He froze. He appeared to be speechless.
Then he gave his head a little shake, as if he was re-tuning his hearing. “Just to be clear, Glory. You’ve been on the job one day—one hardly very distinguished day, I might add—and you’re asking me for a favor?”
She hesitated. Then she nodded. Because, well, what else could she do?
He was apparently so astonished by this that the astonishment looped around past outrage and landed on amusement. “You’ve got brass ones, kiddo.”
But they both already knew this.
“When I’m famous, Glenn, I’ll return triumphantly and bring tons of business to the Misty Cat. I’ll film my documentary here. I’ll record my legendary live album here.”
He gave a short laugh. He fell into a moment of what looked like mulling. Then he sighed hugely.
“Have to tell you, I actually think it’s a great idea. I’d flat out say no to anyone else, but you’re damn great at what you do and I think more people should have a chance to hear you. The crowd won’t be huge but they can funnel word out to their friends if you make an impact. And there’s no reason I can think of that we can’t kick things off earlier, say, give you about thirty, forty-five minutes. But I’ll need to text their manager and get his go-ahead, since you’ll basically be taking advantage of The Baby Owls’ audience. I might have mentioned that he’s kind of a tool, or whatever word you young ones are using to describe insufferable jerks these days.”
Glory’s heart was doing a happy, hopeful, staccato beat. “Douche works. Or prick.”
“I’ll try both of those out next chance I get, but not to his face. He keeps sending me lists of things the band wants available when they get here. Organic this and gluten-free that. And Scotch. Apparently those pretentious owlets drink Glenlivet. They’re from Oregon, for God’s sake. They were probably bottle-fed on craft beer. They’ll get what they get.”
Glenn would probably get them at least the Glenlivet, Glory thought. No amount of bluster could disguise the fact that he was a pretty nice guy.
The Misty Cat’s business did not depend on whatever bands happened to cycle through here. Though they did do a rather brisk business in beer sales on band nights, and the publicity didn’t hurt at all, and Glenn liked money as much as the next guy.
“But I’ll text him for you, Glory. And I’ll tell him you’re amazing and a good fit for their music and that you’ll do The Baby Owls’ proud. I’ll let you know what he says.”
She exhaled at length. And where misery had deflated her, relief did the opposite. She felt aloft and as illuminated with hope as that billboard of the The Baby Owls out on the highway.
“Thanks, Glenn. I really appreciate it. I know I probably don’t deserve it.”
“Glory Hallelujah, life doesn’t always portion things out according to what you deserve. It’s not a tit-for-tat situation. A lot of times it’s just dumb luck and timing.”
And with that uplifting bit of philosophy, he got up from the chair. “See you tomorrow morning, bright and early.”
Chapter 8
Kismet.
The word popped into Eli’s head again as he steered his cruiser past the big wooden sign shaped like a big hand facing palm out hanging from chains on Main Street.
Yeah, he really wasn’t crazy about that word. It belonged between the pages of the kinds of books Greta sold at the New Age Store. She read palms (hence the big sign) and tarot cards behind a velvet curtain in the back of the shop, and the carpets and walls of the place were permeated with sweet, exotic incense smoke funk. She held monthly lectures on things like “feng shui” or “chakras” or other topics that to him sounded like the names of Brazilian percussion instruments. She did a pretty booming business, though, and he liked her. She was more pragmatic than airy and she adhered to her convictions, however loopy, which he admired.
Thing was, Kismet implied that there was some sort of larger, ultimate plan and he was at the mercy of it. He’d never much liked being at the mercy of anything. He did not like ambiguity.
It was hard to deny, however, that he was at the mercy of a number of things at the moment.
Because maybe Kismet was in play when he and Glory were interrupted at that party just when he’d had his hands down her pants and she’d had hers up his shirt.
And maybe the reason they were interrupted was because Franco Francone was about to roll into town.
And maybe that was why Glory had stayed in Hellcat Canyon. Because of Kismet.
