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Becky shivered visibly. “You’d never catch me going anywhere near there. People say it’s haunted.”
Cissy made a derogatory sound and dumped her empty salad bowl into the trash can beside her desk. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. People say Elvis is still alive and you don’t hear any new songs on the radio, do you? I think it would make a wonderful focal point for the town. A way to revitalize downtown.”
Becky wasn’t about to be sidetracked by logic. “Why would Rafe care about revitalizing downtown? He wasn’t all that fond of Broken Yoke when he lived here before.”
“Maybe things have changed,” Cissy said. “Everyone changes. You long to put down roots eventually.”
“Rafe D’Angelo, putting down roots?” Becky said in a horrified tone. “My Lord, what’s the world coming to?”
CHAPTER TWO
THE SILVER SADDLE BAR and Grill, which was more bar than grill, boasted a sizable back room where private parties could be held. This morning, more than forty people had crammed into the space, and there wasn’t the slimmest hope that a party was in the making.
The planning session for Broken Yoke’s summer festival was in full swing, and so far, there was only one thing that everyone at the town meeting could agree on. That no one could agree on anything.
Rafe D’Angelo sat toward the back of the room, next to his older brother Nick. Over the tops of people’s heads—mostly gray, he noticed—he could make out his father seated near the front.
Just like Pop, he thought. Because of his stroke, Sam D’Angelo still relied on his wheelchair occasionally instead of crutches to get around, but that didn’t keep him from seeking out the center of the action. And right now, the center of the action was up front, between those two old geezers Mort Calloway and Howard Hackett.
Over the years, Rafe had developed a pretty keen nose for trouble. He could usually tell just when fists were going to replace words. Right now, he was fairly certain that Mort was thirty seconds away from decking Howard.
The fact that Mort was in his eighties and needed a shot of oxygen with almost every breath, or the realization that Howard’s eyesight was so poor he couldn’t have seen Mort’s fist coming, much less prevented it, didn’t have a thing to do with it. The two men were furious with one another, and no one could get them to calm down. Not even Sheriff Bendix, who stood between them like a referee at a prizefight.
“It was just an idea,” Mort said for the third time. The lifelong naturalist had proposed a botanical theme for this year’s festival—complete with a wildflower exhibition, guest lectures and an orchid contest.
“Well, it was a stupid one,” Howard replied tersely. “Are you out of your wood-pecked, termite-infested mind? How many people in this state do you think will give a rat’s rear end about seeing a slide show on how to identify a bunch of poseys?”
Mayor Wickham spoke up from the sidelines. “It doesn’t seem in keeping with the history of the festival, Mort.”
Mort swung on the mayor, an action that left him more than a little breathless. “Since this is only our second festival, and the first was such a god-awful failure, I don’t see how it can mess much with the history of the danged thing.” He took a sip of oxygen, then whipped his mask away so he could turn back to Howard. “And my idea has as much merit as a harmonica contest or watching a bunch of morons being used as human bowling balls.”
“At least people won’t fall asleep in the street!”
Evidently, some of the other Broken Yoke citizens thought Howard had a point. There were murmurs of agreement from the crowd.
Rafe slid down in his chair, wondering why he’d let Nick talk him into coming here. He’d been back in Broken Yoke for two weeks, but it already felt like a lot longer.
A reed-thin older woman at the front of the room stood up. Beside Rafe, his brother inhaled sharply. “Uh-oh,” Nick said under his breath. “Here comes trouble.”
The woman said in a crisp voice, “I have an idea.”
The years since Rafe had lived here suddenly swept away. He remembered this woman—those small, sharp eyes, the posture that made her look as though she’d snap in two if someone tried to bend her. Polly Swinburne. Paranoid Polly, the kids had called her. Rich. Widowed. A bit “off.”
“Why don’t we have a naked festival?” she suggested.
Okay. Make that a lot “off.” Rafe groaned, wishing he had stayed back at the lodge.
