“It’s summer. Our high season. Normally,” she added with a sigh.
“Are you usually working here?”
She’d tucked her hair behind her ears. Shane still had her clip in his pocket. He knew he should give it back, but…he didn’t.
“Yep. Twelve/seven from the end of May to Labor Day. We’re open nine in the morning to nine at night.”
“That’s grueling. You do this alone?”
“No. I hire high school and college kids. About twenty of them since they all want to work in the beginning but not so much toward the end of summer. I understand. I felt the same when I was their age.”
Their age. College age. He really needed to tell her who he was.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m here.”
She skirted the main entrance, which was recessed and painted black with images from space—stars, planets, galaxies and nebulas. The artwork was cheesy at best, but what caught his attention were the large, Plexiglas display cases that flanked the opening. Even from a distance he could make out some familiar faces: Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Isaac Newton. There were others he couldn’t place, but their names seemed vaguely familiar—like answers to Jeopardy questions under the category of Famous Scientists.
She unlocked the door of a small lean-to—about the size of a one-car garage tucked behind a large flowering bush. “I keep a first-aid kit in here,” she said motioning him forward. “I’ve had people pass out in Dizzy—the building you were peeking into. One lady panicked in the maze and ran smack into the wall. She had a huge goose egg above her eye but refused to let me call the paramedics. She insisted she had to see Crazy Horse.”
She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. Her smile made him feel a little shaky. Maybe he had a concussion.
“Sit in my chair,” she said, pointing to a chair that looked like something his uncle would have owned. The worn leather upholstery had been repaired with Duct tape.
“This is your office?”
“Heart and soul of the operation, although my dad would have begged to say otherwise. Originally, he wanted the Mystery Spot to be free so schoolkids could get excited about physics.” She gave him a wry smile that seemed to say, “Like that would ever happen.”
He sat, glad to be off his feet. “I saw the sign. There’s an admission fee.” Modest, to be sure. He didn’t know if that was all the market could bear or if the tour wasn’t worth any more.
“Yeah, well, Mom finally convinced him it was okay to make enough money to pay the help and property taxes. He always put every dime of profit back into the place. He’d probably still be building new exhibits if he hadn’t died.”
“I lost my father, too. We weren’t close,” he added hoping to forgo any expression of sympathy.
“Is your mother still alive?”
He shook his head. “She’s been gone almost six years.”
She took a plastic box with a large red cross on the cover from a built-in cabinet and returned to where he was sitting. The room was so small she couldn’t move without him smelling her perfume. He didn’t recognize the scent but he liked it. When he’d known her in college she’d worn Charlie. This was better—fresh and vibrant with just a hint of exotic.
“Were the two of you close?” Her tone let him know she’d picked up on his brusque comment about his father.
Two peas in a pod, Mom had called them when Shane was a little boy. A highly dysfunctional pod, he’d later come to understand.
To avoid answering the question, he said, “I read some of your poetry this morning. Coop lent me his copy of your book.”
She let out a low groan. “You poor man. First my collegiate musings, then a fist full of glass. I wonder which was more painful.” She turned his hand palm up and rested it on the corner of the desk.
“I don’t know much about poetry, but I thought they showed a very strong voice.”
“Strong?” She was close enough for him to see the flecks of gold he’d always found so fascinating in her predominantly green eyes. “That’s an interesting choice of words, given the time in my life when I wrote them. But other people have said that, too.”
She glanced up for a millisecond then pushed her glasses back to the bridge of her nose and leaned closer to his hand. “The book caused a huge rift in my family. I almost disowned my mother because she sent those poems to a publisher without my permission. And my dad was outraged because it cost a small fortune to produce.”
“Ouch.”
She looked at him. “I haven’t done anything, yet.”
He was pretty sure she knew what he’d meant but he smiled anyway. “There’s a law against publishing other people’s work. It’s called copyright.”
The shoulders of her purple T-shirt lifted and fell. “I guess she figured if they were in a box under a bed in her house, then they were free game. She claims it was her way of liberating me from my nightmares.”
She suffered from nightmares? “Did it work?”
She didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice sounded bemused. “Well…pretty much.”
How strange, he thought. If his mother had ever submitted his youthful short stories somewhere without his permission, he’d have killed her. No. That wasn’t true. She’d done something far, far worse, and he’d still held her hand and told her he loved her as she took her last breath.
“Does this hurt?” she asked, lightly swabbing the gash in his palm with a cotton ball dipped in alcohol.
“Not bad.”
She sucked in her top lip, eyes narrowed as she moved his hand closer to the lamp on her desk. “Well, this will. There’s a piece of glass under the skin. Brace yourself.”
She sterilized the tweezers, doused the skin a second time then went to work. He flinched. He couldn’t help himself. The pain was sharp, but she didn’t mess around. She pulled out the tiny shard and dropped it in a metal waste basket. “There. I think you’ll heal fine.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” She stood. “Let that air-dry a minute then I’ll put some antibacterial ointment on it and a bandage. I have a certain silly yellow cartoon character in three sizes of strips if you ask nicely,” she said, returning to the cabinet.