Because he still didn’t know what the hell she was still doing here. He did, however, now clearly understand that his instinctive, irrational dislike of Francone had been a premonition of what it would be like to see him standing next to Glory. Like they were members of the same species. They both had that sort of charisma that went beyond just being exceptionally good-looking. The kind of charisma that had a whiff of destiny about it and all but lit them up like sun through stained glass.
Eli knew he could raise a blush, not to mention nipples, by just standing close to a woman and letting his eyes imply how he could make her body feel. His height, his quiet, innate sensuality and authority, all of that suggested great reservoirs of secret hotness, or so he’d been told. He liked to think it was true.
And he’d felt Glory’s body melt into his, and he’d had the minutest hint of how explosively good it would be with her. Unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
Everything on his body tightened then. His grip tightened on his steering wheel lest he drive off the road.
But he’d always wondered whether he might be too sort of earthbound for her. Always.
And he’d never anticipated he might have to actually witness a guy like Francone take her away when the time came. A guy who actually felt like competition, which, if he was being honest, he’d known that that idiot Mick Macklemore patently never was.
At least . . . she was still angry at him. Which seemed an odd thing to be optimistic about, but where there was anger, there was often both hurt . . . and heat. And where there was hurt and heat, there was hope.
Maybe.
His male ego was pretty sure that if he could get her into bed, he’d win hands down. Hold her in a lust thrall. Because they had that kind of chemistry.
But . . . dammit all anyway . . . he would never do that to her. Or, frankly, if he was being truthful . . . to himself.
Fuck the need to do everything the right way.
It was honestly the only way he knew how to do things.
The only way he knew how to live with himself.
He hooked a left down Jamboree Street, where Allegro Music was—and where he’d tackled a drunk naked Boomer Clark—and waved at Dion Espinoza, who was out culling old tattered flyers from the bulletin board in front of his store.
Bethany hadn’t seemed to notice that she was present at The World’s Most Uncomfortable Lunch. On the contrary: the fact that he was indirectly the reason she got to sit with Franco Francone (oh, wait, he thought sardonically, the Franco Francone) was apparently a point in his favor, and she’d glowed all through the meal, even if Francone had frostily retreated into his phone halfway through lunch as Sherrie took over the table and had departed before they did.
Francone was clearly rationing whatever charm he possessed and he wasn’t going to waste it on either of them.
Bethany was easy company and she pronounced him a good listener, which made him feel a little guilty, since he hadn’t been listening so much as letting her words pour in his ear like talk radio. Although he now knew more than he really needed to know about “contouring.” She’d asked intelligent questions about Hellcat Canyon and she was enthusiastic about her job and he was charmed by both of those things and by the simplicity of her happiness. She’d laughed at nearly everything he said, which made him feel more suave than he knew himself to be, and all her innuendos and little touches made it abundantly clear she found him very attractive. It was undeniably pretty pleasant. Maybe not invigorating. But a g
uy could do worse than pretty pleasant.
He’d dropped her off back with her grandma at Heavenly Shores and told her he hoped he’d see her again, and he made his escape before he felt obliged to make a concrete plan. He was back in his uniform and his cruiser by three o’clock. Looking for crime was oddly the first time all day he’d begun to relax.
He hooked a right back onto Main again. He waved at Greta, who was in her window arranging a stack of books—something about “manifesting,” he could see from the shiny gold letters on their covers—and Lloyd Sunnergren, who was chalking the word SALE! on an easel board out in front of his feed store, then headed up toward the Angel’s Nest, the big, lacy lilac colored Victorian bed-and-breakfast. From there he could see the The Baby Owls billboard out on the highway, and he imagined seeing Glory up there one day.
He took the on ramp out onto the highway. A few hundred feet later he was surprised to see that instead of fifty-five the speed limit on the side of the sign now read
TITS
And a boy of about twelve years old was shinnying down the pole with a can of green spray paint in his hand.
Eli pulled his cruiser sharply over to the shoulder and grabbed his loudspeaker microphone.
“Hold it right there!”
