by Dixie Cash
Paige took a seat opposite Edwina at the manicure table.
“Here, soak your fingers in this,” Edwina told her, setting the dish of soapy water in front of her. The lanky brunette laid out brushes, bottles, and jars. “And tell me the story of your life.”
Paige laughed. She loved her two new friends.
“Your folks showed up to see you yet?” Edwina asked.
“I don’t have folks. It’s just my dad. My mom died when I was little.”
“Awww. Your dad didn’t remarry?”
“Oh, he remarried. The oldest debutante in Texas. She spent her whole life preparing to catch the right husband, who turned out to be my dad. She’s been determined I’d do the same.”
Normally, Paige found it difficult to discuss her stepmother with anyone but Sunny. Somehow, with Edwina, it seemed easy and right. She went on to explain that from the age of thirteen she had been preparing, on her stepmother’s instructions, for the role of “perfect”—perfect hair, perfect face, perfect lady. Also being the perfect spouse alongside the perfect husband. “Margaret Ann never let me forget that charm was the key to everything, even if it made your face crack.”
“Hmmm,” Edwina said as she skillfully applied acrylic to one of Paige’s nails. “My mom had a speech for us girls when we were growing up, too. It went something like this. Come home knocked up and you’re on your own.”
Edwina seemed to have a steady supply of one-liners. “But you didn’t take her seriously.”
“Had to.” Edwina blew a bubble and popped it. “I was two months late when she said it.”
Paige laughed. “You and Debbie Sue are just plain crazy.”
Debbie Sue returned with a six-pack of Dr Pepper and a bag of chicken strips, buttered Texas toast, fries, and a side of cream gravy. She spread the fare on her station counter, and the aroma filled the air. Only then did Edwina toss away her bubble gum. The three of them dug in.
“Uh-oh,” Paige said, looking over the abundance of fried food. “It’s a good thing I work off calories during the day.”
Edwina picked up a breaded chicken strip and dipped it into the cream gravy. “Calories have never been a problem for me.”
“Your metabolism is like your mouth,” Debbie Sue quipped. “It never stops running.” She swung a look to Paige. “You don’t need to worry about a diet. You look like some model from Victoria’s Secret.”
“Well, at least you didn’t say Barbie.” Paige helped herself to a chicken strip and dunked it into the gravy. Even with all the calories, it beat what she had at home—Mrs. Sanders’s five-year-old casserole and an assortment of happy-hour food. “I feel terrible keeping y’all in here so late.”
“You haven’t kept us,” Edwina said. “We’re working right now. We’re surveilling.”
A little dart of excitement rushed through Paige’s blood. “Really? Where?”
“See that dark blue Ford Explorer parked at the curb across the street? The jerk who drives it, his wife hired us to watch him. He parked there three hours ago. A Toyota picked him up. We’ve got time-stamped pictures of him crawling into it. When he gets back we’ll take some more. We’ll show them to his wife, and she can decide how exciting things are going to get.”
“Really? Oh, my God! This is so thrilling. What should I do? How should I act? I feel like I’m in a spy movie.” She strode to the window, crouched, and cupped hands beside her eyes, peering out.
“Sugar,” Edwina said, “the first rule is to act naturally. Using your hands for binoculars is a dead giveaway.”
“It isn’t all that exciting,” Debbie Sue put in, popping the tops of three cans of Dr Pepper. “We get a lot of information just working here in the beauty shop. Sometimes I wonder if slopping shampoo on the female skull releases an enzyme in a woman’s brain because it definitely affects her mouth. If we listen real good and ask the right questions, we can find out more than we ever wanted to know right here.”
“All I can say,” Edwina said, dipping a french fry into ketchup, “is it was damn sure convenient of Mr. Ford Explorer to hook up with his new bed partner right across the street from us. I kinda like sitting here having supper while I’m spying. Being a PI is the best job I’ve ever had. The most fun, too.” Edwina stuffed the french fry into her mouth.
“But what if he doesn’t come back for hours?” Paige asked. “Or days?”
