Busted in Broken Hearts Junction: A Cozy Matchmaker Mystery (Cozy Matchmaker Mystery Series Book 2)

by Meg Muldoon

I went over behind the bar, and started reorganizing the back shelf. After last night’s raucousness, Jim Beam was sitting on the top shelf and Bombay Sapphire was sitting on the lower one. Maggie had left lots more bottles out of order than those.

  “Don’t worry though,” Clay said. “I intend to pay for this here bottle.”

  His country twang struck me as a little forced. Like something he’d picked up in Tennessee bars or on tour somewhere, but didn’t seem to come all that naturally.

  “Your money’s no good here, Clay,” I said, looking up at him in the mirror. “Not after you came all the way out here to sing at a stranger’s wedding for nothing. That right there buys you free liquor at The Cupid for the rest of your stay.”

  He smirked.

  “I don’t think you understand what a dangerous offer you’ve just made,” he said. “The way it looks out there today, I could be snowbound in this town for some time.”

  “I don’t think too many of the residents around here would complain about you getting stuck here in Broken Hearts,” I said.

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “I aim to make some of them resent me during my stay.”

  I turned back around to look at him, furrowing my brow.

  “I must have misheard you. What was that?”

  He threw back the whiskey and didn’t answer.

  Strange thing to say, I thought.

  But maybe the kid had had too much to drink. By the way the whiskey was wafting off of him, I wasn’t sure if he’d stopped drinking between last night and this morning.

  “So what’s all this I hear about you being a psychic?” he said, changing the subject abruptly and pouring himself another.

  I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Now where’d you get an idea like that?”

  He shrugged.

  “It’s a long ways from Boise in a snowstorm,” he said. “Fletch and I got around to talking. Told me how y’all met.”

  “Did he now?”

  He nodded.

  “Said you have these visions.That you can tell when two people are meant to be together. In fact, he said that’s how the two of you, you know, came to be. You had this vision of him.”

  I placed my hands on my hips and clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

  What in the world was Fletcher doing blabbing about my visions? Now Clay Westwood probably thought Fletcher had landed himself a real nut job of a girlfriend.

  I tried to think of something to say. Something to change the subject.

  But I wasn’t quick enough on my feet.

  “Is it true?” Clay asked.

  I cleared my throat, about to deny the whole thing, but someone beat me to answering.

  “‘Course it’s true,” he said. “Though Loretta here is shy to talk about it.”

  Fletcher stood there, leaning against the corner edge where the hallway and barroom met.

  He had bedhead and had a severe case of 5 o’clock shadow himself, but that withstanding, my heart did a little dance inside my chest when I saw him there. The way it often did in the mornings. As if I’d awoken thinking my life for the past year had all just been an impossibly happy dream. But then I’d seen him in the flesh, and realize it wasn’t a dream at all.

  It was real life.

  I still felt that way, even when he gave me reason to be steamed at him.

  “I’m not shy about it, Fletcher Hart,” I said, shooting him a sharp look. “I just prefer to keep my cards close to my chest. Something neither you or your granddaddy knows much about.”

  Fletcher smirked.

  “Aw, don’t get sore, now honey.”

  “I’m not sore,” I said. “I’m perfectly clear-headed. I just don’t appreciate you telling Clay that I’m psychic. He probably thinks I’m crazy now.”

  I turned my attention back to Clay, expecting him to say something like ‘I don’t think you’re crazy, miss.’ But he didn’t say anything. In fact, he looked miles away.

  “See?” I said, glancing back at Fletcher.

  He grinned mischievously.

  “You ever been able to use that psychic gift for other purposes?” Clay asked, pouring himself another shot.

  The way the kid was tossing them back, that bottle was gonna be empty within the next 15 minutes.

  “What purposes do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, like to find people,” he said, not looking at me. “Not soulmates, but certain people you want to find.”

  I didn’t answer right away, thinking about his question.

  Sometimes my gift for matchmaking seemed to be a mystery even to myself. My visions would come in waves, and a lot of times, they didn’t make much sense. They were easy to misinterpret, and they could be fuzzy, like they were coming through a broken TV screen. Other times, they’d come to me clearer than a sober Saturday night, as had been the case with my visions of Beth Lynn and Robert.

  But once, last year, one of my visions had come through differently. And it had, in a roundabout way, led us to discovering who had murdered Dale Dixon, The Stupid Cupid Saloon’s former bar owner.

  In the months since, though, I had chocked that up to a one-time event. Normally, my visions didn’t help solve murders.

  “My visions don’t really work that way,” I said to Clay. “I wish they weren’t, but they’re kind of fickle.”

  He nodded and rubbed his chin. Then he fell silent.

  He tossed back the rest of his shot.

  I snuck a glance at Fletcher, who had a crease of worry drawing together his eyebrows.

  I knew they did things different in Nashville. But having four shots of whiskey before 10:30 on a Sunday morning seemed a little extreme, even for the hard partying crowd Clay ran with.

  Fletcher cleared his throat and leaned on his back heels in a stance that Law Dog was also fond of.

  “Say, how’d you get here this morning, Clay?” he asked.

