Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

A
crash sounded in the other room, followed by a string of Allie’s muttered curses.   

“Child
done knocked that stepladder over again.”  Josie Simmons’ broad back shimmied as she rolled out dough on the marble counter, the morning light picking out threads of gray in her curly dark hair.  “Clumsy as two oxen with boxes on their heads.”

“Don’t look at me.”  Sarah continued to
brush pale blue paint over the trim.  “You’re the one that raised her.” 
 

She didn’t turn, because she suspected
Josie was giving her The Look.

Josie
’d been the Hawbaker’s housekeeper for as long as anyone cared to remember, a role that had spilled over to include child-rearing more often than not, which – given her friendship with Allie – meant that she’d practically raised Sarah as well.  Josie baked like an angel, ran the house like a ship and did not suffer fools. 

“Raised
four
children not to sass.  Their friends, can’t do nothin’ about their poor manners.”

Sarah
prudently hid her smile.  Josie would never admit it, but she enjoyed their verbal skirmishes.  And more, the fact that the work – and its frustrations – was bringing some fire into Allie again. 

I
f Sarah allowed herself to be honest, she had to admit it was giving herself a spark or two.  At one time, she hadn’t been able to get away from this town fast enough.  But now that she was back, she found herself not so much comforted by the familiar rhythm as excited to be adding a new and different beat.  And speaking of new beats…

“He’s back.”
 

“Who’s back?
  Austin?”

Sa
rah turned to see a worried Allie frowning in the doorway.  Paint dotted her hair like confetti, her formerly neat T-shirt damp from sweat.

“Not
Austin.”  He was still cooling his heels in the county jail for shooting his brother in the foot. Both he and Jonas had finally been evicted, and Jonas – much to Sarah’s relief – seemed to have skipped town. 

But the man outside the window looked like he’d been cut from the same strip of big, burly, troublemaking cloth. 

“Sarah’s
spyin’ on the new fella next door.”  Josie shot a look of disapproval from under her brows as she sprinkled sugar crystals on the cookies.    

“Someone’s moving in?”  Allie snagged a bottle of water from the
new refrigerator before joining Sarah at the window. The vivid blue balls of Mildred’s hydrangeas – which were blooming spectacularly under her care, if Sarah did say so herself – bobbed outside the glass.         

“
I’ve only caught glimpses,” Sarah told her. “But I think there’re two men.  One looks like Sasquatch.  I couldn’t see the other one because he was behind a mattress at the time.”

“Maybe they’re the movers.  Like
Two Guys and a Truck.”

Sarah snorted.  “
More like Two Ex-Cons and a Stolen U-Haul.”

Muttering something about city
living turning Sarah mean, Josie pushed a used mixing bowl toward the sink. “If you’re gonna stand there gawking, least you could do is make yourself useful.”

Sarah
ran the bowl under the shiny new faucet, then shifted her attention back to the window.  A golden-haired man came out of the truck, descending the ramp like a god venturing forth from Mount Olympus.  Instead of a lightning bolt, he carried a pole lamp. 

“Holy shit.”

“Move over.”  The stepstool Allie grabbed bumped against Sarah’s legs, and she shifted out of the way.  Eyes popping wide, Allie leaned forward to get a better look.

“Paint’s wet,” Sarah said mildly, just as Allie
swore and pulled her hand away.

“What are y’all looking at?”

Sarah turned to see Josie smacking the hand of Allie’s older brother Will, who was lifting two cherry oatmeal cookies from the cooling rack.

Will danced out of Josie’s reach
before ambling over, those distinctive Hawbaker blue eyes sleepy.  He peered over Sarah’s head, one of the few men she knew who was able to do so.  His eyebrows shot up, but his voice when he spoke was grim. “I guess Pettigrew found another renter.”

“Looks like,” Sarah agreed, returning her attention to the window just in time to see Zeus casually whip
off his shirt.

Will grabbed Allie’s water bottle
as she dropped it.  “Christ.” He rolled his eyes, then turned indignantly toward Josie, who’d scooted around the marble-topped island to jab him with her rolling pin.  “
What?
All I said was –”

“I heard what you said, Willis Morrison Hawbaker. 
Tie yuh mout’.
” 

“Why are you telling
me
to hush?”  Will frowned.  “I just got here.”

“Spyin
g on unsuspectin’ folk like some kind of peepers.” Josie started pounding hazelnuts for a cake.  “It ain’t decent.”

“Oh, like you didn’t have your nose pressed to the window every time one of us pulled up in the driveway with a date.”

“That’s different.”  Josie sniffed.  “It was my job to look after you.”

“Yeah, well, now it’s my job to look after the citizens of this town.  I’m the
acting Chief of Police,” he reminded her, not sounding all that happy about it.  “Their problems are my problems.”

“Where’s the other guy?”  Allie asked.

“There’s another one?”  Will shook his head, obviously picturing large groups of hormonally crazed women making Boundary Street impassable to vehicular traffic.

“Don’t worry.”  Sarah waved his disquiet aside with a sweep of her hand.  “The other one struggles to walk upright.  High testosterone, low brow.  Perhaps Zeus out there keeps him as a guard dog.  Like Cerberus.”

“You know.” Will snagged a handful of crushed nuts.  “I think Josie might have a point.”

“Hmmph,” Josie said to Will’s back, just as Allie interjected. “There he is.  He’s…”

“Scary?”  Sarah suggested, checking out the man she’d spotted earlier.  He looked even bigger and darker in the sun-drenched morning, like he’d sucked up all the light around him.  A human black hole.

“
He’s not that bad,” Allie said mildly, and Sarah wondered if Josie was right. 

