The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  Hallie was saddened by what she saw, and wished she could wave a magic wand, or light candles, or something, and make everything all right for the Stratton family, for all of time and eternity. They were such good people.

  When the time to leave approached, she took Kiera and Kiley aside, explained that Chance had been hurt very badly, and she was going to the hospital to see him. She would have to tell them about Joel, too, sooner or later, but that was going to require a lot of thinking and praying. It was so vitally important to get it right, because whatever she told them about Joel, and his death, would remain in their minds for the rest of their lives, like a mental tattoo.

  The trip to Reno was long and treacherous, and none of them talked much, not Doc, not Jase, and certainly not Hallie, who had forgotten, it seemed, how to make simple small talk. Her face hurt, and so did most of the rest of her body. She sensed that Jase wanted to ask a thousand, if not a million, questions, but he was restraining himself. Probably both Doc and Katie had asked him to hold off on the interrogations until she’d had an opportunity to catch her breath. The federal agencies, she knew, would not be so obliging.

  At the hospital, Hallie was out of the rig and running toward the entrance while Jase was still waiting for a State Patrol car to back out of the parking spot he’d chosen. Nobody tried to stop her.

  When the elevator came, she went straight to the Intensive Care Unit.

  Hallie didn’t need to ask which room was Chance’s, once she reached her destination; there were men in suits standing guard on either side of it. Implacable types, with brown shoes and attitude. Here, Hallie realized, was a barrier she couldn’t cross, not without Jase’s help.

  “Ms. O’Rourke?” one of the agents asked, startling her.

  She stared at him. “Yes.” She was feverish with impatience and with grief. “Why are you here?”

  “Just keeping an eye on things, in case somebody got through the net.” He showed his badge; an unnecessary gesture, given the situation. “Special Agent Walters,” he said. “FBI.”

  She gave the ID a desultory examination. Nodded. “What about Agents Simms and Baker? Where are they?”

  Jase and Walters exchanged glances and, suddenly, Hallie felt weak in the knees. Walters caught her by the elbow, squired her to a nearby chair. “Oh, my God,” she gasped, and put her head down to keep from fainting. “They were fakes. I knew something was wrong.”

  “They’re in jail in Primrose Creek,” Jase put in. “When these guys showed up, they were real surprised to find out they weren’t the only game in town. Turns out the Bureau hadn’t sent anybody but them. I picked up Simms and Baker at the Last Chance Café—they were having doughnuts and coffee.”

  Walters nodded, verifying the story. He bent to peer into Hallie’s surely bloodless face. “You were with Mr. Qualtrough when this . . . unfortunate incident happened?”

  “Yes,” she said again. Unfortunate incident. It was such an inadequate phrase, to cover a scene, a night, that had been etched into her memory in stark, slashing lines.

  “Can you tell us what went on?”

  She raked her upper lip with her teeth, and nodded once more. “I can,” she said, “but I’m hoping you’ll let me in to see Chance first.”

  At that moment, while the agents were still debating, Jase spoke up again.

  “Let her in,” the sheriff said, with no effort at diplomacy. Hallie knew about the undercurrent of strain that so often ran between regular cops and the agents they invariably referred to as “feds.” Lou had regarded them as high-handed interlopers.

  Agent Walters hesitated, then stepped aside in response to Jase’s demand, and gestured with one hand for Hallie to enter.

  When she saw Chance, lying there in an odd-looking, high-tech hospital bed, with all manner of tubes and wires affixed and implanted, she flashed on those last days of her mother’s life, and a tangle of emotions rushed to the surface, stinging her eyes, making her throat ache, twisting her stomach into knots.

  “Oh, Chance,” she whispered.

  He didn’t speak, or move, or open his eyes, but somehow, Hallie sensed that he knew she was there, and he was reaching out to her. She went to his bedside, found a place on his arm where she could touch him without disturbing some tube or machine.

  “I did this to you,” she said, leaning over to let her forehead rest against his. “I caused it to happen. I’m so sorry, Chance. So sorry.”

