Scarlet Nights (Edilean 3)

Sara had just picked up the first jacket that needed to be remade when the phone rang again. This time the ID showed that it was her aunt Mavis calling. “Wonder what good deed he did for her?” Sara mumbled and let the phone go to voice mail. When it rang again ten minutes later and the ID showed it was her mother, Sara didn’t take that call either.

She picked up her sewing basket and two dresses, left her cell phone on the charger, and went outside. She knew she should keep the phone with her in case Greg called, but at the moment she didn’t want to talk to him or anyone else.

Outside, she sat down at the pretty little iron table and chairs under a shade tree and began to sew. She had half a dozen seams to repair in an expensive dress that a woman seemed to have worn while jogging. In the afternoon, Sara knew she’d have to spend time on her sewing machine. She planned to turn on HBO and listen to one movie after another while she worked. Maybe she could find something scary so it would take her mind off where Greg was—and off the man who had broken into her apartment last night.

“Good morning.”

She looked up at Luke and smiled. She wasn’t going to let him or anyone else see how upset she was. “Why aren’t you writing?”

“Need to think,” he said as he held up his shovel. It was a family joke that whenever Luke was upset about anything, he dug holes.

“Is Joce okay?” Sara went to see Luke’s wife every day, as she needed some relief from the tedium of being bedridden. For over a year Joce had been working on a biography of her grandmother, a woman prominent in Edilean’s history, but she’d reached a standstill in her research and had had to put the book aside.

“Fine. Great. Well, maybe she’s not so good right now.” He gave a little grin. “She’s working on her family’s genealogy and …” He grinned broader. “Last night she found out that she and I are seventh cousins. I think she’s worried that the babies are going to be morons.”

“Or hemophiliacs,” Sara said, referring to the European royal families who were so interbred that they’d passed the disorder around for centuries.

Luke got the allusion. “Please don’t mention that to her or she’ll add it to her list of what could go wrong. Are you going to meet Mike in town for lunch?”

Sara groaned. “Don’t tell me he got to you too!”

Luke looked surprised. “Got to me? I don’t know what you mean. I saw him at about six this morning, he asked me about gyms in the area, and I told him.”

“You were outside at six A.M.?”

“I usually am,” Luke said, “and if you ever got up before midday, you’d know that.”

“I’ve never slept to noon in my life.”

Luke looked at her.

“All right, so maybe I have, but I haven’t in years. Too much work to do.”

“So how are you coming with all that Greg gave you to do?”

Sara knew exactly what he was up to. After all, he was her cousin and she’d known him all her life. For all that he was eight years older than she was, they’d always been close. “I’ve already had my share of hassle for today, so don’t you start on me. I can’t understand why this town is taking the side of a man they don’t even know. For all any of you know, Mike Newland might be a serial killer.”

“He’s related to Tess and we know her,” Luke said. “And when she married Rams, she became one of us. Mike is her brother.”

Sara didn’t want to argue with her cousin, and she didn’t want to have to discuss her future. She decided to attack. “With all your talk about ‘us’ why didn’t you tell me about that tunnel? This time it was someone we know who used it—know by relationship any way, certainly not by character—but what do I do next time when a stranger comes climbing into my bedroom?”

“Mike said he was sorry about that, but—”

“He told you that he sneaked into my apartment in the middle of the night and nearly scared me to death? Did he also tell you that he wanted to call the police on me?”

“Technically, he had a right to do so. He was entering his sister’s apartment, while you’re—”

She did not want to hear that Mike Newland was right and she was wrong. “How’s my apartment coming?”

“Fine,” Luke said. “I took out the toilet this morning.”

“Before or after you met Tess’s brother?”

Luke acted as though he had to think about that. “After. In fact, right after I met Mike, I went into your apartment and saw that the old toilet needed to be replaced. It only took me a few minutes to remove it.”

“The whole kitchen needs to be remodeled but you haven’t done that yet.”

“I know it does,” Luke said contritely, but then his head came up. “I know. Maybe I’ll get Mike to help me put in a new kitchen. He looks like a man who could handle a screwdriver. Will you make lunch for us every day?”