the south, with only the white clapboard Presbyterian church and the two-lane road that circled Camano Island in between.
Sensing a moment of rare silence, Jenkins sat up and looked over his shoulder to see if the Arabians’ hooves had finally found their mark, but Lou and Arnold remained upright, their sleek bodies rigid, ears perked, noses sniffing at the air.
Jenkins’s senses remained just as sharp, though he’d had a bit of help. When he ventured into Stanwood that afternoon for bird netting to protect his prized vegetables, Gus at the hardware store told him someone had been around asking for him by name. That was also when Jenkins spotted the front page of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The car came from the east, slowing as it neared the church, an obvious landmark someone had given the driver. He lost it momentarily as it passed behind the clapboard building, and picked it up again as it emerged on the far side and turned onto the dirt and gravel easement. The car slowed as it made its way up the road, then disappeared again behind the thick blackberry brush that marked the surveyor’s line between the church’s property and his own. No matter. He knew the path like the lines of his own hand. The gravel would end, giving way to a dirt road pocked with potholes. At the fork, just beyond another tangle of blackberry bushes threatening to overwhelm his dilapidated toolshed, the driver would turn right because the path appeared wider and, therefore, used more often. He would drive until he reached the creek, a dead end, and have to carefully back the car out. The left fork was so narrow the brush would scrape the sides of the car and not clear until the carport, a questionable wooden structure attached to the three-room caretaker’s cottage. The more adventurous visitors would actually get out of their car and knock on the front door. Tonight the knock would go unanswered. The owner knelt in the garden pulling weeds from a row of his tomato plants.
At the sound of the car door shutting with a thud, Lou and Arnold bounded through the thigh-high brush nipping and jumping at each other. Their sudden appearance and sheer size—two Rhodesian ridgebacks each weighing 130 pounds, with a natural Mohawk of hair along their backs—would cause instant alarm. But their wagging tails and slobbering would reveal them to be harmless. Jenkins questioned their pedigree. Said to have been bred in South Africa to track and hunt lions, his dogs wouldn’t hunt a squirrel.
Jenkins bent down and continued mixing the compost with the native soil. Minutes later he heard Lou and Arnold ripping through the tall grass at a frantic pace and sensed from their stops and starts that they were bringing someone to him. Reaching him, they circled, tongues hanging from the sides of their mouths. Jenkins removed his gloves, picked up the garden hoe, and stood, his six-foot-five-inch, 230-pound frame stretching from the ground like the stalk in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fable. He wiped the dirt from his right hand onto his left pant leg, moved as if to repeat the motion, but spun instead to his right with a grip on the handle of the garden hoe, the blade whipping backhand through the air.
15
S LOANE SLID THE binder back onto its shelf, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His optometrist had said he’d likely need reading glasses by forty, but the strain indicated that he was a couple of years ahead of schedule. The good news, however, was that, as with most legal fires, the forest fire Tina had painted over the telephone turned out to be a brush fire. Sloane’s instincts were correct: Judge Margolis wanted to force a settlement, and rightly so. The case should not be tried. After an hour on the telephone with Abbott, Sloane finally convinced him to fund the settlement and be done with it, but not before he had to threaten to refuse to represent Abbott Security if he did not. Abbott made threats of his own but, in the
Sensing a moment of rare silence, Jenkins sat up and looked over his shoulder to see if the Arabians’ hooves had finally found their mark, but Lou and Arnold remained upright, their sleek bodies rigid, ears perked, noses sniffing at the air.
Jenkins’s senses remained just as sharp, though he’d had a bit of help. When he ventured into Stanwood that afternoon for bird netting to protect his prized vegetables, Gus at the hardware store told him someone had been around asking for him by name. That was also when Jenkins spotted the front page of the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
The car came from the east, slowing as it neared the church, an obvious landmark someone had given the driver. He lost it momentarily as it passed behind the clapboard building, and picked it up again as it emerged on the far side and turned onto the dirt and gravel easement. The car slowed as it made its way up the road, then disappeared again behind the thick blackberry brush that marked the surveyor’s line between the church’s property and his own. No matter. He knew the path like the lines of his own hand. The gravel would end, giving way to a dirt road pocked with potholes. At the fork, just beyond another tangle of blackberry bushes threatening to overwhelm his dilapidated toolshed, the driver would turn right because the path appeared wider and, therefore, used more often. He would drive until he reached the creek, a dead end, and have to carefully back the car out. The left fork was so narrow the brush would scrape the sides of the car and not clear until the carport, a questionable wooden structure attached to the three-room caretaker’s cottage. The more adventurous visitors would actually get out of their car and knock on the front door. Tonight the knock would go unanswered. The owner knelt in the garden pulling weeds from a row of his tomato plants.
At the sound of the car door shutting with a thud, Lou and Arnold bounded through the thigh-high brush nipping and jumping at each other. Their sudden appearance and sheer size—two Rhodesian ridgebacks each weighing 130 pounds, with a natural Mohawk of hair along their backs—would cause instant alarm. But their wagging tails and slobbering would reveal them to be harmless. Jenkins questioned their pedigree. Said to have been bred in South Africa to track and hunt lions, his dogs wouldn’t hunt a squirrel.
Jenkins bent down and continued mixing the compost with the native soil. Minutes later he heard Lou and Arnold ripping through the tall grass at a frantic pace and sensed from their stops and starts that they were bringing someone to him. Reaching him, they circled, tongues hanging from the sides of their mouths. Jenkins removed his gloves, picked up the garden hoe, and stood, his six-foot-five-inch, 230-pound frame stretching from the ground like the stalk in the “Jack and the Beanstalk” fable. He wiped the dirt from his right hand onto his left pant leg, moved as if to repeat the motion, but spun instead to his right with a grip on the handle of the garden hoe, the blade whipping backhand through the air.
15
S LOANE SLID THE binder back onto its shelf, closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. His optometrist had said he’d likely need reading glasses by forty, but the strain indicated that he was a couple of years ahead of schedule. The good news, however, was that, as with most legal fires, the forest fire Tina had painted over the telephone turned out to be a brush fire. Sloane’s instincts were correct: Judge Margolis wanted to force a settlement, and rightly so. The case should not be tried. After an hour on the telephone with Abbott, Sloane finally convinced him to fund the settlement and be done with it, but not before he had to threaten to refuse to represent Abbott Security if he did not. Abbott made threats of his own but, in the
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