The room went deathly silent for a long moment. Finally, Sheriff Bendix cleared his throat and asked the question on everyone’s mind. “Polly, what exactly is a naked festival?”
Polly practically went pink with enthusiasm. “Well, you all remember that I went to Japan for vacation last year?” Several gray heads bobbed. “They celebrate something there called Hadaka Matsuri. All the participants wear loincloths, and one man is chosen to run naked through the streets. Everyone tries to touch him.”
“Touch him where?” someone asked.
“And what for?” Mort Calloway added, looking like all the oxygen in the world wasn’t going to be enough to keep him from passing out.
“Just to touch him,” Polly said. “He’s supposed to bring good luck and absorb evil. The custom’s over twelve hundred years old in Japan.”
“Well, it isn’t gonna last twelve seconds here in the good old U. S. of A.,” someone else said, and everyone laughed.
Polly looked annoyed. “This year there were ten thousand participants and over three hundred thousand spectators. Excuse me, but I thought the idea of having a festival was to make money.”
“Where would people in loincloths keep their wallets?” Howard asked.
A few people giggled, and after that, the discussion deteriorated even more as several ribald comments were made. Polly subsided with a scowl.
A few more ideas were trotted out. Not surprisingly, the owner of the Silver Saddle voted for a beer festival. Someone suggested they repaint all the storefronts to look like bare wood, throw down two feet of dirt on the streets and pretend to have returned to the 1850s. Wesley Macgruder, the owner of the local Feed and Seed, recommended they convert one of the abandoned mine shafts into a thrill ride. The ideas went steadily downhill from there.
Nick leaned close to Rafe. “Wesley may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot,” he whispered, “but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
Rafe shook his head. “Tell me again. Why exactly did you think I should come to this thing?”
Nick grinned. “Because Matt refused, and I needed a buffer between me and everyone else.”
Rafe knew better than to believe that excuse, but he nodded anyway and settled back in his seat, tuning out the sound of angry voices.
When he’d first come back to town, he’d known that it would be difficult to reestablish a relationship with his father. After all the harsh things that had been said between them during that final argument, after all the years of noncommunication, there was no way he could waltz back into Sam D’Angelo’s world and expect a warm welcome.
In that, he hadn’t been disappointed. He knew that if his father tried at all to meet him halfway, it was strictly for the sake of Rafe’s mother. Pop would do anything to please Rose. Even make nice occasionally with a son he probably considered a first-class bastard.
But Rafe had also anticipated a cool reception from his brother Nick. He’d never had a problem with his brother Matt and younger sister Addy, but Nick—the two of them had seldom gotten along as kids. Nick was a stickler for order and obeying the rules, and Rafe, well…Rafe had always figured rules were for other people.
So he was surprised that Nick didn’t seem to hold much of a grudge against him. Time seemed to have mellowed his big brother. It could be because he was a married man with kids of his own now. A brand-new baby son, in fact, in addition to a teenage daughter who had discovered boys big time.
Did Nick finally understand what it was like to find yourself on the opposite side of a chasm from someone you loved, with no clear way to make the leap that would bring you back together?
Rafe felt a nudge against his arm. Nick was drawing his attention back to the front of the room, where his father seemed to have won the floor.
“…can argue this from now until Christmas,” Sam D’Angelo was telling them all.
In spite of the wheelchair, his father still had a commanding way about him. He’d turned sixty just a few months ago, but he was as powerful a presence in the room as he’d been years ago, when he’d stood by Rafe’s hospital bed and told him that he was no longer welcome in his house.
“So what do you suggest, Sam?” Sheriff Bendix asked.
“I suggest we form a committee to investigate the best theme ideas we’ve been able to come up with here. Explore all possibilities. Eliminate the most problematic of them, then bring the two most viable ones back to the group for a vote.”
“There have been an awful lot of ideas pitched tonight,” someone behind Rafe pointed out.
