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Pushing any feelings for Jack aside, I got busy. I had a successful morning with the inspector, receiving the certificate for the plumbing work. All I had left was to come back and attach all of the fixtures Jack purchased once the kitchen was complete. I wrote up my final invoice and left it tacked to the door where Jack would find it.
Hoping to catch a quick nap before working at Goldilocks all night, I headed back to Violet's house. The sun was shining, painfully bright off the white snow. Parking the van out front, I was stopped by Old Mr. Chalmers. He wore a red and black plaid wool coat from the sixties, a black watch cap, his overalls and heavy black boots. He held his shotgun in his hands. That wasn't a good sign. I shut the van door behind me and smiled at Violet's neighbor.
“Hi, Mr. Chalmers. How's it going today?”
“I thought you said you had a man staying there.” He pointed the tip of the gun toward the house.
“That's right. Jack Reid.” I stood about ten feet from him, giving him plenty of room. I kept one eye on the barrel of the gun to make sure it didn't swivel my way.
“Then what was a woman doing in there?”
I looked at the house. I saw nothing remarkable. It was a squat miner's shack from the 1800s. White clapboard siding, miniscule front porch. Snow everywhere, piled up beside the walkways.
“Violet's back?” I was surprised as her conference was supposed to last a few more days.
“Nah, some other lady.”
I didn't have a good feeling. “What did she look like?”
“Blonde. Pink coat. She was in there for a few minutes, and then came back out. I shouted at her. She ignored me, so I shot her.”
We made our way up the walk to the front of the house. I stopped in my tracks at what he said. “Did you hit her?” I didn't see any blood. No body parts strewn about.
“Nah, scared the pants off her though. I don't think she'll be back.”
I carefully tilted the butt of the gun out of the way and gave Mr. Chalmers a hug. “Thanks for watching out for me.”
He patted my back through my jacket. “Ah, missy. Let's go see what she was doing in there.”
We went inside, closing the door behind us. It was habit to quickly shut doors, even with a room completely ransacked by a complete stranger. Didn't want to let the heat out, even if the bad guy could still be lurking about.
“Holy hell,” Old Mr. Chalmers said.
I looked around. Magazines were on the floor, pictures were crooked, the couch pulled away from the wall. None of that bothered me as much as seeing the top off of the snake terrarium.
“Holy hell,” I repeated. Jasper wasn't in his cage.
I hustled Old Mr. Chalmers out of the house faster than I'd ever moved in my life.
“I've got a problem,”I said to Jack over the phone. I sat in Old Mr. Chalmers' kitchen having some coffee. I had a feeling he'd slipped some whiskey into it as I was a little warmer than usual and was caring less about the escaped snake by the minute.
“Plumbing or personal?” he asked.
“That's a new take on the question. Usually I get 'personal plumbing problem'?”
I heard Jack chuckle through the phone. “I can help with that, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “I asked for that. Anyway, neither personal nor plumbing. Nor personal plumbing. Jasper, the snake, got out of his terrarium in Violet's house.”
There was a pause. “So just put him back.”
“Are you insane? It's a snake! I have no idea where it is in the house and...and it's a snake!” I was waving my arms wildly about as I talked.
“Okay. I see the problem,” he said calmly. “Where are you now?”
“Across the street with Mr. Chalmers.” I smiled at the older man sitting across from me, the shotgun resting on the scarred kitchen table between us.
Another pause. “He's not going to shoot at me again if I park out front, is he?”
