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The sentence trailed off as he waited for Red to supply his name.
Red thought a minute, then decided it didn’t matter. Allison wouldn’t connect his name with Victor Wigham.
“Malone. Redmond Malone.”
The old man nodded. “Mr. Malone. Delighted to meet you. You’re not from Windsor Beach, I take it?”
Red shook his head. “San Francisco.”
“Oh, yes. Lovely city.” Bill extended the money again. “So, as I was saying. You can take this as a down payment, and I will write you a check for another five thousand to cover the rest.”
“That’s very generous, Mr. Longmire, but I’m afraid—”
“Hey, give the guy a break, why don’t you?” Two burly men separated from the crowd and flanked Allison, one at each shoulder as if they were hired bodyguards. One spoke through a tight jaw. “He said he’d pay for the damages. Why do you gotta bring in the police?”
Another murmur of agreement moved through the crowd, which clearly had only one mind among them. They inched forward, closing ranks. For a minute, Red felt like the hapless stranger in a horror film who stumbles into Looneyville and spends the rest of the movie running from its spooky townsfolk.
Or…maybe he was in the middle of a very strange dream. A dream—yeah, that would be nice. Maybe he wasn’t really standing here at all, negotiating with this old man, who was probably insane. Maybe Victor wasn’t really dead. Maybe there was no Allison York, no baby, no danger to Victor’s grieving family.
“Mr. Malone?” Allison turned her eyes toward him, wordlessly asking for his help. More crazy dream material. Those big bedroom eyes didn’t begin to match that girl-next-door face. They were gorgeous—round, dewy, lash-fringed. A clear dark honey-brown that looked strangely bottomless.
He almost found himself saying okay. Okay, we’ll do this your way.
But that would make him crazier than the old man.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He lifted his phone again, ignoring her disappointed frown, as well as the army of Windsor Beach zombies lined up behind her. “I’m afraid I’m still going to have to call the police.”
BY THAT AFTERNOON, the story had grown even better in the retelling.
Red was pretty good with impersonations, and by the time he’d finished describing the scene to his older brother Colby, both men were laughing. Red could even picture the accordion-folded rear end on his poor Mercedes without cringing.
The best part? The Windsor Beach policeman everyone had been so afraid to call turned out to be Bill Longmire’s pimple-faced great-nephew Larry, who was clearly terrified of the old man. Equally clearly, the kid also had a crush on Allison York and would have flushed his own badge down the toilet if she’d asked him to. For a minute there, Red thought he might end up getting a ticket for upsetting her.
“Hell, Red, this town sounds nuts.” Colby glanced around the small store space they’d been inspecting. “Are you sure we want to open a Diamante here?”
Red shrugged. “Crazy people eat pizza, too, don’t they?”
This trip to Windsor Beach was doing double duty. He’d set aside the morning to get a glimpse of Allison York, and now he could devote the afternoon to checking out the single storefront that had become available. Scouting new locations for Diamante take-out stores was Red’s piece of the family business, and he’d had his eye on swanky, touristy Windsor Beach for months.
He’d been waiting to find the right spot. He thought this might be it. The strip mall was fully occupied—this vacancy was rare. He’d only found out about it because he had a friend who had a friend. The building had easy access, ample parking and about a thousand bored, hungry rich people within a three-mile radius.
“And the price is right,” he said, opening the door to the storage closet. He recoiled as a cloud of vanilla-scented air wafted over him. The Bath Goddess had moved out of the space yesterday. “Damn, we’ll have to do something about the stink, though.”
Colby, who was the company lawyer and therefore wouldn’t get really interested until he got his hands on the lease, had already wandered over to the windows, where sunset-pink was seeping into the western sky.
“Stink?” He tossed a grin over his shoulder. “Oh. I thought that was you.”
