By the Book

by Mary Kay McComas

  Personally, the few times she’d waited on him, he’d seemed like a gruff but reasonable man. It was his reasoning she would address today, she reminded herself, as she opened the door to the front office.

  It wasn’t the sort of place women frequented. Therefore no concessions were made to aesthetics or cleanliness or order or anything else the female of the species generally contributed to the civilized world. Without mincing words, it was poorly lit, filthy, smelly, and, in general, a dump.

  Stepping gingerly, as if she might step in a pile of testosterone and ruin her shoes, she approached a burly, unshaven gentleman sitting on a rusty stool behind a makeshift counter made of plywood.

  “Ma’am.”

  “Hi.” She cleared her throat of the I-don’t-belong-here-but sound and replaced it with a don’t-give-me-attitude-cuz-I-know-how-it-works tone of voice. “I’d like to speak with Mr. Krane if he isn’t busy.”

  Busy doing what? she wondered. Sweeping the junkyard out back? Rearranging piles of rusty metal? Sorting hubcaps maybe?

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. And then in a booming voice that shook the boards under her feet, he bellowed, “Tom!”

  “Yeah,” a voice boomed back, and the boards vibrated in another direction.

  “Woman here to see you,” he said, with the same amount of air that it would have taken him to say “Someone here to see you.” But no. And he said woman with the same intonation he might have used for the word alien or invader or ... Purple People Eater.

  Now, she wouldn’t have sworn to it, mind you—she wasn’t good at waiting under the best of circumstances—but it seemed to her that no matter what he was doing, he could have come, handled their business, and been gone again, ten times over, in the time it took Tom Krane to make an appearance. It also seemed as if his slowness were deliberate, but she wouldn’t have sworn to it.

  However, he was pleasant enough when he finally arrived.

  “I know you from somewhere,” he said, frowning at her from the doorway behind the burly man on the stool.

  “The bank, Mr. Krane. Quincey First Federal,” she said, in case he patronized more than one bank. She wanted to make this as simple, clear, and to-the-point as possible. She sensed he’d appreciate it. “I’m Ellen Webster. I’ve waited on you several times.”

  “Webster,” he said, obviously recognizing the name.

  “That’s right. I’m here to see you about the money my brother owes you.”

  He was a tall, thin man who despite the summer heat was wearing a plaid flannel shirt over a gray T-shirt with jeans. Physically he didn’t look as if he could crush a beer can, but there was something in the way he stood and angled his head that told her if she believed that, she was sorely mistaken. His eyes were hooded and narrow and keen ... and intimidating when aimed directly at her.

  “I don’t know your brother.”

  She glanced at the burly man who sat on the stool with his arms crossed over his large belly, not moving away to give them privacy or looking to Krane for instructions. He seemed to think he belonged in the conversation. They both did. So she went on.

  “He knows you. And he knows he owes you money. He also knows you’ll hurt him if he doesn’t pay it back.”

  “That’s extortion, ma’am. That’s against the law.” He wasn’t denying anything, he was just stating the facts. “Course, to me, it’s no different than the bank foreclosing on a car or a house or ...” he looked around, “... a business if the loan payments aren’t made. But I don’t make the laws. I just live by ’em.”

  It occurred to her suddenly that the cagey, distrustful air about him might be due to a suspicion that she was wearing a wire or working with the police against him, and she almost laughed. What would he do to Felix if he thought he’d turned him in? Or her for that matter?

  “I know you do,” she said as sincerely as she could, relying on her newfound guilt-free attitude toward lying to get her through and make her sound convincing. “And I appreciate you not going to the authorities about this. Felix owes you a lot of money. He could go to jail for a long time. He ... we both appreciate the time you’ve given him to pay off his debt to you. But the thing is, he has no money. He has no job. Nothing to sell. No savings. And even if we—his family—were willing to help him, we couldn’t come up with that kind of money.”

  Choosing his words carefully, he asked, “If your brother did owe money to someone, you wouldn’t help him? No one in your family would?”

