by Cross, Daryn
Magic shook his head. “Bittersweet for Crandall and Zack. Excellent for Gretta and Mike. They’ll agree to tie the knot.”
“How do you know…?” As soon as he asked the question and saw Magic’s raised eyebrow, Tom dropped his head. “Never mind. I get it.”
“The next two trials are tedious, Tom, tedious.” Magic shook his head. “You must be careful as you work. No mistakes. You make the wrong one and it could cost these two a lifetime of bliss.”
Pride asserting itself, Tom raised his head, nose in the air. “What makes you think I’ll make a mistake?”
Magic laughed. “Because Magic knows…”
“Everything, right.” Tom whistled through his teeth. “Can you tell me if I make it right?”
The old geezer shook his head. “Can’t give anything away. You need to grow, my boy. Concentrate on your task and we’ll regroup after Sierra Landing.”
Taking a handkerchief out of his pocket, Tom wiped off his sweating forehead. “This doesn’t get any easier, does it?”
The old guy shook his head. “True love always requires a price. Thankfully, the right matches pay with no regrets.”
As the crowd went wild, Tom grinned. “I won’t disappoint you.”
****
“I didn’t even ask you all the way over on the plane. How did you convince Zack to let you come?” Gretta sat on the bed in their Parisian hotel and patted the mattress.
“I told him I had to check out Washington’s company, how else?” Mike wrestled his tie off and threw it on a side chair, then began to unbutton his shirt. “You know it’s too bad we couldn’t have a separate compartment in a plane like they used to have on trains. We could have played around all the way over here. I always wanted to be part of the Mile High Club.”
She held up her palm, stopping him in mid-strip. The guy was always ready to make love, not that she was complaining. “Lover, don’t undress right now. I have an appointment at a cigarette company at five. Crandall seems to think she remembered something about the name.”
He raise done eyebrow. “Is it far? Maybe we have time for…”
“We don’t.” She shook her finger. “Stay on task for now and I’ll make it worth your while.”
He grinned. “How can I resist that bait? What’s the deal with Washington owning a cigarette company?”
“I don’t know.” Gretta checked her Smartphone. “All I know is he cut his teeth on it. One of his very first holdings after he took over his mother’s firm. Fresh out of college when she died from a massive heart attack.” That was enough information to give away. Crandall would kill her if she told him any more details.
“No kidding?” He scooted over and looked over her shoulder as she scrolled down on her Internet page. “Does it have any special significance?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not sure. All I can find is one interview where he said he bought the company in honor of his mother, whatever that means. If she died of lung cancer I can understand why he’d want to buy it and sell it off piece by piece but he didn’t”
“That’s really strange. Of course it would make great sense to bring it overseas. People smoke more in Europe than the US these days, especially in France.” Mike grabbed his tie off the chair and made a face as he put it back around his collar and began to knot it. “I was researching the man for a few days before we came out here and couldn’t find out anything. All I know is his company filed against Prezelicious about the same time Crandall and Zack went to Tinytown. But her lawyers managed to place some kind of gag order on the details. Said the information would be detrimental to the company.”
Gretta got up and strolled over to the windows, feeling suddenly uptight. How was she going to pull off not divulging the whole truth to Mike? Yet, she had to stay mute. It was a business secret and she was a professional. “Mike, I may know something about this, but I can’t say what I know. Do you understand?” Behind her, she heard him stroll to where she was and place his hands on her shoulders.
“I do sweetheart, and I would never ask you to put your integrity in jeopardy. I’ll find out on my own. I’m here for you, first and foremost. But if I find out anything you don’t while I’m here, the same goes for my mute lips.”
She turned around, reached up on tiptoe and kissed him tenderly. “I love your mute lips.”
****
Crandall drove into Sierra Landing and felt years melt away. If she hadn’t known better, she’d swear she was still in high school. Sure, there were changes in the town, but not so significant that it looked that different. Even if it had, she doubted she’d notice, for the way it had been was indelibly marked on her brain. If buildings had been demolished, she remembered in complete detail where they were and how they’d looked. That was the thing about your hometown. Your memory served as a better photographer than the reality of your present.
Parking in front of Sequoya Care Center, she sighed, staring at the stucco one-story building sprawling along the landscape. It was huge and growing every time she saw it, giving credence to the fact the aging population was also exponentially increasing
Coming here always required a talk with herself before Crandall entered. A reminder to stay bright, upbeat and able to show the love she felt without wallowing in the downer of her mother’s Alzheimer’s. The fact was only a couple of people even knew her mother was alive. It was easier to say she died.
Once inside the building Crandall watched as ambulatory residents wandered the corridor, many with happy smiles on their faces, but all with vacant eyes. Dead eyes to the moment. She’d long ago decided they were seeing thing in perfect clarity, but each one’s crystal vision was directed inward to a place no one could explain, at least not in words. For the sights and the sounds, all that transpired, were recordings of times long ago, forever perfect, drawn from the deep recesses of injured memory banks and played on the mind’s superior DVR. They saw times when life made sense and loved ones were still close around them.
