Stone Cold

Chapter 3

I drove around the development until I found a cluster of well-worn trucks in one of the back corners, in front of a row of finished houses. Everyone seemed to be hard at work already, or at least getting to it. Some men had driven down the street to work on a home while others worked on the houses in the cul-de-sac. Younger men ran back and forth from the trucks while the older men hunched down to lay the stones. I grabbed my coffee mug before stepping out of the driver's seat and noticed someone pulling up behind me. The driver exited his car with a bag full of McDonalds and slammed the door behind him. A younger passenger carried two other bags of what I assumed was breakfast. I tried to warm my hands as best I could in the chilly morning air, but the relaxing smell of the pines and the sunrise streaming through the trees more than made up for being cold.

"Mr. Lummick," I said, walking up to the driver with a smile. "My name is Melissa Kennedy."

Mr. Lummick's face lightened up. "Oh! I figured you would be older!" He walked over and shook my hand, practically towering over me. "Man, you're tiny, too." He turned to his companion, giving him the keys to the truck. "Here, Robbie, go give the guys down there some breakfast. Oh, hand me my papers first." He pointed Robbie in my direction, who handed me the small stack of papers. "I have the statements you asked for," the older man said. "I highlighted all the purchases that weren't mine."

Robbie walked away as I flipped through the papers, noticing more yellow closer to the top of the stack, which were the most recent dates. I put the stack in the passenger seat of my car and followed Billy towards one of the houses, where he passed a bag of food off to one of the workers. "So tell me more about your family, Mr. Lummick. How old is your father?"

"Man's dead, girlie," he said, walking through a heavy oak door at the front of the house. Plastic covering the new floors—I assumed to keep the dirt and cement-covered steel-toed boots from marring it—crunched loudly under our feet as we passed through a living room full of sleeping bags. "Left me and my brother about seven years ago. Had nasty lung cancer. I took over the company long before that, though, when he went to a nursing home. This business was his pride and joy." He held a sliding glass door open for me as we entered a spacious backyard. "If we let it go to take care of him he would have beat us senseless from his wheelchair."

"Have you always wanted to take over the family business?" I asked, admiring the stone porch we now stood on.

"My father was my biggest role model," he said, walking down into the dirt yard. I followed and noticed rolls of grass sitting at the farthest edge of the wooden fence, waiting for landscaping to pull them out. "Best man I'd ever met. Thought a woman's place was in the kitchen, but he liked to take care of everyone as long as he profited from it."

I raised an eyebrow at the random remark. I felt like I was about to regret the question forming on my lips. "And where exactly do you think women should be, Mr. Lummick?"

The man laughed, crouching down to observe his men's work of the side of the porch. "As long as women can keep up, I don't see why they can't do what they'd like."

"Your business does some amazing work. With this quality and breath-taking views of the mountains, the prices of these houses should skyrocket. But Eatonville doesn't make a lot—it's a small logging town. Do you think they're going to sell for as much as they're looking for?"

Billy shrugged. "As long as I'm getting paid the amount we discussed, I don't care if it sells or not. I have plenty of other contracts piled on my desk. This just so happens to be the biggest job we have at the moment. Jon is taking care of the smaller ones with his crew. Why do you ask?"

"I try and get to know as much as I can about my clients." He nodded and I continued my questions. "Your brother has his own crew?"

"Bill!" a man called from inside. "Hey, Bill! Need ya to look at somethin'!"