“Maybe,” Julia said dubiously.
“So, Sally.” Alice leaned over to look past Julia’s sheltering arm. “What did you have in mind?”
Julia thought for a moment, then slid the sheet over to Alice. “Well, to tell you the truth, I was sort of thinking retro ‘50s funk.”
Alice’s light blue eyes widened. She looked about twelve. “Awesome. You can do that?”
“Oh yeah.” Decorating was something Julia could do in her sleep. Actually had. Once, right after the Devauxs had moved to Rome, she had woken up one morning in her empty bedroom with a complete decorating scheme in her head, down to the exact shade of royal blue on the ribbon trim of the curtain tiebacks.
“Right, then.” Julia bent over the notebook. “So, let’s bounce a few ideas around, why don’t we? Now, we could put the bar right inside the entrance to the left.” She stopped and narrowed her eyes as she thought of something. “Alice, can you get a liquor license?”
Alice drew herself up indignantly. “I’m twenty-five,” she said with dignity. “Of course I can get a license. And anyway, my cousin Newton is mayor, and Coop’s head of the town council. Newton and Coop meet a couple of times a year for town business then go over to Rupert for a beer. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it would save them a lot of miles if I could sell liquor.”
“Nothing like friends in high places,” Julia said dryly. “Okay—the bar could be here. That could be built cheaply, just a waist-high brick wall with ceramic tiles on the sides and a wooden top for a counter.” Julia’s pencil flew as she talked. She flipped a page. “Now in the central area, we can have the tables. Any kind of table will do, as long as it’s round. Even cheap plastic ones. We’ll just sew up some fabric to cover the legs. We can paint the walls in either pale blue and cream or peach and cream. We’ll need big planters, something like—” Julia stuck out her lower lip as she drew. “This. Something large and deep. Be nice to have big thriving plants.” She looked up as a shadow fell across the table. “Hi, Bernie.”
“Sally.” Bernie nodded his head. “Alice. Hey, Sport.” Bernie put his hand on Rafael’s shoulder.
“Dad!” Rafael’s grin showed delight and a good deal of his last bite of spice cake. “Miss Andersen bought me some cake.”
“I can see that,” Bernie said indulgently, ruffling his son’s hair. “I can see a little too much of it, as a matter of fact. Remember what I told you about chewing with your mouth closed?”
Rafael obediently closed his mouth and went on chewing.
Bernie took in his son’s delighted grin and turned to Julia. “Thanks, Sally. How did the lesson go?”
“Fine,” Julia smiled, crossing her fingers under the table. Rafael had barely looked at his books before heading for the backyard and Fred. “We managed to comb Fred, too.”
“Glad to hear it.” Bernie hesitated for a long moment, turning his Stetson around in his work-roughened hands and shifting from one booted foot to another. “And—and how’s he doin’ in school?” he asked finally. “He’d been having problems, you said, and I wanted to know if maybe…things were going better.” Bernie shot his son a glance, but Rafael was busy chasing crumbs around his plate with a fork. “Are they? Going better, I mean?”
Julia looked at Bernie’s tense face. He’d stopped fidgeting and was standing straight now, as if facing a court-martial. Julia wondered if he’d been in the armed services like Cooper. If he had been, he’d certainly pass muster now. He was clean-shaven and his clothes, though well-worn, were clean and pressed. The whites around his dark eyes were clear, instead of traffic light red.
“Rafael seems to be doing just fine, Bernie,” Julia said gently. “I don’t think you need worry any more. His grades have shot up and he’s adjusting well to…” Julia hesitated. How to delicately describe a runaway mom? “…to the new situation,” she finished lamely.
Bernie let out his pent-up breath. “That’s good. That’s very good.” He turned to his son. “You want to wait for me in the pickup, son? I’ll be out in just a minute.”
“Okay, dad.”
Bernie waited until Rafael was out of the room, then turned back to Julia. “So…you’re sure he’s okay?”
“Well,” Julia smiled. “I’m no child psychologist, and he might yet grow up to be Jack the Ripper or the CEO of a major polluting company. But for the moment, Rafael seems like he’s gone back to being a perfectly normal seven-year-old boy.”