“Sweetie, in Salt Lick, if some gal’s husband is gone for days for a good reason, everybody in town knows when he left, where he went, and when he’ll be back. If he’s fooling around and disappears for days, the news gets around faster than a priest in a troop of Boy Scouts. So we only concern ourselves with the ones who disappear for hours.”
“No kidding?” Paige said, wide-eyed. “Y’all are such a trip. I’ve spent the last six years of my life going to school. Surrounded by people that had a string of alphabet letters behind their names, and none of them are as smart or wise as you two.”
“See there, Debbie Sue,” Edwina said. “I was right. Schoolings fine for some people, but most of us just gotta rely on the good sense we’re born with.” She turned her attention back to Paige. “Trouble is most people don’t have the smarts to figure out you have to open the window before you throw out the contents of a bedpan.”
Paige laughed at another Edwinaism. “But what if he’s gone really late? You don’t have to sit here the entire time do you?”
“If he doesn’t come back before we decide to go home,” Debbie Sue added, “we use a tried-and-true method for determining how long a cheater’s gone. We keep a box of watches in the back room, all wound up, all set to the right time. None of those digital things. We put one under his back tire. When he leaves he’ll run over it, then tomorrow morning we’ll pick up the crushed watch with the time frozen.”
“No kidding?” Paige said again. “That really works?”
“It worked for me in two of my divorces,” Edwina said. “That little trick is one of my contributions to the technical skill of our operation.”
Paige couldn’t be more excited talking to the CIA. “Y’all are just too cool. Do you ever get into trouble? Isn’t this business dangerous?”
“Depends on your technique,” Debbie Sue said. “We aren’t confrontational, and we’re never conspicuous. If it looks like there could be trouble, we back out. Buddy’s a real cop. He’d divorce me for the second time if I got into a scrape.”
“Tonight’s not a real good example,” Edwina said. “They’re not all this easy. You see, in Salt Lick, everybody knows everybody. This dude in the Explorer is Calvin Echols. We’ve been hearing talk about him cheating on his wife for years, but until Mary Sue hired us to spy on him, we never concerned ourselves with it. She needs hard facts to take to her lawyer. There have been times, though, when we’ve used serious-as-shit surveillance.”
“Oh, tell me. If it isn’t a secret, that is.” Paige wanted to learn everything possible. Who knew? She might have to use some of the same techniques someday.
“Sometimes we have to listen in on stuff. Now, mind you, left up to me and Debbie Sue, we’d be pressing a glass to the wall or talking into two soup cans joined by a piece of string. But thanks to my honey, we’ve got sophisticated shit.”
“Really? How sophisticated are we talking?” Paige said, feeling her eyes bug again.
“Yep, Vic’s our main man for that part of the business. He used to be in special ops in the navy. Girl, he knows two dozen ways to kill you quietly.”
“That must be so scary, Edwina, living with someone who’s capable of all that.” Paige couldn’t keep from being awed. These women were all that Texas Monthly had said they were. And more.
“Umm, scary isn’t the right word. But, yeah, my sweetie’s a man of immeasurable talents. And he knows a thing or two about spying, too.” Edwina cackled, spinning around in her hydraulic chair. “He’s got means and methods you wouldn’t believe.” Edwina winked. “He’s got GPS.”
“Oh, I’ve hear
d of that before. Global Positioning System.” Squinting, Paige pressed a newly manicured finger against her chin. “I think they had it on The Sopranos.”
Edwina leaned forward, her eyes boring into Paige’s. “Do you know that once, we tracked down this guy’s location through his cell phone? Cool shit, huh? Sweetie, the days of calling home from a bar and saying you’re working late are over. Lord, with camera phones, a stolen kiss can be sent to your own home. Don’t even get me started on DNA.”
Debbie shook her head and mouthed, “Reading.”
“I’d love to stay and listen, but I have to go home,” Paige said, laughing.
“You got a hot date with one of our local boys?” Edwina asked, winking at Debbie Sue.
“No, I’m afraid not. Though Dr. Atwater did come by the ranch today. He asked me if I’d like to go to supper sometime.”
Edwina coughed and sputtered. “With him?”