  Did he know what an easy touch her mother was?

  “No one in the family could. Even if they knew about it, they couldn’t,” she said, hoping to inspire trust with her secrecy.

  “Sounds like your brother’s got himself into a real pickle, then, don’t it? Whoever he owes that money to isn’t going to be happy if he doesn’t pay them back, you know.”

  “I do know. And I wouldn’t blame them for being unhappy.” She hesitated. “Anything else I’d blame them for, of course,” she said as she shook her head, a silent plea for her brother’s safety. “That’s why I thought maybe you could give me some advice or make a suggestion as to the best way to work something like this out with someone.” He stared at her in silence. “Now I was thinking of some sort of ... oh, work-related situation. Something where my brother could work off what he owes, say, right here at the junkyard. He gets paid a minimum wage, pays off his debt, so much a week. That sort of thing.”

  He scratched his head through his close-clipped hair. “And why should I be willing to help your brother pay off his debt?”

  Good question.

  “Well, because you’re a good businessman. I’ve always thought this about you. And ...”—how was she going to word this?—“... if my brother’s healthy enough to work and pay off his debt at the same time, then you ... um ... you ...”

  “I’d have his undying gratitude?”

  “That’s right. And everyone would be getting something. You’d be getting a loyal employee. Whoever Felix owes the money to would get paid off. And Felix would be safe and get out of debt.” Somehow that seemed to work out just fine.

  He studied her for a minute that seemed to go on forever. When he finally spoke, his words were calculated.

  “Well now, to be honest with you, I don’t really need any new help around here. I got my brother-in-law here.” The burly man on the stool. “He’s a ball of energy. And your brother’s debts aren’t my problem. But I like you. It’s plain you care for your brother and you got spunk coming here to get him a job. So, I’ll tell you what,” he said, pushing away from the doorjamb, preparing to leave. “You send that brother of yours around here tomorrow evening, about closing time. I’ll show him around the place. He can start working the morning after.”

  I thought I could. I thought I could. I knew I could,

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Krane. You won’t regret this. This was a good, sound business decision. I’ll make sure Felix is here tomorrow,” she said, moving toward the door to leave. Wanting to dance a little jig they would never understand. “Six o’clock sharp. Thank you. Thank you very much.” She glanced away, reaching for the doorknob, and when she looked back, he was gone. Only the unshaven man on the rusty metal stool remained. “Thank you too.”

  Across the dusty unpaved street from Krane’s Krap—Junk, Junk, and More Junk—Jonah sat in his leased sedan with a frown on his face, waiting for her to emerge from the junkyard’s office.

  She’d zoomed past him forty-five minutes earlier as he’d been pulling out of the lot behind the bank on his way to the hospital, about one o’clock. He been so excited to meet the woman who’d been visiting his father, he didn’t want to be late and miss her. So he’d closed the shop an hour earlier than necessary, ignoring the little voice inside him that was telling him he was being foolish and overreacting. He’d honked at Ellen but she hadn’t heard him, her mind clearly on something else—her driving, her destination? He wished he knew.

  He wished he knew everything about her. Not that
he wasn’t enjoying getting to know her a little at time, but ... well, there it was. It was his instinct to discover all there was to know about most anything, and Ellen was a very important something. He’d studied, probed, investigated, collected data on hundreds and hundreds of people, places, and things, none of them nearly as important to him or as interesting to him as Ellen.

  He’d turned onto the street in front of the bank and could still see her several blocks ahead. He’d grinned and given in easily to the impulse to follow her. When she got to wherever she was going, it was his plan to jump out of his car, say hi, and steal the kiss he’d been craving all morning. A little spontaneous romance he thought he’d try his hand at. She was worth it.

  When they’d driven past the turnoff to the hospital, he’d glanced at his watch. Still plenty of time to get that kiss, he’d thought. But when she’d slowed down and pulled into Krane’s Krap, he’d pulled to the side of the dirt road and merely sat there, too baffled to move.

