Baby, I'll Find You

by Jennifer Skully

  Sure enough, when she opened the drawer, the payroll service number was taped to the side. “Cool. I can handle it then.”

  Except that when she went through the cards, she didn’t find one for Cole. Ah-ha, a reason to speak to the mighty man himself. Jami smiled. All right, she was a like a dog with a big meaty bone she wouldn’t let go.

  Why couldn’t she let the man be?

  Because he was a cause for her to rally round, a purpose, much like fixing Easy Cheesy’s books. Especially since she’d lost her higher-paying job and her future husband on the same day and didn’t have anything else to do. I don’t hear music in my head anymore. Well, maybe she could help Cole hear music again. But to do that, she had to start a conversation with him.

  It was close to noon, and she only had until one o’clock, so she plucked up the stack of timecards and headed out of the office.

  A new boy she hadn’t seen before manned the order window, though boy wasn’t quite the right description. Early twenties, she’d guess, but compared to Cole, he was much more a boy than a man. The lunch rush had obviously begun and an assortment of customers waited in line. Frank bustled behind the counter filling drink orders from the soda machine, making milkshakes, wiping up a spill, and otherwise effectively multitasking. A girl, college-age maybe, worked the fry basket and bagged the burger orders. With two other employees bustling around, the area was a beehive of activity.

  Open every day from ten in the morning to midnight, in the off-season, Easy Cheesy had fifteen employees, mostly part-time, students probably, from the looks of it. Cole, someone named Kelly (girl or boy?), and Gary (hopefully a guy) appeared to be the only full-time employees.

  Without saying a word, Jami flapped the timecards at Frank, smiled, then headed back into the grill area. Cole flipped a line of burgers, then threw cheese slices on several of them. Efficient but unhurried, he slapped a second line of cooked burgers onto buns.

  “Yes, ma’am?” he asked without looking at her.

  “I need your timecard.” She waved the stack. “It isn’t in here.”

  He glanced at Frank, then at her, and finally began plopping tomatoes on the line of burgered-up buns. “Frank takes care of that. You don’t need to worry.”

  “Well, Frank is having me take care of it now, so I need your timecard.”

  He took a deep breath, but didn’t miss a beat of his preparations. The lettuce was placed just so. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d talk to Frank about it. He and I have an arrangement.”

  “What kind of arrangement?” She wasn’t being nosy. She was starting to sniff out something rotten. Frank wasn’t paying him under the table, was he? Why, that would be illegal.

  “Okay. I’ll talk to Frank,” she finally said, when Cole merely raised an eyebrow.

  He rolled the dressed burgers into precut sheets of paper. “I know you think I’m being a dickhead.”

  She already knew Dick Head, and Cole was a step away from her former boss. Though, come to think of it, the other day, she’d considered her former boss an angel, comparatively speaking.

  “He can explain it better than I can.” Then he turned away.

  She got a little queasy. She didn’t want to get involved in any accounting shenanigans. Backing away as he plunked down another row of open buns, she almost bumped into the bag girl, then hissed at Frank as she passed, “I need to talk to you.”

  “What’s wrong, pretty lady?” Frank followed her into the cramped office as she moved back behind the desk and sat. “I’ve got shakes to make,” he added.

  “Where’s Cole’s timecard?”

  “Cole’s timecard?” he echoed. Despite his bald head, he had dark eyebrows, and they shot up.

  She went straight to the point. “Are you paying him under the table?”

  Frank quickly closed the door. “No.”

  “He said you’d explain why he doesn’t have a timecard.”

  He looked up, down, around, then settled his gaze on the floor. If she’d learned anything about Frank, it was that he didn’t pussyfoot. So what was up?

  “You need to keep this under your hat.”

  “Fine,” she agreed. “Consider that I’m wearing a hat”—she tapped the top of her head—“unless I don’t like what I hear.” She was not getting into the same position she had with Dick Head, signing off on things she knew were wrong. Best to nip it in the bud right now.

