Chance of a Lifetime (8 page)

“Well,” Alex said with a shrug, “there’s always the jail. We could rent you a room.”

“Maybe I could just double my locks. The apartment will have to do.”

The door bumped suddenly, and a round ball of fake green fur waddled into the room. Nearing her sixties, she’d reached that “who cares” stage about everything in her life from her dress to her manners.

Martha Q Patterson made no pretense that she hadn’t been listening to every word they’d said. “I’ve got your problem solved, Sheriff,” she said in a voice raspy from years of smoking. “My lawyer can stay at my place. Winter’s Inn Bed-and-Breakfast is within walking distance to his work and I’ve got a first-rate security system, so he’ll be safe.”

“Thanks for the offer, Mrs. Patterson, but I can’t afford…” Rick knew the only reason Martha Q thought he was her lawyer was simply because she took him to lunch once a month. Martha Q didn’t need a lawyer, but she did very much want company.

“I’m not giving it to you.” She straightened. “I’m asking if you’d consider watching over the place for me. I’ve decided to go to Dallas for a little work on Saturday, and Mrs. Biggs,
my cook, says she won’t stay in the house alone because those grandsons of hers have convinced her that the place is haunted. I’ve no guests coming in for the next few weeks. By then you”—she pointed at Alex—“should be able to find out who’s trying to kill my lawyer.”

She stared at Rick. “I’ve got a yard man, a cook, and a housekeeper, and you can stay in a first-floor bedroom, but I’m not paying but a hundred a day, so don’t think about charging those lawyer rates on me. One hundred a day to run the place plus room and board seems fair.” She raised one eyebrow and looked him up and down. “From the looks of you, you’re not running at full speed so maybe I should only pay seventy-five a day.”

Rick had always thought Martha Q crazy, but in her own way she was kind. She was also right to have someone watch the old place while she was in Dallas. He figured he could either become a housesitter for a few weeks or defend the bums who’d try to break into Winter’s Inn Bed-and-Breakfast when they heard she was gone.

“Any other duties? This sounds almost too easy.”

She thought for a moment, then added, “If you’re up to it, I’d like you to try and make the writers’ group meeting at the library. Way I figure, I’ll only miss one, maybe two, sessions while I’m in Dallas. If you’ll take notes, I won’t get behind.”

“I’d be happy to do that.” Sitting in on the writers’ group might bring him some new clients. If they were anything like the groups he sat in during college, they were mostly women. “You’ve got yourself a deal. Go ahead with your plans.” Rick smiled, thinking Martha Q could use a lot more work than a face-lift. Her entire body seemed to be moving south. “Your business will be in good hands.” He offered his scraped hand. “Thanks for the offer.”

“Don’t thank me until the job is over. Running a B&B, even an empty one, is not easy. I’ll expect you to let the cat in and out. Which is a constant problem. You’ll have to wake the housekeeper up and tell her to go home every afternoon, and my house is a hundred years old, so
something is constantly breaking, leaking, stopping up, or cracking. I’ll leave numbers of who to call when problems come up and they’ll know to bill me.” She took his hand carefully. “I’ll expect you tomorrow. Your room will be ready.”

Without another word, she waddled out.

“I don’t know about this,” Hank whispered just in case she’d stopped on the other side of the door to listen.

“What could go wrong?” Rick answered. “I’ll watch over her house, have a security system, be able to walk to work, and have Mrs. Biggs to cook me breakfast. This deal was almost worth the fall.”

Hank frowned. “On the downside, you’re in an old house and you’re barely mobile. Mrs. Biggs won’t be any help if trouble comes, and the place is haunted, according to the bookstore owner downtown.”

Rick grinned. “I’ll be fine. Look at the bright side, all I have to do is call and Alex or one of her deputies can be at the bed-and-breakfast door in five minutes.”

