“Rotten boards. The porch needs to be rebuilt. Can’t rebuild until you demo.”
“New porch, Buddy the plumber—who seems to know his stuff, by the way—assorted subcontractors. Sounds like you’re planning to fix the place up.”
“I am. You look like you’ve got a strong back. Want a job?”
“Got one, and I haven’t found tools to be my friend. But thanks. Spock, say hello.”
The dog sat, cocked his big box of a head and held up a paw.
“Cute.” Cilla obliged by leaning down, giving the paw a shake while Spock’s bulging eyes gleamed at her. “What kind of dog is this?”
“The four-legged kind. It’ll be nice to look over here and see this place the way I imagine it used to be. You fixing to sell?”
“No. I’m fixing to live. For now.”
“Well, it’s a pretty spot. Or could be. Your daddy’s Gavin McGowan, right?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
“He was my English teacher, senior year of high school. I aced it in the end, but not without a lot of sweat and pain. Mr. McGowan made you work your ass straight off. Well, I’ll let you get on bashing your boards. I work at home, so I’m there most of the time. If you need anything, give a holler.”
“Thanks,” she said without any intention of following through. She fit her goggles back in place, picked up the hammer as he started back down the drive with the dog once again trotting beside him. Then gave in to impulse. “Hey! Who names their kid after a car?”
He turned, walked backward. “My mama has a considerable and somewhat unusual sense of humor. She claims my daddy planted me in her while they were steaming up the windows of his Ford Mustang one chilly spring night. It may be true.”
“If not, it should be. See you around.”
“More than likely.”
FASCINATING DEVELOPMENTS, Ford mused as he took a fresh cup of coffee onto the veranda for his postponed morning ritual. There she was, the long drink of water with the ice blue eyes, beating the living crap out of the old veranda.
That hammer was probably damn heavy. Girl had some muscle on her.
“Cilla McGowan,” he said to Spock as the dog raced after invisible cats in the yard, “moved in right across the road.” Wasn’t that a kick in the ass? Ford recalled his own sister had all but worshipped Katie Lawrence, the kid Cilla had played for five? six? seven years? Who the hell knew? He remembered Alice carting around an
Our Family
lunch box, playing with her Katie doll and wearing her Katie backpack proudly.
As Alice tended to hoard everything, he suspected she still had the
Our Family
and Katie memorabilia somewhere up in Ohio, where she lived now. He was going to make a point of e-mailing her and rubbing her face in who he’d just copped as a neighbor.
The long-running show had been too tame for him back in the day. He’d preferred the action of
The Transformers
, and the fantasy of
Knight Rider
. He remembered after a bitter battle with Alice over God knew what, he’d exacted his revenge by stripping Katie naked, gagging her with duct tape and tying her to a tree, guarded by his army of Storm Troopers.
He’d caught hell for it, but it had been worth it.
It seemed a bit twisted to stand here now, watching the adult, live-action version of Katie switch sledgehammer for some sort of pry bar. And imagining her naked.
He had a damn good imagination.
Four years, Ford thought, since he’d moved in across the road. He’d seen two caretakers come and go, the second in just under six months. And not once had he seen any of Janet Hardy’s family before today. Subtracting the almost two years he’d lived in New York, he’d lived in the area the whole of his life, and seen none of them before today. Heard of Mr. McGowan’s girl Cilla passing through a time or two, but he’d never caught a glimpse.
Now she was talking to plumbers, tearing down porches and . . . He paused when he recognized the black pickup turning into the drive across the road as belonging to his friend Matt Brewster, a local carpenter. When a second truck pulled in barely thirty seconds later, Ford decided to get himself another cup of coffee, maybe a bowl of cereal, and take his breakfast out on the veranda so he could watch the goings-on.
He should be working, Ford told himself an hour later. Vacation was over and done, and he had a deadline. But it was so damn interesting out here. Another truck joined the first two, and he recognized that one as well. Brian Morrow, former top jock and wide receiver, and the third in the pretty much lifelong triumvirate of Matt, Ford and Brian, ran his own landscaping company. From his perch, Ford watched Cilla make the circuit of the grounds with Brian, watched her gesture, then consult the thick notebook she carried.
