Flirting With Pete: A Novel (39 page)

Four and a half endless hours after she left the O’Keefes, she crossed the Tobin Bridge and entered Boston. It was late afternoon. Traffic slowed her some, but she held a course for Beacon Hill, and
not
for the townhouse. She went straight to Daisy’s Mum, squeezed the Miata into a small parking spot, and strode across the street.

The shop was closed for the day, but she had expected that. She was far more interested in the townhouse doors on either side. One said OWENS on the doorplate, so she went to the other.

O’KEEFE, the plate read. Furious by now, she rang the bell, then waited with her hands on her hips, her head bowed, and her mouth tight.

“Yes?” came a voice through the intercom. Not
a
voice.
His
voice.

“It’s me,” she said. “Let me up.”

There was only the briefest pause, but it was long enough to tell her he recognized her voice, too. The buzzer rang; the door clicked open. Within seconds, she was running up a flight of stone steps old enough to be worn uneven at the center.

He stood with his hands on his hips in an open doorway on the second floor. Backlit, he looked larger and more imposing than ever. The closer she got, the more detail she saw. He wore a tee shirt and shorts. His jaw was shadowed, his hair messed, his feet bare.

She stopped one step shy of the landing, struck by how handsome he truly was. His mother was right about that. Not that Casey had ever thought otherwise. Handsome, sexy, expert at gardening, expert at making love— that was Jordan. He was also agitated, if the set of his mouth meant anything.

She didn’t know what
he
had to be agitated about.
She
was the one who’d been taken for a fool.

Needled by that thought, she mounted the last step and marched right up to him. “I’ve just had a fascinating day in a town called Walker,” she said. “I drove around, saw the sights, had a fabulous hash-and-Jack omelet at the luncheonette. I had an even better visit with your parents.”

“I know,” he informed her tightly. “I just got a call.”

Refusing to be intimidated by what was clearly annoyance on his part, she barreled on. “They kept talking about their son Dan, but I didn’t make the connection until I saw a photo on the mantel. You let
me
think you were a gardener.”

“I am a gardener.”

“You sure looked it— scruffy beard, torn jeans, crusty boots. Disreputable— that’s what I thought you were. You didn’t tell me you were a cop.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“You were,” she charged. “I asked, and you denied it.”

“You asked if I’d ever
wanted
to be one,” he corrected. “I answered no, and that’s the truth. I hated every minute of it. Why were you in Walker?”

“Enlightenment,” she said. “You’re a ‘bleeding heart,’ to quote your dad. Too soft. So you tried to help Jenny Clyde. You encouraged her to leave town before her father got out of prison, only she didn’t have the courage for that. So she stayed, and something awful happened.”

A muscle moved in his jaw. “You saw the journal.”

“I saw the journal. I wasn’t sure it was real, but I needed it to be, because my father had asked for my help with Jenny, and I wanted to please him. It was the first time he’d ever asked me for anything.
Anything
. But the pages I had stopped short of the end, so I went looking. Little Falls isn’t on maps anymore. It took me a while to find it. You couldn’t have told me?”

He held up a hand. “Hold on. You didn’t ask.”

“You were the
gardener,
” she cried, feeling betrayed by that on top of everything else. “I wasn’t supposed to ask you about Jenny Clyde. I assumed that the pages I saw were confidential.”

“If that’s so, why were you up asking people in Walker?”

“I didn’t tell them what I’d read. I wanted to locate her, that’s all.”

“Who’d you ask?”

“Does it matter?”

“Sure does. I need to know who you saw and what you said.”

He did sound like a cop now. Only he wasn’t one, not anymore. And Casey needed her own answers first. “Is Jenny dead?”

“Were you asking that up there?”

“They all think she’s dead,” Casey said by way of an answer.

Jordan inhaled, rolling his right shoulder. When he blew out the breath, his annoyance seemed to go with it. He pushed a hand through his hair and left it at the back of his neck. “Oh, Casey,” he said on a note of despair. “Did you have to race on up there?”

His tone took away some of her steam. “Yes,” she said in defense of the trip. “I didn’t know how else to get answers.”

