East of Easy

by Linda Bleser

  “So,” she continued, “business implies the transfer of money. Since no money changed hands, no business has taken place. Correct? Or do you have to check with your lawyer about the legal ramifications of that?”

  Tate hitched up his belt. “Maybe I’ll just come in and have a look,” he said.

  Kate stood firm, blocking his path. “I said we were having a few friends over,” she said. “Just friends.”

  His face colored with rage. He leaned close and hissed, “You won’t have such a smart little mouth when you lose your mother’s business, will you missy?” Then he raised his voice, loud enough for everyone inside to hear. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” Without another word, he turned and stalked off.

  With his threat still ringing in her ears, Kate closed the door and made her way through the crowded living room to the kitchen. She slumped onto a chair and cradled her head in her hands.

  “Deputy Ed seems to have a burr under his saddle these days,” Nellie said. “What’s gotten into him?”

  “Revenge,” Kate said with a tired sigh. “He’s decided to get back at me for something that happened a long time ago by taking the business away from us.”

  Nellie straightened, indignation making her voice quiver. “He can’t do that!”

  “His lawyers think he can.” Kate pulled out the letter and showed it to Nellie, explaining Tate’s claim to half ownership of the property.

  “That’s…that’s…bull cocky!”

  Kate knew that was the closest Nellie would ever get to cussing, but it was pretty strong stuff for her.

  “Your mother owned that property. When she got rid of that no-good bum…” Nellie seemed to suddenly realize what she was saying and her voice softened. “No offense, hon, but Jebediah wasn’t fit to clean your mother’s shoes, in my opinion. He and Ginny Tate deserved each other.”

  Kate was less concerned with Nellie’s opinion of her father than her insistence that Lillian owned the property free and clear. If that was true, then Ginny Tate had no case against them. “How do you know my mother owned the property free and clear?” she asked.

  “Well, I remember Lillian saying she’d washed her hands of Jebediah once and for all.” Nellie’s hands fluttered like trapped birds. “I remember her saying he had no claim on her now, she was free and clear.” Nellie gave a brisk shake of her head. “Those were her exact words. Free and clear.”

  Kate nodded thoughtfully, remembering her similar conversation with Cheryl a couple days earlier. If her father had no rights to the property, that would explain why the Tates hadn’t pursued this frivolous lawsuit before now. Obviously Lillian had proof their claim was invalid. But where was it?

  “I’ve been through all of my mother’s papers,” Kate said, shaking her head. “There’s nothing I can find turning over the property to her. And nothing on record with the county either.” She’d checked as soon as Ed had made his initial threat. So where did that leave her?

  “I wouldn’t put it past Ed Tate to destroy the records,” Nellie mused. “He’s got half the town in his pocket and the other half running scared.” Nellie sighed. “If only Lillian were here.”

  “Yeah, if only…” Kate’s voice trailed off and she glanced toward the cup resting in the strainer. Maybe in a way she was?

  Then Kate remembered the song she’d heard coming from the cup the other day. Pretty papers? Maybe her mother was trying to tell her there were legal papers somewhere that proved Lillian had been the sole owner of the property.

  Kate shook her head. The whole concept of receiving messages from the great beyond was preposterous. Still, it was the only clue she had. Without giving herself time to reconsider, Kate stood and retrieved the cup from the strainer.

  “Okay Mom,” she whispered, pouring tea into the cup. “If you’ve got something to say, here’s your chance.”

  “Did you say something, dear?” Nellie asked.

  “Nope.” Barely giving her tea time to cool, Kate drank it down, draining the cup until only a few dregs remained, then swirling the remaining liquid and turning the cup upside down on the saucer.

  After setting the cup and saucer on the table, Kate poked her head into the living room. “Madame Zostra? Could you come in here for a minute?”

  *

  Max had been working since sun-up, so he didn’t feel guilty leaving the ranch behind for a few hours. Sue was capable of handling anything that might come up while he was gone, and Bobby was fine, with no visible aftereffects from yesterday’s fever. So Max had a few hours to kill and he knew just the person in need of killing.

