Monty stuffed a forkful of pancake, butter and gooey syrup into his mouth and reached for his wallet. He threw some bills on the table and pointed to the diner door. “Easier just to show you. I’ll drive.”
“Is this where one of your clients lives?” Katie asked five minutes later when they pulled into a decrepit-looking trailer park. Her confusion and curiosity were rising by the second, but she’d guessed Monty was a “show, don’t tell” kind of a guy, so she hadn’t badgered him with questions in the car.
“Joe Jones is one of my clients, actually. His trailer used to be down by the river. When he sold his land to Miles Fordham, he moved it here,” Monty replied before he brought his car to a halt. He glanced over at Katie while she stared out the window at the nearest trailer home. The top of it had started to cave in, so that the roof resembled a flattened letter M. At one time, the double-wide had been blue and white, but dirt and time and turned the white a dingy gray. There were about fifteen bags of garbage scattered on the plywood front porch and the tiny front yard.
“Thinking about changing your mind already?” Monty asked nonchalantly.
“Of course not,” Katie said, stung. “But I would appreciate you at least telling me what you want me to see here.”
“Joe Jones needs help with his taxes.”
“What?”
/> Monty nodded, impervious to her incredulity. “Yeah, believe it or not, a lot of poor people need help filing their taxes. More so than those hotshot movie stars you worked for need assistance with them. At least most of them know how to read and could figure out how to file a return if they weren’t too lazy to pay you so you could finagle ways for them to save all that money. Maybe they never told you in that slick Hollywood tax school that every American has to file a tax return if they have income, regardless of whether or not a body has the ability to read, or write or understand just what it is they’re agreeing to with an X on the dotted line?”
Katie flushed. “Of course I know that. So . . . you want me to do Joe Jones’s taxes for him? That’s how you said I could make a difference?”
“I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask you. Truth is, the community center where I work has just been given a state grant for a financial and tax assistance office. It’s much-needed. Prairie Lakes County has one of the largest rates of illiteracy in the state. You get men like Miles Fordham who come into Vulture’s Canyon and start offering people like Joe here a pittance of money for their land, and the need for some sound financial advice for the poor rises exponentially. From what I hear about you, you’d be a good fit for the job. If you haven’t already decided it’s beneath you, that is.”
Katie reached for the car door. It hadn’t been what she expected . . . but hell. Why not?
“Let’s go,” she said.
An hour later, Katie and Monty got back into Monty’s car. It’d been a heartbreaking experience, no matter how Katie spun things in her mind. The trailer home had been a hovel, and Joe Jones had been a sweet, broken old man with no front teeth and a proclivity to smile at everything that was said to him, despite the lack of any understanding in his rheumy blue eyes.
She’d come close to tears upon seeing the bill of sale and the amount of money Miles Fordham had paid Jones for his land. True, she didn’t know the going rate for land around here, but the casino complex Fordham was building would increase the value of the land a thousandfold, if not more so. He could have at least offered Joe a decent amount for the valuable land, something that could have improved the quality of his life a bit.
Instead, he’d stolen the old man’s sole asset right out from under his nose. The fact that it’d all been legal made it no less criminal, in Katie’s eyes.
She had politely asked Joe if she could assess all his financial records, which he’d brought to her in a cardboard box that was falling apart at the seams.
“Do you want to see my granddaughter’s papers, too?” he’d asked eagerly.
Katie had assured him that she’d need only records associated with his own income in order to file a return. She’d gone through every piece of paper in the tattered box while Joe and Monty sipped coffee and talked about the fish they’d caught over the summer. Afterward, Katie had told Joe she’d return on Tuesday afternoon to assist him in filling out the tax form that had never been filed that year. After the sale of the land, the IRS would come knocking when they realized Joe hadn’t paid his taxes. Joe had seemed so grateful for her offer that it’d made Katie feel guilty for not being there a year ago to give him the advice he’d sorely required when he sold his land.
She’d seen his bank statements. After he paid his taxes, it’d be a close thing whether or not he had any money to live on. Katie grimly informed Monty of that fact as they drove back to the diner. Monty sighed.
“I had a feeling you were going to tell me that,” he said wearily. “Joe’s granddaughter has had her fingers in that till ever since Joe got the money, and little Amber’s got some highfalutin tastes.”
“Joe’s granddaughter is Amber Jones? The girl who works for Miles Fordham?”
Monty gave her a knowing look from beneath heavy eyelids. “That’s the one,” he said.
Katie stared out the window thoughtfully.
“So what do you think? There are lots of folks like Joe Jones all over these woods. Do you want to come by the community center and fill out an application for the job?”
She thought of her life up to now, of her flight across the country, of these beautiful woods . . . and Rill. She thought of the emptiness inside her that she’d finally determined she had to fill, or die trying.
“You know . . . I really would,” she replied softly.
He grunted, and Katie had the impression she’d just passed muster with Montrose Montgomery.
When Katie returned she found both Rill and Everett at the side of the house, splitting logs. She paused for a few minutes and observed them before they became aware of her presence. She sensed by the way they silently worked in tandem—one retrieving the log and placing it, the other chopping, pausing occasionally to mutually gather the split logs and then switch places—that they must have worked through the snarl in their friendship.
Her gaze lingered on the sight of Rill heaving the ax. Even his ass muscles flexed tight before he split the log neatly. The fact that he hadn’t come to her bedroom last night once again caused her to ache. How was it possible to miss so greatly something she’d never had until recently? She waited until the ax was resting against the chopping block before she approached.
“Morning, He-Men.”