Leaving Annalise (Katie & Annalise Book 2) by Pamela Fagan Hutchins Page B

got out, leash in hand, and snapped it to Oso’s collar, then let down the tailgate and he jumped out. Rashidi’s door opened and shut.
    “What are you doing?” I asked.
    “Tom Cruise don’t wait in the truck.”
    “Come along then, Tom.”
    He patted Oso’s head. We cut through the side and back yards of the houses between us and Pumpy’s place.
    “Excellent specimen of frangipani in flower,” Rashidi said, pointing at a tree in the yard of the eggshell-blue house on the corner. “Nice avocado tree, almost ready to go to fruit,” he said as we stole across the yard of the seafoam-green house next to it. I rolled my eyes. Ever the botanist.
    As we slunk up to the peach house’s front window, I had a clear view into the living room and eating area. Behind them we could see the kitchen and what would probably become an office. The open floor plan was common, but it wasn’t the layout that caught my eye. It was the bright and shiny new eighteen-by-eighteen-inch faux travertine porcelain floor tile throughout that did, tile identical to that which I had purchased for Annalise. Not only that, but there were still a few boxes of it against the living room wall.
    Rashidi chuptzed. “He t’iefin’ you.” When Rashidi gets upset, his accent thickens. This phrasing was near-homicidal for the peaceful Rastafarian.
    I stood and gaped at Pumpy and Junior, who were seated side by side at a folding table in the eating area. Junior was wearing his red, green, and yellow Rastafarian winter skullcap so old it had a big patched hole in it. I guess he was ready in case we had a sudden spate of subzero temperatures. I ducked out of their line of vision and peeked around the window just enough to see them. Junior wrote something, whipped his hand from right to left, and handed a rectangular paper to Pumpy—a rectangular paper known the world over by its shape. A check.
    Damn the luck.
    Pumpy took it, then they stood and shook hands with clasped arms. They walked toward the door.
    “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered, and Rashidi and I sprinted back to the trunk. I didn’t bother to put Oso in the bed, just opened my door and said, “Up, boy,” and climbed in behind him. Rashidi was already buckled in by the time I got in my seat.
    “Well, looks like I have to fire another contractor. Do you think I should make a police report?”
    “Nah, cop you get probably Pumpy’s first cousin.”
    “You’re right.”
    Rashidi shook his head. “Girl, you gonna need an awful big piece of paper for the list of enemies dem you makin’, and true dat.”
    True dat, indeed.

Chapter Sixteen
    It was my birthday, but I had blocked out the big three six. I’d decided I wasn’t doing my birthday that year, so it was as good a day as any to move into Annalise. Luckily I had already moved most of my furniture in, since the entire Caribbean Sea had been falling from the sky for the past twenty-four hours. I’d had to swim upstream just to get there from Ava’s that morning. It seemed as if all the forces of nature, including my jumbie house, were conspiring to test my mettle. I stuffed another towel against the threshold to the kitchen door as the wind pushed water over it and ran to change the bowl under the dripping ceiling in the master bedroom.
    I wanted help. And a break from everything going wrong that possibly could. I didn’t need another island holiday to stop work on my house. I could live without any more mysterious holes appearing in my walls or roses appearing in my truck. And I could stand to see the love of my life, who was still in Texas with a business and a baby while I was stuck in the tropics battling the elements.
    I missed Nick. On my worst days it seemed like I’d dreamed his whole visit up. He’d been rock solid every day since then, but still. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and the head grow crazier. I crawled up on the marble countertop with a box of dishes and transferred fiesta plates of three sizes