Red ignored him. As the youngest of three brothers, he was used to being insulted. He poked around some more, though he’d already decided to take the store. He’d put out an SOS to Colby because, after the assault on the Mercedes, he needed a ride home. Not because he needed permission to rent this place.
It had taken him a while to find out where he fit into Diamante, but he had finally carved out his own niche. Nana Lina had long since taken the training wheels off, allowing him to make these acquisition decisions more or less alone. Turned out he had great instincts about real estate.
And he owed it all to his mentor. Victor Wigham.
Which brought him full circle to Allison York. Irritably he kicked a small net full of rose petals into the corner that was functioning as a trash can. What was he supposed to do now? What on earth was he supposed to do about Allison, the waitress with freckled cheeks, a snub nose, and Scheherazade eyes?
He’d been so sure that, once he met her, he’d be able to size her up easily. He assumed he could calculate what it would take to buy her silence, just as he could look at a property and sense what he would have to pay to acquire it, almost to the dollar.
But this situation hadn’t worked that way. Instead of being a simple, money-grubbing “mistress” type, she’d turned out to be a stew of contradictions. Part kid, part sorceress. She was an unwed mother, a waitress living on tips who needed a new pair of shoes. But somehow he could sense she was also a force to be reckoned with. She could coldheartedly betray Victor’s wife and kids, but she was a marshmallow for an eighty-year-old nut job.
She didn’t break down into logical, predictable elements. And yet somehow he had to fix this. What a mess.
“You know—” He turned and saw Colby watching him with a worried big-brother expression in his eyes. Red straightened, scowling. “What?”
“Don’t pretend with me,” Colby said. “I know that look.”
“What look?”
“The holy shit look. You’re thinking about Allison York. You’re regretting it already, aren’t you?”
For a minute, Red wanted to deny it. Right from the start, Colby had told him he was a fool for agreeing to “take care of” Allison. “God, Red,” he’d said. “If Victor had asked you to rope-swing naked into a snake pit, would you have promised to do that, too?”
But Red put aside his instinctive defensiveness. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was thirty-two years old, and, though Colby might occasionally revert to using a paternal tone, the three years between them hadn’t really mattered for a long time.
Besides, Colby might rib him, but ultimately he had Red’s back, no matter what. And, as a lawyer, he might have some good advice. Red decided to come clean. He wiped his hands on a piece of sparkling tissue paper left over from some Bath Goddess purchase, then joined Colby at the window.
“Yeah, I am. Well, not regretting it, exactly. Just not sure what to do next.”
“Can’t you do what you said you would do? Present the deal, and hope she takes it?”
Red took a deep breath, though it made him inhale so much potpourri he nearly choked. “It’s not that simple. If it was, Victor would’ve sent Lewis.”
“He should have.”
“Yeah, maybe, but you know Lewis is bullheaded. No subtlety. I’ve noticed lawyers tend to be like that.”
Colby couldn’t have missed the joke, but he didn’t allow himself to be diverted. “We’re bullheaded because we know how tricky the law is. I’ve warned you about this before, but it’s worth repeating. Private settlement agreements with confidentiality provisions are not only tricky…they’re begging for trouble. You get even a hint of coercion, exploitation, improper influence—”
“There’s no improper influence, damn it.” Red felt his pulse quicken. “He simply wants to give her some money to help with the baby. In return, he wants her to promise she won’t drive to Russian Hill and toss a bomb into what’s left of his family. If she says no, she says no. No one’s going to threaten to break her knees.”
Colby shrugged. He wasn’t the nagging type. He’d said his piece—said it twice, in fact, which was rare enough—and Red knew that he would back off now.
“So, anyhow, Victor didn’t think Lewis could handle it. That means she’s prickly?” Colby’s voice was carefully neutral. “She needs to be charmed, and he thought that, as a Malone, you could charm her?”
Red turned away. The sunset was a hell of a lot easier to look at right now than Colby’s face. “Charm? I don’t know. Obviously he doesn’t mean I should order roses and candlelit dinners. I think he hoped I could…you know…finesse the presentation. The last thing Victor needs is to antagonize her.”
