Meanwhile, Velma was hacking again. Will rubbed her back and told her to relax.
“Messina?” Velma clutched her purse to her chest. “Is that why Will came along? As our bodyguard?”
Joe refrained from snorting, but he noticed Will didn’t hold back a grin.
“Little Joey has grown up.” Will handed Velma a tissue he produced from his pocket, because old habits died hard in nerds, even millionaire ones. “He’s got a daughter and is running the car repair shop.”
“I’m reformed.” Joe played along. “And not too proud to ask for a second chance.”
Velma clamped her lips together and white-knuckled her purse.
Their next pickup balked before she’d made it onto the bus. “Those Messina boys tried to kill my cat.”
This...Joe did not remember.
“Dee Adams.” Mrs. Stephens pulled herself to her feet and used her best teacher’s voice. “If you make me miss my hair appointment, I will cross you off my Christmas card list and that includes the plate of Christmas fudge.”
Mrs. Stephen’s fudge must be something, because Dee climbed the stairs and sat in the rear of the bus. “Somebody call my son and let him know who I’m with in case I go missing.”
“We Messina boys were a lot of things.” Joe put the bus in gear, determined to get Mrs. Stephens to her appointment on time. Maybe then he’d get some Christmas fudge. “But we weren’t murderers of people or pets.”
“Really, Dee,” Velma croaked, turning in her seat. “Everyone in town nearly ran over your cat. It was deaf and liked to sleep in the middle of Jefferson Street.”
Now, that rang a bell in Joe’s memory. Half the time, he’d thought the cat was already dead, and tried to speed by it without looking. And then it would leap up at the last minute and dart in front of his wheel, practically giving Joe a heart attack.
“I’m sorry if I scared you, Ms. Adams.” Joe tried to look contrite as his gaze connected to hers in the mirror. “I was young. And, well, you know how my dad was.” He had no qualms blaming his wild youth on his father if it helped him create a new life here for Sam. “For the record, is your cat still alive?”
Her thin lower lip trembled. “Harvey died of kidney failure at the ripe old age of twenty-two. It was the year I finally got him to nap on the driveway instead of the street.” She sniffed.
“Twenty-two years?” Joe downshifted toward the center of town. “You must miss him.”
“I do.” She stared out the window. “I do.”
“Well played, Joey,” Mrs. Stephens murmured. “Well played.”
* * *
WHEN THE MAYOR asked Brit to rearrange her schedule Tuesday to accommodate a new dial-a-ride bus service he was trying to launch, Brit hadn’t expected Joe to be the driver. Or for Will to be his sidekick.
Joe and Will assisted her new clients into the salon, and then Will stepped out to make a phone call.
Joe leaned on the empty barber chair. “Where’s Phil?”
“At the bakery in a snit.” Brit tried to make light of the situation. “He says no one wants him here.” It was the truth. Her clients couldn’t care less if he was here or not. But the guilt was hard to shake.
“You okay?” Joe’s gaze was warm, perhaps softened by the nice little old ladies he’d escorted inside. “You look rattled.”
Francine glanced up from her gossip magazine. Her two-inch-long hair was spiked up with the ash-blond color Brit was applying. Give her a nose ring and black eyeliner and she’d look like an aging punk rocker. She didn’t care that Joe saw her in such a state.
“I’m off my game,” Brit said. “My sister left town. My grandpa’s deserted me.” And Joe had kissed her. And given her a pep talk. And saved her life. Not in that order. “Maybe Felix is right. Maybe I do need a shop cat.”
“Phfft,” Francine said, returning her attention to her magazine. “You need a man.”
“She’s got me.” Joe gave Brit that almost smile that made her heart want to faint. He offered his passengers coffee and cookies, serving them all.
“He’s a keeper, that one,” Francine said.
I wish, said the wallflower.
“Who is he?”
“That’s Joe Messina. I tell all my customers about Heroic Joe.” Brit finished applying color to Francine’s hair, and began cleaning up. “Because of him, I’m alive, my truck runs great and now Joe’s bringing me happy customers.”
