by Peggy Webb
Lance looked as if he was holding back laughter, but what did she care? She wasn’t out to impress her sister’s boyfriend.
“Do you mind riding the motorcycle?” he said when they got outside.
“I’d love it!”
“Then you’ll have to swap head gear.” He handed her a small motorcycle helmet, obviously made for females, obviously worn by dozens of other women who couldn’t resist that adorable dimple in his chin. Jolie reined herself in. Even if he weren’t her sister’s boyfriend, she had no intention of jumping into an ill-thought-out relationship. First she had to make some major changes within herself; she had to become somebody she could be proud of.
“Do you have a big family?” she asked as she climbed on behind him.
“No.” He didn’t offer further information, and she didn’t ask. She was too busy trying to figure out the least dangerous spot for her hands.
“Just grab hold,” he told her, and she did. She grabbed hold of the most gorgeous chest God had ever created, then tried her best to breathe.
Fortunately, she didn’t have to do anything else for a very long time. They rode around Shady Grove at a snail’s pace, searching for clues. She didn’t know what Lance was looking for or even doing, for that matter, but she was scanning the streets for any sign of a little red wagon and trying to remain sane.
Around ten o’clock her cereal lost its snap, and by ten-thirty the crackle and pop had departed, as well. Obviously, Lance read minds, because he pulled over at Billy Jenkins’s Pit Stop and All Purpose Store and said, “How about a snack?”
You could love a man who knew how to keep a woman well-fed. “Great. Billy has the best boiled peanuts in three counties.”
“He does, huh?” Lance’s light, teasing manner was almost like flirting, and she nearly let it go to her head. Fortunately, one of the new leaves she’d turned over was for common sense, not fantasy.
“Yep, he does. Follow me.”
Lance bought a large bag of boiled peanuts, and they sat on the sagging picnic table underneath the store’s only tree, a magnolia, Jolie’s favorite. If she got her new job she hoped she wouldn’t have to move where there were no magnolias.
“It is always this warm in December?” he asked.
“No. Sometimes we’ll get a cold snap around late November, and once we even had a light dusting of snow for Christmas. Usually, though, you can count on a few balmy days this time of year. Our coldest weather will come in January and February.”
She cracked a peanut and savored the warm, salty treat. “You’re not from the South, are you?”
“No.”
She waited—politely, she hoped—but he didn’t reveal anything else, so she concentrated on her boiled peanuts and pretended she wasn’t burning up with curiosity. Maybe she’d ask Elizabeth for his history.
Or maybe not. Especially since Jolie kept getting sidetracked by the way the sun turned his green eyes into deep pools.
Personally, she had always been a little fearful of plunging too deeply into a man’s eyes. For one thing, men didn’t take her seriously. For another, she’d found it easier to go along with the fiction that she was frivolous and carefree than put herself in a position where she might have to endure what her mother had. Not that Lucy O’Banyon Coltrane would ever admit she’d had a difficult marriage, and certainly not to her youngest child, but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to feel the tension, listen to your mother crying behind closed doors and figure out that all was not perfect with the Coltranes.
Jolie was glad her mother had Dr. Ben now. It was good to see Lucy laughing again after all those years of playing the contented wife, then the grieving widow. Of course, her mother had an outlet: writing romance.
A talent for pretense was a skill Jolie had learned from Lucy’s personal life and her professional one. Jolie wondered if her own life would have been different if she hadn’t pretended to be something she was not. What would have happened if she’d finished college, gotten a real job, then selected a buttoned-down man and fallen straight into the depths of his steadfast eyes?
It was too late for that now. Her life was what it was, twenty-nine years of playing around in the shallows while everybody else she knew plunged into the deep waters and caught the big fish.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
“I was thinking about wasted years and wasted potential.”
Lord, what was there about Lance Estes that made her blurt out the truth?
He studied her a long time before he replied. “That’s some mighty deep thinking.”
“For such a shallow person, you mean.” There she went again, speaking before she thought.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Surely Elizabeth told you about me.”
“She said you love animals and take in strays. She didn’t mention ‘shallow’ and she didn’t say anything about your lethal aim.”
Lance grinned at her, and how could Jolie help but smile back? After all, it was a beautiful day and it was almost Christmas…even if they didn’t find the stolen gifts.
“Elizabeth is so lucky.” She started to add to have you, but bit it back in time to save herself further embarrassment.
“All set?” he asked.
“Yes.” She climbed aboard once more and tried to hold back her fantasies, but they refused to be banished. Well, why not dream? It was only natural to think romantic thoughts when you were squeezed up close to a dangerously sexy man in black leather. Wasn’t it?
They scouted Main Street from one end to the other in fifteen minutes, and the entire town in less than an hour. The only suspicious person they saw was Mr. Leon Crumpett, who had obviously escaped the vigilance of his daughter and was fishing in the fountain in the town square in hip waders, with his grandson’s baseball cap perched on his head like a mushroom.
Lance was coasting to a stop beside the fountain when Sgt. Wayne Gifford of the Shady Grove Police Department took Mr. Crumpett by the arm and gently led him toward a waiting car.