  There was no answer, either verbal or by any sort of sign, and yet she sensed a change of some sort, as if his energies were flowing into hers, and vice versa, in silent communion.

  “You’ve got to get well,” she said, when she could trust herself to speak.

  “Miss?”

  Hallie turned, saw a young male nurse standing at the foot of Chance’s bed. “I’m sorry, but these visits have to be kept short. I’ll have to ask you to step out now.”

  She nodded, kissed Chance’s forehead, already moist with her tears, and then turned and went out into the hallway again.

  “How is he?” Jase asked. He looked grim, and Hallie felt ashamed for acting as if the grief surrounding Chance’s shooting was hers alone to bear. Of course Jase loved him, and so did Jessie, who would be back soon, her tour cut short, to watch and wait. Katie cared for Chance, too, and as word of the incident spread through the town of Primrose Creek, there would be plenty of sorrow to go around.

  Hallie just shook her head, too choked up to speak. Jase’s eyes were wet.

  “Not Chance,” he said, to no one in particular. “Not Chance.”

  “We’d like to ask Miss O’Rourke some questions,” Special Agent Walters put in.

  “Wouldn’t we all?” Jase bit out, glaring at the man.

  “Everybody take it easy,” Doc put in. “This is no place for head butting. We don’t want Chance picking up on a lot of drama.”

  Jase sagged a little. “You’re right,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you everything I can,” Hallie said, and Agent Walters nodded, called on his radio for another man to replace him on guard duty, and escorted her into a nearby lounge. Jase joined them.

  “From the beginning, please,” the FBI agent said, and, once again, Hallie told her story.

  17

  T he FBI interview was grueling, but Hallie saw it through, well aware that there would be a lot more of that sort of thing in the future. Until the full extent of Joel’s criminal activities had been explored, and those of the men he’d associated with, all the knots untangled, her life would be a circus. She and the children might as well brace themselves for an onslaught of cops and questions and, given Joel’s position in the D.A.’s office, probably a platoon of media types, too. As much as she dreaded the prospect of all that uproar, however, her primary concern was still Chance, in there in that hospital bed, holding on to his very existence by a thread. If he recovered, and that was a big if, he sure wouldn’t be up to coping with a media storm, not to mention a lot of court appearances and depositions. None of this would have happened to him, if it weren’t for her.

  When Agents Walters and McNullen had finished with her—it was only a temporary respite, of course—she was allowed another brief visit with Chance. His condition was unchanged.

  “Why don’t you let somebody here take care of that shiner?” Jase asked, when she came out of the lounge the Bureau had appropriated as a sort of office.

  “What can they do?” she countered. “It will fade away in time.”

  Jase huffed out a sigh. He was impatient, as she was, because he couldn’t do something, make something happen, change things for Chance, for all of them. “You still ought to have it looked at,” he said. “What the hell did that bastard hit you with?”

  “His elbow,” Hallie answered, remembering the stunning insult, the pain of the blow. It had been worse, she thought, coming from a man she’d once loved.

  “Jesus,” Jase muttered, with a wincing grimace, as the elevator doors opened at the end of the hallway.
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  “What happened to Baker and Simms?” she asked, as a diversionary tactic and because she was curious.

  “They were cops,” he said, “though I hate to call them that, and lump them in with a lot of decent, hard-working law enforcement people. Part of the Phoenix operation. They’re busted for all of time and eternity, and singing like the fat lady at the end of the opera.”

  Hallie smiled a little, and the two of them watched as a tall, elegant woman wearing a long, divided riding skirt of black suede, boots, a blouse, and a bolero jacket stepped out.

  Jessie had arrived. Her hair was wound into a single silver braid, reaching past her waist, and she wore a round-brimmed hat, gently laced with snow.

  Hallie could have hugged the woman, if she hadn’t been rooted to the floor. Jase strode down the corridor to greet her, embracing her for a long moment, letting himself be embraced.

  “How is he?” Jessie asked, when hellos had been exchanged.

