Forbidden Ground (Cold Creek #2)(15)
“Someone may just try to hide the tree for a while until things cool down,” Kate said.
“Hard to hide something that big uncut,” Todd said.
“But another good suggestion,” Grant said, taking her elbow to steer her toward his car. “Nothing like a beautiful woman who’s also bright. Todd, I’m going to hire her as a consultant,” he called back to his friend.
“Better pay her good,” Todd said with a grin and a wave as he headed back into the mill.
Grant guided her into his car and closed the door. When he got in the driver’s side, he turned to face her. “I’ll think of some way to repay you.”
She almost said that a real close-up look at Mason Mound in daytime would be a start, but for once, she didn’t push that. He’d been reluctant before, so she had to be careful what she said. “Dinner uptown will do,” she said. “I’m buying.”
“Dinner, yes, you buying, no. This is small-town Ohio, Professor Lockwood, not the ivied halls of higher learning or London, England. And tomorrow afternoon I will drive you to Paul Kettering’s art studio so you can talk to him about ordering your special project.”
They pulled out of the mill parking lot, just as a huge, loaded lumber truck pulled in. Grant waved to the driver. They immediately passed another car, which honked its horn.
“That’s Brad,” he said, sounding surprised and craning his neck. “In a Porsche, no less, when his company just went belly-up.”
“Do you want to go back to the mill?” she asked. “For the truck or to talk to Brad?”
“No, Todd can handle it. Brad made himself useful on Friday when Todd was away, so I don’t think they’ll clash. They’ve been friends for years, though Todd doesn’t know that Brad had the gall to ask for his job. But getting back to us...”
He turned down another road toward town. Getting back to us, she thought. There’s an “us”?
“What do you have in mind for Paul to carve?” Grant asked.
She shifted slightly toward him. He seemed far away across the console in the big car. “Since he likes to do mythical beings, it will be perfect,” she told him. “There are several Celtic creatures from their artwork I’m trying to link to the Adena culture to prove a splinter group of Celts became the Adena.”
“No kidding? So they had the know-how to sail to the New World?”
“They did. The creatures are mostly shaman animal heads, maybe used in burial rites. My favorite is an antlered animal, similar to a deer, but with a very frightening face, and— What?” she cried as Grant swerved the car. “Was an animal on the road? I didn’t see anything.”
“No. It’s okay. I—I didn’t, either,” he said, but his hands began to tremble before he gripped the wheel tighter. “It’s just—when you said ‘deer,’ I remembered I almost hit one that darted out here not long ago. Muscle memory to swerve, I guess.”
She didn’t know Grant Mason very well, but she was pretty sure he was lying.
*
That night, Grant could not get Kate Lockwood out of his head—her or that mythical beast he could picture all too well. The wedding had been great, he’d talked to a lot of folks, but that woman kept clinging to his thoughts. Though there was nothing but yard and thick forest out behind his house, he kept his bedroom curtains drawn as he changed into his jeans and T-shirt with his company slogan—Mason Lumber The Perfect Cut For You. Was Kate the perfectly cut woman for him? No, he told himself. She was damned dangerous. Letting her get closer could bring down everything he’d worked for—and worked to hide—all these years.
He flopped back on his big bed, fingers linked under his head, and waited until it was pitch-black outside before he opened the curtains again. He couldn’t stand that bare patch of sky where the tree had been, but you might know a full moon was sitting right above the break in the leafy canopy where the branches used to cradle the tree house. More than anything, that tree had been a monument to his deceased parents and the grandfather he had loved.
Brad had never quite seen it that way, but sometimes Grant thought Brad didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body. Not if he could even mention selling his part of their secret bargain on the black market or anywhere else. It had been only a boyhood oath that had bound the four of them, but they’d cut their fingers and mingled blood, so hadn’t that meant something? Not to Brad, evidently. At least he wasn’t home tonight, probably uptown drinking, or picking up a hottie from the upscale Lake Azure area.
Suddenly, he had to see the artifact he always thought of as simply the mask to make sure it was safe. He didn’t like to look at it, because it often triggered nightmares of what they’d done, what they’d vowed to hide.
He got up, stuck his feet in his flip-flops and padded out into the dark house, through the big living room, into the kitchen, where he opened the door to the basement.
He’d enjoyed remodeling most of the lower space with oak paneling, thinking he’d have kids someday who could play down here in bad weather. But, of course, he’d planned they’d play in the tree house, too, when it was nice outside. Times changed. Circumstances changed, sometimes for the best, but lately for the worst. Brad’s failure had rattled Grant, and he knew Paul Kettering wasn’t really making a living lately, either. Paul’s wife, Nadine, had been pushing him to sell more art, change his “vision,” as Paul always called it, and now that Nadine had medical needs, he was afraid Paul would do something as desperate as Brad might. He’d like to help both of them out, but he was cutting profits close at the mill and had a big staff there to keep employed. And Kate ordering a carving wouldn’t solve Paul’s financial problems.