He snickered softly. “Gee, thanks.”
She moved some items on a shelf and poked around for another minute or two before tamping her hands on her hips. “I give up. Where did the ointment go?”
He enjoyed watching her decision-making process. Her clear, milky-white skin reminded him of a porcelain doll his mother had cherished. The day of the funeral, when he went to her room to retrieve the small memento she’d left him, he’d found it on the floor of her bathroom, smashed to pieces.
“Don’t take this wrong. I’m not being judgmental, honestly, but when I read your poems, I got a sense that you weren’t too thrilled with men. Is that just me or should I be worried about that pair of scissors in your hand?”
She looked at the object she’d picked up but obviously hadn’t realized she was holding. She dropped the shears on the shelf and turned to face him. Her grin told him she didn’t plan to murder him. “You’re very perceptive. Men were my personal anti-Christ when I wrote those poems. I’d just dropped out of college and was living at home again. My dad, who was a tenured professor with a Ph.D., was on my case about returning to school, so I took a creative writing class. To piss him off.”
“He didn’t like writing?”
“He was a man of science. He considered the arts frivolous.”
“How open-minded of him,” he said wryly. “So, did this class achieve its objective?”
She scratched her cheek as if giving the question serious thought. “Well, my teacher was a fervent feminist who had been raped when she was a young mother. The class could have been called Poetry That Proves All Men Are Jerks.”
Shane coughed. “Were there any men in the class?”
“A few. And, interestingly, they never tried to defend their sex. I guess
men can be cruel to other men, too.”
Wasn’t that the truth? He could have named a dozen times that he’d seen Adam publicly humiliate perfect strangers, usually men. Although he’d put down his share of women, too. Yet women flocked to him. Even the smart ones. Like Jenna.
“What did you do when you found out your mother submitted your work to a publisher?”
She took a wide adhesive strip out of a box then turned to look at him. “We’re not talking a real publisher. This vanity press had no qualms about taking my mother’s money even though she wasn’t the author. My dad threatened to sue, but the company declared bankruptcy and disappeared before he could follow through.” After applying the bandage, she cocked her head and sighed. “You don’t have a clever craft project that requires several dozen boxes of worthless books, do you? I thought they might make an interesting lamp base, but I’ve never been able to find the right kind of glue.”
Her tone was blasé but Shane heard an undercurrent of something most people would have missed. He’d worked with actors too long. He could tell when someone was faking it.
“Jenna, I need to tell you something before this gets really awkward. You don’t remember me, but we met years ago. In college. We had an art appreciation class together. I was a senior. You were a freshman.”
“Sophomore,” she corrected. “That was one of the classes I didn’t finish. Eventually the professor worked with me through the mail and I managed to get the incomplete changed to a B.”
She put a little more space between them, discreetly inching closer to the door. Her gaze bore into him. “When you first walked into the store yesterday, I thought you looked familiar, but I just assumed I’d seen you on TV. Like Coop.”
He shook his head. “Nope. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. Would it help if I told you I had a ponytail in college? And a full beard.” He made Os with his thumbs and fingers and held them up to his eyes. “And thick glasses.”
Her jaw dropped and she inhaled sharply. “You’re that Shane? Long-haired, pot-smoking, artsy-fartsy Shane Osterman…Osterberg—”
“Ostergren,” he supplied, smiling at her description of him. He’d been all those things. A rebel without a clue. “I changed my name when I moved to L.A.”
“Why?”
The million-answer question. “I usually tell people I was afraid I might wind up producing porn,” he said lamely. “But mostly I didn’t want my name associated with my family…and vice versa. My dad was in politics at the time.”
She processed the information for a minute before asking, “Why Reynard?”
“My mother’s maiden name, plus I thought it sounded French and edgy.”
Her pretty, Angelina Jolie lips pursed. “It means fox, you know. Although it’s spelled differently, if I remember correctly from Mrs. Haver’s French class.”
“You’re right. No y. I looked it up a couple of years ago because Coop insisted the word meant duck.”
She grinned. “Canard. Renard. Easy mistake to make. And the former can be a verb as well as a farm animal.” Her green eyes flashed with humor. “Which could explain your reaction when you thought we were being shot at.”
He hooted softly, impressed by both her quick wit and her sexy accent. “Habit.”
“You’ve been shot at before?”
“Drive-by’s are common in L.A. Fortunately, not in my current neighborhood, but when I first moved there, Coop and I rented a place that was on the fringe of gang territory. We heard gunshots nightly.”
“You’ve been friends a long time.”
He noticed she’d adroitly steered the topic away from their college years. “Like you and Libby.”
“Actually, Libby and I have known each other since junior high. We spent every summer together. Her grandmother was busy at the post office and my mom worked the gate while my dad gave tours. Later on, Lib and I would give tours. Boys whose parents dragged them to the Mystery Spot would hit on us. It was fun. We even met kids from other countries.”
“Is that why you studied French?”
She seemed surprised by the question. “I suppose,” she mumbled, reaching for the faded pink backpack he’d seen sitting just inside the door. “I, um, have a health inspector coming in a few minutes. I should probably make sure all the paperwork is in order.”