  On his way to find Deputy Ed, he drove past the Tea and Crumpet Shop. Maybe it was force of habit or maybe he was hoping for a glimpse of Kate. He did a double take when he saw that the doors were closed and it was dark inside.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  With an ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach, Max pulled over to the side of the road, everything else forgotten. He hopped out of the pick-up and left it idling at the curb. The shop was empty and silent. The door was locked and no one answered his knock. Something was wrong. He couldn’t remember the shop ever being closed during normal business hours—especially Sunday morning, when it seemed half the town gathered there.

  Could something have happened to Kate? Heart pounding, he climbed back into the truck and raced to her house. The drive took only minutes, but it felt like hours. He imagined any number of emergencies, each one of them more frightening than the last.

  With a squeal of tires, he pulled in front of Lillian’s house and hurried to the front door. In his haste to find Kate, he nearly crashed into Bertha Pitt on her way out.

  “No need to hurry,” Bertha said. “There’s plenty of food left. If I know Nellie, she saved you a special treat in the kitchen.”

  Only then did Max realize that Bertha was carrying a bag that smelled fragrantly of warm baked goods. What was going on here?

  Behind the door, he could hear the sounds of voices. Lots of voices. It sounded as if half of Easy was milling around inside. Max rang the doorbell, only a little surprised when Chrissy Roberts, wearing her waitress uniform and apron, opened the door.

  “Come on in, Max,” she chirped. “I’ll find you a seat.”

  Max’s jaw dropped when he surveyed the living room filled with customers from the Tea and Crumpet Shop. “I’m not here for tea,” he said. “I need to speak to Kate.”

  “Well she’s in the kitchen right now.” Chrissy batted her big brown eyes. “Why don’t you let me get you something while you wait?”

  Immune to her teenage flirtation, Max brushed right past Chrissy. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll find her myself.”

  Max wove through the packed living room, trading greetings with neighbors and friends, all sipping tea and munching sweets from trays balanced on their laps. If he wasn’t so worried about Kate, Max might have found it amusing, like some surreal sugar-addict’s cocktail party.

  When he stepped into the kitchen, Nellie noticed him first. She gestured for him to be quiet by putting a finger over her lips and nodding toward the table. Max saw Kate and Adelaide Wilkinson, known far and wide as Madame Zostra, huddled over a teacup. Kate’s back was to him. At his raised eyebrows, Nellie shook her head, warning him not to interrupt.

  “Roses,” Madame Zostra intoned dramatically, humming and weaving back and forth. “She wants you to search among the roses.”

  Kate nodded and jotted a note on a slip of paper already covered with her neat, precise handwriting.

  Suddenly Madame Zostra cried out, “Max!”

  He jerked when she shouted his name, but Madame Zostra wasn’t looking at him. She seemed to be staring at some distant spot beyond the far window.

  “He holds the key,” Madame Zostra said.

  “Max holds the key?” Kate, still unaware that Max was standing behind her, added the cryptic phrase to the slip of paper. “What else?” she asked.

  Madame Zostra clapped
her hand to her heart. A whimper escaped her lips and Max watched the color drain from her face. “So much sadness,” she said. “Sadness and disappointment. There’s a snake in the grass. BE CAREFUL!” Her voice rose to an ear-shattering screech, then she slumped in her chair, drained and trembling.

  Max didn’t buy her act for a minute. Madame Zostra was no psychic. But why would she torment Kate like this? It was cruel. He stepped forward, intent on stopping this psychic farce.

  “That’s all I can get,” Madame Zostra said, her voice quivering. “Lillian’s energy is gone now.”

  “I think that’s enough,” Max said.

  Kate whipped around. When she saw Max, her face lit up. “You’re here.”

  He knelt beside her chair and reached for her hands, cradling them in his own. “Now what’s this all about?”

