“Everything’s good so far,” she said before she confidently flipped what appeared to be two grilled sandwiches and set down her spatula to toss a salad. My mouth watered. “I hope grilled cheese sandwiches and salad is okay. Evan said supplies are a little low, since your grocery delivery doesn’t get here until tomorrow.”
“It sounds great,” I said.
“Valeria told me she’d go shopping in town for us, if we’d rather have someone pick out our produce and meat with a more discerning eye,” Evan said from behind me. I felt his arms encircling my waist. I spun in time to catch his kiss on my mouth instead of the back of my head.
“I have a cousin who runs a stand at the weekly produce market. I’ll go there this afternoon, and then to the grocery store for the meat. The market is the best for first rate veg and fruit, though, and my cousin will give us a discount,” Valeria was saying behind us.
“Produce market,” I said, looking over my shoulder. I could pick up some nutritious things for the old woman’s basket. “I’d love to go with you. Sounds nice.”
“It is. They have great stuff there besides the produce: jewelry and flowers and crafts… ”
“Where is the market?” Evan asked.
“Just in Tahoe Shores,” Valeria said as she removed the golden brown sandwiches from the pan and placed them on plates. “We’ll have time to start inventorying the things in the boathouse after we get back, if you still want to, Anna.”
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” I said, turning back to Evan. “Did you happen to send someone to the boathouse to get the scuba equipment cleaned and checked out?”
His relaxed expression went hard. “What are you talking about?”
“I saw two men hauling all the scuba equipment out of the boathouse just now, as I crossed the beach.”
He hissed a curse, and without another word, headed toward the stairs and beach entrance to the house.
“Evan?” I called, stunned by his furious intensity.
“Stay here,” he barked in a perfunctory manner over his shoulder.
“Why would someone take all the scuba equipment?” Valeria asked from behind me.
“I have no idea,” I said, listening to Evan’s rapid footfalls on the stairs.
I was on the verge of going after Evan when he didn’t return after ten minutes. But just when I started for the back entrance, and Valeria was calling she’d come with me, I heard the downstairs door open and close.
Evan explained what had happened over lunch.
He’d come upon the men, loading up the scuba equipment into a pick-up truck parked in the South Twin’s driveway.
“I asked them what they hell they thought they were doing, hauling away my property right under my nose. I’ll be damned if they didn’t just keep going about their business, like I wasn’t even there,” he said, eating a mouthful of salad. I could tell by the slant of his jaw as he chewed that just the memory made his blood simmer all over again.
“So what’d you do?” I remembered how I’d hesitated about going after the two men alone. They’d been in their thirties or early forties. They hadn’t had the bodies of athletes, necessarily. But they were big, beefy, rough-seeming guys, not the kind of men I’d wanted to confront about stolen property alone… or have my husband tangling with, either.
“I told them that I knew who they were, and I’d report the theft to the police straightaway if they tried to leave with it,” Evan replied. “I said their license plate number out loud for good measure. I told them wouldn’t get ten miles out without being stopped. Maybe that was a bit of exaggeration on my part in regard to the local police department’s abilities. But it worked. I doubt either one of them wants to come face to face with the police with stolen goods in their truck, given their likely criminal records.”
“Likely criminal records? You knew them?”
He gave a little shrug, his eyes taking on a hard, silvery gleam.
“I knew one of them. I recognized him, anyway… some stoner thug three years ahead of me in school, Frank Sharpton. He was already dabbling in theft, assault, and small-time drug dealing back in high school. He’s turned out even worse than I would have predicted he would. The other one looked rougher than Frank did.”
“What happened after you said what you did?”
“They brought the stuff back to the boathouse and put it back where it belonged.”
I gave a short laugh at his matter-of-fact response.
“Just like that? They just followed your orders?” I asked disbelievingly. “I would have thought a guy like the one you’re describing would have done the exact opposite of what you wanted, once you confronted him.”
“Men like that are much more obliging to authority than you would think, once the rules are made clear.”