“I think so. That’s kind of the way it sounded to me.”
Debbie Sue planted a fist on her hip. “And you’ve been here three hours, we’ve talked about everybody in three counties, and we’re just now hearing that piece of news? Why did you wait ’til you’re on your way out the door to tell us?”
“Well, I got all caught up in hair and nails and spying. My news seemed insignificant in comparison.”
“Honey, read my well-kissed lips,” Edwina said. “There’s no such thing as insignificant news about a hottie. Especially when we can get the lowdown firsthand.”
“That’s the extent of the lowdown. He said he’d call, but I really don’t think he will. I saw the brunette you mentioned. She was attractive. If you like that overdone look.”
“Where’d you see them?” Debbie Sue asked.
“She was sitting in the cab of his truck and—” Paige stopped herself. She had almost slipped and told them she had been at the Kwik Stop. As clever as these two women were, they might put two and two together and figure out she was the one who had gotten locked in the cooler. “I, uh, I don’t guess I should call her looks overdone. I only saw her from a distance.”
“Whoever she is,” Debbie Sue said, “she couldn’t be prettier than you. Want us to find out her identity? We have ways, you know. Edwina and I know every person in this town. I’m curious, myself, to tell you the truth.”
“Thanks, but don’t waste your time. I believe in fate. If things are meant to work out between Spur and me, they will.” Paige called up a mischievous grin. “If not, well, there’s always Lester.”
“Lester! Get out of here,” Edwina said. “Why, the very idea.”
Paige bid her new friends a good night and stepped into the crisp fall evening. With any luck there would be a message on her answering machine at home. If not, as her own personal heroine Scarlett would say, well tomorrow was another day.
seventeen
Morning found Paige back at the Flying C barns. As she alit from her Escalade, she heard the grind of a powerful engine. Before entering the barn, she looked in the direction of the sound and saw an eighteen-wheeler in the distance, inching up the road she had just traveled. Lester was coming from the storage area carrying a sack of feed on his shoulder. “You’ve got company coming,” she called to him. “A big truck just crossed the cattle guard.”
He set his load on the ground and sauntered over, wearing a day’s growth of stubble, which added a dark and dangerous element to his good looks. Paige had to smile in spite of herself. Lester was exactly the type she would have taken up with before meeting Dr. Atwater. There. She had thought it. She and Spur Atwater hadn’t even been out on a date yet, and he had changed how she looked at other men.
Lester must have mistaken her smile for an invitation because the next thing she knew, like a big octopus, his arm had wrapped around her waist and had pulled her close. She pushed against him, but his hold only tightened. She could feel his warm breath against her neck and a hardness—Oh, my God! He had a hard-on.
She pushed against him with both hands, but he was too strong for her. His hand cupped her breast. She summoned all her strength, clenched her teeth, and shoved him away. “Don’t you ever touch me like that again!”
The bastard grinned and rubbed himself. “Don’t tell me you didn’t feel something. I know when a woman wants me. And you, Miz McBride, want me.”
“If you ever pull something like that again, I’ll—”
“You’ll what? Run to daddy? Run to Harley?” He leaned closer, a leer roaming all the way from her lips to her feet and back. “Tell you what, darlin’. Neither one o’ them scares me one damn bit.”
She thought she saw in his eyes that assault wasn’t out of the question for Lester Clinton.
But she couldn’t run to her daddy or to Harley. If either of them knew he had harassed her, she would be yanked from her new job so fast her head would spin, and she couldn’t risk that happening. She had to hang on to this opportunity for a bona fide future in a world she loved, even if she had to defend her virtue herself. She could do it. The genes of E. W. McBride, the toughest self-made man in Texas, coursed through her body. The temptation to break into tears and dash from the barn was great, but she stood her ground.
“The only thing I’m going to run to is my .357, Lester. I promise you, mess with me again and it’ll be the last time you ever mess with anything.”
She saw his eye twitch, but his stare wavered. “Hell, Paige, you’ve got a mean streak. I was kidding you a little.” He grinned. “Did you say somebody’s coming?” He left her and walked out of the barn.