  “My mother. She’s been trying to tell me something.”

  Max crooked an eyebrow, but the hopeful look on Kate’s face softened his tone. “Well,” he said, tipping his head in Madame Zostra’s direction, “from what I heard, she’s not doing a very good job of it.” He glanced at the notes on the table. “Roses, keys, pretty papers…” He shook his head. “No offense darlin’, but if what you say is true, your mother is one of the most cryptic ghosts I’ve ever heard of.”

  “She’s having a hard time getting through,” Kate admitted sheepishly. “I know it sounds silly, but I swear I’ve been getting strange feelings from this cup. There’s an energy there I can feel, see, hear. My mother is trying to send me a message from beyond the grave.”

  “And if anyone can do it,” Nellie piped up, “it’s Lillian.”

  Max took a deep breath. If it made them feel better, he couldn’t see any harm in letting the three women believe whatever they wanted.

  “Okay, let’s forget about Lillian’s ghost for now. Tell me why you’re serving tea here and not in the shop.”

  While Kate filled him in, Nellie went back to her baking and Madame Zostra swept off in search of new psychic connections.

  The more Max heard of Tate’s manipulations, the more furious he became. His entire body tightened with rage, jaw grinding furiously. At least Madame Zostra had gotten the “snake in the grass” part right.

  More importantly, though, why hadn’t Kate come to him first? Obviously she still didn’t trust him. And how could he convince her that she should?

  He stood up, his body thrumming with pent-up frustration. He took Kate’s hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” he said, needing to do something constructive with the rage burning inside him. “First we’re going to take care of the wiring at the shop. Then I’ll take care of Ed Tate and get him off your case once and for all.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Kate watched Max work on the electrical wiring, more relieved to have someone to share her worries with than she cared to admit. She really hadn’t needed to come with him to the shop. It wasn’t as if she could be all that much help and she could have easily given him the key. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise her to find out he already had one. Half the town probably did.

  Nope, she didn’t need to be here, but she was glad she’d come with him just the same. There was something about watching a man work—all hard, corded muscles and intensely focused concentration. And he came with his own accessories—tools of every size and type for whatever job needed to be done. She watched him crouch and stretch and bend, the movements doing incredible things to the fit of his jeans. Watching him made her feel as giddy as she had back in high school.

  But she wasn’t a teenager with a crush on the most popular boy in school. She was twenty-eight with a life to get back to—a life that was far away from here. She couldn’t be distracted by the fact that the sexiest boy in high school was now the sexiest man in town.

  “Which light did you see flicker?”

  “Huh?” Kate had to get her mind off Max’s butt and back to the business at hand. “Oh, it was…when I was sitting at that table over there.” She pointed, remembering that first day she’d come to the shop and found Max sitting across from her. “I felt a shock…like an electrical current. But it came from the cup.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “Yes, the haunted teacup. Let’s just focus on the electrical problems for now then we’ll deal with the supernatural ones.”

  Kate rubbed her eyes. “It was just a flicker. Ed Tate was sitting right here,” she said, remembering the moment the cup had jolted in her hand and the lights had flickered. She’d been too stunned by the jolt of energy coming from the cup to pay much attention to which light had flickered. At the time she hadn’t suspected that the cup was haunted, but apparently her mother had been trying to tell her something even then.

  “So Tate was sitting here when the lights flickered?”

  Kate nodded.

  “And then suddenly he’s here with the electrical inspector?”

  “Well, not exactly.” Kate was almost ashamed to admit the next part. “Nellie said she heard my mother’s spirit while she was in the kitchen yesterday. Then all the lights went out.”

  “And Tate showed up again?”

  “Well…yes,” she admitted, suddenly realizing why Max seemed so suspicious. Tate had an uncanny way of being around whenever bad things happened.

  Max narrowed his eyes. “Hang tight. I’ll be right back.”

  Kate watched him swagger out of the room, purposely keeping her eyes off his backside. Well, maybe just a quick peek, but that was all.

