The Mermaid Collector Read Online Free Page A

tohim, and he walked to it, having to navigate his way over a stack of logs to get there. Once he had, he cupped his hands around his face and pressed his nose against the glass. Squinting in, he could make out the shape of the interior, cluttered surfaces lit by a window on the opposite side. He scanned the room, almost all the way to the end before he saw her.
    A woman sat in the cone of a spotlight and facing a mirror, one hand posed at her hip, the other reaching out to draw on what appeared to be a wooden dolphin. Tom squinted harder, shifting against the pane for a better view and got one. Now he saw clearly, too clearly to look away, though he knew that would have been the right thing to do. After all, the woman had drawn up her shirt on one side and gathered the cotton just above her breast, high enough that he could see the pale fullness of one side, the creamy skin in stark contrast to the rough wood of the shed’s walls. She was posing, he was certain of it, being her own model. But why, when she was sculpting a dolphin? Now she reached her arm behind her, arching her back, her dark hair washing her shoulder blades. She watched herself as her torso curved, causing more flesh, a crescent of nipple, to be exposed.
    At that instant, Tom caught his own reflection in her mirror, then the woman’s eyes shifting to meet his and rounding.
    She twisted to face him.
    “Shit—” He darted backward so fast that he knockedhis head on a set of wind chimes—
Christ, how many does one person need?
—causing them to ring out in alarm. He grabbed the bamboo sticks to quiet them, rubbing his head with his other hand.
    From the front of the shed came the creak of the door being pushed open and then the woman, barefoot, her hair wild and coppery in the sunlight, her eyes the color of freshly cut limes. Her T-shirt was down now, hanging nearly to the hem of her lopsided shorts. It was a man’s undershirt, there was no mistaking it, oversized and worn and low on one shoulder. She held a chisel in her left hand. More like
wielded
it, he thought. What had he gotten himself into?
    “If you wanted to spy on me,” she said, “you should have gone around to the other window. The view’s much better from there.”
    “I wasn’t spying,” Tom defended hotly, already feeling the color seep up his cheeks as he struggled to untangle himself from the precarious stack of logs he’d climbed over. “I was just trying to find someone to ask directions.”
    “You could have knocked.”
    “You could get curtains.”
    “It’s private property.”
    He cleared his throat, succeeding at last in finding level ground. “I’m looking for Buzz Patterson. Is he here?”
    “I suppose he’s somewhere.”
    “He’s expecting me.”
    “I doubt that.” She dangled the chisel by its handle.“Buzz isn’t expecting anyone today. Cottage reservations don’t start until Thursday.”
    “I’m not here for a cottage,” Tom said, tugging on the knot of his tie, which seemed tight suddenly. “I’m here for the keys to the keeper’s house. I’m Tom Grace.”
    “Oh.” She looked him over for a long moment before her eyes lifted to the hill. She pointed behind him with her chisel. “Guess you’re in luck.”
    Tom turned to find Buzz Patterson marching down the hill, the sixty-five-year-old dressed in his uniform of jeans and an unbuttoned flannel over a tie-dyed tee, his long red hair, which, along with his beard, had become increasingly threaded with gray in the past few years, pulled into a ponytail that fell to his shoulders. He arrived and thrust out a meaty, freckled hand. “Tom Grace, right?”
    Tom cautiously extended his own. “How did you know?”
    Buzz nodded to the Volvo. “Saw the Illinois plates. Buzz.” He gave Tom’s hand a rough shake. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
    “I decided to drive straight through,” Tom said.
    “I see you’ve met my daughter, Tess.”
    Tom turned to Tess but found she’d