  “Got a ride,” he said, not elaborating.

  “Well, what do you say I give you a ride back to the hotel now?” he said. “You must be tired after last night. Probably need a good rest.”

  “What I need is a car, Fletch,” he said, looking over at him. “I’ve got things to do, and I don’t intend to stay snowbound at the hotel.”

  The way he was going on, you would have thought Clay had been snowed in for a month instead of one day.

  But I reminded myself that the country star probably wasn’t used to being in a town this size. Let alone in country this far from the bright lights of Nashville.

  “Well, we’ll see about getting you a car soon as you sober up,” Fletch said. “Which is why it’s a good idea to get you back to the hotel. Make that happen sooner rather than later.”

  The kid sighed, then ran a hand through his hair. He threw back one more shot before putting the cork on top of the bottle. Then he stood up, his legs wobbly with the effort.

  A second later, he was kneeling on the pine floor.

  “You gonna be sick, kid?” Fletcher asked, going over to him.

  But the kid just knelt there, touching one of the baseboards, closing his eyes for a long moment, whispering something to himself.

  Then he let out a sigh and shook his head.

  “Nope. I’m just fine, Fletch,” he said, standing up. “You take me back to the hotel now and I’ll sleep it off. But when I wake up, I’d appreciate if you could arrange a car for me.”

  “Sure thing,” Fletcher said.

  He turned his attention to me as Clay stumbled forward toward the front door.

  “Loretta, you want to come along?”

  I shook my head.

  “Naw,” I said. “I’ve got some more work to do here to get this place back in shape. Raymond was kind enough to drop my truck by in the parking lot earlier, so my car’s here anyway.”

  “All right,” he said, grabbing his jacket from off the bar counter. “See you later for Molly’s birthday party, little Bluebird.”

  I b
lew him a kiss.

  Clay put his cowboy hat on real slow like, then he tipped it toward me.

  “Loretta,” he said.

  I nodded back at him.

  “Thanks again for coming,” I said. “It really meant the world to Beth Lynn.”

  “No reason to thank me,” he mumbled.

  I watched as the two of them walked through The Cupid’s heavy front door.

  I stared at the place where I’d last seen them standing for a long, long while.

  I didn’t know what I expected Clay Westwood to be like.

  But that certainly hadn’t been it.

  Chapter 14

  I walked up the creaky steps of my house, and then fished the keys out of my pocket.

  A moment later, I was face to face with a giant, oafish, white furry mug and all the subsequent drool that it entailed.

  “Hank, you’re going to break my back one of these days,” I said as the dog barraged me with a flurry of slobbery kisses. “I’m not as young as I once was, you know.”

  Hank clearly didn’t care much about my 35-year-old spine because he continued to stand on top of me and lick my face.

  I laughed, and then finally gathered the strength to push him off me before climbing to my feet. I closed the door behind me, then went into the kitchen. Billie, my neighbor who had been kind enough to look after Hank all night, had left a short note about when the St. Bernard was last fed.

  A lot of things had changed in the last year, but Hank was thankfully not one of them.

  In fact, my little cabin by the railroad tracks hadn’t changed much either. I still lived here, by myself with Hank, the interior design pretty much the same. I still had Lawrence’s old furniture, and I still kept a fire going in the fireplace most winter nights while the train whistled outside.

  The only thing that was different about my little home was the empty white space up on the wall where that photo of Jacob and me – the one of us sitting together, so much in love – had been. Surrounding it was still all those photos of the other couples I had helped match.

  I’d thrown that one of Jacob and me out last summer. It was now somewhere in the Broken Hearts County landfill, right where it belonged.

  Now the white space on the wall was waiting for another photo. One that I wanted to put up so very badly, but that I had promised myself I wouldn’t until it was for sure. And when I said for sure, I meant one thing and one thing only.

  I sighed, looking down at my bare hands.

  Fletcher and I had been together almost a whole year now. And while I was all for taking things nice and slow, I’d be lying between my teeth if I said I wasn’t getting a little impatient.

  I was 35. And I had found the love of my life in Fletcher Hart. I liked to think that he had found the love of his life in me, too.

  Yet we didn’t seem to be any closer to the prospect of marriage than we’d been when we first met last year.

  I’d tried to bring up the subject a few times with him, but I always got the sense that it made him uncomfortable somehow, which worried me a little bit. I’d known what it was like to be in a long term relationship that had never amounted to marriage. I used to think it didn’t matter – a piece of paper and a ring. But these days, I’d come to have a different perspective on the subject. I needed to know Fletcher was in it for the long run. I needed to know that he loved me and would forever. I needed to know that I could always count on him, that he was my partner in love, life and whatever else came our way.

  I needed to hear him ask me for my forever.

  I knew that maybe I was being unreasonable about it. And maybe part of me wanting to get married so bad was because of Jacob and the things he never gave me. I hadn’t come into this relationship with Fletcher with a clean slate – that was for sure.

  And the fact that I knew Fletcher was my soulmate made me all the more impatient about marriage, I supposed.

  I was sure of him.

  But the more weeks that went by, the bigger the elephant was getting in the room. And the more I was beginning to let an awful thought creep into my head.