“Who’d have thought little Joey Messina would someday be good marriage material?” The woman wearing the long jean skirt raised her coffee cup in a toast.
She didn’t seem to notice Joe had gone still. Or that his eyes had lost their warmth.
His reaction reinforced Brit’s decision to keep her distance. She wanted to get married someday. He clearly did not.
“Oh, he’s the one that people are talking about.” Francine was eyeing the box of cookies. She’d been the first client of the day and Brit had hustled her directly into her chair without treats or caffeine. “Wouldn’t a ready-made family be nice? Doesn’t Joe have a boy and a girl?”
And.
Joe stood beneath Keira, a winter squall gathering in his eyes.
“He has a daughter,” Brit said evenly. “She’s coming for a haircut later.”
The cookies were either very good today or her clients had sensed Joe’s frosty air. Running a salon was like managing a three-ring circus. Brit shooed Francine to the coffeepot and asked for Mary next. The jean-skirted woman walked slowly toward her chair. Seeing her difficulty, Joe lent her his arm for support. The iceman had melted.
“How was Joe’s driving?” Brit tried redirection when conversation still hadn’t picked up again. “Did he break the speed limit?”
“He drove like an old lady.” Mary chuckled. “Slow the entire way.”
“That’s what parenthood does to you,” said the woman with the cannula and raspy voice. “Slows you down. It’s only a matter of time till you’re facing the grave.”
The corner of Joe’s lip inched upward. “I’ve never driven slow in my life. Just wait until I take you ladies home. You’ll have to belt in.”
That got them chuckling.
“Speaking of...” Brittany stroked Mary’s long hair, learning its texture. “When are you returning for them?”
“One o’clock. They have time for lunch and shopping in town.” He waved to his charges and left, driving away in a roar of pink.
“He’s not the worst of the Messinas,” wheezed the woman with the cannula.
“He’s not bad at all,” piped up the lady with the red slippers and lime-green dress.
“He’s a diamond in the rough.” Mary gave Brit a knowing smile in the mirror.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I’M HERE. I’M READY.” Sam pushed into Phil’s after school. She’d run over in her sundress and sandals.
Not wanting to miss the joy on his daughter’s face, Joe had run after her.
Brittany was alone, sweeping white hair from beneath her chair. “Have a seat.”
Sam climbed in, gripping the armrests as if expecting to blast into space. “Can you do curls, too? I want to sit under the dryer.”
“Only if my four o’clock is late.” Brittany put away her broom and dustpan.
Joe sat in the other chair. “Still no Phil?”
“Nope.” There was something in Brittany’s voice that made Joe peer closer. Her eyes had fine, tense lines around them as she swirled a tiger-striped drape over Sam. Was she tired from a full day of work and the demands of her elderly clients? Or was something else bothering her?
“Anything else I can do?”
She picked up a water bottle and began wetting down Sam’s hair as if it was as thick as Joe’s. “Grandpa Phil feels unwanted in
his own shop. And I...I feel guilty that he feels like that.”
Water dripped onto Sam’s plastic-protected shoulders.
“He should retire,” Joe soothed. “Phil’s hands are a hazard with scissors.”
“But he’s my grandfather. And I’m the reason he decided to quit. He lives for this place.” She combed Sam’s ragged bangs and cut along a straight line. “I need to find a reason for him to come back.”
“That’s temporary. It doesn’t heal the real problem.” The old man couldn’t do the job.
“When Uncle Turo gets out of jail, we’re going to hire him.” Sam’s words were more wish than certainty. And there was an unspoken question at the end of her sentence: Won’t we?
Brittany stopped snipping hair. Her gaze cut to Joe’s.
“I don’t know,” Joe said carefully. “It’s taken us a long time to get back on our feet after what Uncle Turo did in Beverly Hills. And he’s part of the reason people here don’t want to bring their cars to us.”