“Very few that have actually been thought out,” Sam said, waving away the comment. With his chin he indicated the man seated across the aisle from him. “We could start with the Founder’s Day Celebration Bill suggested. He’s done his homework about the beginnings of Broken Yoke. Let’s find out if any of it would be interesting to anyone outside of the people in this room.”
Phil Pasternak, a fifty-something guy with a great tan who owned Alpine All Weather, the only sports store in town, stood up. “I think my idea of a Christmas in July celebration bears serious consideration. It’s quirky enough to draw outsiders, and over the past few months I’ve spent quite a bit of time and money planning out sample venues of the games and entertainment we could offer.”
Everyone knew Phil wanted to unload a surplus of winter sports equipment he’d been saddled with after several winters of modest snowfall, but no one had hooted down his idea for the festival. Most were intrigued by the idea of how he intended to pull off snowball fights and sleigh rides in the middle of summer.
Sam nodded. “Fine. Let the committee decide if it’s workable.”
“And profitable,” Phil couldn’t resist adding.
“I’ll volunteer to be on the committee,” Mort Calloway said from around his oxygen mask.
“Me, too,” Howard Hackett piped up.
Polly Swinburne sniffed loudly. “I certainly think I should be part of any committee that makes those decisions.”
Sam wasn’t a good enough actor to keep his disappointment from showing. These three were obviously not who he’d had in mind when he’d made the suggestion.
He tossed a glance around the room, finally settling on a mild-looking fellow whose face would live in no one’s memory. “What about you, Burt? You’re calm and logical. You’d make a good candidate for the committee.”
The old guy blinked a couple of times, then creaked upward from his seat as though he’d just been asked to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. “I’ll do it if everyone insists,” he said politely. “But I’d prefer to stay out of it.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m not even sure Broken Yoke should have a summer festival. What’s wrong with just keeping things the way they are?” The elderly man frowned. “No. I’m not your man.”
Nick expelled a sigh. “Good call, Burt,” he said under his breath. To Rafe he added, “Working with Howard and Polly and Mort would send him to the loony bin. Poor Aunt Sof would go nuts worrying.”
Rafe gave his brother a puzzled look. “Aunt Sof” was one of their mother’s Italian sisters. Sofia and Renata were both widowed. After his father’s stroke a few years ago, the two women had arrived to help out. They’d never returned to Italy and now seemed firmly entrenched in helping to run the family lodge. Rafe had never met either one of them until he’d come home. They seemed nice enough, but he still didn’t really know them.
“Why poor Aunt Sof?” he asked his brother.
“She’s sweet on Burt,” Nick said. “But don’t ask either one of them, because they’ll just deny it.”
Rafe looked back at Burt with renewed interest. Still some life left in the old boy, it seemed. Nice to think of two older people finding love, even at this late date. He wished them well, because as near as Rafe could figure, love was a pretty slippery slope to try to climb. One reason why he’d stayed firmly away from it.
Another half hour was spent determining just how the newly formed committee should proceed and when the deciding vote for a festival theme would be taken. Just when Rafe thought they had a hope of getting out of the Silver Saddle before his backside went completely numb, his father spoke up again.
“Independent of the festival committee, I think we should elect a Publicity chair. Once a decision is made, we can’t afford to waste time trying to decide how to get the word out. We need someone to start exploring what kind of publicity we can get for this thing. How much it’s going to cost, and just what we need to say. Anyone want to volunteer?”
No one spoke up.
“Then I’d like to suggest my son,” Sam said, looking toward the back of the room. “Nicholas.”
Beside Rafe, Nick went upright in his seat. Poor bastard. Rafe was barely able to hide an amused smile. Roped into service and stuck with trying to please all these people.
Nick stood up. “Pop, I don’t think I’m the right person for the job. This really calls for someone with PR skills, and everyone knows that isn’t something I’m good at.”
Sam looked annoyed when there was mumbled agreement from a few others.
