Digging Up Trouble

president.

She’d know one way or another.

Thank goodness I’d already been paid for the job.

No refunds.

Not that I could see Bill and Lindsey asking for one. Not after all they put me through.

I’d decided not to sue them unless I was sued by Greta.

Unlike the Fallow Falls community, I wasn’t lawsuit happy.

But I could hold a grudge. And I did against the Lockharts. They’d out and out used me.

But hadn’t you used them? my inner voice asked.

No.

Maybe.

Kinda-sorta.

Okay, so I’d wanted to know about Kevin’s first wife . . .

That wasn’t a crime. I’d still planned to do a good job for them.

And look where it’d landed me. With a pending lawsuit, possible murder charges, and no information—nada, zip, nothing—on Leah Quinn.

I finished the bathroom, tidied up, locked the house. As I backed out of my driveway on my way to work, I saw Mr.

Cabrera watering his flower beds. Boom-Boom sat on his front step, keeping him company.

She apparently hadn’t heard about Mr. Cabrera’s curse yet.

Brickhouse would be thrilled to pieces.

Speaking of Brickhouse, I needed to mentally prepare myself for her gloating. I’d planned to visit Tam sometime during the day. I couldn’t imagine it was any fun being in the hospital all day with nothing to do. And though she and Ian were now living together, she didn’t have any family in the area. Thankfully, I had plenty to spare, and I made a quick Digging Up Trouble

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call to my mother, who would have Tam surrounded by lasagnas and bear hugs before sunset.

TBS was locked tight when I got there. The chimes still hung from the door, but they didn’t sound as harmonious as before. I plucked a boxwood stem from one of the pipes and went to check my messages.

There were six from Deanna, who apparently was having a panic attack over her solo job today. Thankfully, Kit would be there to keep her sane.

As I popped open a Dr Pepper, I wondered if Deanna really had a crush on Kit or if she was just playing with him. I hoped it was the latter, because Deanna was young and sweet and I didn’t want her to have a broken heart.

I sat at my desk, answered relevant e-mails, deleted spam, except for the ad for hair growth, which I forwarded to Kit’s e-mail. He’d appreciate the joke, I was sure.

For an hour I returned phone calls from clients and potential clients. Apparently the dead guy on the news hadn’t hurt business too much, but I had to wonder what the fallout would be from Greta’s potential lawsuit and the murder charges.

On a whim, I picked up the phone and called Lindsey Lockhart to see if she’d had any luck convincing Greta not to sue. She seemed surprised to hear from me, though I couldn’t imagine why.

It wasn’t every day someone tricked me into doing a backyard makeover for someone else.

“Nina, I’m so sorry about everything that happened.

Greta’s just grief-stricken. When she comes to her senses she’ll understand.”

“Have you talked with her?”

“Well, no. I tried, but she wouldn’t open the door.”

I drew my thumb along the edge of my desk.

120

Heather Webber

Would Greta change her mind? She’d seemed more angry than grief-stricken to me, and I wondered again what kind of marriage she and Russ had had. And asked.

“They’d been married a long time, Nina. Everyone has problems when you’ve been married forty years.”

“Forty years? Really?”

A daddy longlegs crawled along the windowsill. I rolled my chair over to the window, opened it, and helped Daddy outside. He didn’t make it, but instead started crawling up the screen.

“She was eighteen when they married. She’d been an ap-prentice bookkeeper at a shoe shop and he was her boss.

Love at first sight, Greta told me.”