The Bone Orchard: A Novel (Mike Bowditch Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

and scuffed L.L.Bean boots. “And now I look like a lumberjack?”
    “You wear it well, though.”
    There was a shine in her eyes that made me think the cocktail hour had already started back at their cabin.
    I offered her the bottle of wine. “I brought this.”
    She glanced briefly at the label. “We already have a couple of bottles of Pinot Grigio chilling in the fridge. But we can drink this one tomorrow.” It was my understanding they were leaving in the morning. She set the bottle down on the lacquered table beside her chair as if it was something she planned on leaving behind. “Did you ever reach the game warden about those scary guys?”
    “I left another message.”
    It didn’t surprise me that Jeremy Bard was ignoring my calls, given our mutual dislike for each other. I’d probably made a mistake not contacting the state police dispatcher directly and reporting the men for criminal threatening.
    “I’ve never had anyone pull a gun on me,” Mason said from his armchair. “It felt like something out of the Wild, Wild West.”
    “More like the Wild, Wild East,” Maddie said.
    Mason removed a neatly folded handkerchief from his chino pockets and used one of the corners to clean his tortoiseshell glasses. “You must have seen stuff like that all the time. How long were you a game warden, Mike?”
    “Three years, more or less.”
    “What made you decide to change careers?”
    His girlfriend scowled at him. “Mason!”
    “It’s all right,” I said. “I realized that being outdoors was what I loved most about the work and that there were other jobs where I could be in the woods without having people shoot at me.”
    He leaned forward. “You were actually shot at?”
    “From time to time.”
    I wasn’t going to tell him that one of the bullets had found its mark. Mason would just want me to roll up my shirt so he could see the scar on my chest—more like an indelible bruise really—where my ballistic vest had stopped a 9mm round from a Glock 19.
    “I’m fascinated by police work,” he said. “I think it’s because I could never imagine going into such a dangerous profession myself. I prefer to take risks with my client’s money rather than with my own life.” He had a disarming smile. “Did I just call myself a coward?”
    I admired the sense of humor he had about himself.
    “Most cowards I’ve met won’t admit to being afraid, so I doubt you really are one.”
    “You haven’t seen him around spiders,” Maddie said.
    “Some of them are poisonous! Have you ever heard of the brown recluse?”
    The door opened behind me, and I heard fast-paced female voices raised in conversation. A group of four young women dressed in bright-colored Patagonia rainwear and muddy hiking boots hurried in out of the mist. As I stepped out of their way, I found myself unexpectedly face-to-face with the woman I considered the love of my life.
    Stacey Stevens had long brown hair tied in a ponytail, light green eyes, and the lean body of an Olympic pole-vaulter. Her chin was probably a little too prominent, a genetic inheritance from her father, who had a jaw like the toe of a boot. The high cheekbones came from her stunningly attractive mother. I knew men who didn’t find Stacey particularly good-looking—“too bony,” they said—but to me, she was the most beautiful human being on the planet.
    She’d been avoiding me for months, ever since I’d made public some unpleasant information about her then fiancé, Matt Skillen, while I was still a game warden. My discovery had precipitated the end of their relationship. Stacey seemed to be taking out her humiliation on me.
    “Hello, Stacey,” I said.
    “Oh, hello.” She continued with her friends into the dining room.
    When I returned to my clients, I saw that Maddie was looking at me with a quizzical smile.

 
    5
    At dinner I took a chair that gave me a view of the table where Stacey was eating with her friends. She had positioned herself so that her