  Frank let it all out like a deflating balloon. “Cole owns the place so he doesn’t get paid like regular people.”

  If she hadn’t already been sitting, she would have flopped down in the chair. “He owns it?”

  “Yeah, and I run it for him.”

  “But why?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  She wondered if it was a bullshit story. “I’ve got until one o’clock to hear it.”

  “Okay.” He sighed, then hit the high points for her. “Cole didn’t want the hassle of running the place, and he loaned me the money, but the way we set it up, he’s the owner of record until I pay him back the loan. Which I’m working on doing, but I’ve got a ways to go. In the meantime, he gets paid in cash withdrawals rather than payroll.”

  That was the weirdest thing she’d ever heard. Cole was a talented musician, but he didn’t hear music anymore. He owned Easy Cheesy, but he pretended to be a cook. Either that or Frank was giving her a complete and total load of crap. She wasn’t quite sure which.

  “All right, fine,” she managed after a few seconds. “Go make your shakes.” She wasn’t feeling all happy and light the way she had earlier.

  But Frank didn’t leave. Instead, he lowered his bulk into the chair opposite. “He does it for me,” he said.

  “Does what?”

  “He lets everyone think I own Easy Cheesy so I save face.”

  “Oh.” It didn’t make a lick of sense.

  “I don’t mind telling you,” Frank said, despite her lack of enthusiasm. “I had a bad drinking problem, but I got sober, and Cole helped me out. He loaned me the money for Easy Cheesy, and I’m paying him back out of the profits till the place is mine. That’s why I run the show and take the responsibility.”

  “I see.” Sort of. Not really. There was a complicated story here she wouldn’t figure out between milkshake orders. Nor did it answer why Cole made burgers instead of music.

  “If I didn’t have Easy Cheesy,” he paused, then added, “and Ruby, of course, I might not have been able to handle things so well for eight years. Which is why I owe Cole for every sober day.” Frank rubbed the top of his bald head. “He’s a good guy. He’s just in a funk right now.”

  In a funk? “So you’re saying I shouldn’t judge him harshly when he’s rude.”

  “Yeah.” Frank perused his fingernails a moment. “Guess that’s what I’m saying.”

  She leaned forward. “You know what I think?”

  He shook his head.

  “I think you’re a good guy, too.”

  He smiled, and that chipped tooth was actually kind of cute. He went on about Cole. “He’ll come out of it.”

  “How long has he manned the grill for you?”

  Frank seesawed his head, then finally said, “Going on about seven years or so.”

  Seven years. The same length of time since he’d made his last CD. “Well,” she muttered. “That’s one really long funk.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” he muttered, almost too softly for her to hear.

  Jami heard, and she thought about asking for more, but whatever the other half was, that was Cole’s story to tell, not Frank’s. So she shut her mouth.

  “This whole thing’s our secret, right?”

  “Our secret,” she said. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Cole.

  What did it all say about him? He had dimensions she hadn’t imagined. She knew that from listening to his music. But a funk that lasted seven years? That was...

  Good God, that was exactly like her. She’d lived with Leo for sev
en years, her life on hold. She didn’t make waves, she just...waited. In a funk? Maybe. She definitely wasn’t where she wanted to be after all that time. She’d read somewhere that life moved in seven-year cycles. Every cycle meant a big change. She’d moved in with Leo when she was twenty-eight, she’d been booted out at thirty-five. Cole was operating on the same cycle.

  Maybe that was why she’d found his CDs in a thrift-store grab bag. Because destiny, fate, God, the universe, or something was telling them both it was time for a change. A big change. That was the only explanation for such a huge coincidence; the universe had engineered it.

  But what on earth was she supposed to do about it?

  Chapter Eight

  “What did you tell her?” Cole muttered, keeping his voice down so the Easy Cheesy grapevine didn’t get wise.

  Frank laid the stack of wrappers next to the burger staging area. “I told her the truth. What else was I supposed to say?”

  “You shouldn’t have hired her.” Cole refilled the lettuce, tomato, and pickle bins in preparation for the next rush.

