CHAPTER 4
Someone knocked on our door. I lifted my head from my book and stared at the front door, its clean white surface giving no hint of the mystery behind it. A knock.
The sound occurred again, causing me to sit up, setting Odd Thomas aside, my curiosity growing. In a town as small as Quincy, one where we didn’t lock our doors, a town where there were no strangers, there were two types of visitors:
1. The type of which is considered family, a close friend who could waltz into a house without introduction. I didn’t have any of those anymore.
2. The type of which an introductory, I’m-calling-to-ask-if-I-can-stop-in was required. There were no pop-ins, no swing-bys, no unknown knocks on doors. That was rude. Unacceptable.
I’d been well trained in the social etiquette; we all had. There were rules in the South for a reason—we didn’t spend the last two hundred years cultivating our society for nothing. I untangled my way from my blanket and moved to the door, pushing aside the lace curtain and staring into the face of a stranger. A smiling, waving energetically, as if he isn’t popping by unannounced, stranger. Fairly handsome, actually. Perfect skin, white teeth, a brilliant blue polo tight enough on his upper body to show some gym-grown masculinity. I opened the door.
“May I help you?”
“God I hope so.” At the words, my libido returned to its pit of despair, every syllable on the man’s tongue drenched in an over-affected gay man’s lilt, his slouch against the doorframe filled with such dramatic despair that I almost laughed. “Please tell me you are the owner of this fabulous estate.”
Ha. Funny. I was wearing Keds, the toe cracked from too many cycles in the wash. The watch on my wrist was one that included plastic as its main ingredient, and I was standing in the doorway of the former slave quarters of the Anna Holden plantation. This guy was hilarious. “Nope,” I drawled, crossing my arms. “Why?”
He had the ridiculous reaction of looking perturbed, like it wasn’t my business. As if he hadn’t knocked on my door and interrupted my reading. “Do you have the number of the owner?”
I shook my head. “I’m not handing out the Holdens’ number to a stranger. What do you want with them?”
“I’m not really at liberty to discuss.” He sniffed.
I shrugged. I wasn’t going to sit here and beg the man. He wanted to be all secretive, fine. “Good luck.” I smiled politely and shut the door, interrupting my view of his agitated face. The Holdens were in Tennessee for the next two months. He could pound his manicured hand on every door to their mansion or he could come back with a side of information. The choice was his.
It took three days for the pretty boy to return. I saw him coming the second time, his seersucker suit moving gingerly down the dirt path to our cottage. I looked up from my place in the rocker and gestured to the empty one beside me. “Feel free to take a seat, Mr. Payne. It’s hot out.”
It was hot. The type of humid heat that saps your energy within minutes. The type of heat that brings out crocodiles and snakes—the evil creatures. Everyone with any sense is indoors. Yet, here were Bennington Payne and I, under the eaves of my rented porch, the fan beating a furious tune, creating a waft of hot air just bearable enough to keep me in place. I reached down, dug in the ice bucket at my feet and pulled out a beer. Held it out to him, my own stuck in between my thighs.
He didn’t argue, didn’t give me any sass, just grabbed the beer, took one dubious look at my free rocking chair, then plopped down, twisting the lid off and flashing me a grateful smile. “How’d you know my name?” he asked, delicately wiping his mouth after downing half of the Bud Light.
I rocked back, my hair pulled up and secured by my head. “The way you’ve been stomping around? The cows in Thomas County know your name by now.” I laughed against the mouth of my beer, tipping it back as I glanced sideways at the man. “You can take off that jacket, you know. It’s not earning you anything other than sweat.”
He turned to me, his face studying mine as if I held another sentence inside. Getting none, he set down his beer and pulled off the jacket, folding it over carefully before leaning back in the chair, the jacket protected in a neat package on his lap. It was a smart move. Local police can read crime scene actions just by following the drags and prints in the pollen. It’s our curse of the South. That, and mosquitos and snakes and flying cockroaches and the hundred other minute contributions that scare off Northerners.
“Is that why I’ve been so unsuccessful?” he asked. “Because I’m, as you so politely put it, stomping around?”
“It’s two-fold,” I said bluntly. “You’re stomping around, and you’re not telling anyone why. No one likes that. We are a private town. We don’t really welcome strangers. Not your type of strangers. We welcome honeymooners, vacationers, tourists. You’re here for something else, and that makes everyone very suspicious.”
He sat in silence for a moment, finishing the rest of his beer with one long draw. “I was instructed to be discreet,” he finally said.
I laughed. “Were you instructed to be successful? ‘Cause you can’t be both.”
The sun moved a little lower, to the place where it peeks through the trees and glares on the front porch, the moment of day when I typically pack up and head back inside. I reached over, snagging his empty bottle and dropped it with mine into the bucket, standing and stretching before him. I stuck out a hand. “Summer Jenkins.”
“Bennington Payne. My friends call me Ben. And, at the moment, you’re looking like the only friend I have here.”
“Let’s not label the relationship just yet.” I smiled. “Come on in. I’ve got to put supper on.”
“It’s just unnatural, a girl that age being unmarried. Especially as pretty as she is.”
“Well, what do you expect? You know what happened with Scott Thompson. Summer hasn’t had so much as a breakfast date since then.”