“Some do. But you’re too trusting. Always have been. But one of these days, someone you think you can trust will turn against us, and one of these women could get hurt because we put our faith in the wrong person. Or maybe one of us will.”
Katie turned. “Will what?”
“Get hurt.” Tottie slammed the cabinet door.
Katie sank to a chair. “What would our world be without trust?”
“Trust is good.” Tottie’s eyes filled with experience. “But trust in the proper doses. At times you appear to forget that not everyone has your heart. Now get out fresh meat and let’s get dinner started.”
Katie’s mind raced as she took hamburger out of the freezer. She still wasn’t convinced that no one had been following her. It couldn’t all have been her imagination. Maybe whoever it was wanted to find the shelter. Clara’s husband was almost as high profile as she was, so it wasn’t likely he was the culprit. But he could have hired someone to his dirty work. Or it could have been Nate, Meg’s abuser. He’d vowed to track her down, and while the man was a full-fledged jerk, he wasn’t stupid. Meg could have been in touch with him. The girl was scared and pregnant, which made her extremely vulnerable.
And made the shelter even more exposed.
Ten
Katie lifted the kitchen curtain as Warren pulled into the drive. He was back with more budget crud, and she couldn’t wait to tell him how well she was doing. She opened the door before he had a chance to knock, welcoming him inside. He removed his Stetson, smiling.
“Ready to get to work?”
“Eager to get started!”
Clara glanced up from the newspaper. “Ah, my missing vote. Care to sit down and talk about our differences?”
Meg waddled past. “You’re wasting your time. He didn’t come to see you. Katie’s the draw.”
Warren grinned, taking the good-natured ribbing. “That’s not what I hear. I hear Katie and Ben took in the football game the other night. Rumor has it Katie downed three hot dogs and two cokes in the first quarter.”
Heat tinged Katie’s cheeks. “Well, really. Who’s been shooting off their mouth?”
“Like I’d really tell you.”
Clara pushed back from the table. “I’ll let you two have your privacy.”
Katie reached out to stop her. “It’s just business, Clara. Warren’s helping me work on the budget.”
“Strictly business,” Warren confirmed. “But when we’re through, I’ll let you tell me how you can better my life if I vote for you.”
Katie led the way to her office. “That was nice of you.”
He shrugged. “She’s an interesting dame. Not my political party, but she’s smart.” He pulled a chair up to the desk. “Okay. You have some figures for me?”
Katie moved to the desk, catching movement out of the corner of her eye. A small figure made its way toward the barn. Clara. Why would she be going out there? She watched as the woman opened the door and stepped inside.
Turning away, she walked back to the desk as Warren pulled out a notebook and pen. “Well?”
She placed a sheet of paper in front of him. “Read it and weep.”
He frowned as his eyes skimmed the list. Katie had a feeling he was upset at the amount she owed. Just whip out the card and it’s yours. Didn’t even have to write a check, so it didn’t seem like you’re really spending money until the bill arrived.
Warren looked up. “Where are your expenditures for the past week?”
“Right here.” She handed him a second paper.
He zeroed in on the figures. “This is what you spent on groceries this week?”
She flushed with pride. “I decided to take your suggestion.”
“I suggested you spend a mint on groceries? I don’t remember that.”
“You suggested I buy in bulk.”
The frown faded into a glower. “And your point is?”
“My point is I did what you suggested, and I shopped at Warehouse Blowout. I bought industrial-sized everything — even new foods that Tottie never serves. The total bill was sixty dollars over the amount I’m allowed to spend in a two-week period, but we have enough to last us through the month.” Katie thought about the burgeoning food pantry. Maybe eternity. Her gaze returned to the chicken scribbles on the pad. Warren sat across the desk, enduring her rationalizing of the first week’s budget and the sixty-dollar deficit. His face was getting longer by the minute.
