Cry Baby Hollow (9 page)

She lined up a dozen old mason jars on the workbench and placed a quart sized Ziploc bag in each, being careful to fold the top over the lip of the jar so that liquid wouldn’t drip down between the bag and the glass.

She poked her head outside and saw Joe hard at work on a beer, staring intently at the un-dug hole. Plenty of time left, she decided.

She sat down and went to work with the soldering gun and the shotgun shells. It was mid-afternoon before she stood up again, hot and tired, but smiling brightly. Aubrey loved shotgun shells. If you knew what you were doing, you could take out the slugs and replace them with almost anything. In this case, she had chosen thumbtacks.

She carefully transferred the slurry from the hazmat chamber into the Ziplocs, wearing a painter’s dust mask that covered her eyes, nose, and mouth. She sealed the bags and placed them gently into an old dish tub.

When she emerged from the workshop, Joe’s truck was gone but the hole was finished and her old mailbox, with her name careful stenciled on the side, was sitting on the drive beside her car, the dents more or less banged out.

Aubrey mixed a batch of Quick Crete and filled in the hole with it. When it was semi-solid, she placed a rod of rebar in the middle and then lowered a perforated black drainage pipe made of corrugated plastic over that and stuck it into the rapidly hardening base. The result was a solid center, a donut of empty space, and a somewhat wobbly and fragile exterior covering.

Aubrey scooped up handfuls of loose gravel from her driveway, filled the first two feet of the tube’s hollow center, and then went and collected her gear from the workshop. She was excruciatingly careful with the liquid filled Ziplocs, taking them one at a time and lowering them gently down into the tube with both hands, easing them along beside the rough rebar so they wouldn’t be punctured. In careful layers, she alternated the Ziplocs filled with liquid and the little shotgun shell contraptions she had devised. When she reached the top, she drilled a hole in the bottom of her mailbox, stuck it onto the rebar so that two inches protruded into the interior of the box, and wired it all together with practiced ease. When the mailbox was removed, either by hand or with a baseball bat, the circuit would break and the result would be a thing of beauty.

She stepped back to admire her handy work. It looked a little odd in the bright afternoon light, but she decided that at midnight it would appear solid and tempting. It wouldn’t hold up for more than a few days. All she could do was hope that cats and raccoons would give it a wide berth until then. She went off for a shower and a drink wearing a smile of pure, sweet satisfaction.

CHAPTER TWELVE

That evening, after
a few hours getting caught up with work on her computer and eating a salad, Aubrey found she was too antsy to sit down with a book or watch TV. She called Vina but was told by her ever-informative answering machine that it was Karaoke night at The Home and she wouldn’t be in until late.

Aubrey fixed herself a drink and walked out onto the dock, sacrificing a view of her n
ew mailbox, but gaining a cool breeze off the lake. She kicked off her shoes and sat at the end of the dock, dangling her feet in the cold, crystal clear water and sipping from her tumbler.

“Hey!”

She looked up and saw Joe sitting in almost the exact same position on his dock across the lake. The only difference was that he was holding a fishing pole and drinking a beer.

“Hey,” he called again, waving.

“If you come over here and fish, you can have a situational beer,” he hollered.

She cupped her hand to her ear and pretended she couldn’t hear him.

He stood up, propping his pole against the bucket beside him so that the line stayed in the water, and formed his hands into a megaphone.

“BEER?”

Aubrey looked down at the nearly empty tumbler in her hand and ignored him. The last think she needed was to have lowered inhibitions and a visit from Joe. He was hard enough to handle when she was sober. Her cell phone rang and she pulled it out of her pocket and took the call, grateful for the distraction.

“Hello?” She asked warily. She glanced across the lake, but Joe had vanished from his dock.

“Hello, sunshine.”

The voice was intimately familiar, but not the one she had been expecting.

“I don’t think you’re supposed to call me that anymore,” she told him to cover her shock.

“Was that in the decree?” He asked innocently.

“Page 4, right below the part about who got the china,” she told him, smiling against her will. As much as she hated to admit it, it was good to hear his voice.

“So, how are you Jason?” She asked.

“I’m doing good. This new project manager is giving me hell at work, but I’m good. You?”

Aubrey looked down at her scratched and bruised arms and thought about the many ways she could answer that question. She was on the verge of settling for a platitude when something grabbed her foot and she let out a squeal and yanked her legs up onto the dock. She looked over into the water, expecting a snapping turtle, but instead saw Joe break the surface a few feet away, grinning hugely.

“Got you!” He crowed, grabbing the ladder and pulling himself up onto the dock. He was wearing nothing but a pair of unbelted khaki cargo shorts, and the wet, heavy fabric and water laden pockets pulled those down so that they barely hung to his hips. Where a lesser man might have allowed a few inches of boxer shorts to poke out, Joe had taken the road less-traveled and apparently eschewed underwear all together. There was nothing to obstruct the view of his washboard stomach except a light sheen of water. Her eyes were drawn to his hip bones, protruding slightly and angling in toward his groin and to the delicate path of pale, curly hair that led from his navel down.

“Hello?” Jason asked. “Are you there?”

She snapped back to herself and averted her gaze as Joe flopped onto the dock beside her and the wet shorts clung to him in an alarming fashion.

“One second,” she said into the phone and then hit the mute button.

“Can you fill this up for me?” She asked Joe, desperate to get rid of him.

“Sure,” he said, standing back up and taking her tumbler. “Whatcha drinkin’?”

“There’s a pitcher in the fridge,” she told him. “Help yourself.”

He trotted off and she un-muted the phone.

“Sorry,” she told Jason. “Someone just came over.”

“Oh,” he sounded deflated.

“What’s up?” She asked him.

“I was kind of hoping to come over myself. Maybe have a drink and talk. I miss you.”