Sam went silent, the gears in her head spinning at maximum speed. “What happens to people who get out of jail? How do they live?”
“They work in various places.” Joe had no clear answer to the more difficult question. What will Uncle Turo do when he gets out of jail? Joe hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“They ought to be able to come home.” Sam crossed her arms beneath the drape.
Joe didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t sure Turo deserved a home with them.
Luckily, the sheriff opened the door and poked his head into the shop, saving Joe from answering. “I saw you come in. I’m ready to work on your list of cars.”
Joe hesitated. He’d expected to have a good time with Sam and Brittany. He wanted to witness his little girl’s hair transformation.
“She’ll be fine,” Brittany assured him. “I’ll send her around to the station if we finish first.”
Still, Joe hesitated.
“Go on,” Brittany urged, pausing in her work to meet his gaze. “We’re not going anywhere.”
She was right. Something he hadn’t known he’d been carrying lifted. They were staying in Harmony Valley. Not just Joe and Sam, but Brittany, as well.
Joe hurried after the sheriff, who’d been waiting on the sidewalk.
“Just so you know...” Nate’s long legs kept Joe speed walking. “Agent Haas from the FBI called me today.”
“I’m surprised—” Joe was suddenly as out of breath as Velma and in need of oxygen “—he waited so long.”
“He didn’t have a good opinion of you.” Nate didn’t acknowledge the sudden drag in Joe’s step or that he’d fallen behind. “Actually, I got the feeling he didn’t have a good opinion of most people. He wasn’t happy when I said I thought you were a decent guy.”
“I bet.” Joe caught up to Nate at the corner. “I swear, I was strictly an employee. I didn’t know what was going on. I have no idea where my uncle hid anything. I’d turn it over if I did. I’d never risk losing my daughter.”
“I believe you.” Nate unlocked the door to the station. “Car thieves don’t come to Harmony Valley and certainly don’t bust their butt to make a living.” Nate sat behind a desk. “Pull up a chair and let’s see that list.”
The station was housed in a converted store behind the block that housed Phil’s. Beyond the front counter was a desk and a jail cell. To one side was a door that looked like it might lead upstairs. A sign on it said Private.
Forty-five minutes later, they’d identified owners for all but two cars. Four cars were registered to Tony Messina. Sixteen cars were registered to Harmony Valley residents, living or dead. And the question marks? The Volkswagen Brittany had found in the bushes and the BMW.
Just Joe’s luck.
“There are a couple more places I can check,” Nate said as Sam ran in.
Her hair was cut neatly, short in the back and longer by her chin. Her bangs were fluffier than a poodle’s fur, but Joe liked to imagine that Brittany had let his daughter play with the curlers she’d been obsessed with. In short, she looked like a girl.
She didn’t act like a little lady. She ran in the open jail cell and put her face between two bars. “This is so cool.” She spun around before Joe could argue that a jail cell wasn’t cool. “Wait. Is that the toilet?” She stared into the steel bowl. “Ew. Wait till I tell Brad about this.”
“People who get locked in a jail cell don’t have privileges like privacy,” Nate said without looking up from the keyboard.
“Which is why Sam and I won’t be breaking any laws.” Joe refrained from knocking on the sheriff’s wooden desk. “Did you pay Brittany?”
Sam put her face between the bars again. “She wouldn’t accept my money. She said she owed us nachos and this way you wouldn’t worm or squirm or something.” She crossed her eyes and giggled, acting more like a carefree eleven-year-old than she had in weeks. “What does that mean?”
It meant Brittany was reneging on her dinner invitation.
And Joe was going to have to do something about it.
* * *
“YOU DIDN’T COME into the shop all week,” Brit said to Grandpa Phil on Saturday night. She stood in the kitchen and tried not to think about how her feet and back ached. Foot and back aches tended to muddle the mind when it came to deciding what to make for dinner. And when the mind was muddled, the hand reached for microwavable burritos.
