Right Brother

by Patricia McLinn

  “The blue tab is the historical section.” She took a container from the freezer and put it in the microwave. “That incorporates figures from when your grandfather and father ran the dealership.”

  “No red tab? Isn’t that the color you’d need for when Eric ran it?”

  “The figures from that period are also under the historic section,” she said with little inflection, pulling things from the refrigerator.

  She’d taken out a blotchy green-and-brown item wrapped in plastic with a red sticker saying, Reduced For Quick Sale.

  “The yellow tab is for current demographics. Market penetration dropped a lot, so improving it would go a long way to turning around the dealership. But even without that, it can be a success as you’ll see by the information behind the green tab.”

  “Green for money?”

  She shot a look over her shoulder. The woman could pack a lot into a look. A slice of annoyance that he’d called her on it, some surprise he’d figured it out, even amusement. “Black might have worked,” she said, “with the connotation of being in the black. But green is more cheerful.”

  “Good choice. Because black-and-blue makes me think of pain.”

  Only after he said it did he remember that blue was associated with the dealership’s past—and the family members who’d run it. So she could interpret him as meaning money and family.

  “Professional hazard,” he clarified. “You know—bruises.”

  But she’d already shot another of those looks at him, and this one seemed to hold understanding and sympathy, at the same time it informed him confidences would not be welcomed.

  Oh, hell, maybe he was making up these emotions he was ascribing to her. He didn’t know the woman, that was for sure. Hadn’t known the girl, either. What little thought he’d given to her then had been that what you saw was what you got, and what you saw was vacant prettiness.

  Now that she’d peeled off outer layers, he could see the blotchy item was a head of lettuce. Only it looked the way the plants Liz had insisted on buying for his place had looked when he’d returned from training camp after they broke up last year. Jennifer put the sorry, limp lump in a large bowl, ran water into it, added ice cubes, then put it back in the fridge.

  He flipped to the green tab. “So green’s for the future now that Zeke Zeekowsky’s bringing part of his company here.”

  “That’s right. The population is going to expand. People will not only be looking to buy cars, but service also could provide steady income. Now we have to go to Pepton. See the map with projected density of population and present repair shops?”

  “Uh-huh,” he said.

  But he wasn’t looking at maps or population density. She bent to get a pan from a drawer below the oven and Trent leaned forward to watch the way the fabric tightened over her rear end.

  Not that that meant anything, he reminded himself as he straightened. She was a woman—an attractive woman—and he was a man. A man whose last serious relationship had ended a year ago and who wasn’t inclined to one-night stands.

  The contents of the container from the microwave went into the pan on a burner. Precooked ground beef, he thought. She added a jar of salsa and stirred slowly, blending the salsa’s red around and through the darker meat. The motion was deliberate. Almost sensuous. She turned down the heat and with quick, deft movements, she shredded cheddar cheese.

  She took individual bowls from the cabinet. Then she retrieved the large bowl from the refrigerator. She took out the lettuce, reduced in size but miraculously restored. She drained it, dried it, then cut that up, too, putting the shreds in each bowl.

  “Questions?”

  About a million. He had no idea why, of them all, “What are you cooking?” came out of his mouth.

  “A version of taco salad. Quick, simple and covers most food groups.”

  “It smells great.”

  “I’d invite you to stay—”

  Damned if his mouth didn’t water, even after that café dinner.

  “—but you said you already ate.”

  “Why aren’t you and Ashley living in the house Eric built?”

  One quick, surprised look was all he got before she faced away from him. “That has no bearing on the sale of the dealership.”

  Not bad. Didn’t give an inch, but didn’t punch a potential buyer in the nose. “I can ask around town. Most might not tell me. But even those who think they’re not telling anything will give away a bit here and there.”

  She chopped at a pair of tomatoes with verve. He didn’t care to guess whose face she imagined as she whacked away.

  “It serves no good purpose for you or anyone to know all about my marriage ending. It ended. That’s all you need to know.”

  “I didn’t ask all about your marriage ending. C’mon, Jennifer. I heard you got the house in the settlement. When you sold it, the prof—”

  She made a derisive sound, then came to a full stop.

  “Do you want me putting pieces together or do you want to tell me your version?” he asked evenly.

  “It’s not your business.”

  “I’m making it my business. Let’s say I want to know whom I’m dealing with. I can check public records. But—” he dropped one hand on the open page “—that’ll waste time I otherwise could spend studying this.”

  Her next words came reluctantly. “Eric had taken out a second mortgage plus other loans on the house. With income from the dealership falling… In the end, the sale barely covered the loans.”

  “That’s when he left?”

  He saw her recognize that she might as well tell him; otherwise someone in town would. “He’d already left.”

  It was that harpy, Jennifer…. Demanding this, demanding that. Drove the boy right into debt from the start.

  He hadn’t believed or disbelieved his father when Franklin said that. He hadn’t cared whether it was true. He barely knew this woman. The child was a blood relation, sure, but he hadn’t felt obligation to blood relations for a long time. Why concern himself with this mother and daughter now?

  He swore mentally. Emphatically and repetitively.