“So,” Katie drew a pie chart. “If you add sixty dollars to the allotted hundred and thirty allowed for staples, you get a hundred and ninety. But if I don’t have to shop every two weeks, if we can make the staples last, say, a month instead of two weeks, then we have enough left to pay November’s utility bill.”
Her calculations might be screwy, but at least she wouldn’t have the dreaded overdue call from the electric company this month.
Warren slowly lifted his gaze from the writing pad, and his tone was tense. “Let me get this straight. You bought a hundred and ninety dollars worth of food you don’t ordinarily eat in industrial-sized cans and boxes, thinking you can stretch the bimonthly food allowance to monthly, so you can have enough money to pay the utility bill that is already included in your monthly budget.”
“Yes!” He got it. Very few people followed her reasoning. “This way, I’m sixty dollars ahead of the game! Sixty dollars goes a long way in dog food.”
He pitched the pen on the table. “A bargain is only a bargain if it is needed or used. What if your guests refuse to eat the staples you purchased? If they haven’t been on the table before, what makes you think it’s something they would eat?”
“It’s perfectly good food.”
“Like what?”
“Like cans of turnips, succotash, lima beans, and corn relish. I got fifteen boxes of crushed stroganoff for a third of the original price.”
“What’s crushed stroganoff?”
“The boxes were crushed, not the stroganoff itself.” Though, Katie realized, that might be misleading. If the boxes were crushed it only stood to reason the pasta was broken. But broken pasta wasn’t a crime nor did it alter the taste of stroganoff sauce.
He flipped a page. “What happened to the gas budget?”
“Oh, that. I hit a stump when I was backing out of the drive last Monday. We’ve been meaning to get someone to remove it but, you know, expenses. Anyway, I wasn’t thinking, and I backed over the stump, and I must have knocked a tiny hole in the gas tank because by the end of the day the tank was empty. I took it to the garage and they repaired it.” She fished in her pocket, took out a yellow sheet, and handed it to him. He couldn’t be upset about this — emergencies happened, and the budget allowed for crisis.
He skimmed the column.
“A hundred and fifty dollars,” she confirmed, “plus the amount it took to refill the tank. But I had some gas money left from the week before, so I figure I evened out. But look. I can take the extra sixty dollars I’ve saved on groceries and apply that to the repair bill, and I’ll only be ninety dollars short. You’ve allotted a hundred dollars for emergencies, so deduct that from the hundred and fifty, and I’ll still just be a hundred and forty dollars short this month. And believe me, a hundred and forty dollars is pocket change compared to other months.”
Bringing his hand to his nose, he pinched the end, staring back at her. “And how do you make up the hundred and forty dollar deficit?”
She touched her temple with her left hand. “I don’t have a solution for that — yet.”
Leaning back in his chair, Warren gave her a dark look. “Okay. You obviously can’t run this shelter financially, Katie. Why do you try?”
“Because I love it.”
“I love Porsches, but I don’t have one because it’s impractical. The same goes for you and this shelter. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said about budgeting.”
“I have,” she contended. “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“Maybe not, but I seriously
doubt if you can get the hang of managing money in a year, and by then it will be too late.”
She frowned. The man was ruthless. She’d just spent two of the most nerve-wracking, caffeine-ragged weeks, and he was critical of her efforts?
“Obviously you’ve missed something. We have to start at the beginning.”
A painstaking hour later, Katie rubbed the back of her neck and admitted that the budget was going to be hard to follow.
“Money, for most people, is hard to handle. We live in a microwave world. We want it, and we want it in thirty seconds.” Warren pushed back and stretched, his shirt fabric outlining a taut rib cage and stomach. “You’ve got to stick with it, Katie. Concentrate if you hope to pull out of this. Either that or close the shelter and save yourself a lot of headache.”
She bit her lower lip. Was it worth it? Of course saving Grandpops’s farm and the shelter was more than worth it. Other battered shelters were available, but they weren’t Candlelight. Candlelight was hers, and if saving it meant forfeiting personal comfort she’d do it.
