Mr. Write (Sweetwater) Read Free Page A

down at his sister.  “It would appear that I now have to go smooth things over with your new neighbor before he starts calling my own office to complain.” 
     
     
    TUCKER Pettigrew watched the man step off the back porch of the place next door, and resigned himself to social interaction.  The uniform said cop.
    He probably should have resisted the urge to engage any of them, in any fashion, but he was an noyed.  Bad enough that the redhead had been blatantly staring at him for the better part of the morning, but she’d managed to draw a crowd.  After he’d gotten the mattress and box spring in place on the bed frame, he’d come back out to find that two dark-haired individuals had joined her at the window.
    He doubted it went beyond what he thought of as a typical small town mindset – infatuation with one’s neighbor’s doings – but regardless, it was irritating as hell.  Did he look like he wanted to encourage attention?  He should have moved in the middle of the damn night.
    T he same way he’d left this town almost thirty years ago.
    Of course, equally plausible, they could care less about him, and had merely been drawn to the spectacle that was Mason Armitage. 
    Tucker sighed.
    Mason had insisted that no one in this little backwater would possibly recognize a British thespian were one to bite the local citizenry on its collective ass, so Tucker had allowed him to tag along. But now here he was, stupidly giving Mason the opportunity to take his shirt off in a semi-public forum. 
    Mason – poor, beleaguered creature of beauty that he was – was used to people running into walls when they got their first look at him.   He probably hadn’t even noticed that there were now three individuals next door, staring.
    Well, two of them were still staring. One of them was walking this way.
    “Hey there.”  The cop, about Tucker’s height, which put him a few inches over six feet, lifted a hand in greeting as he hopped off the porch.  Tucker sized him up, all easygoing smile and lanky limbs, and eyes that looked like he’d just climbed out of a hammock. 
    The police in New York would chew this guy up and use his shinbone to pick their teeth.
    “Hello,” Tucker said as the man ambled toward him, wending his way around some kind of bushes with nearly fluorescent white blossoms.  The breeze picked up, and Tucker caught a whiff of the flowers’ perfume.
    “Will Hawbaker.  I’m acting Chief of Police here in Sweetwater.”  The guy stuck out his hand and Tucker shook automatically, but something had stirred in his memory.  The accent, the cadence of the man’s speech was familiar, but Tucker had been prepared for that.
    It was t he smell, he realized .   Glancing back at the flower, he had a flash of a small woman with light hair, smiling as she plucked one from the bush.
    H is heart squeezed, and the blurred image faded away. 
    He turned back to the cop.  “Acting Chief?”
    “Open he art surgery,” the other man explained.  “I’m filling in until Chief Harbin comes back.”
    “Ah.”  A beat passed, and the cop said “You never mentioned your name.”
    Tucker was hoping that he wouldn’t have noticed.  “Tucker.”
    Hawbaker’s head tilted to the side.  “Would that be your first name, or your last?”
    Tucker thought about this for a second.  “Both.”
    “Tucker Tucker .”
    “Well.”  He considered that absurdity.  “Generally not at the same time.”
    Something in the cop’s eyes suggested he might not be quite as easygoing as Tucker initially guessed.  “Judging by your accent, Mr. Tucker, I’d say you’re not from around here.”
    “New York,” Tucker agreed, and Hawbaker’s expression clearly said well that explains it.
    “Hey Pettigrew.”  Tucker winced as Mason’s stage-trained voice boomed from inside the belly of the truck. It echoed off the metal sides so that Tucker’s last name bounced around as clearly as a shiny red ball between them.