"I told Owen you probably got tied up," Shari said. "We tried to call you on your cell, but all we got was voice mail."
Glancing down at her fingers, Joanna toyed with a broken nail and thought, This is ridiculous. I’m a nail technician.
Joanna was reluctant to reveal last night's whereabouts and fuel a rumor bomb that might have already exploded. "I didn't have my cell with me. Was Owen mad?"
"A little. He ate and left. Said he was going over to the bars at the state line."
Joanna's mouth flatlined, but she wasn't surprised. Many Hatlow citizens, including Joanna herself, sometimes sought to interrupt the sameness of small-town life in the bars and nightclubs at the New Mexico state line. Not even a beer could be bought legally in Wacker County.
Shari chortled. "He said he wanted to go where he could find a woman who was more interested in him than in a bunch of damn chickens."
That remark brought a scowl to Joanna's mouth. Everyone in Hatlow, including all of her friends, thought her poultry-and-egg venture was a dive off a tall cliff. And lately, she had to admit, she had entertained similar thoughts herself.
"It's just as well,” she said. “One thing I do not need is a newly divorced guy crying on my shoulder about his ex-wife and three kids. Besides, Shari, he probably spends all his money on child support."
"Yeah, yeah. At least he can afford the price of supper. So where were you?"
Joanna recognized the determination in her friend's voice. "I suppose you've already heard about Lane Cherry's wreck. I drove Clova to the hospital in Lubbock."
"My God, Joanna. That must've taken all night. I did hear something about him having a wreck. How bad was he hurt?"
Joanna didn't even ask how Shari had heard. Gossip in Hatlow seemed to move through the ether from out of nowhere. "Pretty bad. Broken bones. Internal injuries. He's out of commission for a good long while."
"Uh-oh. That'll upset Megan Richardson. She's sleeping with him, you know. She's been telling everybody in town what a hot lay he is." Shari giggled. "She says he's hung like a bull. I hope, for her sake, that part of him wasn't damaged."
Joanna's shoulders sagged as she stared at a cheap framed print of a wolf face on her wall. When it came to relationships between men and women, Shari's first thought always was of sex. Probably why she had given birth to four kids. As a girl growing up, Joanna's source of sex education might have been her big sister, but as an adult, it had been and continued to be Shari Huddleston. "Shari, forgodsakes. He could have died. He could still die. He's in ICU."
"I'm just repeating what Megan said."
"Well, I don't know anything about his bedroom prowess, but if that's all Megan's interested in, she might have to go elsewhere. If Lane makes it through this, I imagine he might not be providing stud service for the rest of the year."
The digital clock on Joanna's nightstand whirred and clicked past one o'clock. "I’ve got to get going, Shari. I've got to get out to Clova's and check on my hens and gather my eggs."
She pictured Shari rolling her eyes.
"Did he run into another car or what?" Shari asked, persistent in her quest to learn more details.
"Rolled his pickup. Hit a power pole. Or vice versa."
"Where at?"
"On the Lovington highway, just this side of the state line."
"Good God. How weird is that? There aren't that many power poles along that highway."
"I know. I guess one just happened to be standing in the right place."
"I'll bet he was partying at those joints at the state line. It's a wonder he didn't run into Owen Luck. Was he drunk?"
Joanna almost said, Hell, yes, he was drunk, but then she remembered that Shari worked for the insurance agency that most likely carried Lane's auto insurance policy, if he had one. She suddenly didn't want to be disseminating information to Lane’s insurance agent. "I don't know," she lied. "He was already in surgery when Clova and I got there."
"I hope Clova's okay. That boy's given her a lot of grief."
"He's not a boy. And that's the disgusting part. But, yeah, Clova's okay. She's used to getting bad news about Lane."
"Bless her heart. Now would be a good time for her other son to come home and help her. It's a crying shame to have two grown sons and neither one of them does a damn thing for her. If my boys grow up to treat me like that, I'll just kill 'em."
"Shari, I've got to get going," Joanna said.
"Wait a minute. Do you want Jay to fix up another date with Owen?"
To Joanna's annoyance, Shari and Jay constantly searched for "a man for Joanna."
"No, Shari. I'm not interested."
"Joanna, listen to yourself. I swear to God, you're gonna die an old maid."
"Shari. I've got to go."
After she hung up, Joanna called the beauty salon and told her mom she had returned to the land of the living and that she would be in as soon as she tended the hens.
"You don't have to go out there," Mom said. "I got your message 'bout you bein' up all night. Alicia come in and I sent her out. She didn't get all the eggs, but she filled up the feeders and changed the drinkin' water."
Thank God. Alicia Garza was Joanna's conscientious seventeen-year-old employee who helped her do almost everything. She worked for Joanna's Salon & Supplies part-time and was one of the few people who didn't make fun of Joanna’s organic egg business. Alicia was so fascinated by the business and the hens, Joanna let her choose names for the new chicks. She didn't have to worry about the teenager doing a poor job.
Joanna showered and shampooed, then dried her hair and dressed in a T-shirt, a pair of Cruel Girl jeans and cowboy boots, her attire for every occasion these days. A few dresses hung in her closet, but she couldn't remember the last time she had worn one. She brushed on a scant layer of makeup, then spritzed herself with something that smelled like roses. Since she sold cosmetics and fragrances at the beauty supply store, she tried to always wear her products. The mirrored oval tray that sat on her bathroom counter held so many bottles of various colognes and perfumes vendor reps had left as samples. She didn't even concern herself with the brand or name. She just picked one and sprayed it.