  Hallie had been strong since arriving at the hospital that morning; she’d had to be, but now she wanted nothing so much as to dissolve, to simply fall apart. She held herself together tightly with both arms. “The same,” she said weakly.

  Just then, Doc came out of a doorway, and his and Jessie’s gazes locked, causing the air in the corridor to sizzle.

  “Hello, Jessie,” Doc said, in the same tone he might have used if a goddess had appeared before him. “You’re here.”

  “Of course I am, you old coot,” she replied, but there were tears standing in her eyes, and she went into his arms in a graceful, practiced glide. “Did you think you were seeing things?”

  Doc’s hands lingered on the sides of Jessie’s slender waist. Though she was seventy, at least, her spine was straight and her eyes were bright, and there was an energy about her that said she was nobody to mess with. Hallie, admiration renewed, wanted to be just like her when she grew up.

  “You’ll stay?” he asked. He seemed oblivious to the rest of the world, and there was such extraordinary tenderness in his blue eyes as he regarded Jessie that Hallie ached.

  Jessie laid a long, slim, artist’s hand to Doc’s cheek. “ ’Course I’ll stay,” she told him. “This is home, and I’m done with touring, whether my agent likes it or not.” She paused. “Now. Let me see Chance.”

  Because she was next of kin, and had just arrived after a long journey, Jessie was admitted to Chance’s room immediately, although she stayed less than a minute. When she came out, she was crying.

  “What happened here?” she demanded.

  Hallie didn’t have another accounting in her, after what she’d been through with the FBI. She looked helplessly at Jase, who took Jessie’s elbow and steered her toward the waiting room.

  “I think I can fill you in on most of the details,” he said.

  Hallie paced the hallway until she was allowed to visit Chance again. She felt as though he were a diver, trapped in some wreckage far under the sea, and she was bringing him mouthfuls of air. When she had to leave him again, she went to the chapel, sat quietly in one of the pews, and tried to pray.

  No words came, and she offered no promises. She simply sat there, fingers interlocked, staring up at the multinational tableau painted on the wall behind the altar. It seemed that every conceivable religion was represented, and all were illuminated by the same Light.

  Presently, she sensed someone near, and turned just as Jessie sat down beside her and took her hand. Hallie’s eyes flooded with tears; it was her fault what had happened to Chance. She had expected cold fury from his friends and family, not comfort, not quiet acceptance. Together, the two women sat, saying nothing, communicating everything.

  It was much later, in the cafeteria, where Jessie and Hallie sat across from each other, drinking tea out of foam cups, that Hallie was able to say more than a few words.

  “Are you all right? This must have come as a terrible shock to you.”

  Jessie sighed, and fresh tears welled in her eyes. “There has been too much loss in this family,” she said. “It’s time we had some joy.”

  Hallie touched the other woman’s hand. “Yes,” she agreed.

  “But let’s talk about you, and about that hard-headed man in there, in that hospital room. He’s going to make it, mark my word. We won’t have it any other way.” She paused, sipped her tea. “Will you be staying on at Primrose Creek?”

  Hallie shook her head. “I’ve got a lot of fires to put out back in Phoenix,” she said. Just the prospect of it all made her feel as if the very marrow in her bones had turned to liquid. “My business, some details concerning my stepfather’s estate, all the stuff that’s happened with Joel.”

  “I see,” Jessie said. “I understood that you and Chance—”

  Hallie let out a raspy sigh. “I’m not good for him,” she said. “Look what’s already happened, because of me.”

  “But you love him,” Jessie said gently.

  It was true, Hallie realized. She’d never admitted it to herself before, but that didn’t change the facts of the matter. She’d fallen in love with Chance almost right away, and all the things that had happened since then, good and bad, had only served to reinforce what she felt.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes,” she said.

  “He’ll need you, when he comes out of this,” Jessie went on.

  “No,” Hallie answered. The sentence stopped with that one desperate barrier of a word. If she’d been able to articulate the rest of it, she would have said, He needs peace, and the time to heal. He needs his family and his friends and his horses. My kind of trouble, he can do without.

