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I wasn’t overly worried because the house had sat empty for over a year and no one had bothered breaking the windows or in. But that was before Liz Danger was in it. With all her earthly possessions, which granted, weren’t much. Yet.
Then, reluctantly, I drove into town and stopped by headquarters to see what Bartlett had done lately.
CHAPTER 24
Icouldn’t stop thinking about the house, so I bagged the factory, leaving my neatly sorted papers behind me in case Cash came to check to see if I’d worked, and headed out to my little brown money pit on stilts.
At the entrance to the drive was a No Trespassing sign which had not been there before. Those are things you notice. Had the house been repossessed? That couldn’t be right, I was renting it. I’d given Ken four dollars. Then I noticed the message in marker on the bottom and grinned.
I drove slowly down the drive. The old cabinets were gone from the bottom of the stairs, but there was no car parked there. I stopped and went up the stairs and found a new front door and a giant package from Amazon. I swung open the door and it moved silently on oiled hinges. It had a solid feel, much like the guy who’d put it up. That also explained the no trespassing sign, which I was pretty sure wasn’t just about staying off my land. I was surprised he hadn’t tacked a sign on the top that said “Cash, She’s My Property.” Three months ago, that would have annoyed me, I’m nobody’s property. Today, I just thought, “Yep,” and laughed.
I noticed the old door was off to the side, which meant he was hedging his bets on whether I approved.
I really, really love Vince Cooper.
I dropped my stuff inside and pulled the box tape on the box open on the porch. Inside was a huge roll of memory foam and a note from my mother on the receipt that said,This is just to get you started, and I realized it was a mattress, twin-sized but still a start.
My mom really wanted me to have a house in Burney.
She’d had Amazon overnight it.
Vince was going to be thrilled there was a mattress.
I looked at the door. Vince wanted me to be safe in my house. He’d even put up a sign about it. These were big statements from a man who didn’t say much.
I was so happy, I hugged myself.
Then I dragged the giant hot dog of memory foam inside, and threw the cardboard down the stairs to be dragged to the street later, and started peeling the plastic off so the mattress could expand for twenty-four hours as the instructions insisted. Except once I got the outer layer of plastic off and unrolled that sucker, there was another layer of plastic. Good for the company for taking care, but that plastic was a bitch to get off.
I took a plastic break and dragged the skinny little couch and the flimsy side tables and coffee table out and to the side of the drive so that the only things left in the main room were the two armchairs which were old and dusty but comfy if you could avoid the springs, and a couple of mismatched ottomans so I could put my feet up, and now my shrink-wrapped mattress, yearning to breathe free, sitting on the dusty floor.
Cleaning stuff,I thought, for the first time in my life, and drove to Walmart and got a broom and a dustpan, sheets and pillows and zippered dust protector covers and plain blue pillowcases because sex is better if you’re not sneezing from dust and banging your head on a porch floor. And then I really lost my grip and got a dust buster and a set of dishes: four square plain white heavy plates, four bowls, and four mugs. Minimalist. I threw in dishwashing liquid—the blue stuff—and scrubber sponges—the blue ones—and paper towels and spray cleaner, and by the time I checked out, I was feeling like a Natural Homeowner.
Which was all very well and good, but now I needed to get serious about those damn copy edits.
I got back, cleaned out the cupboards, put my dishes away, stuck the cleaning stuff under the sink, made myself a cup of mocha, and sat in one of my newly vacuumed chairs, carefully to avoid a particularly aggressive spring, put my feet up on a newly vacuumed ottoman, and realized my heart was beating fast. I owned a house. I owneddishes. If I opened the back door, I could see paradise. I felt like Eve, vast possibilities spreading out before me. I even had a great Adam.
Given it was my life, there was probably a snake in there somewhere, too, but I could handle snakes. Hell, I’d said no to Cash and all his offers of apples.
Flushed with virtue and possibility, I went back to work and thought about Anemone’s changes in the copy edit. It wasn’t like she hadn’t had input into the entire book, so why all these changes now? I went through and looked at the things she’d crossed out and rewritten, and they were all pull-backs, places where she evidently thought she’d been indiscreet or too . . . honest? Second thoughts.
Anemone was not a second thoughts kind of person. So what had changed her mind? What had shifted in her life that she was second-guessing herself?
Me. Burney. George.
She’d come to Burney to rescue me and met the police chief and bought a house, and now she was trying to fit in. To Burney. It was like a flamingo trying to wear sensible shoes. Plus she had George running for mayor . . . .
If I went back to the Pink House and she really was wearing sensible shoes, we were going to have a come-to-Jesus moment—
Somebody knocked on the door.
I turned to see a petite, sharp-faced woman in giant red-framed sunglasses with wild curly dark hair leaning sideways from the very secure door to peer through the porch window at me. She was wearing a bright red backpack and what looked to be a white silk shirt, and my first thought was,That is not a neighbor.
I put down the edit and went over to open the door.
“Well, this is going to be a challenge,” the woman said, trying to peer around me.
“That’s rude,” I said, as if I were talking to Peri. She was about the same height.
