Free Trouble in Tourmaline (Silhouette Special Edition) by Jane Toombs

attic I’ve set aside for her to use.”
    “Describe the ‘things,’” David said. “I need to know if it’ll be a one-man or two-man job.”
    “It’s merely a bed, a dresser and some odds and ends,” Gert said.
    “Two-man.”
    “How about one man and one woman?” Amy asked. “I’m perfectly capable of helping.”
    David gave her an assessing glance, then said, “Here’s my take. We’ll load the smaller attic odds and ends into the pickup and, on my way back here, I’ll stop and see if Cal can help out for a half hour with the heavier ones.”
    “Our Cal from Tourmaline Nursery?” Amy asked.
    “The one and only.”
    She raised her eyebrows. “Whatever.”
    Once they’d hauled the pickup load into her new apartment and he’d helped Amy carry up the boxesshe’d had in her SUV, David got back in his truck and stopped at the nursery.
    “Cal’s not here,” Max Conners, the owner, told him. “You must not have heard what happened. He was coming to work on his Harley last Monday and some hockey puck in a van sideswiped him.”
    “How bad is he hurt?”
    “Busted some bones. The worst is, the jerks in the van—two passengers and the driver—say Cal cut in front of them, so it’s his fault. One witness told the cops different, but then she changed her story to say she doesn’t know what happened. Cal thinks she got threatened by the van guys. It’s a bitch of a world, that’s what I say.”
    David nodded. “Is Cal still in the hospital?”
    “Naw, these days they don’t keep you any time at all. He’s home, his mom’s helping him. Lucky for me school’s out—I got his kid brother filling in here.”
    “Got his phone number handy?”
    After Max gave him Cal’s number, David drove back to his aunt’s. She was sitting on the porch with a husky teen-age boy David recognized as the kid who lived next door.
    “Randy’s going to help you move the heavy stuff,” Gert said. “I heard about Cal. At least he’ll be all right, poor thing.”
    It didn’t take long to load the bed and dresser in the truck nor to unload and carry them up the stairs to Amy’s new apartment, after which David slipped Randy a couple of bucks and drove him back home. When he returned to the complex, Amy was taking the last few items from her SUV.
    “Since that was Randy, what happened to Cal?” she asked.
    “Bad news.” David went on to tell her about Cal.
    “Bummer. What are you going to do about it?”
    He stared at her. How in hell had she figured out so quickly that he intended to do anything?
    “I know you’re going to help him,” she added. “Lucky for Cal he has a friend who’s a lawyer.”
    He knew he’d probably have to resort to law, but the first thing on the agenda was to talk to Cal and get the name of the witness who changed her story. The all-too-familiar scenario left a bitter taste in his mouth.
    “Maybe I can help,” Amy said. “I figure you’ll probably interview the witness. Since she’s a woman, it might help if I went with you. Sometimes women talk easier to other women than to men.”
    He found himself annoyed that she’d jumped into what wasn’t even a case yet before he’d so much as contacted Cal. Since she was right about women talking more freely to other women than to men, he let it go. He might need her.
    “Gert sent over some limeade and cookies,” Amy told him. “Come on up to the apartment and we’ll have some while we discuss the case.”
    “It’s not a case.”
    “But it will be.”
    “Stop right there. I don’t know if Cal wants me to do anything, so there’s nothing to discuss.”
    Amy bit her lip. “Sorry. It’s your field, not mine. I got so excited about the possibility you’d be gettinginvolved in law again, facing your bogeyman, so to speak, that I trespassed.”
    David felt as stunned as if she’d whacked him over the head with a psychology textbook. Facing his bogeyman? It might not be a shrink phrase, but what she’d just said was