  Because he could ask himself logical questions from now until Super Bowl Sunday and it wouldn’t change that he did feel an obligation.

  “Now,” Jennifer was saying, “if you have no questions about the projections…” Please get the hell out of my house.

  No, she didn’t say that. But then again, this wasn’t anything like the house his parents had waxed eloquent about Eric building with all possible gadgets and indulgences, fit for a prince and his princess.

  “No, no more questions now,” he said. “I’ll study the projections tonight, and see you in the morning.”

  Trent read every bit of information she’d given him, then he researched on the Internet and sent an e-mail to Linc, who handled his investments, asking for more information before he went to bed.

  He examined the ceiling in a lot more detail than it deserved before he willed himself to sleep.

  First thing this morning, he called Jerry Brookenheimer, who’d been his football coach at Drago High and still held that position, even though he was past official retirement age, “Because no one else wants the job,” as Coach had said.

  After setting a time to meet for lunch, Trent had come out and asked Coach what he’d tiptoed around with everyone else. “Is Eric providing for his daughter, is he helping out his ex-wife at all?”

  Coach hadn’t known details—apparently Jennifer had been so closemouthed that the town’s gossip factory hadn’t had much to work with—but he confirmed a few things Trent had surmised.

  Trent had breakfast at the café, without asking any questions.

  Then he drove by the house Jennifer had sold, contemplating the aggressive angles and outsize proportions. Ugly as sin, to his mind, but still considerably more comfortable than that apartment.

  He found the cornfields where Zeke-Tech would be built. Then drove to the riverside bluff that
gave a view of Drago’s layout. Stenner Autos was a block to the west of dead center. He went by the high school, memories surging. But what he remembered as open fields between it and the middle school now held sport fields and parking lots for a unified complex.

  He arrived at Stenner Autos ten minutes early. Jennifer was there. He saw the same ramshackle car by trees that separated visitors’ parking from the car wash next door that his father had added. He drove past.

  Maybe it was a sense of fair play. After all, he’d already caught her at a disadvantage. Twice. Once at the dealership, again at her apartment.

  He wound through downtown, daylight revealing some boarded-up windows, out-of-business posters and a general air of disrepair.

  Then—to his own surprise—he ducked off Main Street long enough to go past his old family home. It sat back from the street, adding to its prominence. It was dark brick, with a peaked roof over the front door. The trim had been painted dark brown when he was growing up. Now it was a rich cream, with the door a deep blue. Sure made it more cheerful looking.

  He slowed the car to a crawl. Two bicycles leaned against the front steps, as if their users had hopped off and rushed into the house. The garage door was open, a volleyball net stood in the backyard and sometime in the past decade and a half the flower beds had gone from precise right angles to flowing curves.

  He returned to the dealership at the top of the hour.

  Jennifer emerged from the general manager’s office. He wondered if she’d done it deliberately, to replace yesterday’s impression.

  “Good morning. I have a lot to show you. Shall we get started?”

  He nodded. Before yesterday, if he’d given any thought to seeing her again, this was the Jennifer Truesdale he might have expected to encounter.

  She wore a dark blue suit, a pale blue blouse and low-heeled shoes that just missed being boringly conservative because the sides swooped down. She had her light hair pulled back at either side of her face, then flowing down her back. Hammered gold earrings and a watch were her only jewelry. Less flashy than he might have expected, but in the ballpark.

  And yet, different. Different from what he remembered. Different from what he would have expected if he’d ever considered what to expect.

  Something had changed in her face, he decided an hour later as she concluded a tour of the fenced compound nearly empty of cars. She was less a pretty girl and more a striking woman. But that wasn’t quite it, either.

  Maybe some of it had to do with her being tired. Even more tired than when he’d left her at her apartment.

  Considering how much better the showroom looked this morning than it had yesterday afternoon, he’d bet she hadn’t just ignored his telling her to quit cleaning before dinner, but had also come back after dinner.

  “…and you’ll have no trouble hiring people,” she said, continuing to extol the virtues of Stenner Autos. Her voice wasn’t pitched as low as yesterday, but still had that husky quality to it. “There’s an eager employee pool in Drago, including several with excellent experience here at the dealership. I have compiled their names and positions.”

  He noticed she was talking as if he’d agreed to the deal, but he didn’t object. A little trick like that wasn’t going to sway him.

  They’d already toured the showroom, the offices, the reception area, the break room, the service bays, the storage facilities, even a shed with the snow-removal equipment. Not a lot seemed to have changed.

  “What’s in that building?”

  She’d clearly been prepared to skip the World War II vintage metal building at the back corner. That was one reason he’d asked. Another was he wanted to see Stenner Autos as people had come to know it recently, and that meant examining an area that her cleanup frenzy had not reached.

  “Inventory. Parts.”

  “We saw the parts storage room by the service bays.”

  “This provides long-term storage.”

  “Let’s see.” He kept the words mild, but cocked one eyebrow and looked right at her, making his challenge clear.

  To her credit, she didn’t try to wriggle out of it, or to explain. She turned on a sensible heel and marched up the decaying wooden ramp that led to double doors, pushing aside accumulated dead leaves with one toe.

