Daddy's Little Matchmaker. Roz Fox Denny

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СКАЧАТЬ frowned slightly. “Vestal didn’t sound dotty. But I s’pose she is gettin’ on in years. Ralph’s mama’s not as old as your grandma, and that woman’s plumb gone off the deep end.” Launching a diatribe against her mother-in-law, Eva followed Alan to the door.

      “Thanks,” he said, all but running from the shop. Alan didn’t stop to study the address until he was in the Jeep and had the motor running. Then his jaw dropped.

      Laurel Ashline lived in Hazel Bell’s old cottage. The first of two tucked deep in a grove of sycamore and red maple trees—a scant few miles from the source of the spring gushing down Bell Hill. That spring was at the core of Alan’s current problem. Hardy Duff insisted they had to tap into it in order to expand Windridge; he wanted to add a hundred new mash barrels per each milling process.

      Alan was well aware that the water they used, rich with essential minerals and naturally filtered through Kentucky limestone, made Windridge bourbon one of the most sought-after whiskeys in the world. What he didn’t know was how Laurel Ashline had ended up living next to a coveted stream that really belonged to him and his family.

      Alan might not know, but he intended to find out. With or without an offering of fruit or roses, he thought, wedging the vase between the passenger seat and his center console.

      He fumed to himself all the way from town, taking a shortcut fire road that bisected his property from the Bells’ land. What they claimed was their land. He made the mental correction as he got out to open a gate posted with a Private Property—Keep Out sign. For the first time, he wondered if his grandmother knew the Ashline woman had settled in quarters they owned. Well, maybe owned. He revised that thought, too. According to the clerk he’d spoken with earlier, Hazel Bell hadn’t done anything illegal.

      Hazel and Ted had met the state statute for filing squatter’s rights. Jason Ridge, Alan’s grandfather, had issued a temporary deed, which gave Ted the right to erect two dwellings. The couple had resided in one cottage long enough to qualify them as land claimants, otherwise known as squatters, according to a historic act that had apparently never been removed from the county statutes. Such folks had the right to petition for ownership of land they’d improved and occupied for twenty years. Clearly, no Ridge had suspected the Bells would ever file.

      Alan didn’t understand all the legal mumbo jumbo. And Windridge’s business attorney was in Europe on vacation. There was little Alan could do until Dale Patton returned. Except…he could determine who’d let Laurel Ashline move in. Hazel had been dead and buried for over a year. Alan could attest to that, as he and Vestal had attended her funeral. It was then that they’d learned of her treachery. Hazel’s lawyer, an upstart from Lexington, had paid her outstanding bills and practically thumbed his nose at locals over the squatting.

      Now Alan wracked his brain and tried to recall who else had been at the service. A van filled with mostly middle-aged women had shown up at the last minute, making a total of maybe fifteen. Sad for someone who’d lived her entire life in Ridge City. But as Vestal had pointed out, Hazel had cut herself off from neighbors.

      Alan supposed Laurel Ashline must’ve been in the van. He knew Hazel was involved in local craft fairs. Ted had complained often enough that his wife spent more time with her “artsy-fartsy friends” than she did at home doing what he figured wives should do. Alan guessed that meant cooking, cleaning and the like.

      He never commiserated, because he didn’t share Ted’s belief, and because his wife had acted in a similar fashion. Not that Emily ran with an arts crowd. She’d spent her days—and nights—with the horsey set. Racehorses. Down in Louisville. Alan had rarely seen her during the months leading up to the Kentucky Derby. But race season was long over when Emily had had her accident, which was why Alan had such a hard time understanding why she’d been on that particular road. He knew what people whispered, though.

      Even now his stomach pitched at the memory of the call from the state police. He forced his mind onto other subjects. Such as what questions he ought to ask when he arrived at Laurel Ashline’s door—about two minutes from now.

      Pulling up, Alan parked on the west side of the stream near the footbridge leading to the largest of the Bell cottages. Ted had built the second, smaller place for Hazel’s crafts. Down-home items sold like hotcakes to summer tourists.

      If he’d hoped to find the structures in major disrepair, he was sadly disappointed. The oiled-wood siding on both buildings looked to be in pristine shape. Slate-blue trim gleamed as if newly painted. All around the cottage, a profusion of crocuses and daffodils created a riot of color against the bright green of trees just beginning to burst with spring leaves.

      Absently, Alan reached back to retrieve the vase with its pale-pink rosebuds. They seemed puny compared to the Ashline woman’s garden.

      Not for the first time, Alan considered forgetting about this stupid mission. Except, it had never been said of Ridge men that they were cowardly. Hitching up the belt of his well-worn jeans, he thrust a hand through his freshly cut hair, which still bore a cowlick. Alan slammed the Jeep door and set out across the footbridge. He’d taken two steps onto the spongy wooden slats when a huge, snarling dog flew from around the left corner of the cottage, running straight at him. Black ears laid flat spoke of the animal’s displeasure at seeing a stranger. A second look at the black muzzle, lips curled over gleaming white incisors, had Alan edging back the way he’d come.

      He tried softly cajoling, muttering, “Good dog,” several times, to no avail. After which he resorted to shouting for the dog’s owner. “Ms. Ashline! Laurel? Hey, could you come out and call off your watchdog?”

      He got no response. But Alan would swear the white lace curtains covering the largest window moved. And wasn’t that the shadow of a human form appearing briefly behind a rip in the lace?

      Maybe that was wishful thinking. Gripping the neck of the vase, Alan scanned the hill behind the cottage. Between the upper and lower dwellings, two horses poked their heads over a split rail corral.

      Alan had assumed, maybe wrongly, that someone was home, based on the battered pickup beside which he’d parked his Jeep. It occurred to him now that she could be out riding. Although… He glared suspiciously at the window again. Was it logical to leave her monster dog to watch the house instead of taking him along for protection? Hell, maybe her bite was worse than her dog’s.

      He knew absolutely nothing about Laurel Ashline, except that she had a sexy voice. He probably should’ve gleaned more details from his grandmother. Or from Eva Saxon, who loved sharing gossip more than anything else on earth.

      He felt like a fool standing here, clutching a vase of pink rosebuds, squared off with a snarling dog. Yet it was obvious the German shepherd wasn’t going to let him cross.

      Hitting on a new plan, Alan dug out his cell phone and punched in the number written on the crumpled business card. She might be working in the upper cottage. He had no idea whether looms made more noise than that fool dog. He frankly doubted it, but then he knew nothing about weaving.

      The phone rang and rang. If he took the cell away from his ear, he could hear it ring in the cottage across the way. Listening through at least twenty rings, he finally swore again, closed the phone, and stowed it away. That was when he noticed the garbage can sitting near his Jeep. Damned if sticking out of it wasn’t a still-wrapped basket of fruit.

      “Phew! Stinko!” Striding up to the container, Alan waved away a swarm of flies and saw that the fruit had rotted. He would bet ten to one that Ms. Ashline had read the card Vestal had composed in his name and then tossed the whole thing in the trash. Hell, the proof was staring at him. She had tossed away a kind gesture, lock, СКАЧАТЬ