Bernie let out a long sigh of relief. “I’m back on track now, too. It was…hard, for a while.”
“I imagine it was.” Julia’s voice was steady. She remembered the wreck of a man she’d met. Not at all the sober, hard-working cowboy standing in front of her.
“I think we can stop bothering you now.”
“Oh—” Julia waved her hand. Truth was, now that Cooper was gone, Rafael kept her company, kept the darkness at bay. When Bernie stopped by to pick Rafael up, only Fred was left for company. “Rafael doesn’t bother me. Not at all—”
“No, he needs to catch up on his chores. It’s time for us to get into our new routine now. Get our lives together. But I couldn’t have got to this point without you. I can’t thank you enough.” Bernie’s dark eyes met hers. “I owe you. Rafael means the world to me. I’m ashamed that I let him down like that. If you hadn’t picked up the pieces, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“Oh, no.” Bernie was being much too hard on himself. “Nothing would have happened. Rafael’s a good little boy. And you’re obviously a loving father. You just had a rough time. It all turned out okay.”
“Thanks to you,” Bernie persisted. “I just can’t thank you enough.” He flattened his hair with the palm of his hand and put his Stetson back on. “If you ever need anything, all you have to do is ask. Thanks again and—” He stopped, suddenly noticing the drawing on the table. “What’s that?’”
“Nothing,” Julia said swiftly.
“What do you mean, nothing?” Alice asked indignantly. She pushed the paper around so Bernie could get a better look. “Sally’s got these ideas for redecorating. Doesn’t it look great?”
“Yeah?” Bernie examined Julia’s drawing with care, then looked around the dusty diner as if seeing it for the first time. “I’m no expert,” Bernie said. “But it sure looks like it’ll be nice.”
“Yeah, it will,” Alice said proudly. “Only we want lots of plants but can’t decide what to put them in.”
Bernie reflected. “Coop has some old horse troughs. We could sand ‘em and hose ‘em down. We could bring them over with a truck when you’re ready. And as for the work itself—well, I’m not much, but Coop’s real handy with a saw and a hammer. He’ll be back soon. We’ll help.”
“That’s awfully nice of you. Thanks.” Julia looked at Alice’s rapt face. She felt caught up in a river flowing towards an unknown destination. “And thank Cooper, too.”
“No thanks necessary. I reckon Coop’d do just about anything for you. And so would I.” Bernie tugged at his Stetson in a sort of cowboy salute. “Sally. Alice.”
He walked away, leaving Julia with her head whirling.
Alice wasn’t paying any attention. “Golly, Sally,” she breathed. She was studying the drawings the way some women study the latest issue of Vogue. “These are great.” She looked up and shook her head in wonderment. “You’ve really got talent.”
“It’s just a knack,” Julia said modestly, wrenching her attention back to the drawings. When Bernie mentioned Cooper’s name, her heart had given a huge lurch in her chest. “Now, I was thinking that the kitchen area would be over here—” Julia stopped and thought about the kitchen and about how kitchens were where food was prepared for human consumption and about how the person preparing that food for human consumption would be Alice.
Alice was obviously thinking the same thing. “The kitchen area,” she said unenthusiastically.
“You know, Alice,” Julia put her pencil down and leaned forward. “I was thinking. I
f this place takes off, and people start coming from, oh, Rupert and Dead Horse, well then, you’d want to concentrate on hostessing and not have to be involved in the kitchen area.”
“Hostessing.” Alice smiled. “I like that.”
“So,” Julia continued, “I was thinking that maybe you might want to hire someone…someone who could—well, look after that aspect for you.”
“You mean like a—a cook?” Alice frowned.
“Well, yes. I was thinking that maybe Maisie Kellogg might give you a helping hand. Her kids are out of the house now and I think she’d enjoy a part-time job.”
Alice blinked. “Maisie Kellogg?”
“Yes.”
“As the cook?”
“Uh-huh.”
Alice turned the idea over in her mind. “Well, one thing’s for sure—Maisie’s a great cook. We all fought over who was going to get her chocolate cake at the church bazaar when we were kids. But I don’t know, Sally,” Alice shifted in her seat in embarrassment, “the diner doesn’t really bring in all that much money. I couldn’t afford to pay anyone a salary.”