“You had more customers in the past two weeks than I’ve had in three years combined,” Phil lamented from his semipermanent position on the couch.
After a week of Phil avoiding her—leaving early for the bakery, pretending to be asleep on the couch when she came home—they were getting to the heart of the matter. “Is that when your hands started to shake? Three years ago?”
“Who can remember?” He stared at his trembling digits. “I saw Francine in the shop the other day. I used to color her roots and trim her bangs.” He clenched his fists. “Do you know what it feels like to lose a skill? These hands...” His voice cracked. “They’ve betrayed me.”
Someone knocked on the door. And then pounded with both hands.
It was Joe and Sam. They carried two boxes of pizza and a bottle of soda. Talk about bad timing.
“Delivery.” Sam elbowed her way inside with the soda and shamelessly looked around. Her bangs floundered on her forehead, being too short to win the cowlick war over her right temple. “I hope you like pizza. I sure do.”
“Me, too.” Phil sat up, funk vanquished.
“This is because I wouldn’t take Sam’s haircut money, isn’t it?” Brit scowled at Joe, blocking his entry with one hand on the door frame. “You can’t just barge in here with dinner and expect me to roll out the welcome mat.”
Unfazed, Joe lifted the top of the box. “Ham and pineapple.” He angled the boxes to flash her a view of the lower pizza. “Pepperoni.”
The smell of pizza filled the air. Hot and salty and more satisfying than a freezer-burned burrito.
Brit opened the door wider and stepped back. “Fine. You can come in, but don’t make a habit of it.”
“Never.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead as he passed.
Brit froze. She was supposed to be wrong for him. They were supposed to be friendly, not friends. They’d had boundaries, of sorts, when he drove a second busload of women to the shop on Thursday. There was no kissing in Acquaintanceville.
Sam waved Joe toward the dining room. “I found plates and napkins.”
“This is just what we needed to cheer us up.” Grandpa Phil lumbered and swayed to the table. “Reggie moved to the city this week. We’re feeling a bit sorry for ourselves.”
Her grandfather didn’t mention he’d been in the middle of a breakdown when they’d knocked.
Joe appeared at Brit’s
side, pizzaless, and closed the door. He directed her toward the dining room. “Sit down. Eat. You’ll feel better.” His fingers worked magic on her aching shoulders as he propelled her forward.
“Do you always pizza bomb people you barely know?” As Brit sat in the nearest oak captain’s chair, she made a mental note to buy seat cushions.
“We know you.” Sam grinned, wiping pizza sauce from her chin. “You’re our neighbor. Our haircutter. And a mermaid lover.”
Phil chuckled.
“I made that last one up.” Sam was loving this.
It was hard not to smile.
Joe slid a plate in front of Brit with two slices, one from each pizza. He’d found the glasses. He poured everyone a soda. He was the perfect host. He wasn’t glacial or frosty. In fact, both days he’d driven the bus this week, he hadn’t scowled. Not once.
“There’s green salad in the refrigerator.” What was the use of buying vegetables if you didn’t eat them?
“Don’t even think about vegetables and sugar intake,” Joe admonished. “It’s Saturday night.”
“We don’t do vegetables on Saturday.” Sam twirled a finger in her hair. “It’s a rule. And before we go to bed, we have milk shakes.”
Brit angled herself in the chair so she was facing Joe. “You didn’t bring milk shakes?”
“It’s a bedtime ritual. Not for the neighbors.” There was a smile in his voice, plain as day. He just didn’t let that smile out often enough. “We’re here to celebrate the weekend and hear about what was accomplished in the art world.”
Brit choked on her pizza.
Joe gave her a couple of sturdy backslaps. “I take it that means you were too busy to get creative.”
“Shoot,” Sam said. “I was hoping to peek at some mermaids.”
Brit stared at her plate and wondered what Leona was serving for dinner.
“You know what this means?” Joe looked at each of them in turn. “It means tomorrow we all encourage Brittany to take on an art challenge.”
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