  “Why?”

  Cole hesitated. He didn’t have a good reason. “She’s from out of town. She blew in”—like a gale force wind—“and she can blow out again just as quickly. Then we’re left high and dry and needing to train another bookkeeper.”

  “But she’s fixing everything. At least we’ll get that out of it. I was going to have to hire someone with more experience to get it all in order anyway. All I did was patch-up work to get us back on track with invoice payments.”

  “I’d rather you hired someone who was going to stay.” It was the first time he’d ever given Frank advice in hiring, firing, or anything else to do with running the joint.

  “She’s smart. She asks lots of questions, but they’re not dumb questions. She’s telling me stuff I never understood completely about the system. And she’s funny.”

  Frank continued extolling her virtues as he pulled a refresher heap of to-go bags from beneath the counter. He’d run in and out of the little office all afternoon, acting quite the chatty fellow with the new bookkeeper. “She even said she’d take Ruby to the dog park for me,” he finished.

  She was a veritable paragon of virtue. “I don’t trust her.”

  Frank rocked back on his heels and looked at him. “Why the hell not?”

  Cole didn’t have an answer. Oh yeah, actually he did. He didn’t trust her not to worm her way into the heart of Easy Cheesy. First Frank, then all the employees, then...

  “What have you got against her, Cole?”

  “Nothing.” That was the problem. He didn’t have anything against her at all. Except that she’d showed up at his house with his final CD in her hand, then she’d followed him to work, and she’d— “I think she’s stalking me.”

  Frank laughed so hard, his tattoos starting doing the horizontal mambo on his arms. Behind him, Kelly put her hand on the wall phone in case Frank needed 911.

  Cole shooed her away with a flick of his spatula. “I’m serious,” he said, low and intense. “She knows who I am and where I live.”

  Frank didn’t bat a lash. “So she’s a former groupie.” He spread his hands. “You used to have a lot of them. Stephanie’s mother was one of ’em.”

  “She was not a groupie.” Sure he’d met Hannah on tour, but she wasn’t a groupie. She’d been his lover. When she got pregnant, he’d wanted to marry her, wanted to be a father. Hannah, however, had a hard beginning in life, coming from perennial drug users and petty criminals, and she wanted no part of being a mother or a family. Yet rather than have an abortion, she’d agreed to stay until the baby was born, then gave way all her parental rights. She’d never looked back. Neither had Cole. He’d stopped going on tour fifty-two weeks a year and did most of his work in the studio. Stephanie had been the biggest part of his life. The best part.

  His hand on his chest just over his heart, he rubbed away the aching thoughts.

  Did he honestly think the woman was a threat? Well, no. What was bugging him was why the hell he’d told her the music was gone. Why had he put himself on the line like that?

  “Cole, would you let me make the decision on this? She’s doing a bang-up job, and I don’t want her to stop now. I want this computer crap off my bed of worries.”

  Put like that, Cole knew he sounded small and was forced to give in. “Fine. Whatever works.”

  Andrea arrived after school. He glanced at his watch. The kid was like clockwork. She ghosted past them, her eyes on the floor as if afraid she’d trip and someone might notice her. She gave not a word of greeting. She didn’t have much to say on a normal basis, but this was worse than usual. Bad day at school? Or was she still in recovery because he’d scared the crap out of her on Saturday by looking too closely at her drawings? When he’d come up on her, she’d freaked like a rabbit sighting the hawk just before it hooked in its claws.

  “I don’t get that kid,” Frank mumbled, then scratched behind his ear. “But she’s a hard worker.”

  When she wasn’t scribbling in her sketchbook. But in slow times, why not? Otherwise, she worked fast and efficiently because she didn’t do a lot of blabbing. Maybe the kid would turn out to be the next Boris Vallejo, a famous fantasy artist. He liked a kid that had passion. Stephie had been passionate about...

  Cole shut down the thought.

