Fixed in Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

and hoisted herself up and onto her deck. “Give me five minutes to wash my hands and pull a comb through this mop and I’ll be right over.”
    Mort leaned back in his lawn chair and surveyed the Monday evening activity on the lake. The air was warm, and the low rays of the setting sun cast ribbons of gold across the water. A fellow wearing a weathered Seahawks cap waved as he rowed past in a small bathtub of a boat. Mort didn’t know his name, but the guy passed his house often about this time of day, and the two of them always acknowledged the other. That was one of the things Mort liked about houseboat living. Folks were polite and helpful if you needed them, but for the most part everybody kept to themselves—satisfied with a relationship based on passing nods and smiles and the occasional comment about the weather. He considered how different it was when he lived in the house he and Edie bought just after they were married.
We stayed there almost thirty years,
he thought.
The whole neighborhood raised one another’s kids. Knew each other’s business.
He thought about how it was the perfect place for that time in his life. But with Edie dead three years now and Robbie married with two daughters of his own, the big house didn’t seem right for the current chapter of Mort’s life. It was true he bought the houseboat on impulse, and there was a time he wasn’t certain he’d last a month on the water. But he’d been here nearly a year, and it was feeling more and more like home. He turned and smiled as one of the main reasons his floating life felt so comfortable crossed the boardwalk separating their houses and stepped onto his boat.
    “Stay there,” Agatha commanded. “You need another?”
    Mort held up his bottle. “Just sat down. Haven’t taken my first sip.”
    “Well, hang on. I’ll raid your fridge and join you.” Agatha was back on Mort’s deck in less than a minute, Guinness in hand. He liked how she took care of herself. He never had to worry about serving or tending Agatha. She settled her lean and tanned body into the chair next to him and clinked her bottle against his.
    “To another day in paradise.”
    “I’ll drink to that.” Mort took a long sip. “You been busy?”
    Agatha kept her eyes on the water as she answered. “Same old. Met the crew down at Bindy’s for breakfast. You’ll be happy to know Cissy Callaway sold her first book. New author, small house, but still. That first sale’s something you always remember.”
    Agatha retired at age eighty after a long and acclaimed career as a literary agent. She represented authors across a variety of genres, some of whose names even Mort recognized. Edie had always been the reader in the family, and Mort knew she’d get a kick out of his attempts to discuss the world of books with his accomplished neighbor. Though no longer actively negotiating for her client list, Agatha kept her hand in the business by mentoring young agents. Her only criteria were that they be serious about finding and nurturing talent and that they be women. She once told Mort the best thing about retirement was she no longer had to play the role of deferential less-than to the men who called the shots in the old boys’ network of major publishing. She met the three women she called her “crew” for breakfast twice a week. While Mort knew nothing about what it meant to be an agent, he was certain the women she mentored were well served by his brilliant and no-nonsense neighbor and friend.
    “Well, good for Cissy,” he said.
    “Then I put in my time down at Crestwood.” Agatha referred to her volunteer reading gig at a nearby elementary school. “Came home, got to work sanding that front deck. I got about a third of it done.” She pointed to the railings on Mort’s boat. “Wouldn’t hurt you to get busy on your own, mister. Houseboat’s not like a land house. You can’t let maintenance slip by. The water’s beautiful, but it’s harsh.”
    Mort took