“I can do it,” she assured Warren as she walked him to his truck. Judging by the expression on his face, he thought she was blowing smoke, but she wasn’t. He might have seen her around all his life, but he didn’t know the real Katie, the determined Katie. But he was about to meet her.
“Horses eating you out of house and home?”
“No, but I’m a little worried about the bay. She has a deep cut on her right shoulder that isn’t healing. It’s scabbed over, but it’s so puffy and red that I believe it’s infected. I think I’ll call Dr. Vincent to come and take a look.”
“Vet charges,” he reminded.
“Not this vet.” Katie grinned. “Tottie baked fifteen apple pies for her last family get-together and wouldn’t take a cent. She said she owed us one, and so now we collect.”
“You’re amazing. You’ve got an answer for everything.” He stepped into the cab of his truck. “I need to get home. Got some fence to fix sometime today.”
“What about Clara?”
“What about her?” Obviously chatting with the politician had left his mind.
Carefully shutting the cab door, Katie said, “I’ll tell her something came up, and you’ll have to visit another day.”
“You don’t need to tell her anything. I didn’t get around to a visit.” He started the engine. “She’ll live.”
She thought that was a little cold, even if Clara deserved it. “Thanks for the help.”
“Wait until you can live up to it before you thank me.”
She knew he didn’t expect her to be able to stick with it, but he was in for a shock.
When Katie approached the barn, she heard Clara’s voice still talking to one of the horses. The thought that tough Clara had an ounce of kindness in her brought a smile to Katie’s lips.
“Hang in there, old boy. We’re alike, you know. Tough old birds. We hurt; we heal. The world can’t keep us down for long.”
The politician’s voice floated to the open doorway.
“Wounds heal, but it’s the inside pain that’s hard to deal with, isn’t it? Who’d have thought Neil would turn so physical — so malicious. Twenty years I’ve spent with this man, supporting him, upholding him, up before dawn with only a few hours sleep, shaking hands at the polls, handing out doughnuts and coffee to steel workers, kissing babies, shaking hands, eating more dry chicken at stuffy fund-raisers than I can bear to stomach.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “I thought I knew him. But when I tried to tell him that what he’s doing is wrong, he turned on me. Struck me, then struck me again, and then it was as though all the pent-up anger he harbored toward the world came out — ”
Katie cringed when she knocked over a rake and disturbed the therapy.
Clara’s eyes jerked to the barn entrance.
Smiling, Katie set the rake beside the door and entered the cool barn. “Sorry to disturb you.”
The politician visibly withdrew. “The animal seems to like sugar. I brought him a cube, but I’m finished feeding him.” She indicated the stalls. “The horses seemed to be doing better.”
“Most are. There’s still one I worry about. I think I’ll hitch up the trailer and take her to see a vet.”
“What did you say happened to them?”
“Accident. The person hauling the horses had bought them illegally and was taking them to the slaughterhouse.”
A carefully drawn brow shot up. “Slaughterhouse? Why would they do that? The horses are beautiful.”
“They were intended for slaughter, and the meat would have been sent overseas. Some people consider horse meat to be a delicacy.”
“That’s awful. Why doesn’t someone do something?”
“We’re trying to stop it. There’s a bill pending — ”
“The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. I remember now.”
“How do you plan to vote on it?”
Clara shrugged. “I haven’t won reelection yet. If you look at the polls, I’m behind.”
“You don’t appear to me to be the kind of woman who gives up easily.”
“I should be out there shaking hands. You can’t win an election hiding away in a battered women’s shelter.”
Katie sensed a softening, brief but noticeable. “Then why are you here?”
Clara’s face went absolutely expressionless for a minute. Then something very close to anger flashed across her taut features. “Why is any woman here?”
“Would you like to talk about it?”
“No.” Her chin rose. “I have a request.”
“Oh?” Something outlandish probably, but she hadn’t asked for favors prior to today. “What is it you want?”
