The Firefighter's Match. Allie Pleiter
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wisecracks like “#6. Don’t drown in the river,” and “#8. Go to the hospital if you get bitten by something you can’t identify.” Max ran his cottage and boat rental businesses like he ran the rest of his life: at breakneck speed with little thought to useful details. His talent at haphazard messes was one of the reasons she’d opted to stay in a rental cottage rather than Max’s grubby house.
She addressed the list, stained in three spots and taped back together in one corner. “I’ve seen your house. I’ve seen your life. You’d have lasted eight seconds in my unit, Max. Six, tops.”
It felt foolish to chastise an empty room, but since leaving the army a month ago she’d not yet learned how to be comfortably alone. That was why she was here: to reacquaint herself with the virtues of peace and privacy. To ease her way into settling down in Gordon Falls alongside her brother. And, if she was truly honest, to get the chronic knot out of her stomach and squelch the nonstop urge to look over her shoulder. Helping Max out by tending to his business for a month while he was off on yet another of his crazy schemes was just a temporary way to pay the bills while she got her life in order.
JJ laughed at her own thoughts. Who was she kidding? Picking up after Max’s multiple fiascoes was a lifetime gig. Jones River Sports was just this year’s verse to the same old song. She was amazed, actually, that he’d held on to the business as long as he had. The real surprise, though, was that she was actually enjoying the benefits that came with this particular scheme. JJ liked the location and thought she might really want to stay, even when Max pulled up stakes, as he was sure to someday do.
Pushing past the diet sodas on the fridge’s top shelf, JJ found a bowl of grapes and was pulling them out to snack on when she heard a tune coming in the window. She turned, not quite able to place the melody or the instrument. It was an instrument being played outside, wasn’t it? Not someone’s nearby radio? A sour note, followed by a second attempt at a melody, confirmed her guess. It wasn’t a guitar, and it wasn’t a violin, either. A banjo? No, a ukulele. She set the bowl down on the yellow Formica counter and peered out the window. It was. It was a ukulele. People still played those? In the middle of the night?
She popped a grape into her mouth and squinted harder in the direction of the dock. Max had said something about a crazy renter, some guy who paid cash in advance through a broker and wouldn’t give a name. She’d never have rented to someone acting that suspicious, but of course Max thought that was all great fun.
“Just don’t bug him and he probably won’t murder you.” That had been Max’s final instruction on the mystery renter. The creepy, nocturnal mystery renter.
Yet how creepy could a guy be who launched into a bad rendition of “When You Wish Upon A Star” at—she checked the clock with a grimace—3:21 a.m.?
Taking the big walking stick Max had given her as a parting gift, JJ slipped into her sandals to go find out.
She worked her way down the path toward the figure of a man sitting on the dock, his silhouette crisp against the yellow wedge of light thrown by the dock’s single bulb. Given the circumstances, JJ couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or annoyed that she gave the entire scene a military assessment before coming closer. Trying to ease up on the military vigilance didn’t mean throwing caution to the wind. This could be a potentially dangerous situation. People were weird, even out here in tiny Illinois tourist towns. And let’s face it—normal people don’t croon...“White Christmas” now, at 3:30 a.m. in July.
She stepped on a squeaky board and the man turned, still strumming a chord. He was her age, which surprised her. His profile was rugged, with a tumble of sandy-blond waves that were overdue for a cut. He wore one of those high-tech outdoorsman shirts but a ragged pair of jeans, and an expensive-looking watch glinted from his wrist. Could murderous psychopaths afford fine timepieces? Her military vigilance answered that: people can make themselves look like anything.
“It’s July,” she said, not knowing how else to address this kook.
“It’s snowing in New Zealand.”
“That still doesn’t make it time for Christmas carols.”
He went back to “When You Wish Upon a Star.” “I’m sorry I woke you.” He had a remarkably interesting voice—rich and deep, like a radio announcer but without all the theatricality.
“You didn’t, actually. Wake me, I mean. I was up.”
He shifted to face her and the light shone on his features. He looked like someone out of an outdoor magazine—handsome and carefree. “Another night owl?” She was startled by the friendliness in his words. He gave off the attitude of a man who played hard: rumpled, almost unkempt, but with loads of energy. A bit like Max but without the rough, destructive edges.
“Not by choice.” She started to say more, about how being up at night was often an asset in the military, but stopped herself because she knew nothing about this guy. She shouldn’t offer extra information to a stranger, even to make conversation. She wasn’t used to even wanting to make conversation. It certainly wasn’t the appropriate response to have to a potential sociopath.
He smiled—a dynamic, engaging smile that made it hard not to smile back—and switched to an ethnic-sounding tune she didn’t recognize. An owl hooted from somewhere behind her and she heard a fish jump from the river beyond him. “Been up nights since I was in college, myself. Still, I can never sleep past the sunrise even if I do manage to doze off.” He nodded toward the instrument. “That’s a Himalayan lullaby. The lady who taught it to me swore it worked, but I’ve never had much success.”
New Zealand, Himalayan mountains—the upscale gear was starting to make sense. It was easy to be carefree if you had the funds to play like that, especially at his age. He doubled back to a few bars of “White Christmas,” evidently tiring of the lullaby. She decided to try an experiment—after all, this guy had no idea she knew any of the information Max had told her. “Who are you?”
He hesitated only a moment before answering, “Bing Crosby, of course.”
“You are not Bing Crosby.”
“I had an Amazonian tribal chief tell me I had the soul of a monkey, but I’m not that, either.”
Given what she’d seen of his personality, she had a feeling it was actually a better guess than Bing Crosby. She ought to introduce herself, force his hand, but JJ found she didn’t want to. It was part fear—after all, no one knew anything about this guy other than he was well traveled and had deep pockets—and part to keep things private. Gordon Falls was still a bit of a hiding place for her. She was new enough that almost no one in town knew her past. This dock was no place to start creating unwanted conversations about what the war was like and why she wasn’t over there any longer. “Does that make me Judy Garland?” For as many nights as she stayed up watching television, she ought to have a better knowledge of old movies.
“Bing’s” smile doubled, and the man’s eyes fairly glowed. “Actually, I think that makes you Rosemary Clooney.”
JJ laughed. It felt foreign but not altogether bad. “I could do worse.”
He held her gaze for a moment before replying, “So could I.” A few chords went by before he asked, “So, Rosemary, what keeps you up at night?”
There was one of those loaded questions she’d hoped to avoid. “Too much to think about, I suppose.”
His sigh echoed across the water. “Oh, I know that tune. I suppose if we really were Bing and Rosemary, we’d be counting our blessings instead of sheep. Isn’t that how the song in the movie goes?”
“I have no idea.” She sat down on the little wooden bench that ran along the side of the dock. Being up in the middle of the night was always such a lonely thing; it was nice to have a little company.
He looked up and she followed his gaze. The summer sky was a sapphire blanket studded with stars, a glorious display. One of the benefits of being such a raging insomniac was that she got to see a lot of magnificent stars. It was nearly