He rubbed the shoulder he had been rolling moments before. “But you didn’t get them. You just stirred up trouble.”

“No, I didn’t,” she argued, puzzled. “I asked questions, then I left.”

His smile was grim. “Clearly, you’ve never lived in a small town. The call I just got was from my dad, and it wasn’t only to say that you’d been to the house. Word’s spreading already. I’d wager that by morning, most everyone in Walker will know you were there, and why.”

“I was only asking questions.”

“You were raising doubts. Whenever there’s a violent death with no body to show for it, there’s doubt. Jenny’s death had been put to rest. Now you’ve resurrected it.”

Had he yelled, she might have argued more. But the sensible tone he used was hard to fight. With caution now, she asked, “And what’s the harm in that?”

Jordan studied her for a minute. Then he hitched his head toward the room behind him and said with resignation, “Come in. You can read it for yourself.”

She went forward. As soon as he closed the door behind her, he set off for another room. The one she was in was large, minimalist in decor but attractive and clean. She saw no paintings— not on the wall, not on easels. Aside from the art books stacked on a simple wood table, there was no evidence that he was interested in painting, much less had painted the pieces she had seen in his parents’ home.

Casey swallowed. She wrapped her arms around her middle. She didn’t have to be told to know that he owned this place, just as he owned the shop downstairs. On this turf, he exuded command. She struggled to process the fact that her bad-boy gardener was a man of greater skill and smarts than she had initially thought.

And she had aimed to shock Connie by having an affair with him? What a joke
that
was! Except the joke was on her. Connie would not have been shocked. Far from it. Hadn’t he asked, through his lawyer, that she retain the gardener? An argument could therefore be made that Connie had actually fixed them up.

She found that thought humiliating. She didn’t dwell on it, though, because Jordan returned to the living room carrying a large manila envelope. When he reached her, he held it out.

“This is what you’re missing, I believe.”

Little Falls

Head held high, Jenny fairly floated along the side of the road, moving through air so clear it sparkled. The fog that had spent the night in town had dispersed with the sun, giving her an unobstructed view of all she passed, and she put it to good use. Her eyes searched out the people she usually avoided. They found Angie Booth and her two mongrels, all three startled into silence by her smile. Likewise Hester Johnson and her sister, who froze in the act of removing the mail from the box that stood by their rusty hinged gate. Nick Farina stared without saying a word and that gave Jenny pause, but only until she thought of Pete. Then she smiled at Nick, too.

She found herself humming. It was one of the songs she and Pete had danced to at Giro’s. She strode on in time to the beat.

Merle Little’s car approached from ahead, passed her, then slowed. She imagined Merle was stunned by her grin, but she didn’t look back. Instead, she smiled at Essie Bunch, who stopped sweeping her veranda to watch her pass, and though Jenny couldn’t actually see the Websters, the Cleegs, or Myra Ellenbogen, she smiled in the direction of the television sounds coming from their homes and fancied they were amazed.

She turned the corner onto Main Street, where the same people had parked the same cars at the same angle they always did. She walked under those deep green awnings with large white letters, past the same people sitting once again on the same wood benches.

Old habits died hard for her, too, though. All of them staring at her at such close range made her nervous. But today she didn’t lower her head, and she refused to look away. After a second of remembering the woman Pete had helped her find inside herself, she met their eyes and smiled.

She continued on to the last side street, turned right, then turned in at the Neat Eats sign. Miriam was in the big kitchen stuffing cannoli with a pastry cone. She looked up. Her hands were suspended for several bars of a hard-driving country song before she punched an elbow at the radio switch, killing the sound.

“Jenny, you look different again, and it isn’t just the hair.” She set down the cone. “Today’s the day Darden comes home, isn’t it? You seem calm. Even… happy?”

Jenny was. Oh, she was. What she had been dreading for so long was here, and things were nowhere near as bleak as she had thought they would be. Choices. They were the key. She had choices now. “I wanted to tell you before you heard from someone else. I’m leaving Little Falls.”

“No way.”

Jenny grinned. “I am. With Pete. Remember I told you about him?”

“You bet I do. He’s the guy with the leather jacket and boots. The biker. Jenny, uh, how much do you know about him?”