  Maybe he wasn’t sure yet of me.

  I caught Hank giving me a sideways, questioning look. It snapped me out of my thoughts.

  I let out a sigh, and then shook my arms out.

  Maybe this was all just a product of spending these last few months helping Beth Lynn plan her own wedding. Maybe that was the reason I couldn’t stop thinking about Fletcher asking me for my hand in marriage.

  Maybe I was trying to hurry things along that just didn’t need hurrying.

  I went into the kitchen, pulled out a can of dog food. Hank sat down in front of his food bowl, a dribble of drool dropping from his mouth as he watched me open the can and plop the contents into his dish.

  He went after it ravenously.

  I smiled, realizing for the first time that morning just how tired my muscles and bones felt.

  It had been one whirlwind of a 24 hours, all right.

  And on top of that, I had my older sister Molly’s birthday dinner to attend tonight.

  Something, that given my tired state, I would have much rather not gone to.

  But I couldn’t do that: I’d never hear the end of it from my mother if I didn’t show up.

  I left Hank in the kitchen eating happily from his bowl, and then went and changed into my soft, plushy white robe.

  Then, I took a nice, long, hot shower. Letting the water wash away all the leftover stress of being Beth Lynn’s maid of honor.

  Chapter 15

  “I’m real sorry, Bluebird, but something came up and I can’t make it tonight.”

  I bit my lip to keep from saying something I knew I would regret later on and adjusted the phone, pressing it closer to my ear.

  “But you said—”

  “I know. And I’m sorry, darlin’. But something’s come up.”

  I shook my head, and looked at myself in my bedroom’s vanity mirror.

  I guess I should have been more understanding. Fletcher, had, after all, had a very long day of driving on snowy mountain roads the day before. And frankly, if I were him, the prospect of spending this evening with my mother, sister and their significant others for my sister’s birthday didn’t sound all that appealing. In fact, if I were him, the idea alone would have driven me to start drinking.

  Still, Fletcher had known about this for a long time now. I’d given him plenty of warning. I didn’t much like showing up to these things alone.

  I guess you could say that my family wasn’t all the easy to get along with.

  “You’re upset, aren’t you?” he said.

  “Well, if you want to know the truth, yes. Yes I’m upset, Fletcher. You know how my mom is. If you’re not there with me, she’s gonna start harassing me about—”

  “I know, I know,” he said, letting out a sigh into the phone.

  A silence settled in over the conversation.

  I stared out my bedroom window, watching as a few flakes of snow tumbled down from the sky.

  “Well, that’s it?” I said finally. “No more explanation beyond ‘Something came up?’”

  “It’s just something important,” he said. “I’ll tell you more about it later.”

  Maybe it was just the shoddy connection, but I thought I heard something in his voice.

  Something out of place.

  A kind of worry maybe.A preoccupation that wasn’t normally there.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked, suddenly feeling very anxious.

  Fletcher was one of those strong, silent types that I loved so much. Which meant that sometimes when something was wrong, he didn’t always tell me right away.

  “Yeah, everything’s fine,” he said. “Just… I’m sorry to let you down, Bluebird.”

  I let out a sigh.

  “It’s okay, Fletch,” I said. “It’s my family anyway.”

  “I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “I promise.”

  I forced a smil
e.

  “You better.”

  “Love you, little Bluebird.”

  He hung up the phone then.

  I let out a long sigh, my eyes finding that bare left hand of mine again.

  Sometimes… sometimes I couldn’t help but get this feeling. Like a cool autumn breeze blowing at the tail end of summer.

  This feeling that Fletcher was somehow pulling away.

  Chapter 16

  I felt the vision coming on while I was rumbling down the highway in the snow and the dark, headed for my mom’s house.

  A bad place to have a vision if there ever was one.

  It started with a tingling at the back of my head that soon developed into an all-out brutal throbbing. I let out a painful groan, and then checked my rearview mirror.

  At least the highway was pretty empty tonight.

  I drifted off to the shoulder of the road, my hands trembling on the wheel. I turned the engine off, and hit my hazards just before the migraine came on like a bulldozer, and just before the world around me fell into utter darkness.

  Chapter 17

  The girl in the middle looked like the others, she sounded like the others, she teased like the others.

  But even a fool could see that she wasn’t a’tall like the others.

  That girl up there, crooning into the microphone, was of an entirely different sort.

  A sort that the cowboy always dreamed he’d find, but had begun to believe was only a figment of his dreams.

  He stood in the back of the crowded bar, nursing a bourbon, watching her up there on stage. They had her squeezed between an Amazon woman and an aging beauty queen, and behind a fool that was more in love with his own voice than anything or anyone else.

  The girl in the middle blew the rest of those fakes right out of the water. She stole the show without so much as lifting a finger. Her presence outclassed them all.

  “Looks like cupid just got your number, friend.”

  The cowboy felt himself being yanked from a fantasy he didn’t much want to leave. He looked over at where the voice had come from.

  A familiar-looking man in a loose t-shirt with a brown mullet and blue eyes stood next to him. He held a Budweiser with a vintage-style label on it.