Had she gotten cynical?  Or had
she allowed her ill-will toward both Pettigrew and his former tenants – particularly Austin – to cast a shadow on what could be a perfectly pleasant man.  After all, it wasn’t like her to make such a snap and biased judgment.  She studied him again.

“He looks like
he eats puppies for breakfast.”

“I bet if he shaved,
and cut his hair, he wouldn’t look quite so threatening.  In fact,” Allie tilted her head “he’s… crap.”  She dropped from the chair, crouching into a fretful ball beneath the window.  “He saw me looking.”

Sarah and Will both lifted their gazes from the tiny woman on the floor to the
enormous man outside.  Sure enough, there he stood, feet braced apart, brawny shoulders thrown back, dark head lowered like an angry bull.  He was too far away for her to see his eyes clearly, but Sarah gathered they weren’t dancing gaily with amusement.

“Well now. This is just exactly how I like to introduce myself to new Sweetwater residents.”  Will lifted
the water bottle in mock salute.  “Thank you, ladies.”  He glowered down at his sister.  “It would appear that I now have to go smooth things over with your new neighbor before he starts calling my own office to complain.” 

TUCKER
Pettigrew watched the man step off the back porch of the place next door, and resigned himself to social interaction.  The uniform said cop.

He probably should have resisted the urge to engage any of them, in any fashion, but he was an
noyed.  Bad enough that the redhead had been blatantly
staring at him
for the better part of the morning, but she’d managed to draw a crowd.  After he’d gotten the mattress and box spring in place on the bed frame, he’d come back out to find that two dark-haired individuals had joined her at the window.

He doubted it went beyond what he thought of as a typical small town mindset – infatuation with one’s neighbor’s doings – but regardless, it was irritating as hell.  Did he
look
like he wanted to encourage attention?  He should have moved in the middle of the damn night.

T
he same way he’d left this town almost thirty years ago.

Of course, equally plausible, they could care less about him, and had merely been drawn to the spectacle that was Mason Armitage. 

Tucker sighed.

Mason had insisted that no one in this little backwater would possibly recognize a British thespian were one to bite the local citizenry on its collective ass, so Tucker had
allowed him to tag along. But now here he was, stupidly giving Mason the opportunity to take his shirt off in a semi-public forum. 

Mason – poor, beleaguered creature of beauty that he was – was used to people running into walls when they got
their first look at him.   He probably hadn’t even
noticed
that there were now three individuals next door, staring.

Well, two of them were still staring. One of them was walking this way.

“Hey there.”  The cop, about Tucker’s height, which put him a few inches over six feet, lifted a hand in greeting as he hopped off the porch.  Tucker sized him up, all easygoing smile and lanky limbs, and eyes that looked like he’d just climbed out of a hammock. 

The police in New York would chew this guy up and use his shinbone to pick their teeth.

“Hello,” Tucker said as the man ambled toward him, wending his way around some kind of bushes with nearly fluorescent white blossoms.  The breeze picked up, and Tucker caught a whiff of the flowers’ perfume.

“Will Hawbaker.  I’m
acting Chief of Police here in Sweetwater.”  The guy stuck out his hand and Tucker shook automatically, but something had stirred in his memory.  The accent, the cadence of the man’s speech was familiar, but Tucker had been prepared for that.

It was t
he smell, he realized
.
  Glancing back at the flower, he had a flash of a small woman with light hair, smiling as she plucked one from the bush.

H
is heart squeezed, and the blurred image faded away. 

He turned back to the cop. 
“Acting Chief?”

“Open he
art surgery,” the other man explained.  “I’m filling in until Chief Harbin comes back.”

“Ah.”  A beat passed, and the cop said “You never mentioned your name.”

Tucker was hoping that he wouldn’t have noticed.  “Tucker.”

Hawbaker’s head tilted to the side.  “Would that be your first name, or your last?”

Tucker thought about this for a second.  “Both.”

“Tucker
Tucker
.”

“Well.”  He considered that absurdity.  “Generally not at the same time.”

Something in the cop’s eyes suggested he might not be quite as easygoing as Tucker initially guessed.  “Judging by your accent, Mr.
Tucker,
I’d say you’re not from around here.”

“New York,” Tucker agreed, and Hawbaker’s expression clearly said
well that explains it.

“Hey Pettigrew.”  Tucker winced as Mason’s
stage-trained voice boomed from inside the belly of the truck. It echoed off the metal sides so that Tucker’s last name bounced around as clearly as a shiny red ball between them.  He’d hoped to keep that to himself for oh, say, an
hour
or two, until he’d had a chance to get the lay of the land. No telling what kind of reaction his arrival would generate.

A
pparently it was something of a big deal to be named Pettigrew in Sweetwater.

“Are you going to fanny around all morning?” his own personal albatross bellowed.  “Let’s get on with it before I’m totally knackered.  This heat is bloody… oh.”   He emerged from the yellow beast, his sour expression shifting into something beatific as seamlessly as the tide.  “Mornin’ Officer.”  And there went the accent.  “Didn’t see y’all there.”

The cop was definitely awake now.  “Pettigrew?” he glared at Tucker.

“Perhaps
we got off on the wrong foot.”

“Perhaps
you’d like to tell me your name again.”

Tucker knew his rights, and the fact was Hawbaker was basically trespassing without
cause or consent.  But he reminded himself that this was Sweetwater, South Carolina and about as far from New York as he could get, culturally speaking.   Telling the top cop – acting or not – to go to hell was probably frowned upon in these parts.  Plus, he’d come here for a change of pace, some quiet. Maybe even some peace.  Landing himself in the local pokey would be a rather antithetical start.