Jenny drew a little heart in the confectioners’ sugar that dusted the edge of the table. “Enough. And he’s not a biker, not like you think. He has a motorcycle, but there’s no gang. He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met. He brings me things and takes me places. We went to Giro’s Sunday night.”

“Hey, so did I. When were you there?”

“Late. Around midnight.”

“No way. I was there from eleven to one. I’d have seen you.”

“Well, it might have been one-thirty. I don’t remember, we did so much that night.” Memory of it made her blush.

Miriam glanced at the window. “Is he outside?”

“No. He’s back home, getting ready.”

“But I want to meet him.”

Jenny wasn’t taking any chances. Pete was her savior. He was her pride and joy, her heart’s desire. She wasn’t having anyone meet him and find fault just because he was hers.

So, politely, she said, “There isn’t time. We’re leaving tonight.”

“
Tonight
. Oh, wow!” More cautiously, “Does your father know?”

Jenny was back to drawing in the sugar, an arrow through the heart this time. “Not yet. But we’ll wait to see him before we go.” She made a mess of the arrow’s feathers and erased it all. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to draw pictures. She had the real thing etched inside. “So, anyway, I wanted to let you know I won’t be coming to work anymore.”

“That’s okay. Like I told you, it’s slowing down fast.”

“I wanted to thank you. You’ve been nice.”

Miriam pouted. She wiped her hands on her apron and gave Jenny as much of a hug as she could without smudging her with powder. Then she held her back. “Where are you going?”

“To his family’s ranch in Wyoming. Maybe if you’re driving around there, you’ll come see me.”

“What’s the name of the ranch?”

“South Fork.” When Miriam looked skeptical, she explained, “It’s at a fork in the road, just south of Montana.”

“Ahh. Well, that sounds exciting. Good luck. Hey, listen, if you want me to write a recommendation, I will. I’ll say what a good worker you’ve been.”

“Oh, I won’t be working. Pete has money, and besides, I’ll be busy on the ranch.”

Miriam gave her hand a floury squeeze. “I’m glad for you. It’s good you’re leaving. You need a new start. I hope everything works out with your guy, Pete.”

“Pete?” Dan O’Keefe asked. He had a hand up holding open the screen door of the room in his garage that housed the Little Falls Police. The outside of the door was framed by ivy. It made the place a little more approachable. “That the same one Reverend Putty told me about yesterday?”

Jenny looked past him to the desk, bookshelves, file cabinets, and electronic equipment crammed into too small a space. She refused to let his doubtful tone wreck her good mood. “He’s taking me back to Wyoming with him. We’re only staying here until Darden gets home.”

“He’s coming in on the bus?”

“Uh-huh.”

“The six-twelve?” Dan pushed the door open wider and gestured her in with the hitch of his chin. “Let’s talk about this.”

Jenny’s good cheer did falter then. The police office held memories she didn’t care to revisit. She hadn’t planned on going inside. It was bad enough to look in at the place through a pretty ivy frame.

But Dan had always treated her better than most. She wanted him to see that she was calm now, that she knew what she was doing and wasn’t afraid. She wanted him to see she was happy.

He brushed dust from the seat of the wood chair across from the desk, and settled on the desk’s corner.

She stood behind the wood chair with her fingers curled over its top.

“Don’t want to sit?”

She shook her head, shrugged, smiled an apology.

“We were rough on you, huh? You seemed older than eighteen back then. Hard to remember you weren’t. Does Darden know you’re leaving?”

“Not yet.”

“Does he know about Pete?”

“Not yet.”

“He won’t be happy.”

Jenny felt whispers of the old panic. But that old panic came from confusion and guilt, as much as fear. Now she had Pete to help with the fear, and while there was still guilt, the confusion was gone. She wasn’t staying with Darden. She wasn’t living that way. Pete had given her a choice. She knew what she had to do.

The whispers died away. She stood straighter, took a deep breath, and said with a smile, “I told him I’d be here when he got back, so I will be. But then I’m leaving. He’s been in jail six years. Well, so have I. He’s getting out, so I am. He wants to come back here, I want to leave. I’m twenty-four. I have a right to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life.”