"She'll put it on account for you. I mean, she does know where you live," I said, "Or she'll...hold your change," I continued, even as he was pressing a few battered bills into my hand.
"I like to pay promptly," he said.
"Then Paula will like you," I answered, tucking the cash into a pocket. "Do you want some help with the roof?"
"No, there isn't much more to be done," he said. "You're welcome to stay if you want, until the rain stops. It'll only be muddier going back. But you have your shop," he added, more to himself than to me. "You'll want to get back to your shop."
"I'm used to the mud," I said. "I don't mind it. Sure you don't want help?"
"No, thank you," he said, and set his empty mug in the sink. "I'll walk you down to the field."
He left me at the base of the hill, in rain that was softening from vicious to merely steady. It isn't wise to ignore where one is going, walking across a muddy field, but I turned around every so often to see if he had gone back to his repairs yet. By the time he returned to his patching, I was halfway home and his coat was a dark speck on a distant roof.
When I arrived back at the shop I changed out of my muddy clothes, padding around the ground floor in clean socks and ancient blue-jeans while I waited for the mud on my boots to dry. The boy who was so curious about Lucas was there again with his friends, but he had wandered away from the table where they were doing their homework (or at least where they were folding their homework into paper airplanes to throw at each other). He ducked one particularly well-aimed shot and leaned his elbows on my counter, hoisting himself up a little and then dropping down again.
"Have you gone to see Lucas today?" he asked.
I set down my sorting and looked across at him. "Yes, I have – how did you know?"
"I saw your boots," he replied. "Has he patched his roof yet?"
"You're quite the Sherlock Holmes," I said.
"That's the sort of thing people tell me when they think they shouldn't have to answer me because I shouldn't know enough to ask," he said solemnly.
"I'm sorry," I said, a little taken aback. "He was patching it when I left. He'll do better now that he has a real hammer."
"That's good. Are you going to buy firewood for winter?"
"Probably," I said. "Why?"
"Dad's got some split and seasoned cords for sale. Give you a half-cord for credit."
I raised an eyebrow. "What's your dad say about that?"
"He wants to shift it. He says I can sell to you for credit and it'll make me read more."
"Do you think it will?"
The boy grinned. "More comic books, anyway."
I laughed. "Done deal."
He offered a hand and I shook it.
"Do you think Lucas needs some?" he asked.
"I'd think so. He might not know he does, though. You're a salesman, sell him some."
"Okay, I will," he said, and went back to his friends, ordering them imperiously to be quiet.
Chapter TWO
I was pleased with the progress I was making on Jacob's bookbinding commission, as slow as it was. I could've worked on it during the day, but I also had a shop to run and shelves to stock. Even when nobody was buying there was always someone stopping by to say hello.
"Halloooo, Christopher!" Charles called, banging the glass door behind him as he entered. I put my head through the doorway from the storeroom.
"Just a minute, Charles," I replied. "Make yourself at home!"
"I already have," he said, and I heard him shuffling through the papers on my counter. "Had breakfast yet?"
"Ron ran toast and bacon over from the cafe this morning, and I had some of the eggs Jacob brought me a few days ago," I replied, tossing the last of the shipping boxes in a corner and studying the troubling books on the storage shelf, hands on my hips. "Was that an invitation?"
"Well, I can talk here just as well as I can there," he replied, as I emerged. "You look annoyed."
"My seller mixed up an order," I said.
"What happened?"
"Sure you want to know?" I asked. "I have twenty anthologies of erotica when I should have thirty-five assorted True Crime."
He grinned. "Six of one, half dozen of the other."
"I hate to think what your wife would say to that."
"It's all voyeurism, is what I mean," he explained.
"I'm shocked a church elder even knows that word."
"Oh, you kids think you invented sex and atheism!"
"Not concurrently."
Charles is a large man with a barrel chest, and when he laughs he scares flocks of birds miles away.
"I assume sex and atheism aren't what you came here to talk about," I continued, when the sonic boom had died away.
"Just thought I'd drop in. Keeps me out of trouble and the missus doesn't get suspicious."
"Ah! I'm an alibi."
"Well, no. But I was over at the hardware store buying saddle soap and some liniment – "
I held up a hand. "I want you to stop and think about what you just said."
"What? I was at the hardware store."
"Saddle soap and liniment. You're such a farmer."
"Oh, big city boy! Do you want to hear my story or not?"
"I want to hear your story, Charles," I said, in my best humble voice.
"That's better. So I was at the hardware store and I heard from Paula that you'd said Sandra and Michael – at the bank?"
"Yes, I know who Sandra and Michael are."
"Well, you'd said they were an item and I wanted to know your sources."
"Is this going to be a lecture about telling tales out of school?" I asked.
"No, but Sandra's parents'll hear about it, and I thought I'd set you right, because Cassie is talking about them. But everyone else says that Nolan's sister says she never said she saw anyone kissing on the loading dock."