“Well, I guess today put paid to that. You got her favorite old geezer arrested. I assume you’ll be handing this off to Lewis now after all?”
Red shook his head. “Victor doesn’t want Lewis involved.”
An awkward silence hung between them. It seemed to stretch, though it probably wasn’t more than a few seconds.
“Red.” Colby’s voice dipped low. “You know you keep talking about Victor in the present tense.”
Present tense. Of course. As opposed to past tense. Dead tense.
For a horrible second, Red wasn’t sure he could answer. His throat closed up, as hot and painful as if he’d swallowed broken glass.
He clenched his jaw until it burned. He hadn’t cried since he was a kid, not even when he sat in Victor’s shadowed bedroom and watched him drift between the sweating clarity of pain and the terrifying morphine hallucinations.
But how the hell could he accept the fact that Victor was dead? The man had been only fifty-two, at the top of his career. So completely alive.
Victor was the closest thing to a father Red had ever known. He’d literally saved Red’s life fifteen years ago, when he happened to be in the right part of the Pacific to drag a stupid, unconscious teenager and his surfboard to safety. But he’d also saved Red’s life again, metaphorically, five years later, when he showed him the way to a career.
Victor’s wife, Marianne, was too young to be a mother figure, but she was a good and loyal friend. And, by God, Red would do whatever was necessary to protect her.
Whether Colby approved or not.
Red might not have gotten off on the right foot with Allison York today. But today had been merely the first skirmish in a much longer campaign. Colby was right. Victor had obviously picked him for this mission because of the Malone charm. That charm might be diluted a bit, sifting its way down to him, the youngest brother. But surely he’d inherited at least enough to get the job done.
The sun had almost dipped down to the horizon, and the buildings across the street lurked in deep shadow. The electricity was still on here in the empty shop, but the fixtures had been removed, and the bare-bulb glare was depressing.
They should be getting home. The brothers always went to Nana Lina’s Belvedere Cove waterfront house for dinner on Fridays, and if they didn’t hurry they’d be late. It was an hour back to San Francisco, though luckily on a Friday afternoon most of the traffic would be headed into Windsor Beach, not away from it.
“Shall we hit the road?” Colby put his hand in his pocket and extracted his keys.
Red shook his head, his decision suddenly made.
“You go,” he said. “I think I’ll get a rental car and stay here a couple of days.”
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS 3:00 A.M., and Allison had walked at least a hundred miles. She must have worn a groove in the peach-and-green braided rug that covered the small living room. When she moved out, she’d probably have to pay her landlord a fortune to fix it.
Not that she had any hope of moving out anytime soon.
With only a full moon and the distant rays of the corner streetlight to guide her, she kept circling, humming an old Beatles song while she walked. A hundred and one. Her eyes drooped and her arms ached. So few hours between now and 8:00 a.m., when she’d have to meet the real-estate agent.
But still Eddie wouldn’t go back to sleep.
With a suddenness that startled both of them, Eddie sneezed that little snicking sound of his. It was hardly a noise at all, but it was enough to jolt him awake. He widened his eyes, as if someone had insulted him. Then he arched his back, straining away from her, and let loose a furious wail.
“Shh, shh, honey, hush.” She bounced him softly, holding the back of his head in her palm. He sneezed a second time, and she listened for wheezing in his lungs. If he was getting pneumonia again…
Nothing. The tension in her chest eased. So far, so good.
“Hey. Keep it down, why don’t you, kid? People are trying to sleep in here.”
Allison looked up to see Jimbo Stipple, her roommate, housekeeper, babysitter and best friend, standing in the hallway. He never wore a shirt to bed, and his sweatpants had so many holes in them he was barely decent. But Jimbo had lived on a navy sub for the better part of four years, and he wasn’t exactly the self-conscious type.