“Well, why don’t you try talking to Maisie about that?” Julia nodded at the phone. “Give her a call and talk it over. Maybe the two of you could come to an arrangement, say share in the extra profits or something.”
“Now?” Alice asked.
“No time like the present.”
Alice walked slowly over to the old-fashioned phone and dialed a number. Julia watched Alice lean against the wall, the cord wrapped around one finger like the teenager she had been such a short while ago, and listened to the one-sided conversation.
“Hi, Glenn, it’s me, Alice. Just fine and you? And how’s Maisie? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Alice’s distressed eyes looked over to Julia who shook her head and mouthed—“Go on”. Alice drew in a sharp breath and turned back to the phone. “Uhm, do you think I could talk to her for a minute, anyway? Uhm, business. I think. Tell her…oh, okay, I’ll wait… Hi, Maisie. This is Alice. Listen, I’m here with Sally Andersen—you know, the new grade school teacher? And we’re, uhm, sort of talking about redoing the diner, nothing definite, just bouncing a few ideas around…uh-huh…and—and I was thinking I’d need someone to help out in the kitchen, but I can’t afford—oh. Well—sure, okay. See you soon, then.” Alice hung up the phone, dazed and looked over at a smugly smiling Julia. “She said she’d be right over.”
“There,” Julia said. “You see? That wasn’t so bad, was it? Now, let’s get back to our stuff before Maisie arrives. The two of you will want to talk over the business side of things without me around.” Julia finished a sketch of the room from the back wall, and added some troughs, filling them in with plants. “So,” she said casually, concentrating on sketching some leafy fronds, “you think Cooper might help us—you out?”
“Oh, yeah.” Alice tilted her head curiously. “God, if you’re around, Coop’ll be around, no doubt about that. Say, Sally, where do you think we’re going to get all those plants? The closest flower shop is in Dead Horse and anyway plants don’t come cheap.”
“Ferns.”
“Ferns?”
Julia finished the last sketch and held it up admiringly. Carly’s Diner would never look like that, but still. “Alice, it seems to me that between Simpson and Rupert there’s nothing but ferns and trees.”
“You mean we should steal some ferns?”
“I prefer to think of it as relocating them,” Julia replied primly. “The State of Idaho has a gazillion ferns, anyway. It’ll never miss a few. We’ll just have to make sure we get all the roots.”
“Steal them,” Alice said admiringly. “I never would have thought of that. You’ve really got a good imagination. How do you do it?”
“Guile,” Julia said on a sigh.
Chapter Fourteen
The hotel room was the best available, but it wasn’t much. The professional had become used to the very finest over the years. Once, on a job in San Diego to take out the head of the longshoreman’s union, the professional had stayed at the Hotel del Coronado and had celebrated the hit in the majestic Coronet Room with a deliciously dry local champagne.
Water gurgled in the hotel pipes as the tepid heating system kicked in and the professional sighed. It was a far cry from the Coronado.
It was raining and the room was cold and damp. The professional couldn’t wait to finish the job and fly out. It was all carefully planned with three different identities. The trip out of Sea-Tac to Hawaii. From Hawaii on a new passport to Mexico City, and from Mexico City to Kingston on another one. Once inside the Caribbean, it was going to be easy to disappear. The Caribbean was full of “disappeared” people, anyway. “Pulling an 876” it was called in the trade, when you disappeared into the mass of tiny sunny islands; 876 was Kingston’s telephone area code.
The professional froze.
It couldn’t be that easy. It couldn’t, could it?
Feverishly, the professional typed in the site of a service that provided phone numbers, working on a thin scratched veneer of cheap pine which served as a desk. Next to it was a plastic bowl with a bag of peanuts that had expired in September.
A quick perusal of the counties and the telephone area codes brought the answer.
There was an area code 248 in Idaho and it more or less corresponded to Cook county. An area of 2,347 square miles.
The professional consulted the laptop and Google maps. There were three medium-sized cities, four small towns and a handful of hamlets in the county. They would have put Julia Devaux in one of the smaller towns. Ruling out the area around Rockville and Ellis left a triangle created by Dead Horse, Rupert and Simpson.
