Free One-Eyed Jack by Lawrence Watt-Evans

That
big one drops a lot of twigs and stuff, though – maybe it’s
sick.”
    I shook my head. “No, tulip poplars
just do that.” There were enough of them around where I grew up
that I knew that.
    “ Oh. So you’re a
student?”
    “ Yeah.”
    “ U.K. or
Transylvania?”
    If someone had asked me that a day or
two earlier I would have thought it was a joke I wasn’t getting,
but now I knew there really was a Transylvania University in
Lexington. I didn’t know much about it, though, so I said,
“U.K.”
    He nodded. “And you’re just looking at
trees?”
    “ Yup.”
    He glanced at the Wilsons’ house. “You
aren’t interested in any of the kids around here?”
    There it was again, and I should have
expected it – a stranger in the neighborhood right after a kid got
attacked, of course I was going to attract suspicion. “Nope. Not
big on kids, really. Why? Do they climb the trees?”
    “ Don’t know. What if they
do?”
    “ Well, that might affect
growth patterns, having that weight on the big limbs.”
    “ And I suppose you asked
about the smell because you thought it came from the
trees?”
    “ No, I knew it wasn’t the
trees. I wondered whether it might be an environmental factor I
needed to check out, though.”
    “ You didn’t think it was
candy?”
    “ Mister,
I didn’t know what it was. That’s why I asked.”
    He didn’t look entirely
convinced.
    “ Thanks again,” I said,
and reached for the steering wheel.
    “ Hold up a minute,” he
said.
    I waited as he walked around and
looked at the back of the car; then I leaned out my window and
asked, “Is something wrong back there?”
    “ Nothing wrong,” he said.
“I was just getting your license plate.”
    I blinked, trying to look puzzled.
“It’s a rental,” I said. “Why’d you want the plate
number?”
    “ We’ve had some trouble
around here lately,” he said.
    “ Really? Want me to keep
an eye out for anything?”
    He shook his head. “I’d suggest you
not stay around after dark, though.”
    “ I wasn’t planning to,” I
lied. I put the car in drive. “Thanks again.”
    He stood and watched as I pulled away
from the curb, but by the time I reached the end of the street the
comfortable buzz of the mower was filling the air once
again.
    The sun was low in the west but still
above the horizon as I stopped the car again and looking into the
shadows beneath the big tree. I didn’t see Jenny, but I wasn’t sure
whether that was because she wasn’t there, or because there was
still too much daylight. I scanned the area.
    A curtain in the last house
twitched.
    I bit my lip, considering what to do.
I’d told two different lies now, that I was an actor practicing
lines and that I was a student studying trees; if the mower man and
the shotgun woman ever compared notes I was screwed. They were both
suspicious of me, and I couldn’t really blame them; this was a
dead-end street in the sort of neighborhood where anyone other than
the people who lived here, and maybe the ice cream truck or the
trash collectors or the postman, was out of place and going to be
noticed. My cover stories were both pretty weak.
    I thought of a better one,
but I really didn’t want to try it. I could claim to be some sort
of official investigating the attack on Jack Wilson. The problem
with that one,
though, was that someone would want to check it out – they’d want
to know whether I was a cop or what, and how to verify my
story.
    I could say I was a reporter, but that
wasn’t much better; they’d want to talk to my editor. Or they might
just want me to leave; everyone here seemed to know about the
attack, but none of them seemed to want to talk about it. My guess
was that they really didn’t want any publicity; it would be bad for
the real estate values, bad for the neighborhood.
    The sound of the mower cut off; the
guy had finished his lawn. I looked back and saw him pushing the
mower toward the garage. He looked at me, at my car, as