  The problem with contemplating Andrea was that he always started thinking about Stephie. It was safer just to ignore the kid. He was heartless bastard enough to do just that.

  * * * * *

  Andrea walked by the office door once...twice... The third time she stopped. “Are you working here now?”

  Jami nodded. “I’m doing Frank’s books for him.”

  “You’re an accountant?”

  “Yes.”

  Andrea simply stared as if Jami had sprouted whiskers out of her chin. “And you like it?” she asked.

  The girl had a way of looking not quite at you, not even through you, but sort of around you. Yet she made one small step inside the office doorway.

  “I do like it,” Jami confessed. “Numbers can be soothing.”

  Andrea tipped her head, a lock of dark hair coming loose from her hairnet. “Sort of like drawing.”

  “Drawing?”

  “You know. Pictures.”

  Jami almost snorted at herself. She’d thought the girl meant a drawing, like a raffle, even a grab bag. She held the sound in, however, so Andrea didn’t think the joke was on her. “I take it you like drawing. What do you draw?”

  Tall for her age but on the slender side, in a couple of years, Andrea would be gorgeous and willowy. She shrugged one shoulder. “Just stuff.”

  Oo-kay. “Who are your favorite artists?” Jami asked to bring the teenager out.

  Andrea smiled at last. “There’s T. L. Petrov who does some really cool fantasy stuff.” She glanced at Jami, going on when she detected genuine interest. “And I like Nick Angel, he does lots of book covers and stuff. And this other guy named Gil Bouvier. I have a book of his paintings.”

  “Cool.” Jami had never heard of any of them. “Do you want to do book covers and stuff,” she repeated, “like Nick Angel?”

  Andrea winked out right before her very eyes, like the bleep of a computer monitor. “Mine’s nothing much, not like theirs. My parents want me to be an accountant.”

  Those sparse words contained a wealth of information. “And you don’t really want to be an accountant.”

  The girl shrugged the other shoulder, as if making sure she remained on an even keel. “I don’t mind. It just seems”—she tucked her chin down, then looked at Jami through her lashes—“boring.” Almost a whisper. The eye contact, lasting only a second or two, gauged Jami’s reaction.

  “Boring to some, I suppose.” Jami leaned forward as if she had a secret and lowered her voice, reeling the girl in another step. “But there’s this weird little kick,” she confided, “when you find that hundred dollars you’ve been look
ing for on the bank reconciliation.” She’d done many a bank rec when first out of college, before moving into her true love, cost accounting. “It’s like you’ve beaten the thing into submission.”

  Obviously unconvinced, Andrea chewed on the inside of her cheek. Jami admitted it was a rather odd concept to grasp.

  “My sister Nannette has never balanced the family checkbook,” Jami revealed. “Me,” she tapped her chest, “I couldn’t live like that. I’ve been known to spend half an hour looking for a penny.” Which was, in its own way, OCD.

  “Do you find it?”

  “Always.”

  Andrea contemplated the top of Frank’s desk—which Jami had straightened—then fluttered her fingers in the direction of the front window. “I’ll get back to work.”

  She was shy, uncertain. Perhaps she didn’t feel like she fit in at school. She might want a bigger chest or a few less inches in height. Whatever it was, Andrea needed something. While Jami was fixing Frank’s books and getting Cole to hear his music again, maybe she could help Andrea find her confidence.

  * * * * *

  “Stephie?”

  She’d grown into a beauty. Cole had always known she would. She had her mother’s thick, glossy hair and lithe figure, but her height was a product of his genes.

  “Daddy, you’re supposed to call me Stephanie. I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  No, she wasn’t a little girl. A tall, gorgeous blonde, he’d have to beat her suitors off with a stick. No mere mortal man was good enough for her.

  “Daddy, you should have gotten me that horse I wanted.”

  As a girl, her passion had been horses. He’d paid for riding lessons, but he should have leased her a horse for her.

  “It wouldn’t have been all that much money, Daddy.”

  She twined her long hair, piled it on her head, and fastened it with a clip. She was so grown up.