Chapter Three
Not quite half an hour had passed by the time Meredith returned, but within that half hour, enough had happened to solidify David’s plans of leaving Midnight Cottage for good.
Having once more retreated to the relative safety of the deck, he lay back in his chair, closed his eyes, and mentally composed an email to his real estate agent—or, strictly speaking, the email he would send to his real estate agent once he had found one. Which he would do, just as soon as—
That thought was interrupted by two sets of footsteps—one canine, one presumably human—ascending the stairs from the garden to the deck, Bianca’s claws clicking rapidly against the wood.
“David?”
He kept his eyes firmly closed. Perhaps if he didn’t acknowledge him, Meredith would go away, would simply vanish back into the ether of whatever nightmare realm was to blame for his existence.
“David.”
He couldn’t abide the way Meredith said his name, either, with a torturously elongated Midwestern A, and of course the way he had trouble with his middle V’s, dragging them out nearly to F’s in words like Cleveland and haven’t and—
“David.”
David gave in and sat up. “Yes?”
“Oh, I thought perhaps you were asleep.”
David glowered at him, which Meredith paid absolutely no attention to. Instead, he made his way to the corner of the deck behind David’s chair, while Bianca promptly bounded over to take up residence beneath it.
“You really shouldn’t sleep out here,” Meredith continued, moving aside the basket of rolls and oranges (in fact, tangerines) that now rested next to David’s abandoned teacup. “You’ll be carried off by vultures.”
“Vultures.”
“Vultures,” repeated Meredith firmly, perching on the deck rail and picking absently at the peeling paint. “I’d go and rescue you, of course, but best to avoid the whole situation altogether, if you ask me.”
David hadn’t asked him, and decided it best to change the subject. “I thought I told you to take your time.”
“I did. Me and Bednarek had coffee,” said Meredith, causing David to despair at the state of his grammar, “only he wasn’t in a chatty mood.”
“Didn’t you have coffee with Mrs. Jupiter this morning?” If there was a touch of nastiness in David’s tone, well, Meredith deserved it.
“Nah, didn’t want to wear out my welcome there. Matter of fact, I—” He broke off as he caught sight of the adhesive bandage newly adorning David’s forehead. “What happened to you?”
David batted away his reaching hand. “Don’t go touching it, would you?”
Meredith only continued to regard him with dismay.
“What happened?” David echoed with a grim laugh and plucked another wisp of white wool from his sleeve. “You happened. You left your—your fur all over me—”
“It’s mohair,” Meredith protested.
“—and Brian got the wrong idea about that, too.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes. As if,” said David in indignation. “I mean no offense to you, Meredith, but you are the last person in the world I would be interested in sleeping with.”
“Oh, none taken,” he said cheerfully. Then a thoughtful frown crossed his face. “Wait, last even after the women? Or—”
“I’m not going to answer that.” David might be gay, but very possibly Meredith Schwarzwelder might indeed rank below every woman on earth, if it were to come to that.
“Suppose not. Would you like an orange?” he asked, offering the basket.
“No, I would not like an orange, you hopeless goldfish.” What David would like was for Meredith to keep a thought in his head for longer than thirty seconds at a time, but he knew by now that was a lost cause.
“I do like goldfish,” agreed Meredith. “And koi. The way they sort of glitter in the water when the sun hits just right.” Then, after this latest mental detour: “Wait—what happened with Brian?”
“I was trying to tell you. He threw a saucer at me.”
“Oh! That’s not on!”
David agreed, but there was no use reiterating it. Again he waved off the reaching hand. “Don’t. It’s just a scratch.”
“He ought to have thrown it at me.”
“Yes. He ought. But he didn’t, did he?”
#21: He avoids having crockery thrown at him even when he deserves it.
“Where’s he gone?” asked Meredith. “I’ll go and sort him out.”
“Like hell you will.” David was fairly sure Meredith couldn’t sort out so much as a geriatric butterfly. “Anyway, he’s gone. Loaded up half his room into his car and took off.” An accusatory note crept into his voice. “I don’t think he’d even unpacked all his boxes to begin with.”
Meredith looked like he was about to cry.
“There, it’s all right,” said David, hoping to forestall the possibility of being seized in a tearful hug, which was not an infrequent occurrence. “I’m not hurt, not really. Anyway, we’ll have to tell Mr. Bednarek.”