“What’s going on?” Lance asked Jolie.
“Wayne will take him back home. He’s been a little off since his car accident six years ago. Everybody in town watches out for him.”
“Good,” Lance murmured. Then he said, “We’ve covered the town. What’s on the outskirts?”
“Nothing but cotton and soybean fields and the town dump.”
“Where’s the dump?”
“We have to double back, then take Field Road.”
Two miles out of town and another three down a potholed, blacktop road they came to Shady Grove’s junkyard. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence with broken sections that nobody bothered to fix and a double gate nobody bothered to close, let alone lock.
They saw the little red wagon before they saw the thief. Dented and rusty, it sat among abandoned refrigerators and treadless tires and useless telephones…and it was piled high with Christmas packages wrapped in familiar paper.
Lance cut the engine. “Can you drive this thing?” he asked, and she nodded. “Good. Stay here. If I’m not back in ten minutes, go to the police.”
“Okay.”
She was not foolish. Danger lurked behind the carcasses of household appliances. Even with soccer pads, motorcycle helmet and a fearless heart, she didn’t really know how to catch a thief. And she had no intention of becoming a target.
“Be careful,” she whispered, but if Lance heard, he didn’t give any indication. He was already blending with the landscape, a big man who had somehow vanished while she was looking at him.
She squinted her eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of him, but all she saw was a crow lifting off from the rusted-out hood of a l973 Thunderbird convertible. Exactly who was Lance Estes, and how did he do that—vanish quietly without a trace?
Maybe she’d ask him. Or maybe not. If he were no more forthcoming about his profession than he’d been about his origins, she might as well save her breath. Shivers ran down her spine, in spite of her b
est intentions and recent resolutions. Mysterious men fascinated her, and Lance more than most.
What was he doing now? What was he finding? What time was it? Had ten minutes passed?
Jolie never wore a watch. They were a bother, always staying behind in places like hotel bathrooms and distant coliseums where she’d clipped, shampooed and groomed the world’s champion dogs.
What if something had happened to Lance? What if the thief was a gun-toting madman who had already done him in and was at this very moment looking to do the same to Jolie?
She wasn’t about to be caught unprepared. She slid off the motorcycle and crept on hands and knees toward a pile of old tires and rusty pipes. Selecting a pipe the size of a baseball bat that was only slightly twisted on the end, she gave a practice swing and decided she wouldn’t go down easily.
Now that she was armed, shouldn’t she go to Lance’s rescue? Shouldn’t she at least look for him?
Crouched on the ground, torn between returning to the relative safety of the motorcycle or wandering among refrigerator carcasses, she jumped out of her skin when Lance called her name.
Was he hurt? Dying? Trapped? Was it a warning to run?
“Jolie,” he called again. “Over here…the old yellow school bus.”
Peering around the towering stack of tires, she spotted it beyond a graveyard of vehicles.
“I’m coming.” She jumped on the motorcycle, started it up and wound her way through the junkyard to the ancient, leaning bus. Most of its windows were busted out and all the paint had peeled off except a wide swath down one side, where a large oak tree offered protection from the elements.
Lance appeared in the bus’s doorway and, of all things, he was smiling. What kind of thief made a person smile?
“Come on in. I found our Christmas-loving visitor.”
“Visitor?”
“You’ll see. Brace yourself.”
She did, but no amount of pulling up her mental bootstraps prepared Jolie for what lay just inside the bus. Everywhere she looked she saw O’Banyon Christmas ornaments in nests of pine needles, some on vacant seats, some carefully arranged on the driver’s console. Some of the gifts had been unwrapped and placed about like little altars to the gods of innocence and unreason. Two diamond bracelets swinging from the rearview mirror caught the afternoon sun and shot rainbows across the bus. A tiny tiara Jolie had bought for Matt’s little girl glittered from the rusty old ceiling, suspended there by a length of gold satin ribbon Jolie had used to tie the package. The books the O’Banyons and Coltranes were fond of giving each other teetered in a tower formation at the back of the bus, and on top of them sat a nest woven of multicolored Christmas ribbon.
In the midst of it all stood a birdlike woman in a dusty pink chenille robe, high-topped running shoes with the laces untied, and leftover ribbon woven in her abundant gray hair.
Lance bowed to the little woman, then took her hand and led her toward Jolie as if she were a queen. “Jolie, I want you to meet the Bird Lady.”
Chapter 4
Jolie reached out and smiled as if she were shaking hands with the mayor’s wife instead of holding the dirty hand of a stranger who had squirreled away stolen gifts.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” Jolie said.
Nothing escaped Lance’s observation. Not the tenderness of Jolie’s smile nor the sincerity in her voice. Not the way compassion bloomed across her face nor the way she held on to the Bird Lady with one hand and patted her with the other.
“Shh,” the old woman said. “You’ll wake up the baby birds.” Jolie gave Lance a quizzical look, and he nodded toward the ornaments in their makeshift nests. “They’re about to hatch.”
“I see.” Jolie spoke without a hint of amusement, which raised Lance’s estimation of her another notch.
“I found them,” the woman murmured.
“You did?”