He had to admire the way she moved. Must be all that leg, he supposed, that had her eating up the ground so efficiently while appearing to take her time. All that energy so tightly packed in that willowy frame, the glacier blue eyes and china-doll skin masking the muscle it took to . . .
“Whoa, wait a minute.” He sat up straighter, narrowed his eyes and pictured her with the hammer hefted on her shoulder again. “Shorter handle,” he muttered. “Two-sided head. Yeah, yeah. Looks like I am working.”
He went inside, grabbed a sketch pad and pencils and, inspired, dug out his binoculars. Back on the veranda, he focused on Cilla through the glasses, studying the shape of her face, the line of her jaw, her build. She had a fascinating, sexy mouth, he mused, with that deep middle dip in the top lip.
As he began the first sketch, he rolled around scenarios, dismissing them almost as soon as he considered.
It would come to him, he thought. The concept often came from the sketches. He saw her . . . Diane, Maggie, Nadine. No, no, no. Cass. Simple, a little androgynous. Cass Murphy. Cass Murphy. Intelligent, intense, solitary, even lonely. Attractive. He looked through the glasses again. “Oh yeah, attractive.”
The rough clothes didn’t disguise that, but they played it down. He continued to sketch, full body, close-up face, profile. Then stopped to tap his pencil and consider. Glasses might be a cliché, but they were shorthand for smarts. And always a good mask for the alter ego.
He sketched them on, trying out simple, dark frames, rectangular lenses. “There you are, Cass. Or should I say, Dr. Murphy?”
He flipped a page over, began again. Safari shirt, khakis, boots, wide-brimmed hat. Out of the lab or classroom, into the field. His lips curved as he flipped the page again, and his mind raced as he sketched out who and what his newly minted Cass would become. The leather, the breastplate—and the very nice pair rising over it. Silver armbands, long bare legs, the wild swirl of hair with the circlet of rank crowning the head. Jeweled belt? he wondered. Maybe. The ancient weapon—double-headed hammer. Gleaming silver when gripped by the hand of the blood descendant of the warrior goddess . . .
And yeah, he needed a name for her.
Roman? Greek? Viking? Celt?
Celtic. It fit.
He held up the pad, and found himself grinning at the image. “Hello, gorgeous. We’re going to kick some major ass together.”
He glanced back across the road. The trucks were gone now, and while Cilla was nowhere in sight, the front door of the farmhouse stood open.
“Thanks, neighbor,” Ford said, and, rising, went inside to call his agent.
SURREAL WAS the best way to describe Cilla’s view on finding herself sitting on the pretty patio of her father’s tidy brick colonial, sipping iced sun tea fussily served by her stepmother. The scene simply didn’t fit in with any previous phase of her life. As a child, her visits east had been few and far between. Work trumped visitations, at least in her mother’s game.
He’d come to her now and then, Cilla remembered. And taken her to the zoo or to Disneyland. But at least during the heyday of her series, there’d always been paparazzi, or kids swarming her, and their parents snapping photos. Work trumps Fantasyland, Cilla thought, whether you wanted it to or not.
Then, of course, her father and Patty had their own daughter, Angie, their own home, their own lives on the other side of the country. Which, Cilla mused, equated to the other side of the world.
She’d never fit into that world.
Isn’t that what her father had tried to tell her? A long way, and not just the miles.
“It’s nice out here,” Cilla said, groping.
“Our favorite sitting spot,” Patty answered with a smile that tried too hard. “It’s a little chilly yet, I know.”
“It feels good.” Cilla racked her brain. What did she say to this sweet, motherly woman with her pleasant face, dark bob of hair and nervous eyes? “I, ah, bet the gardens will be great in a week or two, when everything starts to pop.”
She scanned the bed, the shrubs and vines, the trim swath of lawn that would fill with pockets of shade when the red maple and weeping cherry leafed out. “You’ve put a lot of work into it.”
“Oh, I putter.” Patty flicked her fingers over her short, dark bob, twisted the little silver hoop in her ear. “It’s Gavin who’s the gardener in the house.”
“Oh.” Cilla shifted her gaze to her father. “Really?”
“I like playing in the dirt. Guess I never grew out of it.”
