What a lucky, lucky man you are.”
Sam started up the stairs, listening to each familiar groan and creak, testing the give in the banister, thinking that he’d never felt like a lucky, lucky man. Ever. Well, not lately anyway. Not since Jenny Sayles’s car had slid through a guardrail on Highway A-14 and then crashed in the icy underbrush along Cabin Creek. When Jenny died, all his luck, both good and bad, had perished with her, and Sam had lived in a sort of luckless limbo ever since.
He turned left at the top of the stairs, then opened the door of the spare room which his mother had also used as a sewing room. The clutter inside rivaled that of the living room downstairs. Laura McNeal ought to be in hog heaven up here, he thought.
“This should be fairly comfortable,” he told her. “As far as I know, the bed’s hardly ever been slept in.”
She made a beeline for his mother’s ancient Singer sewing machine, still parked on a card table, and ran a hand over its worn black surface. He’d seen women look at diamonds or fur coats the same way, their eyes a little glazed, their faces touched with an ineffable longing. But a sewing machine? Sam was half tempted to tell her to take the damned thing with her when she left, but then he was leery of whatever form her expression of gratitude might take.
“Well, I’ll just let you get settled in,” he said. “Bathroom’s just on the right. I won’t be in your way.”
“Thanks. I’ll try to keep out of your way, too.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to go take a look in the freezer and see if I have a nice little steak I can thaw out.”
“I really don’t expect you to feed me, too,” she said.
Sam lifted his index finger to touch his eye. “A medicinal steak.”
“Oh. Does that really work?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
He winked at her as he stepped back into the hall, and then descended the stairs muttering to himself. Winking! Good God. He never winked. Guys in polyester suits with gold chains around their necks winked. So he convinced himself it was just a sympathetic twitch, brought on no doubt from the pitiful sight of the woman’s purple shiner.
Laura only meant to test the bed. She woke up three hours later, startled at first by her strange surroundings, then comforted by the sight of the sewing machine. She stretched beneath the soft warmth of the granny afghan, then stopped midstretch, suddenly realizing that Sam Zachary must have come in and covered her with it while she was sleeping.
The Big Ben clock on the nightstand told her it was almost six o’clock. Her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t eaten since Artie Hammerman smashed his fist into her half eaten glazed doughnut this morning just before he’d smashed it into her face. She lay there for a moment, refusing to even contemplate her predicament, while from somewhere downstairs came the clattering of pots and pans and the metallic rattling of silverware and the occasional thud of a refrigerator door.
She smelled coffee, too, and lay there imagining the beguiling fragrance wafting up the staircase like wavy banners in a cartoon. Her stomach growled. Hadn’t Sam Zachary said something about a steak?
For lack of a comb, she ran her fingers through her hair, at the same time deciding not to get anywhere near the oval mirror above the antique dresser for fear of sending herself into a deep depression. If her eye looked anything like