With a sudden start, Crandall realized they saw their lives the same way she saw Sierra Landing. From time to time they “visited” reality, but for them it hadn’t changed.
Crandall’s anger built within her like a steam kettle as the water begins to boil. It wasn’t fair or even comprehensible. These people were all older than her mother. Sure, her mom and dad had given birth to her later in life, her mother in her mid-thirties and her dad in his late-thirties, but Donna Drake was still only sixty-four years old, by today’s standards, still very young.
How could the brain rob you of the years you were most supposed to enjoy the most? In her case, the downturn had started about the same time she’d entered college. Now, she was fortunate if her mother even recognized her. You never knew how alert she’d be. It was sort of like trying to tune in a distant radio signal.
The fact also bellowed a wake-up call that Crandall herself had less time than she thought and only a short window if she were going to have any children of her own.
As she knocked on the door to her mother’s room and entered, her nose was greeted by the smell of urine, and she took note she’d have to speak with the nurse in charge of the unit. That shouldn’t happen these days. The smell was too strong to have just occurred and injurious to her mother’s well-being. Mama was sitting at a small table in the corner with a light box.
The nurse had told her last visit they were trying light therapy for her mother. Patients seemed to respond better to natural-looking light. The box helped when an aide wasn’t available to help walk patients around the courtyard or watch as they wandered in a closed space. Thankfully her mother had not progressed quite far enough to wander at this point in time.
Quietly, Crandall took a chair on the opposite side of the table. “Mama, I’m here.”
A small heart-shaped and hollowed face surrounded by freshly coiffed graying hair looked up at her. “Who are you?”
A single tear slid down Crandall’s left cheek. “Mama it’s me, Crandall.”<
br />
The woman, now a stranger to her daughter, in no way like the mother Crandall had known, shook her head. “You can’t be. She’s only six years old.”
“But I am Crandall.” She placed her hand over the woman’s thin hand. “Mama, please remember me. Remember when I rode my bike in the street and the car almost hit me. I had all those scrapes on my knees.”
Donna Drake’s face changed from one of confusion and lack of focus to that of a concerned mother, her eyes widening and a smile of pure love tracing her lips. “Honey, child. What were you doing? Come let Mama check those scrapes on you.” She grabbed Crandall’s hand. “Turn over your arm so I can see your elbows.” She stared at them as if surveying real wounds. “Not that bad, sweetie. Just a bit of alcohol, that’s all you need. Knees, I need to check the knees. Scoot over and let me see. Okay, there’s bleeding, but it’ll stop in a heartbeat. Stop crying, sweetheart. You won’t die. It just hurts for a minute.”
Without warning, the woman stood and cradled Crandall’s head in her bosom. “It’ll be okay sweetie. Everything will be okay.”
Through a blurring of tears and a clogged nose, Crandall nodded and sniffed, wishing she had a tissue. “I know Mama. I know it’ll be okay.” If only she believed it were true. But more than anything, she wished it only hurt for a minute.
Chapter Thirteen
The next morning, still feeling the after effects of her homecoming, Crandall woke in her hotel room. It felt odd to stay in a hotel in her hometown, but the truth was she didn’t have any close friends who’d stayed here after graduation. Nowhere to stay since her parents’ home had long since been sold. It wasn’t like she’d keep it when she had no intention of living here again. Now was one of those times she regretted not having siblings and vowed if she did beat her biological clock she wouldn’t let that happen to a child of hers.
Climbing out of bed, Crandall stumbled to the door and picked up the newspaper. Quickly thumbing through and checking the headlines, she groaned and put it down. On the front page of the local section, the headline read, “Hometown hero vows he’ll battle for his true love’s hand.” A huge picture of Xavier smirked at her. She needed coffee and at least a cinnamon roll before she could stomach reading it. No doubt about it. The challenge in her very own hometown was going to be a dismal failure.
Better not think of failure, she was here to find some dirt, so where did she start? She decided she’d go down her already prepared list of possible leads first. That included Patti Burkett who owned the local beauty salon and graduated three years before she did, Jason Hansen, her dad’s old friend, and Frank Nelson at the garage. The reasons for seeing Patti and Frank were obvious. Women always gossiped when they got their hair done and also had the bad habit of divulging everything too.
It didn’t take a genius to realize that if Patti knew everything about everyone and told you, she was also spreading everyone else’s dirty laundry. But, somehow, she was never blamed. The same thing went for Frank. Men would let a lot of information drop over the engine of a car or simply chewing the fat in Frank’s ancient office. Here was hoping she still had the charm she needed to get the two of the town’s local grapevine talking. As for Jason, Crandall hoped he could tell her more about Xavier’s mom and how she could be in possession of the formula. It was a sure thing her mother couldn’t help her.
An hour later and settled in a salon chair, Crandall cringed as Patti trimmed her ends. She didn’t remember the woman being all that talented. “What’s the buzz around Sierra Landing these days?” Crandall stared at Patti in the mirror. She never knew what color Patti’s hair would be, but right now she had a bright purple strip through her bangs.
