Hoodwinked (2 page)

It was almost time for lunch before she got enough of her backlog cleared away to even start on the mail. By then Mr. Blake was leaving, and she was left with a handful of letters that she could do nothing about until he came back.

She usually went to lunch herself at noon, but she felt guilty because she'd been late. So she went along to the canteen and got herself a soft drink and a chocolate bar and sat by the window alone, eating it. It wasn't nutritious, but it was filling. She was finishing the soft drink when the new mechanic sat down at a table near the middle of the room and opened his lunch pail.

Without meaning to, Maureen found herself watching him. He was so big. She wasn't used to particularly masculine men, and she usually didn't stare. But he was a dish. A real dish. She sighed, just as he looked up unexpectedly and caught her in the act. He glared at her as if he found her interest infuriating, and she flushed furiously as she quickly turned her eyes back to the window. This was absurd. Probably she'd been working too hard and her mind was disintegrating. She finished the soft drink, put the bottle up, and smiled faintly as she passed the mechanic. She meant the smile as a kind of apology, but his dark eyes only glittered more angrily.

He dropped his eyes to his coffee cup and ignored her completely. He was still wearing his cap and kept it pulled down over his face. She felt uncomfortable. He made her feel like a man chaser, and she wanted
to crawl off into a corner and hide. His anger had actually hurt her.

She put thoughts of the mechanic at the back of her mind and doggedly spent the rest of the day answering the mail. Mr. Blake had a long conversation with some official, and at the end of it he wandered around, preoccupied, for the better part of an hour.

“Is something wrong, sir?” Maureen asked gently.

He glanced at her, running a hand through hair he hardly had on his balding head. “What? Oh, no, thank you, Maureen. Just a knotty problem. There'll be a government inspector here in the morning, by the way. Do try to be on time, will you?”

“Is it about the Faber-jet design change?” she asked.

He smiled grimly. “I'm afraid so. We may be in for some stormy weather from the aviation people trying to get this thing approved.”

She nodded. He left for the day shortly afterward. It took Maureen until six-thirty to finish answering the mail. By the time she had put away her typewriter and straightened her desk, most of the other employees had vacated the building. As she passed MacFaber's office on her way to the time clock, she heard noises and paused.

There was a voice behind the door, a solitary voice—it was muffled, but it sounded deep and hard and demanding. Its owner was apparently talking to someone on the phone. Maureen wondered if it was the venerable J. MacFaber himself in there. Perhaps he'd returned early from Rio. She'd have to ask Charlene tomorrow. She walked on by. It wouldn't do
to be caught spying outside the big boss's office. She punched her card, left it, and went out of the building.

It was a delicious spring day. A lush, green lawn stretched from the streamlined building with its glass front, and she liked the smell of young buds breaking on the trees. The parking lot was almost deserted. There was a rather beat-up-looking red-and-rust pickup truck sitting nearby. Just that and Maureen's little yellow Volkswagen. The pickup had seen better days, like her poor, battered beetle. It ran beautifully when it wanted to, but it was tempermental.

With a long sigh she got in behind the wheel. It had been a difficult day. She put the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing happened.

“Oh, Yellow Plague,” she moaned. “Why today of all days?”

She got out and opened the hood at the back of the car, kneeling down to glare at the small engine. And there was the trouble. A gummy battery terminal, eaten up with acid. She wondered if she could hit it hard enough with the heel of her shoe to unclog it.

She was considering that when she noticed the big dark mechanic standing a little distance away, studying her with what could only be described as a calculating stare.

She glanced toward him, but before she could even speak, he moved closer. “Isn't this a little obvious?” he asked with faint amusement. “First you spill coffee all over me. Now your car stalls right next to my pickup.”

His pickup? She felt as if fate were out to get her. It really had been a horror of a day. And now here was this big, dishy mechanic under the impression
that she was putting on an act to get his attention. It was her own fault, she supposed. To someone who didn't know her, her behavior might have seemed come-onish. And she had stared at him in the canteen.