M
ONDAY

E
MILY TOMLINSON WALKED INTO THE NURSING HOME FEELING
like she was doing something wrong. Tannon asking her to come visit his mother was one thing, but Emily just deciding to go was another. Before Saturday night, she’d said nothing to the woman in more than ten years. That didn’t exactly make her a close friend, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the visit was something she should do.

Maybe now was the time to start the friendship over. Monday was her only early day off and three o’clock seemed like a good time to pay a visit. She knew deep down she wasn’t there to visit Paulette Parker so much as to visit the memory of her mother.

With all her family gone, Emily had no one who could answer her questions. Paulette Parker might be half out of her mind, but she was the only person who would know what her mother had truly been like. Emily had her childhood
memories, but they were scattered and disconnected like random toys tucked away in an attic box.

She remembered summer mornings in the garden working beside her parents. Her mother’s easy laugh. Her father’s gentle smile. Late-night movies with her parents cuddling. Shopping at farmers’ markets. Vacations to historic sites. Her mother was always there, always dear in those growing-up years. Emily felt like she knew her mother, but she didn’t know Shelley Tomlinson, the girl, the young woman, the dreamer.

She took a deep breath and pushed Paulette’s door open hoping to see one more glimpse today of the way her mother had once been.

The thin woman sat in a wheelchair by the window staring out at nothing but a garden wall. Someone had dressed her, with little care, in a plain cotton blouse and dull brown pants. Her collar was turned up on one end and one of her socks caught the leg of her pants. The Paulette that Emily remembered would never have looked so unkempt. She dressed in colorful outfits to garden, and everything about her matched.

“Morning, Mrs. Parker, are you feeling up for a visitor?”

Paulette turned toward her, and for a few seconds her eyes were dull, unseeing, but then she smiled. “You do look like your mother, child. I see her kind brown eyes in your gaze.”

Emily pulled up a chair close enough to almost touch knees with the older woman. “I’ve heard people say that, but I don’t see it.” She put her hand over Paulette’s wrinkled fingers. “Is it all right if I’m here? I don’t want to bother you while you’re resting.”

“It’s fine. I’ve had my lunch and my nap. Now it’s sit-up time until supper. My days seem to move around meals and bowel movements. I think I’ve figured out why people die in places like this…boredom. I was thinking about planning my escape, but now that you’re here, I think I’ll stay until dinner.”

Emily smiled. Paulette had always been one of those
rare people who said the unexpected, only now she couldn’t tell if Tannon’s mother were kidding or being deadly serious. She decided to play along. “I’ll smuggle in a map of the grounds for you, if you like. With all the construction, I had to walk around a pile of lumber and a mountain of dirt. I had to drop leftover French fries so I’d be able to find my way back to the lot where I parked.”

Paulette laughed. “You’re a dear. That’s just what your mother would have done. People always wondered why we were friends, me so outgoing and her so quiet and shy, but they didn’t see the real her. She was always whispering funny things in my ear. I used to tell her I lived big on the outside and she lived big on the inside.”

“You two were friends,” Emily agreed, remembering pictures of them standing side by side since they’d been in grade school.

“More than that. We accepted each other just the way we were. I remember back when we were young, Shelley’s mother was always badgering her to take bigger bites out of life, be braver, take a risk now and then. Shelley hated that. She said once that she was a nibbler at life’s banquet and liked it that way.”

“You knew my grandmother?”

“Of course. She used to say she wished she had me for a daughter and not Shelley, but I didn’t want her for a mother any more than Shelley did most days. Your momma was a good momma, but she sure didn’t learn it from any example.”

Emily asked questions about her grandparents. Paulette filled in where she could, but she said she rarely went over to Shelley’s house, and when she married so young her parents got so mad they moved up north somewhere. “They wouldn’t even come to your mother’s wedding, so I told her I’d be her mom for the day. I even had an usher walk me in and seat me in the first row.”

