He jogged toward the clubhouse, praying he could find a quick solution to mitigate this disaster.
Alice clicked on the oven’s light to check the progress of her chicken pot pie for the third time. Baking a flaky, golden crust without burning the delicate pastry leaves decorating the rim of the pie was always a challenge, but if Martha Stewart could do it, so could Alice.
Five more minutes? She set the timer, then lifted the lid on the pot of bone broth simmering from the roasted chicken carcass. She always used leftover bones to make broth that captured a depth and richness no store-bought brand could deliver. The aroma of savory meat and baking pastry filled the kitchen, stirring a deep sense of pride within her. Aside from the chicken, every ingredient she used today came from the farmers market or her own herb garden. She bought the carrots, onions, and peas this morning, and snipped parsley and thyme from her windowsill. Some people might settle for a frozen block of packaged vegetables, but creating a meal from scratch was a rewarding experience . . . even if she only cooked for one.
She’d use the last few minutes of baking time to make a bouquet garni for tomorrow’s soup. It required clipping a bit ofthyme and basil from her windowsill herb garden, which she did while smiling at the chirp of a wren nesting in a tree outside the open window. Evening sounds were always so soothing, a relaxing end to the day.
The slam of a car door from the parking lot startled the wren into flight. Why did people have to be so obnoxious? Most of the residents in this quiet row of townhouses probably had their windows open to savor the one of the last cool evenings of spring, and there was no call to slam that door so aggressively.
She focused on the calming scent of herbs as she wrapped them in cheesecloth, then reached for a bit of twine to tie it together.
A pounding on her front door startled her, but she didn’t look up from the half-assembled bouquet garni. She wasn’t expecting anyone, and they could wait while she finished the bouquet.
The pounding continued. “Open up, Professor,” a voice growled on the other side of the door. “I know you’re in there because your pansy car is sitting in the parking lot.”
Jack Latimer. He had a lot of nerve to insult her responsible vehicle when he drove a monstrous, carbon-emitting pickup that looked like it was designed to transport Darth Vader around the known universe.
She tied off the bouquet and set it on the windowsill before strolling to the front door while the pounding continued. Did he think acting like a caveman was going to earn her cooperation with anything?
She opened the door to see Jack’s face flushed with perspiration and annoyance. He had one hand braced on the frame of her door and held an official-looking document with the other.
“Would you care to explain this?” he demanded, holding the document before her face. She took a step back from the fury inhis voice, which he mistook for an invitation to enter her home. He took a giant step inside and slammed the door.
She flinched. “I didn’t invite you inside and have no intention of discussing anything if you can’t speak in a respectful tone of voice.”
“That’s right; you don’t discuss. You run to the government to fight your battles for you. I just got a warning letter for polluting Saint Helga’s Spring, and it’s got your fingerprints all over it.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but the ding of the kitchen timer gave her the perfect excuse to retreat. She hurried to the kitchen and grabbed a pair of mitts. A quick glance through the oven window confirmed the pot pie had achieved the perfect golden shade, with the pastry leaves a tiny bit darker. Satisfaction filled her as she lifted the fragrant pot pie from the oven and set it on a trivet.
“A fancy meal for one?” Jack taunted. “Why does this not surprise me?”
That was a nasty thing to say, but perfectly in keeping with Jack’s boorish nature. She ran a cloth over the kitchen counters to hide her nerves. “Why do you think I had anything to do with that letter?”
“Because someone tampered with the irrigation lines on my golf course, and it magically happened the day after you told me to expect eco-warriors to interfere with the amphitheater. I also just laid a ton of fertilizer on the course, and the laws of gravity means it was all washed into Saint Helga’s wetland. The request for an environmental inspection was filed the daybeforeI noticed the problem. Somebody tipped them off.”
She folded her arms. “It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“You were the one mouthing off the other day because I plan to cut down some trees on your sacred land. Now my irrigationlines are cracked in three places and it’s washing fertilizer into protected wetlands.”
The anger in his voice seemed too big for her cozy front room with its antiques and lace doilies. The kitchen counter served as a barrier between the kitchen and the living room, and she stood behind it as if it were a protective shield. “Is it so unthinkable to believe you may have made a mistake? Or that your irrigation guys were sloppy? Accidents happen all the time.”
“Yeah, they do, except that last month the pump on the waterfall also broke and started dumping water toward the spring. It’s not a coincidence. All my troubles started right after you got back to the United States.”
His implication that she’d resort to sabotage to stop his project was ridiculous. She couldn’t even change the oil on her own car; she certainly wouldn’t know how to rig an irrigation system to cause an ecological crisis.
“How bad is the runoff at the spring going to be?”
“Bad,” he bluntly stated. “The nitrogen and phosphorus levels are twice the acceptable level. Algae blooms will start taking hold unless something can be done. The state is going to charge me a fortune to hire aquatic specialists to get things under control. They’ll probably set up some aeration pumps and maybe break out some aerobic bacteria strains to get things in balance again. I’ll be setting up security cameras to watch the course around the clock. All your wannabe mothers will need to go somewhere else to cast their witchy spells.”
“You are so disrespectful.”
“What else would you call sunrise appeals to mythological Saint Helga?”
“You’ve tracked mud into my home.”
“Don’t change the subject. The Roost and the Spring are on private property. I was being nice letting you stuffy academics poke around, but that’s all over.”
Her jaw dropped. “I need to do my research.”