“It's all right,” she said quickly. “I know what to do.”

“Why don't you just crank it?” he asked, eyeing her curiously. He folded his arms across his broad chest. “For future reference, I don't like come-ons. I don't have much trouble attracting women, and I sure as hell don't want you lying in wait for me every day. Clear enough?”

That was insulting, uncalled-for and surprisingly painful. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them away hurriedly. She got to her feet, staring at him numbly. She wasn't quite her old, feisty self. Losing both her parents at once had been a terrible blow, and she still wasn't quite recovered. Too, she'd always been sheltered. She simply didn't expect cruelty from people. It was shocking to find that, and mocking contempt, in a total stranger.

“I suppose you're justified in what you're thinking,” she said quietly, “but you're quite wrong. I'm not trying to come on to you. This morning was really an accident. And I have a bad battery connection that I meant to see about earlier, but I had some distractions. All I have to do is beat on it with a shoe, and I can crank it. So please don't let me detain you.”

She turned back to the engine, her hands trembling with mingled hurt and confusion, took off her shoe and slammed it against the battery terminal with a sharp, angry blow. She stood up and almost collided with the mechanic.

“There does seem to be a little corrosion there,” he said slowly, obviously surprised.

She didn't answer him. She didn't even look at him. She closed the hatch, got in behind the wheel and tried the key. This time it cranked.

She didn't look back as she drove off, fighting tears all the way. Horrible, arrogant, conceited man, she thought furiously, and wished she could call him what she was thinking he was.

Maureen had an active mental life. In her mind, she could be and do anything. But in real life, she was only a shadow of the person inside her. The inner Maureen could engage in verbal battles and give people the devil. But the outer Maureen, the one who seemed always to blend into the background, was a different proposition. She fumed and muttered, but she was too softhearted to argue with people. She walked away from fights. She always had.

Back at the small duplex in which she lived, she kicked off her shoes and flopped down on her worn sofa. She couldn't remember a time in her life when she'd been as weary. Everyone had bad days, she reminded herself. But hers seemed to go from bad to worse.

That ill-mannered mechanic's sarcasm had been the last straw. So he was dishy. That gave him no excuse to accuse her of chasing him, for heaven's sake. Who did he think he was? Nobody who really knew her would ever think her capable of such a thing. She smiled ruefully when she remembered that there wasn't anybody who really knew her. Only her parents, and she'd lost them. She had nobody anymore. She didn't make close friends easily because she was basically shy and introverted. She waited for
other people to make the first move. But no one ever had. And that was too bad, she thought sadly, because the inner Maureen was as vivacious as Auntie Mame, as outrageous and outgoing as any comedienne, as sexy as a movie star. But she couldn't get out of Maureen's mind to tell people that she was. The reckless, devil-may-care person inside her needed only a catalyst to bring her out, but there had never been one. She dreamed of doing exciting things, and she admired people like the absent Mr. MacFaber who weren't afraid to really live their lives. But Maureen was a slow starter. In fact, she'd never really started anything, except her job.

She put on jeans and a T-shirt, brushed out her long, dark hair and went barefoot into the kitchen to cook herself a hamburger. On the way she almost tripped over Bagwell, who'd let himself out of his cage and was having a ball with her measuring spoons.

“For heaven's sake, what are you doing down there?” she fussed, bending over. “Did I forget to put the lock on the cage again?”

“Hello,” the big green Amazon parrot purred up at her, spreading his wings in a flirting welcome. “How are you-u-u-u?”

“I'm fine, thank you.” She extended an arm and let him climb on, pausing to pick up his spoons and put him and them back into the big brass-toned cage he occupied most of the day. “I'll let you out again when I'm through cooking. You'll singe your wings on the stove if you come too close.”

“Bad girl,” Bagwell muttered, running along his perch with the spoons in his big beak. He was a yellow-naped Amazon, almost seven years old, and
extremely precocious. Her parents had brought him back from a Florida vacation one year and had quickly learned that Amazon parrots were very loud. They'd given him to Maureen two years ago for company and protection, and so far he'd done well providing both. The one man she'd invited over for supper had barely escaped with all his fingers. He hadn't come back.

