Habit by T. J. Brearton Page A

Bank, just down the street, where I was right at nine. Or, if you need something earlier, I stopped at a little place in Forestport for coffee and a breakfast sandwich at seven this morning.”
    Brendan was nodding. “Thank you. That’s more than enough. I’ll just have a word with Mr. Pert on the way out and that will be it.”
    Brendan picked up the recorder, shut it off, and stood. Kettering stood, too. They shook hands again across the desk. “I can show myself out,” Brendan said. “Thank you so much for your time. You’ve been immensely helpful.”
    Kettering, for once, didn’t seem to have anything to say. He just nodded.

CHAPTER NINE / THURSDAY, 4:08 PM
    He was a few minutes late arriving at Olivia Jane’s house, just outside of Barneveld. She lived in a Cape Cod-style house with a columned, wrap-around porch. The home was on Trenton Falls Road and sat across from a river that burbled softly in the afternoon. Brendan stepped out of the air conditioned Camry, the atmosphere was hazy and humid, the heat cloying, like a thick blanket. With any luck it would start to burn off in the next hour. The radio claimed the temperature had hit 95 in Utica.
    He had parked in the driveway behind her pea-green Aztec, and now walked up the short path to the front door. She must have heard his approach, because the door swung open before he reached the bottom of the steps to the porch.
    “Hi,” she said. She had traded in her blue jeans for a pair of brown shorts, and her white blouse for a red tank top. Her brown hair was tied back showing her forehead dewy with perspiration. A smudge of dirt was on her jawline. “Come on in. I’m just pulling some more vegetables.”
    Brendan smiled and walked into the house, which was cooler than the outside, but not by much. The place was roomy. An open area just inside the doors turned right into a dining area and kitchen, left into a living room with two couches facing each other and a baby grand piano in the far corner. Straight ahead were mahogany stairs that went up to the second floor.
    Olivia walked past the small dining table and through the kitchen and into a back mudroom, Brendan close behind. “Come outside if you wouldn’t mind,” she said, and headed out a back door and into a vibrant garden.
    There was a wheelbarrow in one of the paths between the raised beds of vegetables and wildflowers. In the wheelbarrow was a crop of carrots, and what looked like rutabaga, beets, squash, beans, and more. “Wow,” said Brendan.
    “I love the harvest,” she said. “I’ve just got this last row and then I can clean up and we can talk. But we can talk too, now, absolutely. I’ll just be . . . let me just tend to this last bit.”
    “Of course,” Brendan smiled, and added, “I don’t feel so bad for being late.”
    She was already on her knees and leaning forward into a row of green sprigs of something. She lifted her head and turned to look at him. “Are you late? What time is it?”
    He took out his cell phone. “4:10.”
    She turned back to what she was doing. “Wow. It never ceases to amaze me how I just get lost out here.”
    “I’ll bet. What have you got?”
    She looked at him again, unsure what he meant.
    “For a yield, I mean. What did you grow?”
    “Oh. Everything and anything that will grow. Cucumber, peas, celery, beets, carrots, you name it. There’s some potatoes in that barrel there on the end. And herbs. Cilantro, Oregano, Basil, Dill, Mint. It’s tough to grow mint.”
    “It is?”
    “It looks like clematis. It just blends in. Chives are easy. Chives grow if you stomp on them and call them bad names. They just keep growing.”
    “Resilient.”
    He put his hands in his pockets, and suddenly felt strangely self-conscious. He found himself looking down at his appearance. He was wearing jean-like khaki pants and monk strap shoes, black. He had changed his shirt at the office before going to Boonville – it had been soaked with sweat – and opted