Paige felt her knees shaking and stood for a minute gathering her composure. Good grief! The whole scene had been pure bravado on her part. Dirty Harriet she wasn’t. She didn’t even own a gun, wouldn’t know a .357 from a cap pistol.
The truck arrival turned out to be a delivery of a large number of fifty-pound sacks of specially blended performance horse feed. Lester called for help from two hands and they began unloading the truck.
He apparently ordered top-shelf products to provide an optimum balance of nutrition for Harley’s horses. Oats and bales of coastal Bermuda and alfalfa hay were also part of the delivery. Lester might be a despicable human in other areas of life, but he knew how to care for the horses. Harley’s horses were high-caliber, disciplined athletes. Their condition was paramount to their success, thus his. Good nutrition did more than improve the horses’ performance; it also reduced their chances of injury. Lester didn’t take such pains out of love for the animals, she thought, but viewed them as a ticket to whatever lofty goal he had set for himself.
Paige didn’t doubt for a minute the number of sacks delivered was justified, but oats and alfalfa hay puzzled her. He had been explicit when he gave her instructions on feeding. The mature horses were to be fed twice a day. No treats and plenty of water. Alfalfa and oats would add burdensome pounds to their weight. Definitely not a desirable prospect. She did notice that most of the alfalfa and oats taken off the truck were loaded into Lester’s own pickup bed. Apparently he didn’t plan on feeding it to the cutting horses.
Paige spent the better part of the day avoiding Lester. At two o’clock she mustered her courage and approached him, keeping a safe distance. “Lester, I’m going to town. I need some supplies, and I want to get them before you leave next week.”
“What kind of supplies? Everything we needed was delivered today.”
“Small stuff. I want some new feed buckets. The ones I’ve been using are busted. I’m going to buy some Blue Lotion, some Stress-Pak, and wheat germ oil. Some personal things, too, like a decent brand of coffee and some diet drinks.”
“Long as you’re going to town, pick me up some beer.”
“The fridge is loaded with beer.”
“I need it for my trip.”
“Just exactly where are you going? Or is that too personal?”
“Nothing’s too personal between us, honey. I’m going to see a lady friend in Abilene. Even if you don’t want what I got, there’s plent
y that do.” He smiled devilishly.
“What can I say, Lester? There’s just no accounting for taste.”
Slinging her purse over her shoulder, Paige left the barn, not doubting for a minute he was watching her backside.
SPUR LOOKED DEEPLY into the troubled brown eyes and tried to smooth the furrowed brow. Sammy was a Rhodesian ridgeback, a highly intelligent but painfully neurotic breed. His owner talked soothingly, but Sammy suffered from “white coat syndrome.” His annual visit to the vet, as reported by his owner, Randy, always proved to be traumatic for Sammy and owner both.
The seventy-pound Sammy was strong as a bull, and fear heightened his determination to break free. Spur had all he could do keeping the slick-haired dog on the exam table. The owner stood by, wringing his hands and offering little help.
“Please don’t let him get away from you,” Randy pleaded. “His instinct is to run when he’s frightened. If he takes off, I’m afraid I’ll never see him again. He’s my baby. I can’t imagine life without him.”
“He’s got nowhere to go in here,” Spur said, both arms wrapped around the slick-haired dog’s middle. He dodged Sammy’s determination to claw at his head. “Even if he gets out of this room, there’s still the front office to hold him.”
The thought of the dog escaping bothered Spur, too. The fear in the animal’s eyes touched him. “Let me get another pair of hands in here.” Not relinquishing his grip, he yelled, “Electra.”
The door between the examination room and the front office opened, and his sister poked her head inside just enough to answer, “Did you call me?”
“Would you come help us out with Sammy? Hold his rear, ’Lectra. Randy, I’ll ask you to come to the front so that he can see you and I’ll get the syringe ready.”
PAIGE LEFT THE GROCERY STORE with her scant supply of food tucked into the back of the Escalade. She had saved the trip to Spur’s office for last for a good reason. If he should engage her in a long conversation or if he should ask her to join him for a drink after work, she would be free to do it.