  She glanced around, looking for something to do, anything to get her mind off Max and his derriere. She wandered through the kitchen but it was spotless, not so much as a spoon out of place. Nellie had taken care of everything.

  She ran her hand over the gleaming stainless steel surfaces. Funny, when she first came here she couldn’t wait to unload this place. Now she’d do anything to save it. Why? Why was it so important now? It wasn’t as if she planned to stay in Easy. But there was Nellie and Arthur and Chrissy and even Madame Zostra to think about. They all depended on the shop. There was Jeff and his new wife too.

  And there was Max.

  Damn, why couldn’t she stop thinking about Max? As soon as the question formed in her mind, the lights came on, nearly blinding her with their brightness. Kate blinked in surprise, not missing the symbolism. She held her breath for a moment, waiting to see if Roy Orbison was going to croon a message from the great beyond as well.

  “All fixed,” Max called, confirming that there was nothing supernatural about the sudden bright light. “There were a few wires loose in the breaker panel, that’s all.”

  Kate noticed the way he broke eye contact with her when he said it. He was hiding something. “Loose?” she asked. “Why didn’t the electrical contractor notice that when he was here?”

  Max shrugged, still not meeting her eyes. “Maybe they weren’t loose when he was here…”

  “Or?”

  Max took a deep breath. “Or,” he finished, “maybe Tate or one of his flunkies purposely loosened the wires just for an excuse to shut the shop down.”

  Kate considered Max’s theory. It made perfect sense, and she wouldn’t put it past Tate. “He had to know you’d find it pretty easily,” she argued.

  Max nodded. “Yeah, he knew I’d find it. And he knew I’d know who did it. He’s just thumbing his nose in our faces. Showing us who’s boss.”

  “And he’ll keep getting in our way, won’t he?”

  Max knew for a fact that was true. Tate would use every underhanded, devious trick in the book to get under his skin. Apparently Kate was on his list now as well.

  “Not if I can help it,” Max growled under his breath. “If he wants a fight, that’s just what he’ll get.”

  Kate seemed to sag. “What’s the use? He’ll find one reason or another to keep shutting us down until the courts decide on the lien. Then he’ll walk away with half of everything my mother worked for.”

  Max didn’t like the look of resignation on her face. For awhil
e there, she’d been all spit and fire, ready to fight for her rights. She’d reminded him of the Kate he used to know.

  “So what? You gonna just give up and run away?”

  She jerked back as if he’d slapped her. “I didn’t say that.” Her lower lip quivered.

  He could see he’d hurt her, but he didn’t let up. She’d lost her spunk somewhere along the line and if he had to provoke her to get it back, he would. “You let Ed Tate win ten years ago. Are you going to let him win again?”

  When she tried to turn away, he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Look at me. If you run off with your tail between your legs, Tate wins. If you stay here and fight with me, we both win.”

  Her eyes widened. “With you?”

  “Yes, of course.” He grinned. “I have a one-third share invested in this place, right?”

  She jutted her chin out, a tiny blaze flaring in her eyes. “We’ll see about that,” she said, a brave smile taking the sting out of her challenge.

  He gave a low chuckle. “That’s my girl.”

  As soon as he said the words—words so familiar it hardly seemed ten years had gone by since he’d last said them—she caught her breath. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and the air seemed to stretch and pull and wrap around them in an embrace.

  Max focused on her lips, watching them soften and part, releasing a whispered sigh. He knew they’d be warm and full and lush. He remembered their sweetness as if it were yesterday. The pull was irresistible. He leaned closer.

  Closer.

  “Kate.” It was barely a whisper, almost a moan. His body tightened with need and he couldn’t have stopped even if he wanted to.

  He swooped down, pulling her into his arms. Roughly. Gently. Desperately. All at the same time. And when their lips touched, it was everything he remembered and so much more. He pulled her close, sure if he just held her tight enough she’d never be able to leave again.