The kid glanced over his shoulder and then nearly shot skyward out of his jeans in fright. His legs scrabbled futilely on the gravel for a moment, like Fred Flintstone in his Stone Age car, and then he got traction and bolted straight for the bushes in the median.
Eli scrambled out of his cruiser and bolted after him.
The little bastard was fast and low to the ground and Eli felt like he was chasing a damn squirrel. But Eli also had longer legs, he was pissed now, and no one knew better than him how to tackle. He lunged and grabbed a fistful of striped shirt.
The kid thrashed frantically. “Help! Police!”
“I am the police, you knucklehead! Stop wiggling!”
The kid’s legs were going like egg beaters. Eli twisted in time to avoid taking a heel in the nuts. He made a grab for the kid’s spray paint and swore again when he came away with a hand sprayed green.
Some days there was just no dignity in this job.
He finally got a look at the kid.
“Aidan? Aidan Parker? Knock it off. Hold still, for fuck’s sake, or I’ll spray paint tits on you.”
This made the little jerk laugh a little and he went limp.
Eli wasn’t about to let go of him. He kept a grip on his arm.
“Deputy Barlow, please don’t tell my dad!”
“Don’t tell your dad you risked your life and limb to spray paint tits on a speed limit sign? Yeah, I think he’s gonna want to know.”
Eli already had his phone out. He told Siri to call Parker’s Hardware and conveyed the info tersely over the phone to Aidan’s dad.
Not more than seven minutes later Aidan’s father came screeching up behind Eli in a red Ford F-150. He was already yelling on his way out of the truck.
Aidan’s dad owned the hardware store in town. He’d just inherited it from his dad, who’d inherited from his dad, and so forth on down to about 1930 when it first opened.
“Why, Aidan? Are you out of your mind? You could have been killed! Why in God’s name did you risk your life to spray paint that word?”
“What else would I spray paint? Math? And I can’t draw.”
This was twelve-year-old logic at its finest.
Eli had a hunch math was a sore point in the Parker household.
“Why do you have to spray paint anything at all?”
Doug and Eli exchanged looks. Honestly, from about Aidan’s age on it was pretty much the only thing on a guy’s mind, and they both knew that. That word, and its various titillating cousins. It emerged in all kinds of inconvenient ways. Eli himself had gotten in trouble for drawing a penis in pencil on a desk when he was twelve. He wouldn’t have gotten caught except Jonah couldn’t stop laughing.
“I thought it through,” Aidan protested. “None of the other things I thought of would fit.”
Doug Parker sighed a sigh that tapered into a moan. “This is what you have to look forward to, Eli, if you have kids.”
“Can’t wait,” Eli said dryly.
But the notion made him feel restless again. He thought it might be kind of fun to have a kid who was rascally enough to spray paint a sign, as long as he only tried it once.
“We’ll pay for the sign or any damage, Eli. More specifically, Aidan will pay for the sign out of his allowance, and he’ll be working his butt off this sum—”
Eli’s phone buzzed. His heart gave a little lurch.
It was Leigh Devlin.
“Hang on, Doug. It’s the big boss. I gotta take this.”
He strode about fifteen paces down the gravel verge out of earshot of Doug’s harangue and answered the call from Leigh Devlin.
“Sir. How are you?”
“Excellent. How are things there, Eli?”
“Scintillating. Just checking out a . . .” If he mentioned it to Leigh, he’d be obliged to write Aidan up, and he hadn’t decided whether to do that yet. “. . . rumor about a homeless encampment up at Coyote Creek.” Which he was about to do.
“Listen, I was hoping you’d come up here to county for a meeting sometime in the next few weeks. Don’t want to go into it over the phone, but let’s just say it involves your ideas regarding your future career direction. Thought we could have lunch after we meet. Amy would love to see you, too, I know. You interested?”
Amy was Leigh’s wife.
“Of course. It would be my pleasure, sir.”
“Great. Pull together any insights you might have about law enforcement in the county and ideas about where you’d like to see yourself in a few years. I’ll have my assistant mail you a few dates, you pick one, get back to me?”
