Too Close to Home Read Online Free PDF Page B

so that accounts for the Volvo dealership.
    Once you get past the newer subdivisions that surround the town, you reach the old part, which is big on charm with its hundred-year-old houses and large lots, like a lot of places in this part of the state and nearby Vermont. Big trees, a main street with lots of small businesses that have managed to hang on even after the Wal-Mart showed up. We had Mayor Randall Finley to thank for its arrival. He brushed off the local business association’s concerns about the monster retailer, saying they could do with a little competition, that it wasn’t enough to be quaint and charming, you had to give people value for their dollar.
    Finley had managed to offend so many people in town, it amazed me he’d been reelected. But he had a constituency out there that loved it when he stuck it to unions and special interests and those who didn’t live up to some moral code voters were under the impression Finley himself adhered to. There were probably more than a few residents of Promise Falls who loved it that he’d barged in on the unwed mothers and given them a piece of his mind, and a little something extra.
    “So what did you end up doing last night?” I asked, still attempting to draw Derek out. “I never heard you come in. I crashed early, went right into a coma. You see Penny?”
    He’d been seeing Penny Tucker for a month or more now, and the few times she’d been by the house she struck me as a sweet kid. I could only imagine the limericks teenage boys might come up with that involved her last name.
    “No,” Derek said. “She was grounded.”
    “Why? What she do?”
    “Banged up the car.”
    “Oh no. Bad?”
    “No.”
    “What she hit?”
    “The bumper.”
    “On what?”
    “Telephone pole.”
    “She going to have to pay to have it fixed?”
    “Don’t know.”
    Jesus, it was like pulling teeth. And then, for the first time, I noticed something different about my son.
    “When did you stop wearing that little stud thing in your ear?” I asked. “The peace sign.”
    He reached up and touched his left earlobe, where there was a tiny dimple from a piercing, but no jewelry. Derek shrugged. “I don’t know. It fell out or something. I lost it a while ago.”
    We did the Simpson place first. A medium-sized property, no hills, nothing tricky. I assigned Derek to the tractor, since he likes riding it, thinking that if I started him with something he enjoyed, his disposition would improve. I did the trimming, then got out a mower for the spots the tractor couldn’t easily reach.
    Mrs. Simpson came out with a glass of water for each of us, which we gratefully accepted. I could see her husband standing back in the kitchen, looking our way slightly disapprovingly. I knew his type. We were the hired help, and if we needed water, we should know enough to bring it with us, or at least take it from the garden hose like we were a couple of golden retrievers. Mrs. Simpson, however, was not a shit like her husband.
    Then all we had to do was blow the clippings off the drive, which Derek looked after. We were there barely an hour, and just as we were getting back into the truck, we were approached by a skinny kid about Derek’s age, with thick black hair and skin so white you had to wonder if he’d been getting tanned by a refrigerator bulb, wearing a pair of shorts that had at least a dozen pockets all over them. He came up to my window.
    “You hiring?” he asked. He handed me a slip of paper from a wad of flyers he was holding. I glanced at it and read, “Stuart Yost. Odd Jobs.” And a phone number.
    “Sorry,” I said, handing the flyer to Derek, who jammed it into the glove box. “I got my son here working with me.”
    “I’m just looking for something for the rest of the summer,” he said.
    “Nearly the end of July, Stuart,” I said. “Kinda late, isn’t it? Another month and you’ll be back in school.”
    “I had one but I lost it,” he said. He shrugged.