Read Online 02 _ Maltese Goddess, The by Lyn Hamilton - Free Book Online Page A

began.
    “More serious than a stolen part?”
    “A bit worse than that,” she replied carefully. I waited.
    “It’s not so much a part missing. The mechanic said nothing was missing, actually. Some minor problem with the carburetor,” she said. “It’s just there was also a broken line, or something.”
    I watched her face carefully. She was frightened, I could tell.
    “To the brakes,” she said finally. “You… we were all lucky the car wouldn’t start,” she said. “I’m sure it’s just because the car is so old,” she went on. “But the mechanic says there is a possibility that the line didn’t break, that it was cut.”
    I just looked at her. “It’s fixed now, of course,” she said, then burst into tears.
    Anyone with any sense would have moved out of the house after this, I know, and I’ve often asked myself since why I stayed. It was partly my capacity for self-delusion, which is as strong as anyone’s. I, like Marissa, preferred to believe the brakes were just old, not tampered with. In addition, I just decided, I think, that these horrible events were not directed at me. Furthermore, I had a job to do, and I didn’t like the idea of telling Martin Galea his house wasn’t ready for his important entertaining. Somehow I didn’t think he’d find a dead cat and what was probably just an accident with the brakes a good excuse for not getting the house finished.
    In any event, the job of getting the house ready took up more and more of my time and energy. I’d assumed, more than a little optimistically as it turned out, that by the time Sophia’s lecture rolled around, the house would be shipshape and the furniture winging its way to me.
    Instead, after the incident with the car, I put in a rather exasperating and anxiety-ridden couple of days as our work on the house not only did not progress as quickly as it should, but we actually seemed to be losing ground. Galea had said he’d arrive Friday or Saturday to inspect the place, and we were far from ready. I was getting worried.
    The electrician, for example, was supposed to arrive Monday morning. However, he and most of the other tradespeople I encountered ascribed to a casual philosophy I’d call a Mediterranean version of manana, and it was late Monday afternoon before he got there. Then what had seemed like a simple matter of installing a few ceiling fixtures had turned into a major wiring problem requiring several holes in the ceiling and walls to put right.
    Next we ran out of the glaze for the stucco and had to match it. A good designer, for example my ex-husband on one of the rare days when he was actually prepared to work, would have matched it in a minute or two. Joseph, Marissa, and I took considerably longer, and in the end we agreed we’d have to redo one whole wall to get it right.
    Even this would have been manageable. The really big problem was the shipment from home, and my early optimism that meeting Galea’s deadline would be reasonably easy was fast beginning to fade.
    A massive winter storm had blanketed much of the Great Lakes region and was now moving on to the eastern seaboard of the U.S. and Canada. Nearly twenty inches of snow had dumped on the Toronto area; temperatures had plummeted to way, way below zero; schools and offices were closed, as was the airport.
    “We’re completely socked in,” Alex told me. I was in almost constant touch with him and with Dave Thomson as my anxiety levels headed for the stratosphere.
    “Dave sent a truck out from his warehouse at the airport to pick up the furniture here and at Galea’s place on Saturday afternoon. He’d found an Air Canada cargo flight headed for Heathrow that night that had room for the shipment. But it was so cold the truck blew a tire on the highway.
    “Dave tried to find another truck but couldn’t, then… Well, anyway, they never got here or to Galea’s house and we missed that flight. Then the storm moved in. The airport authorities estimate