Carol (Carol Schmidt Series) by Cook Lori

Author:Cook, Lori [Cook, Lori]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pink Peccadillo Books
Published: 2013-06-20T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

A couple of houses down a man was mowing the front lawn. They sat in the Cardinal’s large black Mercedes and watched. The man had taken off his shirt and his torso was honed and well worked, but a little full, the kind of body a naturally stocky guy gets when he hits forty, no matter how many hours he puts in down the gym.

He was around five-eight, and his hair was thinning, cropped short to try and disguise the fact. Handsome? Hard to tell. The sun was beating down on him, and his face was screwed up against the glare as he pushed the mower up and down the small, neat lawn.

“A lawyer,” the Cardinal said with just the hint of a smile.

He lifted his arm and tapped his wristwatch.

“Two thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, you see?”

Carol nodded.

The street they were on was modest but pretty. The houses were not very large, and were in a vague colonial style, each one with the exact same small yard in front. There were trees all the way down the sidewalks on both sides, and in the air was the faintest hint of birdsong.

You could just imagine a kid on his pedal bike every morning weaving down here at a hundred miles an hour, flinging newspapers onto porches; then, people in dressing gowns shuffling out to pick them up, grumbling that they’d landed on the grass again, that the kid should take more care... Any more suburban and you’d have needed Dick Van Dyke to put in an appearance.

“Is this one of his regulars?” she said, her eyes fixed on the guy doing the mowing.

“One of several on his busy schedule today.”

“And every day it’s the same?”

“Some days he never makes it into his office. He has an extraordinary number of lawns to mow. Quite extraordinary. He also fixes dishwashers and replaces light bulbs.”

Carol watched as the guy finished up and wheeled the mower over to his car on the drive. In a second it was in the trunk, and he was coiling up the extension cable as he walked slowly up to the front door of the house.

A lady with neat white hair was already there, waiting for him with the unplugged end of the cable. They talked for a minute or two, laughing like old friends. Then she pulled out a bill and tried pushing it into his hands. He gesticulated in a friendly way, shaking his head, his hands waving an earnest “no.” There was something warm and protective about his manner, like she might have been his grandma or an old aunt.

Finally, he put an arm around her narrow shoulders, gave her a kiss on the forehead, and was off, talking over his shoulder as he jumped into his car and reversed out into the street. A toot of his horn and he was gone.

“With any luck,” the Cardinal said, watching the guy’s dark blue Ford disappear, “he’ll be going home. Gets up late. Lunches late. You know the type.

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