Going Through the Notions(52)

He gave no sign of noticing me in the doorway. His tanned back gleamed with sweat, and I stood transfixed for a moment, watching the smooth muscles work together in perfect unison.

Another man sauntered across the lot toward me, holding a plastic cup. He looked to be slightly older than the first one by a couple of years. He was also bare-chested, furry-chested actually, with a pelt that narrowed to a dark brown line that disappeared under the edge of his belt. Like his sibling, he was all finely toned flesh, the ridged stomach evidence of a life spent outside doing physical labor.

“Can we help you, Mrs. Buchanan?”

“Oh!” My laugh sounded nervous, even to me. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage. You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

He didn’t answer, but tipped the cup up to his lips, took a mouthful of whatever was inside, and chewed. His dark eyes regarded me, sullen and angry. If he’d been a dog, he wasn’t wagging his tail.

The younger, blonder brother slid down off the pallet of feed sacks and came over to us. “I’m Bobby Perkins and this here’s Tom. What can we do for you?”

“Well, the reason I’m here is—”

Tom Perkins spat a few hulls onto the ground, one by one. Sunflower seeds. “You’re the lady who’s friends with Angus Backstead, right?”

I nodded, wary.

“He’s the bastard who bought our grandmother’s estate.”

A bead of sweat trickled down between my breasts. “I heard you got a fair price and—”

“Fair price, my asshole.”

I stiffened my spine. He had no business speaking like that to anyone, particularly to a woman old enough to be his mother. “Look, Tom, you decided to sell the whole house. No one forced you into it. You could have consigned the merchandise at auction.”

“Yeah, well, I seen you making out pretty good at that there auction, too, scarfing up a lot of our grandmother’s stuff. Like that quilt she made for us. Grave robbers, all of ya.” He spat a couple more hulls for emphasis.

“Hey, I didn’t know what the arrangements were.” My jeans were sticking to my legs, and the available oxygen in the air was nearly obliterated by the burning dust. “I simply went to an auction.”

“Leave it, Tommy. It ain’t her fault.” Bobby frowned at his brother as he raked his hair back with both hands against the sweat running down his forehead, making it stick up. His hair was light brown, bleached to blond in places by the sun. As he lifted his arms, the muscles in his chest tightened, and I had to force my gaze away from all that golden skin and taut, youthful six-pack.

An image sprang unbidden into my head of tangled bedsheets on a hot summer night, feverish caresses, and the frantic urgency of rough, screaming-out-loud sex. How long had it been since it was like that for me?

A flush spread across my body that had nothing to do with the ninety-degree weather.

“Was there something you wanted, Mrs. Buchanan?” Bobby asked.

I exhaled as evenly as I could. “Um, you know, I was going to get some food for my daughter’s dog, but silly me, all of a sudden I can’t remember what brand, and I don’t want to buy a thirty-pound bag of the wrong one.”

I wasn’t fibbing. I didn’t know what kind Jasper ate.

Tom Perkins took a step closer to me. Too close. The ripe man smell of him was overpowering. If he’d used deodorant this morning, it had stopped working a while ago. I had to steel myself not to take a step backward.

“It’s not a good idea to change food suddenly on puppies,” he said softly. “You have to introduce a new food slowly and mix it in with the old.”

I nodded, heart pounding, staring deep into his cold, dark eyes. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“And in my opinion, Angus Backstead should rot in jail. Keep that in mind, too.”

A white cat came around the side of the shed, and Tom Perkins knelt, picked up a stone, and in one graceful motion hurled it at the animal. The stone clanged against the metal siding and the cat darted away. Unharmed, I hoped.

I decided to do the same. I walked as fast as I could to the Subaru without breaking into a run. The car was an inferno inside, but I wasn’t about to wait for it to cool down. I gunned it out of the parking lot, and as soon as I hit Sheepville Pike, I stomped on the gas and opened the windows. I scraped my damp hair off my neck up into a haphazard ponytail with one shaking hand, and blasted the air-conditioning.

Suddenly frantic to get home, I stepped harder on the accelerator.

Angus Backstead should rot in jail. Tom Perkins’s words sounded eerily similar to Ramsbottom’s. My intuition had stood me in good stead as a teacher and I was relying on it now. If I gave Ramsbottom the credit that he was too smart to perform the act himself, then he’d gotten the Perkins brothers to handle the murder and locked down the crime scene evidence with all fingers pointing to Angus.