Mood apparently restored, Meredith selected a tangerine from the basket and began to peel it. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Bednarek says there’s a man coming to look around later.”
“What do you mean, to look around?”
Meredith shrugged. “Somebody called Maitland Cartier.”
If David had accepted a tangerine, he would have dropped it in shock. “Maitland Cartier is coming here?”
The name failed to elicit the proper reverence from Meredith. “Yeah, why, do you know him?” he asked, eating a slice of tangerine. “Friend of yours?”
“Maitland Cartier, a friend of mine?” If only.
Maitland Cartier, the property developer, was one of the most revered yet elusive figures in the world of finance.
“He owns the Corner Store.” And about half of Bingham Junction, not to mention a number of other concerns throughout northeast Ohio and western Pennsylvania.
David liked his present job well enough—he’d been head of accounting at the Corner Store for some time, ever since his unfortunate predecessor had to be taken away following the Incident with the fax machine.
He did not, however, like having to continually explain that he worked not at a corner store but at the Corner Store, the flagship location of a midsized regional department store chain.
He also did not particularly like Steve Corner, general manager and grandson of the owner.
Former owner, rather, following the recent sale of the business to Cartier.
David could tolerate all that for the time being, but what he’d really set his sights on was someday working for Cartier directly in his head office, preferably sooner than later.
Rumor had it that Elaine Contreras, Cartier’s longtime VP of finance, was on the verge of announcing her retirement.
If true, that would leave an opening for her replacement, and Cartier was known for promoting from within his own ranks.
In his current position, David had a foot in the door already, and if all went well at the Corner Store’s upcoming charity auction that David was helping to organize, Cartier would have no choice but to take notice of him.
Of course the door would open wider still if David was able to obtain one of the highly coveted spots on the auction’s exclusive VIP list. That would gain him admission to the VIP lounge and, more importantly, a chance to speak to Cartier face-to-face.
If Cartier was coming to look at Midnight Cottage, the only logical supposition was that he was interested in purchasing it—further confirming David’s suspicions about Bednarek’s plans to sell.
Yes, David decided, he was ready for a change of surroundings in more ways than one.
It was time to say goodbye to the Corner Store, to Midnight Cottage, and to Meredith.
Meredith, whose attention had turned to the half-full teacup next to him. He picked it up, gazed at it thoughtfully, and then flung its contents out into the flower bed.
David was appalled. “Don’t do that!”
“Why not? ’S only tea.”
“We do not dispose of things by throwing them into the garden,” said David severely. “I swear, I’ve met wolves with better manners than you.”
“So’ve I, Maurice Wolkowitz invited me to dinner a while back and had so many little forks laid out, I hadn’t the first idea where to begin. Course he managed it well enough, even with the paws.”
“From the outside in,” said David automatically.
“What?”
“The forks. You start from the outside—never mind,” said David.
“The cutlery was not the point here. Nor were the wolves.” He had quite forgotten the point.
In any case, if Meredith was going to go about flinging tea into the garden, which he apparently was, David would have to get him safely out of the way before Cartier made his appearance.
If Meredith did such a thing in front of Cartier, he’d surely ruin David’s chances with him forever. “Aren’t you working today?”
“Later.” Meredith licked a stray drop of tangerine juice from his fingers. “Nobody wants to get tattooed at eight in the morning, or if they do, I’m a little scared of them.”
“Why not? It’s a good sensible time for an appointment.”
“You would think so.”
Choosing not to dignify that with a response, David closed his eyes and settled into his chair once more, tipping his head back to rest against the deck rail. As Meredith was sitting behind him, however, he found himself reclining against his thigh instead.
David didn’t bother to move; it was more comfortable than the railing, but only just.
“Orange?”
David opened one eye as a black-nailed hand came into his field of vision bearing a segment of tangerine. “No, tha—oh, all right.”
He leaned forward and let Meredith feed him the fruit.
Briefly, David wondered whether five years of the Midnight Wood—and of Meredith—hadn’t warped his ability to gauge normal behavior after all, but soon rejected that idea.
After everything Meredith had put David through that morning alone, feeding him tangerines was the least he could do to make up for it.
“Really,” said Meredith, “Brian thought—you and I.” He giggled. “Really, I can’t imagine.”