Page 37 of The Leaving Kind
After making the last delivery, Cam drove the truck back down to Mr. Fincher’s and spent an hour and a half shoveling gravel into a wheelbarrow and spreading it along the front path. Fincher paid him in cash, which sat nicely in Cam’s back pocket as he drove away. Maybe he’d head out this weekend.
He ran a hand over his messy hair. It was probably time for a haircut. Then he could put on a shirt with buttons, dig out his clean jeans, and polish up his boots. Find someone to overlook the dangerous glint he’d been told lurked in his eyes. Or someone who wanted to go there. Have some fun.
He was whistling when he pulled into Victor’s driveway, the dog once again strapped carefully into the back seat of Emma’s car. She seemed to enjoy the sound. Her head had stayed cocked and alert for most of the drive.
As he stepped out of the car, Victor’s front door banged open. Cam glanced up with a start.
“There you are.” Victor strode toward him.
“Here I am,” Cam murmured.
Victor wore acid-wash jeans that he’d presumably hidden in his closet at the end of the eighties or had liberated from a thrift shop, and a loud purple V-neck T-shirt. Oddly, the brightness of his shirt didn’t wash out his skin. In fact, Victor looked as though he’d gotten a little color over the weekend. He’d lost the pallor and thumbprints beneath his eyes. The pale gray-blue of his irises remained the same, though. And his eyes flashed with a danger all their own.
“I thought you might have died or something.” Victor planted himself in the driveway, a hand to either hip.
“Died? Why?”
“You disappeared. For over a week. And I have a hole beside my patio. A huge hole!”
“Sorry. I, er ...” Cam gestured limply toward the back seat of his car. “I’ve been taking care of the dog.”
“You brought your dog!” Shrillness edged Victor’s words. “It better not shit on my lawn. Or eat my cats.”
“She’s pretty well-trained. Will poop when I tell her to and she won’t be chasing anything. She has a broken leg.”
As though Cam had hit a button or maybe pulled a plug, Victor’s expression immediately softened. “Oh no! The poor dear.” He rushed forward to peer into the back seat. “Oh, and she’s so pretty.”
He glanced over his shoulder, the lightning storm now missing from his eyes. “What’s her name?”
“Spoiled, because everyone wants to give her everything.” A half grin tugged at Cam’s mouth. “She’s a stray. I found her on Milford Road last week. The night it rained?”
“That’s every night, lately. What is with all this rain?”
Cam stared at Victor, amazed by the sudden change in his attitude. “Right.”
“So, this hole. Why is it so big?”
“For the bodies I’ve got stashed in the trunk.”
Victor gaped. Cam laughed.
Shaking his head, Victor continued on as though Cam hadn’t made a bad joke. “I only want one tree on that side of the patio.”
“I always dig a large, wide hole if I can. You want a lot of room for the roots to spread out.”
“Huh. Okay, that makes sense. Those trees down there?” Victor pointed out an uneven row of Bradford Pears on the lawn side of the driveway. “They didn’t do much the first couple of years after I put them in. Would that be because the roots couldn’t push through the clay or whatever?”
“Roots are pretty hardy and tricky. They can push through just about anything, though the soil here can be kind of shit.”
Victor’s eyes widened slightly, and Cam made a mental note not to use the word shit in front of a customer. Because that’s what Vic was. A tree farm customer but also a ... fledgling landscape-business customer.
Where had that thought come from?
Regardless, he should attempt to clean up his act. Limited cursing and no jokes about dead bodies.
“The soil isn’t good,” he said in his most professional tone. “Did you feed the trees?”
“I did not. I meant to, but time gets away from me.” Victor waved toward the glass-fronted studio. “I can go into the studio in March and not come out until May sometimes.”