  Jessie looked sad. “I shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have put that kind of pressure on you. It’s easy to forget that you’ve been through as much as Chance has, if not more—you’re still standing, that’s all. But you’re just as badly wounded.”

  Hallie didn’t know what to say to that. She ran her hands down the legs of her borrowed jeans—this woman’s jeans—and tried in vain to smile. The result of her effort felt like some kind of ghoulish mask, so she let it fall away into space. Before she had to say anything else, Evie appeared, with a woman she introduced as her mother, Della. Hallie had seen her a couple of times in the café.

  The pair didn’t scan the large room from the doorway, the way most people would have done, but simply zeroed in on Hallie and Jessie, at their corner table, with all the unerring confidence of a pair of homing pigeons.

  “We heard what happened,” Della said, and hugged Jessie, who stood up to greet her with genuine gladness.

  Evie glanced at Hallie, full of sorrow. “We’re holding a candlelight vigil tonight,” Evie announced, “in the parking lot of the Last Chance Café.”

  “I’ll be there, if I can,” Jessie said. “It depends on how things go here, of course.”

  Della, a robust woman with no apparent ax to grind, pulled Hallie to her feet and virtually slammed her against her bosom in a matronly hug. “No wonder I saw all that darkness around you the other day, when you served me the chili special,” she said. Like her daughter, Della was into auras, tarot cards, and magic in general. “Poor little thing!”

  Evie mellowed a little. “How are you, Hallie?” she asked, with a note of reserve. Hallie saw a flicker of cautious concern in the other woman’s face. Maybe she’d noticed the shiner, though it was hard to conceive of anybody missing something like that. The bruise covered half her face.

  “I’ll be okay once Chance takes a turn for the better,” she said. She wished she had Evie and Della’s ability to see into the future, at least some of the time, then quickly called it back before some passing fairy godmother decided to grant it. If she’d known all this ahead of time—Joel and the divorce and the murders and Chance’s possibly fatal injuries—well, she’d probably have stayed in bed with the covers pulled up over her head.

  Evie, standing next to Hallie’s chair, laid a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Hallie,” she said. “I—”

  Hallie
covered Evie’s hand with her own. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

  Della drew up a chair and sank into it. She was wearing a black velveteen sweat suit, Hallie noticed, with a big orange pumpkin grinning, saw-toothed, on the front of the shirt. “One of my little blue-haired ladies made this for me,” she said, referring, no doubt, to a customer at her beauty shop. She beamed with subdued pride. “We swapped for a color rinse and a perm. She’s going to whip up a reindeer for Christmas.”

  Jessie smiled, and it was clear then to Hallie how much this woman had missed her friends, Primrose Creek, and being in her own house, with her things around her. “I’ll bet you’re talking about Audrey Moss, aren’t you? She was always so clever—she was in my art class in high school.”

  Della beamed fondly. “Heck, Jessie, I know that,” she said. “I graduated with you, remember?” She slid a glance to Hallie, indicating Evie with a nod. “Got my family started late in life,” she added, in a whisper that could have been heard on the other side of the room, had anyone else been paying attention.

  Maybe it was the mention of the reindeer, a fallen domino starting a chain of thoughts. “The horses,” Hallie said. “And Chance’s dogs—”

  “Taken care of,” Evie said. “Soon as word got around, the men in town organized a schedule. They’re looking after Chance’s livestock, and Miss Jessie’s, too.”

  Hallie let out a breath. “I can’t believe I forgot.”

  “I’d have been surprised if you remembered,” Jessie countered gently. “A person can only manage so much trauma without shorting out their circuits, Hallie, and you’re well past the normal limit.”

  It was balm to her, this woman’s friendship and caring. Almost like having her mother with her again, for a few golden moments.

  Presently, Della stood and, at her signal, Evie did, too. “We’d better get back to Primrose Creek,” she said. “The Harvest Festival is tomorrow, and there’s the vigil tonight. Six o’clock, if you can make it.” The invitation was issued to both Hallie and Jessie, Hallie noted, with something that might have been relief.