WILD OATS by User Page A

careful to neither stain nor tear them. Even after twenty years of relative affluence, pretty things were still too precious to be taken for granted.
    "James Edwin," she called softly down the hallway. Living in a funeral parlor, she had adjusted to keeping her voice at a respectfully low level most of the time. "James Edwin!" she called more loudly when he did not respond.
    Hearing movement in the casket display room, Amelia went to the door. “James Edwin?''
    "It's just me, Mellie," Haywood answered, giving her a broad smile full of wicked insinuation. If Amelia had not been so familiar with him, she might have taken offense.
    He was standing near the back of the room, inspecting a damaged hinge on a new casket. It was an expensive item with a see-through glass half-top. As usual Haywood Puser was clad in the most casual of clothes. The striped overalls made him appear more a farmer than a man of profession. His casual unconcern for formalities irritated Amelia. Not for the first time, she wished that he would shave that untidy beard so that she could get a good look at his face. It was hard to trust a man who was hiding behind a mask of whiskers. And there was something about Haywood Puser that made Amelia uneasy. There were things about him that she was sure he wasn't telling.
    Nervously and without conscious thought, Amelia's hands went to her hair to straighten the nonexistent disarray there.
    "Where is Mr. Sparrow?" she asked politely, trying to shake off the strange, tingly feeling that she often felt in Mr. Puser's presence.
    Haywood shrugged. "Couldn't rightly say, Mellie. As far as I know, he ain't even stirred from his bed yet this morning."
    "That's ridiculous," Amelia assured him firmly, ignoring the overly familiar nickname she loathed. "Perhaps my son is not as ambitious as he should be, but he has never been a shig-a-bed."
    "No, he sure ain't," Haywood agreed easily. "And he's plenty ambitious enough, if you ask me."
    "But, of course, I didn't ask you," Amelia said sweetly. "I would never need to ask questions about my own son."
    Amelia saw it as no mystery that an employee would defend his boss. Once Jedwin took up his responsibilities again as embalmer, the services of Haywood Puser would be unnecessary and he could be on his way.
    Haywood raised a skeptical eyebrow, but then shrugged as he moved around the side of the casket and casually continued examining the defective hinge. “Then I expect you know that he didn't come home last night till nearly dawn."
    "What?" She was well aware Jedwin had gone to bed early the previous evening, claiming tiredness. "That's utter nonsense. My son was in his bed before nine o'clock."
    "Maybe so," Haywood said and then offered a little tutting sound through his teeth. "But I got a charley horse in my leg last night and had to get up to walk it out. I must have made fifteen trips from my cottage to the carriage house. Then, just as the moon set and the first pink light was coming in from the east, here comes Jedwin driving in that old open-top before sunup. He looked as fag-tired as if he'd put in a full day's work."
    "I don't believe you."
    Haywood shrugged. "Why would I lie?"
    Amelia couldn't answer that. "Where on earth had he been?"
    "I got no idea," Haywood answered. "And of course, I didn't ask him, like you would have," he said easily.
    He stepped closer to Amelia, close enough that he could look straight down into her eyes. Close enough that Amelia felt obliged to take a step backward.
    Haywood rubbed his beard as he studied the pretty woman before him. There was a glimmer of fire in his bright blue eyes. "I Figure Jedwin's a grown man, Mellie, he shouldn't have to tell anyone when he's coming or going."
    "Well, he certainly should! He—"
    Amelia suddenly recognized the statement for what it was: baiting. Haywood Puser openly disapproved of the way she handled Jedwin, and there was nothing he wouldn't do to try to get between them. But Jedwin was her son and no