  He’d watched her straighten out her clothes, smooth her hair, then throw her shoulders back as if she needed a little extra courage. She’d approached the shabby building slowly, entered with caution—it wasn’t a place she frequented and she wasn’t comfortable frequenting it now.

  He didn’t like the feeling closing in on his chest like a vice or the grip in the pit of stomach. They were familiar enough to him and they didn’t bode well. He recognized them as early warning signals for trouble and danger—and in this situation pure terror, with Ellen involved.

  He leaned back in his seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel. If it weren’t for the twisting and churning inside him, he’d have driven away, not wanting her to think he was spying on her but ... There was no way he could do that now. He had two choices left. Go insane waiting for her to come out. Or join her inside.

  He looked at his watch again. It was one forty-five. She was about fifty minutes late for work. Stopping at the junkyard was important to her, then, because she was rarely more than five or ten minutes late getting back from lunch. His father’s mystery woman would have to wait. He scanned the vicinity with a practiced eye. The street was quiet; there was no one in sight. He’d give Ellen fifteen minutes to come out of there, or he was going in.

  In the next fourteen minutes he tapped the crystal of his watch three different times to make sure it was working. His hand was poised on the door handle and he was about to renege on the last minute of her grace period when he heard the door squeak open across the street. She came out empty-handed but smiling—even though she hurried over to her car in a fashion that suggested more than just being late for work.

  He started the car and drove up the road a fair distance, then watched in his rearview mirror as her car emerged from the junkyard and turned down the street in the opposite direction. He pulled a U-turn and went back.

  She was safe and unharmed, but he still couldn’t shake the monkey off his back. Something was wrong. Something she hadn’t told him about. He could feel it in his bones. Why hadn’t she told him? Because it was something minor? Because she could handle it alone? Was it sticky and embarrassing? She didn’t know how to tell him? She didn’t trust him? Maybe she didn’t even know she was in trouble?

  An act of God couldn’t have stopped him from pulling into the junkyard lot. He wouldn’t be able to breathe right until he’d assessed the situation himself. Okay, so maybe he was butting in where he might not belong. He’d take his lumps for it later. No problem. He’d still be able to look at himself in the mirror.

  The man on the rusty metal stool didn’t bat an eye during his inane story of being a visitor in town with a license plate collection. The tall skinny guy waved him through, past the makeshift counter and through a huge storage area to a bin and small display of license plates from various states. They talked man-to-man about the heat and where he was from and why he was in town, the man’s interest in Ford pickup trucks and the hazards of tire piles, while he sifted through the plates.

  Three quarters of an hour later he was driving away with a 1958 license plate from Kansas and a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

  He couldn’t imagine why Ellen had gone there in the first place. Or why she’d been so obviously uncomfortable about it. The men inside weren’t overtly suspicious, but seemed to exude trouble the same way they might garlic on their breath. But there was nothing concrete, nothing he could put a finger on. It was all gut feelings and subtle observations.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STEP SEVEN

  Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.

  —Alice Roosevelt Longworth

  Just do it.

  “WELL, WHO IS SHE? What did she say?” she wanted to know when Jonah called as he’d promised to, later in the afternoon. “I’ve been sitting here on pins and needles all afternoon.”

  Actually it felt more like she had ants in her pants than needles in her chair, she was so excited. And not just about Earl Blake’s mystery woman. About everything. It was all coming together perfectly.

  She had Felix’s problem solved. She had Jonah and a negligee in his favorite gray in the black and silver shopping bag at her feet. She had a pay raise coming and a possible short-term promotion in the works. She was a woman in control of her life. She was taking what she wanted from the world. What more could she ask for ... except maybe a marriage proposal and a move to Washington, D.C.? She laughed silently and squirmed in her chair. That was a secret wish that had suddenly popped out of its box, but there it was. It was too late to stuff it back in the box and put it back on the shelf. Impulsively she flipped the latch on the box of another secret wish and included children and then grandchildren to her list.