She sighed. His new girlfriend must have dumped him.

Joe returned with two tumblers and she was suddenly very grateful for his presence.

“I’m sorry, Jase. I can’t.”

“Maybe some other time?” He asked doggedly. “How about tomorrow. I can come pick you up and we can go out to dinner and catch up.”

She took a long drink and smiled at Joe. He sipped his tentatively and his eyes flew wide open. He gave her a thumbs up and took a long gulp.

“I’m not doing anything for dinner tomorrow,” she told Jason. “But I don’t think you’re going to want to come pick me up.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’d need a plane ticket to get here in time,” she told him, relishing the long silence that followed.

“Are you on vacation?” He finally asked. “I thought you said someone just came over.”

“I’ve moved,” she told him.

“Moved?” He stuttered. “Moved where? You didn’t say anything to me about moving.”

“We aren’t married anymore,” she reminded him. “I don’t have to consult you.”

“I know,” he told her mournfully. “I didn’t mean it like that. I guess I just thought we’d still get together and have drinks in the evening.”

“If you wanted to chat and have drinks with me in the evenings, then you shouldn’t have convinced me to give up my career so we could be together and then left me three months later for a teenager.” She was surprised at her own vehemence.

Joe laughed silently and gave her another thumbs-up sign.

“She wasn’t a teenager,” Jason said defensively. “She was twenty-two and you’re the one who left me.”

Aubrey didn’t trust herself to say anything.

“I thought you said we could still be friends,” Jason said quietly.

“I lied,” she told him and disconnected the call.

“That your ex?” Joe asked.

She nodded, mildly ashamed of her behavior.

“I wish you hadn’t left it off like that,” Joe told her seriously.

“Why?” She asked, draining her tumbler and leaning back on her elbows.

“Because if him calling is the situation that calls for these,” he held up his tumbler, “then I think you should encourage him to call a bit more often.”

“I was drinking these before he called,” she pointed out.

“What are they?” He asked her, rolling onto his side to face her.

“They’re mint juleps. Two parts bourbon, one part simple syrup, mint and a lot of crushed ice.”

His brow furrowed.

“You mean all the time Vina was sitting on the porch sipping on these she was drinking nearly straight bourbon?” He asked incredulously.

Aubrey nodded.

He rolled onto his back and they lay in companionable silence, crunching the ice from their drinks and watching the bats come out and flit above the water, taking their nightly toll on the insect population.

“What happens if you catch something?” She asked, pointing with her toe over to his fishing rod, still propped on the other dock.

“I practice what I call contemplative fishin’,” Joe informed her sagely.

She looked over at him.

“I don’t bait my hook.”

She shook her head in wonder, trying to fathom the motivation for fishing if you weren’t trying to catch anything.

“If you sit on the dock with a beer,” Joe explained, “people come up and bother you. If you sit with a beer and a fishing pole, they leave you be but the fish bother you. An un-baited line means you get left alone by everybody. Gives you time for contemplation.”

She never would have guessed that any of Joe’s actions involved that much thought.

“It’s karaoke night at The Home,” she told him impulsively. “Would you like to go?”

He smiled and stood up, passing her his tumbler.

“I’ll come back and pick you up in ten minutes,” he told her.

“I think I better drive,” she said, thinking that she didn’t want her car parked in the driveway if anything happened with the mailbox.

He narrowed his eyes and searched her face for any sign of subterfuge.

“You tryin’ to ditch me again?” He asked her seriously.

She shook her head and grinned to reassure him.

“I’ll get dressed and be over for you in a few minutes, I promise.”

“You better,” he told her and dove into the lake, gliding back to his own dock with steady, powerful strokes. She watched until the twilight swallowed him up, admiring the play of the muscles in his shoulders as he swam, and then went inside to get ready, reminding herself for the hundredth time that she wasn’t interested in him.

Aubrey dressed in
a thin cotton sundress that was soft enough not to chafe her raw stomach and did what she could with her make-up to look less like a train wreck survivor. She drove over to Joe’s and tapped the horn.

He popped out of his RV wearing a dry pair of his ubiquitous khaki cargo shorts and a short sleeved Hawaiian shirt open halfway down his chest.

Aubrey pushed a button and her window slid down.

“Do you want to drive?” She asked him.

“I offered,” Joe pointed out.

“I didn’t realize how stiff my arms were,” Aubrey admitted.

“Just give me a minute to clean out my truck,” he said.

She opened her door.

“You can drive mine,” she said and, seeing the havoc the recent rains had caused with his dirt driveway, she scooted over the center console instead of walking around. She plopped her bottom into the passenger seat and pulled her legs over the gear shift, making her skirt ride up even higher. Joe averted his gaze politely.

“You know,” he told her conversationally as he squeezed in and adjusted the seat as far back as it would go. “If you keep doin’ stuff like that I’m gonna forget Vina threatened to kill me dead if I laid a hand on you without an invitation.”

Aubrey blushed. She had wondered why Joe hadn’t made any advances and especially after the call from Jason, it did her ego good to hear it wasn’t her appearance that had put him off.

He leaned out to pull the door shut and there was a loud crack. Years of training kicked in automatically and Aubrey grabbed his shirt collar and yanked him back into the car, hunching low behind the seat herself and holding his head down.

“Some boys can’t wait to let off their fireworks is all,” he mumbled into his own shoulder. “The fourth is this weekend.”

She released him and sat up straight, thoroughly embarrassed.

“Nice to know you got my back, though,” he told her with a smile, shutting the door.

“You can drive a stick, right?” She asked, eager to change the subject.

He nodded.

“Nice to know you can, too,” he grinned rakishly and put the car into reverse, pulling carefully out of the driveway and heading at a sedate pace toward Placid Crest.