A polite way of saying, Scram.
“What do you plan to do about setting up motion detectors or installing an alarm system?”
She pulled a manila file out of the bag. “It’s on the list,” she said. “Right after I pay for the new water system we just put in, get the parking lot paved and reroof all the buildings.”
“Oh.”
Brilliant reply, genius, he heard his brother snicker.
He’d come here hoping to find some peace of mind where Jenna was concerned. It crossed his mind to offer to pay for any or all of those things, but what would he say when she asked why he felt he needed to give her money?
A guilty conscience, he’d be forced to admit.
For what? For not sticking around the party longer? For not deflecting his brother’s attention? For unintentionally providing his brother with an alibi?
He couldn’t break his promise to his mother. Besides, Adam was a powerful man with powerful friends. Maybe Jenna was better off not knowing the truth. Shane had learned at a very young age that the adage, Let Sleeping Dogs Lie definitely applied to his brother. Shane had the scars to prove it.
“Why don’t I give you a lift into town after your meeting? You can’t carry a new piece of glass on your bike.”
“I have a car. Mom needed it this morning, but she should be back by the time I get home. Thanks for offering, though. And I’m sorry about kneeing you. My self-defense training sort of took over.”
“It worked,” he said, feeling a twinge in his groin as he got to his feet. “You took a class because of what happened to you in college, right?”
She frowned. “You heard about that, huh?”
He didn’t tell her that everyone on campus had talked about little else for a solid week. “I tried to visit you at the hospital. My car wouldn’t start so I was hoofing it. I remember I was by McCrory Gardens when I saw you in the backseat of your parents’ car. I’ve never forgotten the look on your face.”
Even now, the image that came to mind made an intense fire start to burn in his gut. Rage, hopelessness and despair—triggered by the disillusionment and emptiness he’d seen in her eyes.
Her narrow, perfectly groomed eyebrows arched in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right? I pretty much blanked out everything about that time once I got my feelings down on paper. Therapy by poetry, my teacher called it.”
He dug in his pocket for his sunglasses. Had they fallen out when he hit the ground or were they still in the car? He felt naked without them. “I should go.”
“I seem to remember Coop and my mother talking about you. The movies you’d made. Didn’t one of them deal with violence against women?”
“Yeah, but it was an indie. Not widely released. You probably didn’t see it.”
“I wouldn’t have gone to it back then, anyway. It took me years to get enough perspective on the subject. Even my closest friends—except for Libby—don’t know about the rape. I didn’t want pain and fear to define my life.”
“Sounds smart. I’m glad you’ve put what happened behind you.”
She shrugged. “All things being relative. I never got my degree. I started back a couple of times. My dad kept harping at me. But even he gave up when I flunked four out of five classes, including bowling.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I never went back, either.”
“And according to Coop, you’re a successful producer, director and screenwriter. Maybe I should have given Hollywood a try.” She tried to sound flippant but couldn’t quite pull it off. “Instead, I went to Montana to live with my aunt. I worked at a grain elevator. It was actually kind of interesting, but then Dad…”
“Ah,
yes, the demands of family.”
The bitterness in his tone raised a whole slew of questions, but before she could ask even one, the sound of tires on gravel interrupted. She opened the door and looked out. “White truck. Must be the inspector.” She glanced at her watch. “Amazingly prompt. I figured I’d be sitting here all day.”
She expected him to use this avenue to escape but once again he did the unexpected. He picked up the folder she’d dropped on the desk and tucked it under his arm. “Tell me again, what exactly is he inspecting?”
An hour later she wondered if her luck was changing. The inspection passed without a single correction. Of course, that might have had something to do with Shane’s presence. Once it clicked who Shane was, the man with the clipboard barely glanced at her shiny new pipes. Instead of making certain her soldered joints were properly soldered, he regaled Shane with his acting experience as a member of the Black Hills Repertory.
Shane handled the man with such finesse Jenna was convinced the guy believed he had a shot at a career in Hollywood.
“Did you just offer him a tryout in L.A.?” she asked, glancing at the green tag the man had given her before he left.
“No.”
“He thinks you did.”
“That was the idea.”
They were standing near the lumpy pile of reddish clay that had been excavated a few weeks earlier. Jenna was keeping her fingers crossed that Walt was back from Denver and available to backfill the hole, now that they had permission to turn on their water.
“What will you do if he quits his job and shows up knocking on your door?” she asked.
He looked at her, humor dancing in his eyes even if he wasn’t smiling. “He won’t. Believe me. If he were as dedicated to his craft as he wanted us to believe, he’d already be there. This was just small talk.”
She wasn’t sure she was comfortable with his ability to read minds.
“So, are you done here? If you get me a hammer, I’ll renail those boards, then take you into town for a piece of glass. I really don’t feel comfortable leaving you here alone.”
The Mystery Spot was the one place on the planet that she’d always felt safe. After the rape, which had taken place at the end of October, she’d come home to recuperate. To escape her mother’s hovering and her father’s nagging, she’d come to the Mystery Spot with a heavy quilt and an empty notebook.
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