Well, well, well.
The professional’s eyes narrowed. I know where you are, Julia Devaux. Now all I need to know is who you are.
“What do you think, Sally?” Alice asked anxiously Saturday morning, holding up some color samples. Peach and sky-blue and taupe.
Alice had begged her to accompany her to Rupert. Julia had reluctantly agreed and then had surprised herself by having a wonderful time.
Alice’s chatter had kept her amused during the ride and she had discovered that the third time was the charm. Instead of feeling oppressed and frightened by the landscape between Simpson and Rupert, she found it imposing and majestic.
When they had walked into Harlan Schwab’s store, Harlan had greeted them cordially. At first he had been disappointed that Julia wasn’t with Cooper.
In his second sentence, he asked Julia whether she was married and for a moment she was taken aback. Was that some rule out West she didn’t know about? You had to be married to buy dry goods? Then she realized that, like everyone else, Schwab was matchmaking. There were only three channels and no cable in the area. Matchmaking was obviously what people did instead of watch TV. It took Julia a good ten minutes to get Schwab back on track and focused on Alice’s project.
“Well…” Julia stepped back three paces to get a better look. She put a finger to her cheek and watched Alice more than the color samples. Alice fairly hummed with excitement, her light blue eyes alive with the thrill of planning her new diner. She looked as happy as it was possible for a human to be. Julia bit back a smile as she pretended to consider. But it wasn’t even close. The sky blue exactly matched Alice’s eyes. “I’d go with the blue and we can do the ceiling in cream. Harlan? What do you think?”
“Good choice.” Harlan Schwab said, beaming at them both. “Well, ladies, I think you’re all set now. You’ve got—” he ticked off the packages around the cash register, “—your paint, your fabric, your leaf stencils, a set each of coffee cups and tea cups. You’re all ready to go.”
Mindful of Cooper’s comments about shopping locally, Julia had convinced Alice to buy as much as she could from Glenn and they had made the trip into Rupert only to buy what Glenn didn’t carry. Harlan had seemed to understand that instinctively.
Alice paid and Julia started gathering up the packages when Harl
an stopped them with a wave of his hand. “No, no, ladies, we can’t have that. Just let me know where the car is, and when you plan on driving back and I’ll have my son there with the packages.”
“Harlan, you really don’t need to—” Alice began.
“Oh, yes I do.” Harlan was already beckoning to a sturdily built teenager and smiling at Julia. “Coop’d never forgive me if I didn’t give his lady a helping hand.”
Cooper’s lady?
What do I have, Julia thought, a sign on my forehead?
“I know I said I wanted to be back early, but would you mind if we stopped at the bookstore?” Alice asked as they strolled back to the car. “I want to look at some decorating books, just for a few ideas, and I want to see if the new Nora Roberts is in.”
“Oh, yeah,” Julia replied. She had nothing else to do, besides recolor her hair that evening. She’d been putting it off. She hated having brown hair. “I’ve always loved bookstores.”
Once in the bookstore, Julia stood still for a moment, breathing in the heady smell of books. She’d been to the bookstore less than a week ago, but she was used to dipping in and out of bookstores the way other people dipped into the cookie jar. Bookstores usually had twice-weekly deliveries, she knew, so there would probably be a whole new set of books in since last Saturday. And, to tell the truth, last Saturday she’d been so distracted by Cooper’s overwhelming presence that she hadn’t browsed as much as she’d have liked. Alice was a very nice girl, but she didn’t make her blood bubble hotly under her skin the way Cooper did.
Humming quietly, Julia dove into the bookshelves.
Half an hour later, she woke up from her trance, arms full of books, having thoroughly examined Bob’s stock. It was a well-run little bookshop, for its size. Even if it had been in Boston, it would have been one of Julia’s favorites. Now that the drive to Rupert didn’t terrify her, Julia knew her stay in Simpson—however long that would be—would be more bearable.
And Simpson wasn’t even as bad as she sometimes made it out to be in her darkest moments. Alice was turning into a good friend and the redecorating project was sure to keep Julia happily busy for a while. And, of course, there was Cooper, who kept her warm at night and gave her more orgasms than there were trees in Idaho. And who was coming home on Friday.
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