Along Came Trouble(34)

She zipped the bag shut before he could come up with anything else and carried it out to drop it beside the front door, where she saw a man standing behind the screen.

This time, it wasn’t Caleb. It was an older guy in a blue uniform shirt that said “Bill” over the breast pocket, and behind him the tallest, skinniest, palest, Abraham-Lincoln-lookingest sidekick she’d ever laid eyes on.

“Hello!” Bill said cheerily. “You must be Mrs. Callahan. We’re going to have to shut off the power for a while to get these lights installed, and then for the alarm we’ll have to turn it on and off a few times. Can you show me the way to the master switch, or do I need to have a poke around myself?”

Henry meandered out of his room, caught sight of the strangers, and wrapped his arms around Ellen’s bare leg.

“You—” she began. “What—”

Scrambling. Her brain was half a beat from figuring out what was going on, but apparently her emotional intelligence had an edge, because emotionally she’d already moved on from confusion to irritation, and something like full-blown outrage waited not so patiently in the wings.

“Not to worry. A lot of women don’t know where to find the shut-off. We’ll have a look ourselves. You’ll just want to turn off the television and computers and such before we flip it.” He reached for the handle on the screen door and pulled it open a few feet.

“Out,” she managed to say, her voice thick and choked. “Get off my porch.”

“Mrs. Callahan?”

Her thinking brain caught up. “You’re not installing any lights on my house. Or any alarm system. Get off my porch. Please.” She picked up Henry, opened the screen door, and stepped outside. Bill and the Human Cadaver eased back to the top step. Bill’s jovial smile had faded slightly. He plucked a piece of paper from his pocket and inspected it, then looked up at her house number.

“This is 334 Burgess, isn’t it? Mr. Clark sent us here to do the installation. Said it was a rush job, had to be done today.”

She pitched her voice as close to civil as she could manage—which wasn’t terribly close—and said, “This is not Mr. Clark’s house. It’s mine. You don’t have my permission to install anything, nor do you have my permission to continue standing on my porch. This is the third and final time I’m going to ask you to get off my property. If you’re not gone in five minutes, I’m going to call the police and tell them you’re trespassing. Is that clear?”

Bill and the circus freak backed all the way down the steps. “Yes ma’am, that’s clear. I’ll just call Mr. Clark.”

“It won’t make any difference.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder as he scuttled to the work van. “We’ll call Caleb,” he said, loud enough so she knew she was meant to hear it, and then both of them ducked inside and left her standing on her front porch, hand on one hip, toddler on the other. Glowering.

“Cabe is?” Henry asked, unaffected by her mood.

“I don’t know, Peanut, but I have a feeling we’re going to find out.”

The van backed past the Camelot Security SUV to park on the street, and then the workmen and the security men formed a huddle near the bottom of the driveway, talking to one another and looking up at her intermittently, as if she were the enemy and they needed to regroup to come up with a superior plan of attack.

Bring on the cannons, fellas. Bring on the catapult, and that big log thing they use to bust down the doors. She was in the mood to fight for her castle. Hell, she was in the mood to dump a big cauldron of tar on the handsomest, most annoying man in Camelot, Ohio.

Henry was in the mood to get down. “Play with the chalk,” he said.

“You want your sidewalk chalk?”

“Yas.”

So she got out the bucket of sidewalk chalk, checking first to make sure the spot where they settled wouldn’t be visible to any stray photographers in the cul-de-sac. She and Henry drew pictures on the asphalt, which wasn’t the best rage-sustaining activity. Toddlers did have a way of puncturing a good rage.

Funny thing, that—how hard it was to hold on to anger around Henry, and how hard it had been to stay upset with Caleb when he’d shown up at her house with a box of tools, looking sexy as sin in jeans and an olive T-shirt that clung to his chest. Making her heart beat too fast. Paying more attention to her son than Richard ever had.

When she’d gotten close to him to reclaim Henry, he’d smelled like sawdust and brass, and she hadn’t been able to figure out what to look at, where to put her hands, what to say to him. She’d felt so irrationally betrayed, and so annoyed with herself for feeling that way, that she hadn’t even been able to meet his eyes.