Emily smiled realizing she’d got that little bit of information she’d hoped for. One glance of her mother’s life. “I never knew they didn’t make the wedding. My grandparents would
have changed their minds if they’d seen how happy my parents were. They were sweethearts.”

Paulette agreed and filled in any details she could.

Shelley’s mother died of cancer when Emily was a baby. Shelley wasn’t able to make it to the funeral, but she heard her father married three months later. As far as Paulette knew, he never made any effort to contact his only daughter or anyone else in Harmony.

“He’s dead by now,” Paulette said, without any caring in her tone. “No loss. He was pretty much invisible even when we were kids. Never came to any of your mother’s school events. If I remember right, he sold farm equipment and was gone a lot.”

Emily listened. In her mind, when she’d been a child, she’d imagined grandparents who loved her dearly living far away, but she knew it was only a dream. No cards, no presents, not even phone calls. She could never get her mother to talk about them. Apparently they hadn’t been bad parents or good parents—they’d simply faded away.

A nurse stopped in and seemed delighted to see a visitor in the room. “If you’d like, you can wheel her through the main hallway and around to the north door. The grounds outside haven’t been torn up there. It’s not so windy right now, though the temperature seems to be dropping. This may be the last warm afternoon we have for a while. I hear a cold front is heading our way.”

Emily stood. “Are you up for a stroll, Mrs. Parker?”

“Of course. I need to learn where the hole in the fence is.”

The nurse tucked a blanket around her while Emily straightened her white blouse and wrapped her own silk scarf around Paulette’s neck to add a touch of class.

“Thank you, dear,” Paulette said. “You’re very kind. My son brought a few clothes, but I’m afraid he’s never heard of the word ‘accessory.’”

They circled the grounds twice talking mostly of what should be done with the flower beds this time of year and how gray the day seemed. When they came back inside,
Emily noticed a nice sitting area off the main entrance and asked if they could take tea in the empty room.

One of the staff nodded. “I think Mrs. Parker might like that. I’ll fix it up for you.”

By the time they were settled into the colorful room, tea on a tray was delivered. The cups and saucers might have been thick and white, but a colorful napkin covered the brown cafeteria tray. They had hot water in silver cream pitchers and several tea bags along with little cookies that resembled fat goldfish.

Emily couldn’t stop smiling. From the time she’d been three or four, Mrs. Parker had kept a tea set just for her in the Parkers’ formal living room. While her mother and Paulette talked, Emily would have tea with her dolls. When she’d finished, she’d run off searching through the house for Tannon. He’d always offer to play a game with her or watch TV, but he never joined her for tea and it never occurred to her to ask why.

“This is lovely,” Paulette said as she puffed up her scarf. “The tea and the visit are also lovely, dear. I hope you’ll come again.”

“I’m always off on Monday afternoons. We could make it a regular date until you go home.”

“That would be perfect. I’ll have Tannon pick up proper tea cookies. These will never do, but I don’t want to hurt the staff’s feelings. They try so hard to make me happy, you know.”

Rain tapping on the window reminded Emily that it was getting late. “I’ll see you to your room before I go. I’d better be getting home.”

The storm had gotten worse by the time Paulette settled back in her bed. She looked frightened when thunder rattled the windows. “I’ve always hated storms since the wreck. It was raining that night your parents died, you know. I remember looking up front and seeing that truck coming at us out of the storm like a devil running from hell straight toward us.”

Emily sat on the side of the bed and held Paulette’s hand. Paulette’s big eyes were almost childlike in the growing shadows as she told Emily of that night. She spoke of how happy the four of them had been to be traveling together and how they’d laughed and talked all at once.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Parker?” Emily whispered when Paulette finally fell silent.

“Stay with me a little longer, will you, dear? Just till the storm passes.”

“Of course.” Emily wasn’t sure if she was truly needed or just being manipulated. She remembered how Paulette always seemed to get her way. Once, her mother had said that if the end of the world came and Paulette Parker wasn’t ready, the Lord would just have to postpone his plans.