Yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that all hell was about to break loose.
She glanced over the fence dividing the parking lot from the property next door. She’d slaved all spring to keep her lawn and flower beds alive in the unseasonable heat. By what freak of horticultural nature did her neighbor’s straggling patch of monster grass and gargantuan weeds grow so abundantly?
Neighbor? Squatter was more like it. The insolent, ill-mannered oaf did not pay his too-kind landlord a dollar’s worth of rent. How many times had she told Brindon Tucker that helping a lazy down-and-out bum like Joe Mitchum exceeded the limits of human generosity? Unfortunately, her longtime friend was a big-hearted guy who looked for the best in people.
What he saw in Mitchum was beyond her. Texas was filled with good ole boys, but Joe wasn’t one of them. After being thrown out of his manufactured home by a woman smart enough to finally divorce him, the shiftless ne’er-do-well had moved into a ratty, forty-year-old travel trailer he’d rescued from the salvage yard. Mere moments before it was scheduled to be flattened into a cube the size of a 29-inch television from the looks of it.
Aside from a few female tavern dwellers whose judgment was obviously impaired by frequent applications of hair bleach, his only regular companions were a pack of mangy dogs. None of which had ever had a bath, received a rabies vaccination or seen the inside of a vet’s office.
Which only proved the adage, “No man ever sinks so low that a dog or a woman won’t take up with him.”
Pumped up by righteous indignation, Mallory ignored the approaching storm and her unsettling undercurrent of misgiving. She glared at the rusting car bodies and heaps of scrap metal. How had Mitchum managed to accumulate such an impressive collection of junk in the few short months he’d lived there? The place was a scandal and a danger to community health. It was a veritable wonderland of tetanus just waiting for an unsuspecting victim to stumble and puncture something. She shuddered at the thought of the chiggers, toxic ticks and poisonous snakes lurking in the overgrown brush.
She’d lodged numerous official complaints about the eyesore on the clinic’s behalf. The citizens of Slapdown subscribed to a “live and let live” policy, but that hadn’t stopped her from trying to convince the town council to issue a citation. Warnings hadn’t worked. Maybe if they made it official and ordered Mitchum to clean up the place, haul off his junk and mow the offending vegetation, things would change.
Oh, wait. Something had changed. Another gutted auto hulk had been added to the landscape. According to the mayor’s wife from whose shoulder Mallory had removed a questionable mole this afternoon, the lazy redneck had laughed in response to the last warning.
“Sure thang,” he’d said. “Soon’s I get around to it, I’ll have the place lookin’ fresh and dewy as The First Lady’s rose garden.”
The heavy clouds squeezed out a few fat raindrops, which practically bounced off the hard, dry ground. Mallory bolted for home, jogging over the well-tended clinic grounds where flowers bloomed in color-coded symmetry and grass was not permitted to grow longer than three inches. She glanced up to track the storm, and a disturbing sight stopped her in her tracks.
Joe Mitchum was perched atop a utility pole on the clinic side of the fence. Dressed in scruffy jeans and a T-shirt, he looked grungy even from a distance. His precarious position was loosely secured by a makeshift lineman’s harness. She had never mistaken him for a genius, but lightning was flashing, and the man was clinging to the highest object in an otherwise open area. Tampering with electrical wires.
Somewhere a village was missing its idiot.
The wind kicked up as she dashed across the parking lot. She stopped at the bottom of the pole and looked up. Rain stung her face like liquid needles. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing up there?”
“Borrowing a little juice. Power’s out.” Mitchum grinned down at her. He had an annoyingly wide smile that revealed naturally straight, white teeth. Had to be natural. No way did orthodontia fit into his unemployed slacker budget. Heck, the four-syllable word wouldn’t fit into his caveman vocabulary.
As far as she knew, there had been no power outages in the area. Mitchum’s electricity had probably been cut off due to failure to pay. “Are you crazy? Or just plain stupid?”
“I’m a wrestling fan,” he called over the wind. “Wanna come over and watch the WWF with me tonight? You can bring a six-pack.”
What a waste of decent looks and bulging muscles. While he could be creepily charming at times, she’d rather break both her thumbs than set foot in his tumbledown, flea-infested trailer shack. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a storm rolling in.”
“Better get inside then. You’re so sweet, Doc, the rain might melt you.”
A few ginger-colored curls had escaped the ponytail elastic securing her unruly mop. She pushed an errant strand of wet hair out of her eyes. “I realize Mr. Hardy flunked you out of physics class, but are you at all familiar with the basics of electrical conduction?”
“Yep. Electricity makes the world go around. Or does love do that?”
“You’re hugging a lightning rod there, Einstein.” Mitchum had been two grades ahead of Mallory throughout junior high and high school. She’d finished at the top of her class, earned a full college scholarship, gone on to graduate summa cum laude from Baylor Medical School.
Joe had dropped out a month before his own high school commencement for reasons known only to his unambitious self. In the twelve years since, he’d accomplished nothing noteworthy, nor done anything even remotely useful. Unless you counted his career as the poster child for brainless wonders.
Then there was his precocious three-year-old daughter, Chloe. Mallory recalled the adorable preschooler from a recent clinic visit. Mitchum’s ex-wife Brandy had recently moved to a neighboring town to live with her parents but continued to bring her child to the clinic. She was doing an admirable job of raising Chloe, but the little girl deserved more than the paltry child support Joe managed to scrape together each month, and occasional court-mandated visits.
While he’d never been caught committing a crime, Mitchum had no visible means of support. He called himself a mechanic and sported the dirty fingernails to prove it, but Mallory had never met anyone whose car he had actually repaired. Judging from the automotive debris littering his yard, he was more adept at taking them apart than he was at putting them back together.
“You’d better shinny down that pole,” she called up to him. Unless you have a burning desire to be a fried hick on a stick.
“Don’t get your panties in a knot, Doc.” He pulled the steel spike strapped to his boot out of the pole and lowered it a notch. Repeating the move with the other foot, he started down. “I’m done.”
So was she. Her hair was soaked, and she was cold. If the bozo wanted to risk electrocution in order to watch half-naked overweight men throw chairs at each other, who was she to question his choice of entertainment? Joe Mitchum wasn’t worth catching pneumonia, and she had a date with some hot buttery popcorn.
She turned and stalked away. Tomorrow she’d have a little chat with Nate Egan, the county sheriff. Texas hadn’t passed any laws against being a dumb jerk, but bootlegging power was definitely illegal.
She was halfway across the parking lot when a bright spear of lightning knifed to earth, followed by a deafening boom of thunder. The distinctively pungent odor of ozone assaulted her nostrils, and her scalp tingled as the super-charged air lifted her hair. Heart racing, she wheeled around and gasped. Popping, crackling flames erupted from the reduction transformer atop the utility pole. A shower of sparks, like a miniature fireworks display, cascaded to the ground and rained upon the still, silent body of Joe Mitchum.
With no thought for her own safety, Mallory surged into doctor mode and rushed to the fallen man’s side. Kneeling beside