“In a great big house on the hill. The mother flew off and they were waiting for me.”
“I told her we’d help take care of them,” Lance said. “Unless you have other ideas.”
Most women would have weighed all the options, or motioned him outside and said, What do you mean, take care of them? I’m calling the police. But not the unflappable Jolie Kat Coltrane in her impossibly endearing flak gear and her long braid.
“Of course we will.” She tossed him the keys to the motorcycle. “I’ll stay with her while you go get the car.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. What the O’Banyon Manor needs is more baby birds about to hatch and the Bird Lady to watch over them.”
She turned to the little woman. “It’s supposed to turn cold tonight. You don’t mind if we move them to a warmer place, do you?”
“No. As long you’re careful.”
“We will be. I promise.”
Lance had no doubt that Jolie would be safe, but still he said, “You’re sure about this?”
“Absolutely.”
“All right then. I’ll be back in less than thirty minutes. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”
“Of course we won’t. We have lots to talk about. Oh, and Lance, why don’t you bring back a big box from the kitchen pantry. We’ll need it for the baby birds.”
The Bird Lady lost interest in their conversation and began to sway to music no one else could hear.
Jolie got tears in her eyes. “The sweet dear,” she whispered.
“Nobody to dance with,” the Bird Lady said, and Jolie shoved aside the books to waltz her slowly up and down the aisles.
Lance left them dancing in the cramped bus, with an ache in his empty heart and the nagging fear that he had let the best things in life pass him by.
Though O’Banyon Manor was less than ten minutes away, it took them an hour to get the Bird Lady and her nests loaded into the car and transported back there. They’d all had a late lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches—the elderly woman ate two—and now, while Jolie supervised the Bird Lady’s bath, Lance sat in the library making calls to the area’s hospitals and nursing homes to find out who she was.
Laughter floated down the stairs, Jolie’s full-bodied, no-holds-barred glee and the Bird Lady’s bell-like peals of mirth. He found himself grinning for no reason at all. When he stopped to think about it, he realized he’d laughed more in the past two days than he had in the last two years.
It felt good, heartwarming and soul-satisfying in ways he’d never dreamed. Of course, he tried very hard not to dream, but he was rediscovering the urge, teetering on the edge of some forgotten place within himself.
The voice of the supervisor at Langston Nursing Home came to him over the receiver: “I’m sorry. We have no one here who fits that description. All our residents are accounted for.”
That was the last nursing home in Lee County. Could the Bird Lady be like him? Homeless. No known identity… He was swept back into the past, into the hot desert country of the Southwest, where he’d been found on the steps of the orphanage in a handwoven, Native American blanket.
There was no note telling us your name so we called you Lancelot, because your cries were like a warrior. That’s what the first housemother, Ina Estes, had told him, a kind soul who was at the orphanage until she’d married and moved away. He’d been five years old, and heartbroken to see her leave.
He’d selected his last name himself. When he was old enough he’d legally changed the name Smith, which the orphanage had given him, to Estes in honor of the only mother he’d ever known.
He didn’t think she’d mind, although clearly at least half his blood was Native American. His deep olive skin, thick black hair and high cheekbones gave that away.
He’d tried his best to honor her name, and had, too, until that hot summer in Italy....
“Lance?” Jolie stood in the doorway with a woman he would hardly have recognized if he hadn’t known she was the only little old lady in the house. “What do you think?”
The Bird Lady wore khaki slacks a
nd a bright pink blouse that put color in her cheeks and emphasized her dark eyes. Instead of scruffy, high-topped tennis shoes, she now wore a tiny pair of red Western boots.
Lance took the little lady’s fragile hands and said, “You look great.”
“Got on my dancing boots.” She stuck one foot out for his inspection.
“I let her pick out her own shoes.” Jolie turned to the old lady. “In fact, they are dancing shoes. I used to wear them to a club in Nashville.”
“And my ribbons.” The Bird Lady patted her hair. “Do you like my ribbons?”
Head cocked like an inquisitive sparrow, she peered up at him and his heart melted. “I like the ribbons very much. They’re cheerful, and they match your boots.”
The Bird Lady was there, and then suddenly she wasn’t. Rocking back and forth on her boots, humming, she simply disappeared into her own world.
Motioning for Jolie to follow, Lance moved to the French doors so they would be out of hearing. “I haven’t found out who she is or where she belongs.”
A hint of moisture glistened in Jolie’s eyes. “That’s so sad.”
“If she ran away from her family, this could take a while. I’ve called the hospital, and all the nursing homes in Lee County. It’s too late to call nursing homes outside the county. I’ll do that tomorrow.”
Jolie turned to study their visitor, who was dancing again with a faraway expression in her eyes. “Just look at her. She seems as if she doesn’t have a care in the world.”
“Compensation. When the mind goes, so do the cares.”
“Just think how awful it would be to be left all alone in the world with nobody to buy you a new dress or remember you with a gift. Especially at Christmas.” Jolie wiped her eyes on the edge of her sleeve. “Don’t you think somebody would have sounded the alarm by now?”
“She could be one of the forgotten old. Their numbers are legion.”