Page 18 of Iron Heart
“Will you stop with the ‘if there’s actually a problem’ crap?” She gives me a sour look. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m not that hard up for male attention that I have to fake an electrical issue in my house.”
“So you say,” I murmur.
“Besides,” she continues, a challenge in her eye, “how the hell would I have known you were the electrician Cyndi was talking about?”
She’s got me there. When Mal told me some reporter for the local paper was looking for an electrician, it seemed like too much of a damn coincidence to be real. Then, I figured if it was her, it was an excuse to see me again. Wouldn’t be the first time a girl has manufactured some chance meeting with me, hoping I’ll take the bait.
But the blond chick looks genuinely pissed at the suggestion, so maybe she wasn’t making shit up.
I’ll know soon enough, I guess. It’s pretty hard to fake a wiring problem.
“So, you gonna let me in your house to take a look? Or are we gonna stand out here all night and chit-chat?” I say gruffly.
She blows out an exasperated breath. For a second, I think she’s actually gonna send me away. But then, pursing her lips, she opens the screen door and unlocks the main door.
We step inside from the huge wrap-around porch, into a large entryway with worn hardwood floors. The entryway alone is half the size of my living room. This house is crazy huge for one woman to live in all by herself — if she does live by herself, that is. It occurs to me that maybe she’s married. Hell, maybe she even has kids.
If she is married, I’m guessing her husband doesn’t know dick about home repair.
I wait as she tosses her bag on an antique dresser in the entryway, then follow her into the living room. Even though the sun is still high in the sky, it’s pretty dark in here, and she reaches under the shade of a table lamp sitting on an end table, flicking a switch. The room is filled with a low, golden light that doesn’t quite reach to the walls. Glancing overhead, I see there’s no ceiling light. That’s typical of these sprawling older places, when they haven’t been renovated and modernized.
I take a second to look around the space. The furniture seems all wrong for a twenty-something female — especially someone who looks like her. It looks more like a grandma’s house, or a cat lady’s. Overstuffed couches and spindly chairs are arranged around an old, dusty-looking fireplace. Old gilt-framed pictures line the walls. It’s like someone raided an antique shop to decorate the place — only most of the stuff in here isn’t fancy enough to be antiques. There’s one of those huge ancient square TVs on a low cart over on one side of the room next to the fireplace, and knickknacks all over the fuckin’ place. The only thing that’s missing is doilies on every available surface.
“This isyourhouse?” I ask, frowning.
“Obviously,” she tosses back sarcastically. “Or do you think I break into random houses for fun and hire people to repair their wiring?”
“I just mean…” I shake my head, gesturing. “This furniture doesn’t really seem like your style, you know?”
Her face grows pinched. “I inherited this place from my aunt. She died a couple years ago,” she says softly, glancing away.
“Oh. Sorry.”
She doesn’t respond. “The kitchen’s through here,” she says, turning abruptly.
She leads me through a short hallway to a kitchen filled with a mishmash of appliances whose ages span at least thirty years. I notice her eyes widen for a split-second, and she darts toward the counter, where a small bottle of prescription pills is sitting. She scoops it up and shoves the thing in her back pocket.
“So,” she says crisply, turning to face me. “I was making toast the other day…” she nods toward the toaster sitting on the counter to her left. I notice it’s unplugged. “About halfway through, the outlet got really hot, like something was starting to burn. Then I blew a fuse.”
“Fuses. Of course, you have fuses,” I murmur.
“What does that mean?”
“Well, for most of us living in the twenty-first century, we like to use circuit breakers instead.”
“Okay,” she shrugs, indifferent. “Then this morning when I was at work, my roommate called me and told me the fridge was making funny noises. Then another fuse blew.”
Roommate.Not boyfriend or husband.
In spite of myself, my dick takes note.
“Is your basement through there?” I ask, pointing to a door. “I’m assuming the fuse box is down there?” When she nods, I say, “I’m gonna go down to take a look.”
She gestures. “Go ahead.”
I head down a rickety wooden set of stairs into the basement, which is mostly empty except for an ancient washer-dryer set and some shelves with some old canning supplies collecting dust. I swear to God, if you walked into this house alone, you’d never guess in a hundred damn years that a hot blond chick lives here. I can’t help but chuckle to myself.
The fuse box is on the wall above and to the left of the washing machine. There’s an old metal flashlight sitting on a narrow shelf next to it, and I grab it and switch it on, surprised to see it’s got batteries in it. I focus the shaft of light on the box, noting the two blown fuses, and then spend a few minutes shining it up in the beams and checking out what I can see of the wiring situation.