“His grandfather was a farmer.” Patty sent Gavin a quick beam. “So it came down through the blood.”
Had she known that? Why hadn’t she known that? “Here, in Virginia?”
Patty’s eyes widened in surprise, then slid toward Gavin. “Ummm.”
“I thought you knew—your grandmother bought my grandfather’s farm.”
“I—What? The Little Farm? That was yours?”
“It was never mine, sweetie. My grandfather sold it when I was just a boy. I do remember chasing chickens there, and getting scolded for it. My father didn’t want to farm, and his brothers and sisters—those living at the time—had mostly scattered off. So, well, he sold it. Janet was here, filming on location.
Barn Dance
.”
“I know that part of the story. She fell in love with the farm they used and bought it on the spot.”
“More or less on the spot,” Gavin said with a smile. “And Grandpa bought himself a Winnebago—I swear—and he and Grandma hit the road. Traveled all over hell and back again for the next six, seven years, till she had a stroke.”
“It was McGowan land.”
“Still is.” Still smiling, Gavin sipped his tea. “Isn’t it?”
“I think it’s a lovely kind of circle.” Patty reached out, patted her hand over Cilla’s. “I remember how the lights would shine in that house when Janet Hardy was there. And how in the summer, if you drove by with the windows open, you could hear music, and maybe see women in beautiful clothes, and the most handsome men. Now and then, she’d come into town, or just drive around in her convertible. A picture she made.”
Patty picked up the pitcher again, as if she had to keep her hands busy. “She stopped by our house once, when we had a litter of puppies for sale. Five dollars. Our collie had herself a liaison with a traveling salesman of indeterminate origin. She bought a puppy from us. Sat right down on the ground and let those pups jump and crawl all over her. And laughed and laughed. She had such a wonderful laugh.
“I’m sorry. I’m going on, aren’t I?”
“No. I didn’t know any of this. I don’t know nearly enough. Was that the dog that . . .”
“It was. She called him Hero. Old Fred Bates found him wandering the road and loaded him in his pickup, took him back. He was the one who found her that morning. It was a sad day. But now you’re here.” Again, Patty laid a hand over Cilla’s. “There’ll be lights and music again.”
“She bought the dog from you,” Cilla murmured, “and the farm from your grandfather.” She looked at Gavin. “I guess it’s another circle. Maybe you could help me with the gardens.”
“I’d like that.”
“I hired a landscaper today, but I have to decide what I want put in. I’ve got a book on gardening in this zone, but I could use some direction.”
“It’s a deal. And I’ve got a couple of gardening books that might give you more ideas.”
“A couple?”
Gavin grinned at his wife’s rolling eyes. “A few more than a couple. Who’d you hire?”
“Morrow? Brian Morrow?”
“Good choice. He does good work, and he’s reliable. Was a football star back in high school, and never pushed himself to be more than a dead average student. But he’s built up a good business and reputation for himself.”
“So I hear. I met another of your former students today. Ford Sawyer.”
“Of course,” Patty put in. “He lives right across the road.”
“Clever boy, always was.” Gavin nodded over his tea. “Tended to daydream, but if you engaged his mind, he’d use it. He’s done well for himself, too.”
“Has he? How?”
“He writes graphic novels. Illustrates them, too, which isn’t usual, I’m told.
The Seeker
? That’s his. It’s interesting work.”
“
The Seeker
. Super-crime-fighter sort of thing?”
“Along those lines. A down-on-his-luck private investigator stumbles across a madman’s plot to destroy the world’s great art through the use of a molecular scrambler that renders them invisible. His hopes to stop them—and secure his own fame and fortune—result in the murder of his devoted girlfriend. He himself is left for dead, but he’s also exposed to the scrambler.”
“And is imbued with the power of invisibility,” Cilla finished. “I’ve heard of this. A couple of the guys who worked on my flips were into graphic novels. God knows Steve was,” she said, referring to her ex-husband. “They’d argue the Seeker versus the Dark Knight or X-Men as compared to the Fantastic Four half the day. When I said something about grown men and comic books, I got the fish eye.”
“Gavin enjoys them. Well, Ford’s in particular.”
“Do you really?” The image of the quiet-natured high school teacher poring over superhero comics amused her. “Because he’s a former student?”