“Besides,” Nick went on, “it shouldn’t be someone who has a particular personal agenda. You know I’d like to pick up some business for the lodge and our helicopter tours. We need a person who can be fairly unbiased.”
“Like who?” Polly Swinburne asked skeptically.
Nick tossed a desperate look around the room, and in the same moment when Rafe could hear his own inner voice saying No, no, no, his brother’s gaze landed on him like a load of concrete. “Like Rafe, for instance,” Nick said.
There were several moments of silence. Rafe knew that most of the people here, while perhaps not having an actual ax to grind with him, might find him an interloper in their midst. No, maybe more than that. He let his eyes do a quick circuit around the room. How many of these people had he had run-ins with as a teenager?
Short of killing his brother very slowly, Rafe couldn’t think of a suitable revenge. He shook his head. “Nick,” he said at last, clearing his throat. “I don’t think—”
“Not Rafe,” Sam said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
For just one moment, Rafe’s eyes met with his father’s. They had lightning in them.
Rafe’s heart gave a kick of annoyance so faint he hardly felt it. He knew what the old man was thinking. Mustering all of his self control, Rafe said, “I’ll do it.”
“No,” Sam said.
Rafe felt his jaw setting in anger. If there had been a collective gasp in the room at that moment, it couldn’t have been more obvious that everyone knew more was going on here than just a simple difference of opinion.
“Why not him? “Sheriff Bendix had the guts to ask.
In spite of his surface poise and bland ease, Sam’s eyes hinted a warning toward the man. “My son hasn’t lived in this town for years. He cannot know what would work best for Broken Yoke. He has no interest in it.”
Polly Swinburne swung a glance in Rafe’s direction. “I heard you bought up part of First Street downtown. Is that true? Because that doesn’t sound like someone who has no interest to me.”
“It’s true. I’ve come back to BrokenYoke with the intention of making it my home.” Rafe’s eyes locked again with his father’s in a light challenge. “Permanently.”
He waited, refusing to look away.
Sam settled back in his wheelchair. “You have landed here for now. But a home is more than just an address.”
Before Rafe could say anything, Nick jumped in. “That’s beside the point. As an outsider, Rafe has no preconceived notions about what would serve us best. What he does have is plenty of PR experience. All those years in Vegas and L.A. He’ll know what will catch people’s interest. How to massage the media to get the best coverage.”
Someone laughed. “Way I hear it, you were always good at massages, Rafe.”
“This is a serious discussion,” Howard Hackett complained, and Rafe tried to remember if the man had a daughter. Truthfully, he couldn’t recall many of the local girls he’d romanced and left behind.
“I know how to handle the press,” Rafe acknowledged. “If you want me to do this, I will. Otherwise, I’m perfectly happy going about my own business.”
“I nominate Rafe D’Angelo for publicity chairman,” Nick said quickly. “All those in favor say aye.”
There was a surprisingly supportive vote of confidence in favor of the motion. There were no opposing votes, though Rafe suspected his father’s silence cost him dearly. He could tell from the older man’s posture in his chair that he wasn’t liking this turn of events. Not liking it at all.
A short time later, the meeting broke up. Rafe was trapped in a round of congratulatory handshakes and slaps on the back, so that he couldn’t immediately join his father and brother on the sidewalk in front of the Silver Saddle. Calloway, Hackett and Swinburne, who he’d already begun to think of as the Unholy Trio, cornered him with promises to be in touch soon.
When he finally emerged from the bar, he found his father and Nick waiting near the lodge’s van in the weak sunshine. From the matching set of their hardened jaws, Rafe could tell there had been harsh words exchanged. He could make a safe bet on the topic.
He decided to ignore the ice forming between them. Before Rafe and his father were through with one another, he suspected there were going to be plenty more worthwhile arguments between them. He didn’t need to run interference for Nick, who had always been able to take care of himself.
He tucked his hands into his jacket pockets, wishing he’d remembered to bring gloves. Easter might be right around the corner, but there was still snow on the mountaintops and the air was chilly.
