In His Wife's Name. Joyce Sullivan

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      Chapter Two

      Shannon was deeply relieved when Luke’s references all checked out. Even though the southern Okanagan wasn’t exactly teeming with crime, it had been risky to allow a stranger to change her truck’s flat tire. Even riskier to offer him a job out of the blue. But she’d taken all the right precautions by not giving Luke her phone number or home address until after she’d verified his references. She just hoped he would work out until she could find a more permanent replacement.

      Luke’s brother-in-law hadn’t sounded pleased that Luke was taking on a part-time job. But the two clients who’d returned her calls last night had raved about his reliability and his finish work.

      And Luke had been willing to start this morning. Surely it was the prospect of getting some work done this afternoon that made her heart race with anticipation when she heard his sedan pull into her drive right on time, wasn’t it?

      LUKE SHOWED UP for his first day on the job determined to make substantial headway into solving the mystery of Mary Calder. Yesterday after he’d made arrangements for his phony references, he’d checked her phone number and discovered she only had a business line listed under her company’s name, not a residential one under her own name. Then he’d spent a half hour combing the listings for Calder in the phone book for Blossom Valley and the nearby towns, but none of the three Calders he’d dialed had acknowledged being related to Mary. However, one elderly gent had offered the information that Luke wasn’t the only one who’d called seeking a woman by the same name.

      Luke eyed dispassionately the tidy white cottage with crisp blue trim on the porch rails and the gray weatherbeaten detached garage, which were set back in a stand of trees. Two oak-barrel halves overflowing with salmon geraniums and mounds of white flowers marked the beginning of a stepping-stone path that wended its way to the cottage’s front door. A patchy lawn, bare in spots, stretched down to the cattail-fringed shore of Kettle Lake.

      Luke felt his body tense as he climbed out of the sedan. Somehow the prospect of seeing Mary again made him feel as if he was entering a war zone populated with more enemy troops than allies.

      Mary emerged from the cottage as he reached the stone path. “Hi, Luke!” she called out. The welcoming sunny warmth of her smile hit him like a sharp blow to the ribs. Without the thirty pounds of equipment and body armor he usually wore while on duty, Luke felt exposed and vulnerable to the emotional rounds her every look and gesture seemed to inflict on him.

      With her flaxen hair glinting in the sunlight and her lighthearted step, Mary looked the picture of innocence in blue-and-white candy-striped overall shorts and a white tank top. She wore red running shoes painted with black dabs that made each foot look like a wedge of watermelon, and white cotton socks edged with blue hand-crocheted lace. Luke dredged up a smile and tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. A massive weight settled in his stomach as if he’d swallowed rocks for breakfast. Nothing was more important to him than finding out who had murdered his wife. “Hi yourself,” he replied. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

      “It’s beautiful. I just put Samantha down in her crib for her nap. If we’re lucky she’ll go to sleep, and I can give you an uninterrupted tour of my workshop. It’s out here in the garage….”

      She was babbling. Was he making her nervous? Or was she worried about the baby? Or the threat against her life yesterday? Luke noticed she carried a portable baby monitor in her hand. He fell into step beside her and tried to act casual as she led him to the detached garage. But he felt more awkward than an adolescent on a first date. Fortunately Mary was doing enough talking to carry both sides of the conversation.

      She paused to unlock the door and flick on the overhead fluorescent lights. “I’m warning you, my workshop is small, but functional.”

      She wasn’t exaggerating. Luke examined the collection of power tools she had skillfully crammed into the one-car garage, which was little more than a shack constructed of decaying cedar siding. At least it had a window, albeit a small one, to bring in some light and ventilation.

      It wasn’t every day he met a woman who knew a jigsaw from a scroll saw, much less wasn’t afraid of the whine or the ten-inch gleaming blade of a miter saw. Luke was frankly impressed that this Mary Calder seemed totally in her element, ankle-deep in sawdust. His wife had always tiptoed into his workshop as if getting sawdust on her three-hundred-dollar shoes and tracking sawdust into the other parts of the house were indictable offenses.

      But why would someone want to hurt this Mary?

      Luke detected an unmistakable wariness in her hazel eyes as she spoke to him, the same wariness he’d glimpsed fleetingly yesterday. It was the same hunted look perps wore when he questioned them on the street. Gut instinct told him there was something lurking here behind Mary’s bright smiles. He hoped, with time, that he could convince her to share her fears. Meanwhile, he’d provide protection for her and her daughter. Not that he was armed. Only federal police officers could transport firearms from one province to another.

      As she opened a cupboard to show him where she stored her reversible electrical drill and bits, Luke could hear via the monitor Samantha noisily sucking on a bottle.

      “Are these your husband’s tools?” he asked mildly. He had noted the absence of a wedding band yesterday when he was changing the truck’s tire.

      She looked startled. “No. They’re all mine. I took up crafting after Samantha’s father died.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      She waved away his sympathy with a flustered smile, setting the baby monitor on the workbench beside a plastic file box filled with manila files. She pulled some patterns from two of the files. “Basically I’ve got forty-plus designs in my Garden Patch collection that I sell to retailers in the area. About half my designs are seasonal items. My busiest periods are Christmas, Halloween and Easter, though business is brisk in the summer with the tourists. The files here contain all the patterns you’ll be using. The patterns clearly indicate how many pieces must be cut per finished item. And I usually make a note on the inside of the file folder how many pieces can be cut from a particular dimension of lumber.” She pointed to a pile of lumber stacked on a couple of sawhorses. “These pine one-by-eights are for a rush order of letter boxes and welcome signs.” She laid the patterns out on two of the planks, her quick fingers minutely adjusting the placement of each pattern piece. “I’ll need a dozen signs and eight letter boxes as soon as possible.”

      Luke slid his hand over the surface СКАЧАТЬ