Free 8 Sweet Payback by Connie Shelton

in the
whole picture?
    He decided to cruise by the
Starkey place, get a feel for things there, see if someone holding a can of
lighter fluid opened the door. He’d just put his SUV in gear when his cell
phone rang.
    Sam’s name showed on the readout.

 
 
    Chapter
7

 
    Sam’s first hitch in her cleaning
project came when she plugged in her vacuum cleaner and discovered the huge
house had no electricity. She uttered a little curse, mostly at herself for not
thinking of that. Obviously, if no one had ever lived in the place and if the
taxes were in arrears . . . well, she should have planned better.
    She owned a generator that she’d
used on more than one occasion in these situations, but it was in the barn at
home right now, not on her utility trailer where it might have done her some
good. She stood at the open front door, staring toward her vehicle and
estimating the distance across the long front courtyard to the driveway. With
her longest extension cord she might— might —be
able to reach the outlet nearest the door. There was no way she could piece
together enough of them to cover all areas of the ten-thousand-plus square feet
inside. It would have to be manual labor.
    She groaned at the thought and
strode out to the truck to retrieve her brooms and dustpan. Giving the house a
critical eye as she returned, her idea of finishing this off in a few hours
disappeared. Every doorjamb and window frame was filled with an accumulation of
years’ worth of dirt and she now noticed that the windows themselves were a
grimy mess. She sighed and attacked the first of the window sills with her
whisk broom. An hour into it she’d finished the master suite’s numerous windows
and doors, deciding on a change of scene downstairs before tackling the acres
of tile floors.
    Humming helped fill the silence
and when she discovered that the great room had the acoustics of a concert
hall, well, she couldn’t resist breaking into a medley of Patsy Cline tunes. She’d
finished ‘walking after midnight’ and ‘falling to pieces’ and was about to
think she was going ‘crazy’ when she caught a flicker of movement outside. Down
on the highway, far below the house, a white vehicle cruised slowly past. For
an instant she thought it might be Beau’s department SUV. But it didn’t have
the brown logo and lettering as far as she could tell at this distance, and it
definitely didn’t have the light bar on top. She turned back to her work but
found herself really wishing that Beau had come by. Her back was aching and his
company would have provided a welcome break.
    Once the idea of taking a break entered
her mind she couldn’t let go of it. Lunch would be a good idea. There was a
café in Sembramos. It would probably be open now and she could order a sandwich
to go. She leaned her broom against the wall and locked the house, dropping the
shiny new key into her pocket. There would be paperwork to do later, signage to
install, and a lockbox for the key—but for now she just wanted food.
    She guided her truck carefully around
the looping circular drive; despite the ample space, a crew cab truck with a
utility trailer was too large a rig for some places. Since she wouldn’t need
the lawn mower or garden tools for this job maybe she would just take the
trailer home and leave it before she came back this afternoon.
    At the highway she paused to look
back up at the large white house, a mansion by any standard and unique in
design compared to everything else in this county. Hard to believe she’d never
known the place was here. She looked both directions but there wasn’t a single
car in sight as she made the left turn and headed toward town.
    The acres of cultivated fields ran
from the edge of the roadway all the way to the forested foothills of the Sangre
de Cristo range. Somewhere in those woods was the spot where Beau said the
suspicious hunting accident had happened. Ahead, she came to the north end of
the little community,