“Do you know what time it is?” He tried to sound annoyed, but his yawn got in the way. He leaned toward the kitchen to see the stove’s digital clock. “Oh. Shit. It’s three in the morning.”
Allison raised her eyebrows. They’d had a deal. As soon as the baby was born, Jimbo had to stop cursing.
“What?” He twisted his arm over his shoulder to scratch at the Rubik’s Cube tattoo on his back. “Come on. The kid’s only three months old. He doesn’t know that s-h-i-t is a cuss word. He thinks it’s an entertainment choice.”
Allison managed not to laugh. Life with Jimbo had its challenges, but it was never boring.
“Sorry,” she said. “His nose is stuffed up again. He can’t settle.”
Jimbo frowned. “Does he have a fever?” He crossed the room in three strides and put his hand gently on Eddie’s forehead. Against the flawless powder-pink of the baby skin, it was almost a shock to see the knuckles tattooed with black block letters.
B-A-C-K, this hand said. The tattoos on the other hand completed the threat. O-F-F-!
He let his fingers absorb the warmth for about three seconds. Then his features relaxed. “He feels okay.” He bent toward Eddie’s red, fussy face. “Don’t scare me like that, buddy.”
Eddie snuffled. Then, as he always did when he stared into Jimbo’s face, he broke out in a grin. He reached out to grab a fistful of the man’s spiky blond hair.
“Ouch!” Jimbo complained in a cartoon voice. All drama, designed to delight Eddie, which it did. The baby giggled and pulled even harder, his discomfort forgotten for the moment.
A rush of warmth moved through Allison. Jimbo was such a good, good man. She was so lucky to have him in her life. Maybe Eddie’s biological father had been a lying, cheating bastard who wasn’t interested in helping walk the floor at night, but thanks to Jimbo she wasn’t in this alone.
“How about I take him, and you get back to bed?” Jimbo glanced at her, his head cocked at a forty-five-degree angle so that Eddie could hold on. “You’ve got the closing with the agent at the crack of dawn, right?”
“Close enough. Eight.”
Jimbo groaned. “Any chance you could reschedule?”
“No way.” She shook her head emphatically. “I’ve waited too long for this day.”
He nodded. She didn’t have to say any more. He’d known her since she was four, lived with her since she was six. He was as close to a brother as anyone could ever be without sharing DNA. In her senior year of high school, he’d fixed her favorite tomato bisque soup while she wept over a cheating boyfriend. Five years later, he’d fixed up another big pot the day she signed her divorce papers and swore off men forever.
When her father died, even Jimbo’s food couldn’t help. But his tattooed hand had held on tight and somehow kept her from being swept away on a river of grief.
So he knew how much owning her own restaurant would mean to her—the security, the independence, the focus. The dream that had already been deferred three times. Almost ten years of disappointment could come to an end tomorrow.
As long as she didn’t sleep through the appointment.
He touched the side of her face. “Okay. Then let me wrestle with the little demon here, and you get some sleep.”
So tempting. But guilt nipped at her. Jimbo was tired, too. Eddie was her responsibility. But when Jimbo held out his hands, Eddie practically leaped out of her arms trying to get to his big, silly friend.
Laughing, she relinquished him. Her arms burned from the sudden release. “If he starts to wheeze—”
“He won’t.” Jimbo propped Eddie against his shoulder with the practiced skill of a true parent. He put his hand against Allison’s back and steered her toward the hall. “Nobody wheezes on my watch.”
She smiled. The truth was, if Eddie had trouble breathing, Jimbo would give the air out of his own lungs, literally, to help him. The forty-year-old chef/babysitter spoke three languages and quoted Greek playwrights like pop songs. He knew CPR and first aid, the doctor’s number, and most of the Merck Manual by heart. He could have been a surgeon, a stockbroker, a CEO—anything he wanted.
But by some miracle he wanted to be her guardian angel. And Eddie’s.
