Too Close to Home

Our first house of the day belonged to Walter Burgess, Brett Stockwell’s retired high school English teacher. It was my first time here since he’d asked me to take on his property.

He came out to greet me, while his companion, Trey Watson, watched us through the screen door.

“Hello,” Burgess said. “Anything you need to know from me before you get started?”

“Not really,” I said. “Just if you have any requests.”

“Just watch out for the tomato plants up against the house around back. Trey’ll have a fit if something happens to them.”

“Don’t worry.”

He cleared his throat, like he was working up to something. “A lot’s happened to your family since you dropped by the other day.”

“Yeah,” I said. Certainly Derek’s situation was well known. The incident at our house the night before hadn’t quite become common knowledge yet.

“I’m sorry for your troubles,” he said. “When you were here before, you were asking about Brett. You said there was a book. On an old computer of his.”

“That’s right.”

“Did you sort that all out?”

“Not really.”

Burgess nodded. “That was pretty much it, though? What was on the computer?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “I never actually saw it. What makes you ask?”

He shook his head like it didn’t really matter. “Trey, he was just curious, that’s all. So I thought I would ask. But it’s nothing.”

Something twigged in the back of my mind. Something Derek had said in passing when he first told me that he’d noticed the computer was missing from Adam’s room, and what was on it. He’d said there’d been letters to some teacher Brett had had back in high school.

“Letters,” I said.

“Pardon?” Burgess said.

“There were letters on the computer. To a teacher.”

Burgess took a breath. “Were they to me? What did they say?”

“I don’t know. You think they were to you?”

He ran his tongue over his lips nervously. “It’s possible. He wrote a few to me back then. They were. . he seemed a bit infatuated with me, if you want to know the truth.” He shook his head, trying to dismiss the whole thing. “I’m sure it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Trey worries about these sorts of things. It hardly matters now. It’s not like I have a job to lose anymore.” He licked his lips again. “If you should happen to run across them, would you let me know?”

“I’ll keep my eye out,” I said.

He thanked me and went back into the house. I went over to Drew, mentioned to him about the tomato plants, and we got started. I took the tractor, cut the front and back yards, while Drew tackled the tight areas with the mower.

When we were done and packing things away, I thought Walter Burgess might come back out again, even if to say nothing more than he was happy with the job, but the front door never opened. Drew and I got in the truck.

“What’s their story?” Drew asked as we pulled away from the curb.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I could tell they were a couple of pansies, and I don’t have anything against that.”

“Sure.”

“But they were really going at it in there.”

“Go on.”

“I’d stopped the trimmer for a few seconds, had to get some more line out of it, and you were far enough away on the Deere, in the backyard, I think, so you weren’t making that much of a racket, and the two of them were bickering away in there like all get-out.”

“Really,” I said, turning the A/C fan up a notch. “About what?”

“At first, it was just random shit, how the one, not the one who came out and said hello to us, but the other one, he was going on about the tomato plants and whether we’d been warned about them or not, and then they started getting into other shit, and then the one with the plants said, ‘Maybe you’d be happier with some of your boy toys instead of me.’ And something like ‘You can’t be too careful, these things can come back and bite you in the ass.’”

“He said that?”

“Yeah.”

“So what did Walter-the one who came out and saw us-what did Walter have to say about that?”

“He said the other guy was overreacting, then he told him to go fuck himself.”

I fiddled a little more with the A/C. “Everybody’s got a lot of shit on their plate,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Drew. “No kidding.”

WE WERE PULLING UP to our second property of the day when my cell rang. I wasn’t expecting to hear any news from Ellen this early, but you never knew. I flipped open the phone without looking to see who was calling.

“Hello?” I said.

“Has something else happened between you and Lance?” a man asked. It took me a second to realize the mayor was on the other end.

“What are you talking about, Randy?” I said.

“Look, you two guys, you need to cut this shit out,” the mayor shouted into the phone. “He came back to work late yesterday after he got his face stitched, said he was okay to drive, but then last night, he’s supposed to run me up to some fucking fund-raising thing at the hospital and he doesn’t show. And he hasn’t shown up this morning.”

“So why you calling me, Randy? You asking me to drop what I’m doing and drive you around today? I can pick you up in my truck, but you’ll have to ride in the back with the tractor.”