“Sounds perfect.”
Devlin ended the call.
Eli was still a moment, staring down at the phone.
Then he glanced back up the road.
He wasn’t certain whether he’d miss hollering at twelve-year-old vandals when he was undersheriff.
If he was undersheriff.
But damned if that didn’t provide a little extra glow to this challenging day.
He started to smile.
And then his smile faded.
And hell, maybe that was Kismet. He’d be working closer to Sacramento. Which is where Bethany Walker lived. That didn’t provide quite the “ping” in his gut he thought Kismet ought to.
“Hey, Doug,” he called to Parker, who was still lecturing his now thoroughly penitent son. “If Aidan does a little litter clean up and helps clean that sign, I’ll let him off with just a warn—GODDAMMIT, FRANCONE!”
The blue Porsche was roaring by him at around seventy.
The nerve of that motherfucker.
He could have sworn he saw Francone’s arm waving gaily at him out the window.
“Wow. If he can talk like that, why can’t I?” Aidan Parker said reasonably enough to his dad.
“You gotta earn it, son,” Doug Parker said.
When Glory returned to the Misty Cat that night with her guitar, fresh from a nap and smelling sweet from a shower, her hair fluffy and washed and unfettered, the open mic sign-up chalkboard read as usual:
Open Mic Night!
And first name on it, in bright pink chalk, was Glory Hallelujah Greenleaf. Because she’d signed it just before she left the Misty Cat for the day. Just one of the many privileges of being an employee. That, and she’d had Giorgio make her a Glennburger on her break.
But there was already another name on the board.
It drooped drunkenly southward beneath hers: Mick Macklemore.
Oh, shit.
Glory froze and rotated, peering cautiously about the room. What the hell was he up to?
She’d once tried to teach Mick to play guitar, because what could be hotter than a hot bad-boy guitar-playing boyfriend with a GTO? But once he
discovered that holding down the string kind of hurt his fingers, he’d pronounced it much too hard.
“I want to know how to play, not learn how to play,” he’d explained earnestly.
Nor could he sing a note. But neither of those things had ever really stopped anyone from signing up for open mic night.
Glenn had already hit most of the lights so that it had gone from a cheery chamber-of-commerce-reception glare to moody and shadowy rock and roll. Which meant it was pretty dark in the body of the restaurant.
She peered cautiously around. She was somewhat relieved that Mick was nowhere in sight. Unless he was in the bathroom or had slinked into the poolroom. Maybe he was just going around drunkenly writing his name on things. He’d gotten a label maker for Christmas once, and he’d labeled everything in his bedroom just because he could. His lamp had said “lamp” on it.
Some stragglers from the chamber of commerce mixer were laughing a little too loudly and polishing off their little glasses of wine near the counter. These were adults who had jobs with defined trajectories, jobs that required staff and storefronts and college degrees or training programs upon which you got some sort of certificate (or so Glory imagined). In other words, careers that didn’t hinge on playing open mics, working random jobs, and dumb luck.
Eyeing them, she felt a little like a child who’d already gone to bed peering into the dining room on Thanksgiving, where all the adults were sitting. She spotted Eden Harwood, Glenn and Sherrie’s daughter who was a florist, that good-looking lawyer Griffin Campbell, and Casey Carson, who was talking to Lydia Flynn, who owned the wonderful little bakery. And—was that Bethany? Her flawless golden blow-out was pretty unmistakable. Maybe she was on hand representing the movie crew. Or maybe she’d caught word of the free wine and invited herself, and really, who could blame her?
Glory felt removed from them, and she knew a sharp little twinge of loneliness that evolved into the tremendous honesty of relief. Because having storefronts and certificates and the like just wasn’t the life for her. She supposed in some ways she was neither adult nor child. She was that other creature: the Musician. If she was a tarot card, she’d be the Wizard, she decided. And one day she was going to be an industry unto herself. With not just staff, but an entourage. And a freaking billboard out on the highway.
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