“Let’s see.” Patti snipped twice on the back of Crandall’s hair. “Since you were here last. Marge Thurston’s been married twice and divorced both within six months. I think that puts her on her fifth divorce. And to think the woman’s only in her early forties. Then there’s Seth Fallon. Word has it that he’s playing around with his secretary, and his secretary’s a man.” She snorted. “That spread through the community like a wildfire in the Sierras.”
Patti paused as she clipped part of Crandall’s hair up so she could get the under layers. “But, I suppose what you’re really wanting to know is what’s new with Xavier.”
Crandall chuckled. “Not really. I want to know what’s old with him. Do you know anything about his business at all? I remember when he took it over from his mother. She always did wear the pants in the family. I remember it being a bread company. How did it get to be what it is today?”
Patti stood there, her scissors in mid-air. “Let me see, how did all that go down?” Then she laughed. “I remember now. Don’t call my mind a closed trap for nothing. Don’t lose any information.”
I just bet you don’t.
“Xavier had a lot bigger ideas than a small town local bakery. When he couldn’t successfully turn it into a multiple city production, he sold the plant and used it to buy some company. I remember he kept talking about how he’d been watching it for a long time. Even mentioned he had people on the inside watching the owner’s every move and he’d figured out how to get his hands on it.”
Patti snickered as she started cutting again. “Little shit never would tell me what company it was or if the owner was local. Even after I offered to trade secrets. The way he does business these days, I doubt that company ever was the same. First thing I knew he was bragging about closing a deal over in Paris.”
Crandall nodded. “I remember his bragging about the last part, too. You don’t know anymore?”
Patti shook her head. “Hell, honey, I can’t believe there’s a secret left around here I don’t know. If you find out something, you will let good old Patti know won’t ya?”
****
Dragging her feet, Crandall entered the Granby Café for dinner. Frank had proved worthless. All he did was keep talking about carburetors and drive trains. It seemed he’d had a hard day, and after speaking to him, she felt like she’d worked on every broken car he had. The only personal information he could share about Xavier was that the man once had him change the oil in his Rolls. Here was hoping Jason could help make some sense out of what happened so long ago.
She saw him as she entered, grayer and more stooped than she remembered. Jason was, after all, seventy-eight, older by eight years than what her father would be if he were still alive. The man who had been just like an uncle looked up, smiling as he saw her. As she slipped into the booth opposite him, he grabbed her hand in a tender grip. “You look beautiful, little girl. Ben would be proud of you.”
She smiled. “Thanks Uncle Jase. But if I mess up the company, I don’t think Daddy would like it.”
His smile disappeared. “What’s wrong?”
She told him about the lawsuit Xavier filed and his eyes narrowed. “He had no right to do that. Although I don’t know what went down between him and Xavier’s mom, I do know she was the one who gave him the shaft. He told me it happened right after they separated, said he felt like his heart had been sliced in two. I remember distinctly his saying something about ‘she told me another guy stole her heart.’ This was all about another man, and I guarantee it wasn’t Robert Washington. She only married him for his money and that was quite a while later. My bets are this whole thing now is a fabrication of Xavier’s.”
She leaned close to him. “Do you think his mother may have known the formula?”
“Maybe at one time.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think your dad would have ever written it down for her and given her a copy. From what I know that secret is complicated, not anything one could memorize.”
She leaned back against the booth and sighed. “Then how did Xavier get it?”
His mouth screwed up in anger. “My guess is the asshole had someone steal it. He manages to convince people to be his moles. I don’t know how anyone could be fooled by his fake charm. His father didn’t worry about accomplices. He used to steal everything he co
uld get his hands on all by himself and then hid behind the robes of his father’s judge appointment.”
Crandall smirked. “You sound like you didn’t like the elder Washington.”
Jason’s eyes flashed. “You’ve got that right. All he did was bring sorrow to a lot of people over petty crimes, including my son at twelve. Accused him of stealing from him. More likely he had something of the boy’s. I lost my son to suicide all over Robert’s father’s harsh judgment.”
Gasping, Crandall, grabbed his arm. “Why didn’t I know that?”
“Because I never speak about the dead.” His eyes filled with unshed tears. “If there’s anything I can do Crandall, I will. Move carefully, because the Washingtons are like tarantulas. They crawl under the covers and bite you when you least expect it.”
****
On a whim, Crandall decided to drop by her high school, and just remember what it felt to go to school there. As she pulled up in the Parking lot, she chuckled, as kids practiced archery in the back athletic area. That had been one sport she’d never mastered, though she’d gotten her share of bulls eyes once she’d settled into corporate life. The school seemed smaller somehow, perhaps because the parking lot had expanded. Probably due to more students driving here everyday.
Now, after four, the parking lot was only half-full. Time for a trip down memory lane. Entering the building, Crandall caught a whiff of cigarette smoke mixed with cleaning fluid. Either a student in the bathroom or a janitor sneaking a smoke had left their trail. Since the other smell was fresh, she assumed a member of the cleaning crew was around the next hall-bend.
When she almost ran into Xavier Washington, well, that was an unwelcome surprise.
His dark-brown eyes lighting up in a near-black gleam, Xavier grinned from ear-to-ear. “Lover, you’ve come back to me.”