“You're ruining my social life,” Maureen told the big green bird with a glare. “Thanks to you, I'll never get a roommate.”

“I love you,” he said, and made a purring parroty noise behind it.

“Flirt,” she accused. She smiled, cooking her hamburger. She was using an iron pan, not her usual coated cookware. There had been an article in some bird magazine that warned bird owners about using nonstick cookware; it had said that the fumes could kill a bird. So now she cooked in enamel or iron pans. It was much messier, but safe for Bagwell.

“How about a carrot, Bagwell?” she asked the parrot.

“Carrot! Carrot!” he echoed.

She got him one out of the crisper and heated it just to room temperature in the microwave before she put it in his food dish. He took half of it in his claw and stood eating it contentedly.

“You're company, at least.” She sighed, turning the hamburger one last time before taking it up. “I'm glad you're good for seventy years or so, Bagwell. If I can't have a husband, at least I've got you.”

Bagwell glanced at her with green disinterest and went back to chewing his carrot.

There was a commotion out front followed by a yelling voice giving instructions. It was usually a quiet neighborhood, but that was an ominous sound. Maureen left Bagwell and went into the living room to peep out from behind the curtain. Two men were at the other half of her duplex, the one that had remained unoccupied for the past six weeks since the music lover had moved out. People tended to come and go there, because the man who owned the other half of the duplex traveled and rented it out. The last occupant had been a hard-rock fan, and Maureen hadn't been sorry to see him leave. But now she was wondering who would take his place.

She got her answer almost at once, and it seemed like fate, sure enough. A bad end to an even worse day. A big, dark man in a red-and-rust-colored pickup truck had backed into the second driveway, with what was obviously a small load of furniture.

She closed the curtain before he saw her, thanking providence that her small yellow VW was out of sight so that he wouldn't realize who his nearest neighbor was. There were other houses and apartments in the neighborhood, but none close, and there were a lot of trees separating the small duplex from the other dwellings. Maureen had liked that when she moved in, but now she was beginning to feel uncomfortable. She didn't like that big man anymore, even if he was dishy, and she was frankly irritated that she wasn't going to be able to avoid him at home. Well, maybe he'd stay inside. That way she could do her precious gardening in the plot outback without having to be observed at it.

“AAAHHH!” Bagwell screamed. “AAAHHH!”

She rushed into the kitchen, putting her finger against her lips as she tried to quiet the screaming bird. It was almost dark, and Bagwell had to do his thing at sundown. Some Amazons purred themselves to sleep, she'd heard. Bagwell wasn't one of them. He did a whole routine, from screaming to hanging upside down from the ceiling of his cage, and he wouldn't stop until he was covered.

Terrified that her unwanted new neighbor was going to burst in the door any minute to find out who was being beaten, Maureen rushed to get a cloth and threw it over the cage. When Bagwell stopped yelling his parroty head off, she'd clean out the remains of his carrots and put in fresh water and papers.

She leaned against the wall with a sigh of relief. That was when she saw the shadow against the window. She felt her knees going weak. It had to be him. The shadow was huge, and if he was at the kitchen window, that meant he could see her yellow VW, which was parked just behind the duplex.

She waited there, frozen, to see what he did. But the shadow went away almost instantly, and nobody knocked.

Maureen remained immobile for another minute. Then she went and peeked out the curtain at the back door, but there was nobody in sight. Thank God, he wasn't going to give her any trouble.

But if he was a peace-loving man, Bagwell might give him some. The last occupant, while loud, had at least not complained about Bagwell. Maureen had a feeling that this new lodger wasn't fond of noise, musical or otherwise. It could present some problems.

She made herself a sandwich and some coffee and finally uncovered Bagwell. He was nodding off, his
eyes closed, his feathers ruffled, one leg pulled up under him.

“Loudmouth,” she muttered.