“There are certain things I’m used to, like caviar and Ca Peachio’s crackers. They available here?”
Peach crackers? If they were, Katie hadn’t heard of them. “I don’t know.” Her tastes were a bit more plebian. And caviar had never been on her list of must-tries.
“Check on that for me, won’t you? I simply love them.”
Katie cleared her throat. “Caviar is very expensive and the crackers …”
“Ca Peachio.”
“I’ve never heard of the brand, and I have no idea where I might find them. How about a box of Ritz or Town House — they’re good.”
“No — Ca Peachio. That’s what I want. I should be allowed a few luxuries.” Her tone had risen sharply, and Katie wondered if she was near breaking. No one could be this cold under the circumstances.
Caviar was a big deal on Katie’s budget. A really big deal.
“Sorry, but I can’t supply your request.” Katie turned and headed for the house wishing she could comply. Maybe a little extra attention would bring Clara around, soften her turtle shell.
Then again, maybe not.
Katie drove into town that afternoon and stopped by the grocery store. “Hey, Jack, do you carry these items?”
He glanced at the list. “California-farmed white sturgeon caviar and Ca Peachio’s butter flavored crackers? No, but I can order them. The shelter girls developing a gourmet taste?”
“Looks that way. How long will it take to get them?”
“Give me two or three days, and I’ll have them for you. Going to cost you though, since I have to order such a small amount, and I don’t aim to get stuck with them. There’s not much demand for fish eggs and fancy crackers in these parts.”
Katie swallowed and placed the order. She was a pushover and she knew it, but an idea had occurred to her. If Clara won reelection, she might be influenced by her brief stay at Candlelight. Katie didn’t know what she had to offer a woman like Clara Townsend. But maybe if she upped the ante, provided a few luxuries, when it came time to vote on the Horse Slaughter Act, Katie could remind Clara ever so gently that her vote was crucial to pass the bill.
Payola. She believed that was the correct term.
Longer life, a horse would say.
Two days later the phone
rang and Katie answered. Jack was on the line. “I got the items you wanted, Katie. When do you plan to come get them?”
“Today, I guess. Why?’
“Caviar is a perishable item. It won’t keep forever. As much as you’re paying for it, you don’t want it to go out of date.”
No, she certainly didn’t want that. “I’ll be there within the hour.”
Funny, she hadn’t seen Clara this morning. She wasn’t at breakfast, and her bed was made up. Maybe she would be more responsive now that her order for caviar and crackers was about to be realized.
When Katie reached the grocery store, Jack held up a finger cautioning her to wait. He went to the back and returned with a tin of caviar and a box of crackers. “This what you wanted?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t know much about caviar. My income puts a damper on luxuries.” Though she doubted she’d eat fish eggs if someone gave her a batch.
Jack grinned. “Mine, either. I’ve tasted it though, and I’m not all that high on it.” He figured up the bill and gave Katie the amount.
“How much?”
He repeated the total. “I told you it would cost.”
“I know. I guess I hadn’t realized how much.” Enough to pay the phone bill. That’s how much. Was she out of her cotton-pickin’ mind? Warren would have a cow. “Fifty dollars an ounce for caviar?”
“That’s right. Of course you could have ordered Iranian royal beluga at a hundred seventy an ounce.”
“No, that’s all right. This will do.”
“Had to order a case of crackers. They come to thirty dollars, plus ten for shipping.”
Katie mentally gulped and whipped out her checkbook, praying the check wouldn’t bounce. Maybe she could talk the phone company into giving her an extension. When she walked into the kitchen and took the items out of the sack, Tottie shook her head when she read the can. “There’s a new one born every day.”
“Meaning me?”
“You know what I mean. Why did you do this? We can’t afford to feed ourselves, let alone buy things like this.”
“I have a plan.”
“And I don’t want to hear about it. I’ve got dinner to fix.”
Clara wandered into the kitchen.
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