  All right, so she’d been a little ambivalent about the little green book at first. Who in their right mind wouldn’t have been? But now? Now she was a believer. The advice inside it had worked too often for it to be mere coincidence. With that little book in hand, there was nothing she couldn’t do. She looked out the big bank window. Her future was like the sun, bright and vital—her eyes made contact with Jonah’s—and wonderful.

  “Tell me everything,” she said, speaking once again of the mystery woman Jonah had just met.

  “I will, I promise, but later. There’s just too much to tell you now. Your phone looks like it’s on fire over there.” She didn’t look or sound as if anything untoward had happened to her that afternoon. Maybe his suspicions were unfounded? Maybe he was imagining things earlier?

  She glanced at the lights, flashing and blinking. “Okay. But at least tell me who she is. I have to know.”

  He chuckled. “Denise Gunther is her name. Mr. Gunther’s daughter-in-law. The soldier’s wife.”

  “You’re kidding.” She laughed. “Oh, you know what? I’ll bet she was in the phone book all along.”

  He groaned. “I know. I thought the same thing afterward and felt really stupid. I didn’t even think about looking up his relatives.” There was a short pause. “Maybe I didn’t think I’d care about what they might know about him. My father, I mean.”

  He had his head lowered in the window across the street; she couldn’t see his face.

  “You care now, Jonah. That’s what counts.”

  His head came up slowly. He looked back at her for several long seconds, then admitted, “I do care now. About a lot of things.”

  She smiled and he smiled back. She squinted. It was half an I-knew-you’d-understand and half a thank-you smile. It coated her heart with warm satisfaction.

  “I know you do,” she said. “I think you always have.”

  There was a thoughtful silence before he spoke again.

  “You think so, huh?” he said in a light teasing tone, as he blinked away an absurd urge to shed water from his eyes. “What do you think I’m feeling right now?”

  She knew this smile instantly, and she laughed. “That’s easy. The same thing I’m feeling right now.”

  His chuckle sent chills up her spine. “In t
hat case, hang on to that feeling. We’ll be picking this conversation up again later. Oh. That reminds me. Would you mind eating out tonight, instead of at the house? I found an interesting looking seafood place this afternoon, and I feel like celebrating.”

  “I do too.”

  Ellen rode her perfect-day buzz well into the afternoon. But by the time she left work and the sun was hanging low in the sky, the intense elation had metamorphosed to a deep contentment, one of those too rare times of profound gratitude simply to be alive. She moved slowly, sucking in the scents of summer, tuned in to the aerial songs of the larks, and the grass growing under her feet.

  “Can we help you with anything, dear?” came Mrs. Phipps’s weak but still shrill voice from the screened porch that served as the back entrance to their apartment house. “We’ve been watching for you.”

  She sighed happily. “No, Mrs. Phipps, I don’t need any help today,” she said, climbing the wooden stairs and stepping over Bubba, seated smack in the middle of the doorway. Her benevolence swelled to include the old woman and the cat. It was nice to be watched for, nice being cared about, good to have friends. “How are you feeling today?”

  “We’re fine, dear. We were just thinking of having some tea, a fine way to end a busy day and begin a quiet evening, we think.”

  She smiled. A few solid, predictable events in your life were nice too. She reached out and patted her shoulder fondly, then turned to go up the stairs to her apartment.

  “Enjoy your tea, Mrs. Phipps.”

  “But, Ellen ... we ... we were hoping you would join us. Tea is for two.”

  “No,” she said kindly. No explanations needed. No excuses required. “Not tonight.”

  She thought about adding “Thanks anyway” or “Maybe some other time,” but the longer she stood there talking, the more opportunities Mrs. Phipps would have to bring up her shopping list or an errand she wanted run—and those days were over. Well, for the most part anyway. She wasn’t thinking of never helping, or never shopping for her, or never having tea with her again. She wasn’t cruel, she just wasn’t so very, very nice anymore.