  “I can…” he volunteered, extending his hand for the keys.

  “I’ll do it.” She fiddled with keys until one fit the padlock that gripped the ends of a dirt-coated chain threaded through the door handles.

  She pulled the heavy chain free, but before she reached for the handle, he stepped in. No telling what could come flying out of a building locked tight so long. Kind of like his return to Drago.

  He yanked the door open, sucking out a wave of air stale with time, dust and uselessness. He blinked against that hot draft and against the gloom inside that gave nothing away. Behind him, Jennifer sneezed. Once delicately, then a second time, wholeheartedly.

  For some reason that made him smile.

  He cleaved a spiderweb with his hand and stepped inside, beating back the anonymity of darkness. From floor to ceiling, rows of tall metal shelving rose, divided by narrow aisles. He edged down the middle aisle, where daylight cautiously slanted in. Each shelf held ranks of boxes faded to muddles of colors and indistinguishable writing. He swiped his thumb at what appeared to be a label.

  “Power cylinder for the power steering of a 1963 Ford Falcon.”

  “What’s a power cylinder?” Jennifer asked.

  “Hell if I know. I’m reading the label. Better question might be—What’s a Ford Falcon?” He peered at rows of boxes stretching into dense shadow. “This place must be filled with parts from my father’s time, maybe before.”

  He swore under his breath. He knew the man never let go of ideas and beliefs, but he hadn’t known it extended to parts for long-dead cars.

  “There’s a flashlight in the office. I can—”

  His hand shot out and hooked around her elbow. “Don’t bother.”

  “But to see what’s in here—”

  “You said it before, it’s parts inventory.”

  “But that’s all I knew. I asked a former employee. But I didn’t have a chance to get to this.” Sure as hell she’d have tried to clean it single-handedly if she had, he thought. “We’ll need a flashlight to see wha—”

  “I don’t want to see any more.”

  He was aware of her gaze. He didn’t meet it, instead using his hold on her to guide her out. Stepping over the threshold, her arm came out of his loose hand, severing the connection.

  He pulled the chains into place and held them while she threaded the padlock through and clicked it. He swiped his hands against each other to dislodge dust and dirt. She did the same, and he had a fleeting wish he was one of those men who carried a handkerchief so he could offer it to her.

  They crossed the back lot’s broken surface, passed through the sparse ranks of remaining cars. When they neared the main building, she clicked back into real estate–salesperson mode, listing each supposed highlight.

  “And as you’ve seen,” she said, wrapping up her spiel from the side doorway, “you could have a ready-to-operate service area—”

  “Without the newest equipment.”

  “And a salesroom ready to go, as well as—”

  “Run-down.”

  “A secured lot in place.”

  “Without inventory to secure.”

  Annoyance flashed across her eyes, stark and unmistakable. She had it controlled almost as fast as it had arrived. “I’ve shown you the pertinent areas. Is there anything I’ve missed that you would be interested in seeing?”

  The whisper of a devil’s voice he didn’t know he had in him mentioned a thing or two it would be interested in seeing. He pushed it back down where it belonged, under whatever covered the floor of his subconscious.

  “I’m sending these projections to several other investors,” she said. “You shouldn’t wait until this develops into a bidding w
ar.”

  He snorted.

  “Other investors will look at it strictly for its business potential,” she added coolly, “without personal associations clouding their assessment.”

  “Then why not give these other investors first crack? Wouldn’t it be easier to sell to them than to somebody who spent half his life trying to get away from Stenner Autos and the rest thanking the fates he’d succeeded?”

  “It only seems fair to give a Stenner first crack at it. You have a name that has meant a lot in this community for a long time. It would be a real asset to you in running this business.”

  “If the name’s such a business asset, why didn’t you keep it?”

  She gave him a level, would-be-cool-eyed stare. But underneath, he saw emotions churning, including pain. He felt like an ass for stirring that.

  “All right, all right. None of my business. I get it. I over-stepped. Sorry.” But he wasn’t a patsy, either. “But come on—other potential buyers?”

  He let her see he didn’t for a second believe in these other potential buyers. She looked back, defiant.

  He almost smiled. “You’re good, Jennifer. You’re really good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Uh-huh. My family ties both explain my reluctance to buy this white elephant, and excuse you from producing rival buyers. That’s what I call making the most of what little you have to work with.”

  “Quit worrying if I’m trying to play you, Trent,” she said. “Pretend the name Stenner isn’t attached and look at the numbers. It’s a good opportunity. A great opportunity. Perhaps I’m foolish in giving you first crack, but you’d be more than foolish to turn it down because of the name.”

  “What if I say yes?”

  “Uh, we’ll write up the offer,” she said tentatively, as if she’d so focused on getting him to say yes that she hadn’t considered what came next. “Judge Dixon has to approve, but I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”

  He was sure it wouldn’t be a problem, either. Not if she smiled at the old judge the way she was smiling at him.

  “We can go to the office and write up the offer now,” she proposed.

  “Not now. I’m meeting Coach Brookenheimer for lunch.”