She moved on into the kitchen. The sight of her purse on the dining table brought thoughts of Clova's oldest son back to her. At the hospital, while she still remembered Dalton Parker’s phone number, she had gone into the ladies’ room before starting the trip back to Hatlow and had written it on a grocery store receipt she found in her purse.
She chewed on her lower lip, wishing Clova hadn't asked her not to call Dalton. The compulsion to do it anyway was almost overwhelming. The woman needed help from somewhere.
You're butting in, her sister would tell her. But was Lanita going to come to Hatlow, go out to the Parker ranch and help Clova do chores? No.
Stickin' your nose in other people's business gets you in a lotta trouble. Her mom had said those words to her just last week. Was Mom going out to the Parker ranch to help Clova? No.
Still undecided, Joanna steered her thoughts to something she could decide on: food. She walked over to the refrigerator and peered into it, saw poor pickings—sliced ham with an expired date on the package, sliced processed cheese and stale bread. No telling how long the bread had been there, but it appeared to be free of mold. She smoothed mayonnaise on a slice, added a squirt of mustard and folded it over some ham and cheese. It's fine, she told herself as she filled a glass with ice cubes and Diet Pepsi.
She carried her lunch to the dining table and sat down. The purse that held the California phone number sat there staring back at her like a dare. What would she say to a son who hadn't returned to visit his mother more than a dozen times in twenty years? Without sounding like a hysterical lunatic, how could she convey to him the seriousness of his brother's condition and the gravity of his mother's dilemma?
Through all of her dithering over the phone call, Clova's state of mind, Lane's condition and a million other niggling little worries, the
bottom line kept pushing its way toward the forefront of her thoughts. Joanna hadn't wanted to acknowledge it, even to herself, because she hadn't wanted to seem callous. But she couldn't forget that her two hundred hens lived at the Parker ranch and she had mortgaged the very roof over her head to pay for her free-range egg business. Didn't that fact alone make her interest in what happened to Clova, Lane and the Parker ranch extend beyond caring about them as friends?
She easily convinced herself that it did. On a note of determination, she left her seat and picked up the yellow pad she kept beside her landline phone and carried it back to the table. While she ate, she made a few notes—"talking points," the sophisticated businesspeople who knew what they were doing called them.
Since Clova had told her Dalton traveled a lot, Joanna was unsure he would even be at home. She decided to abandon talking points and wrote out the voice mail message she would read if necessary.
She finished her sandwich, then dug her cell phone and the grocery receipt from her purse and smoothed out the wrinkles. The decision to butt in made, she summoned her nerve and keyed in the California number. Sure enough, she got voice mail. She left her rehearsed message and her business number, but the machine cut her off before she could leave her phone numbers.
* * *
Dalton Parker had no sooner killed his truck engine in his garage and scooted out when Candace Carlisle handed him a note. Uh-oh. She never came into the garage except to get into her car.
"A woman from Texas left a personal message on voice mail," Candace said. “She said she’s a friend of your mother’s.”
A pulse jumped in Dalton's stomach. "Shit," he mumbled under his breath. "Okay, thanks."
He stepped back to his truck bed and lifted out a heavy cardboard box filled with cans of paint and supplies he had just bought at Home Depot. He intended to clean and repaint his office and his studio. He carried the box over and thunked it onto the wooden workbench he had built on one side of the garage.
"Who is she, Dalton?"
He turned and looked closer at Candace's face, saw a shimmer of tears in her blue eyes and made a mental groan. "I don't know. She must be who she says she is. A friend of my mother's."
Candace turned sharply and left the garage, her high-heeled shoes clacking out anger in quick little steps. As Dalton watched her go, he sighed. He still couldn't sort out exactly how she came to be living in his house, but he knew himself well enough to know that in a weak moment he must have invited her. He loved sex. He didn't always love women, but they controlled the thing that he loved. Ergo, Candace Carlisle had moved in.
Inside the house, he went to his office, made dim by a huge bush outside the window, and played back his voice mail messages—his agent in New York, his editor, his insurance agent. Finally he reached one from a voice he had never heard before:
"Mr. Parker, this is Joanna Walsh in Hatlow, Texas. I'm a friend of your mother's. You might not remember me, but we knew each other in school. Sort of. You dated my sister. I'm calling to let you know your brother was in a bad wreck early this morning and he's in the ICU in Lubbock Memorial Hospital. His leg was crushed and the doctors aren't willing to say yet how it's gonna turn out. Your mom's doing the best she can, but she could really use some help. She was real sick this past spring and isn't completely well, and she can't afford to hire a hand to replace Lane. She and Lane don't have any health insurance, either. I'm hoping you can come home to the ranch for a while. If you want to call me, I have two phone numbers—806-555..."
Had she said, Come home to the ranch? Dalton could almost laugh. The Parker ranch hadn't been his home since his mother married Earl Cherry more than thirty years ago. It might have been where he had spent his youth, but it hadn't been his home.
Standing behind his desk, he listened for the second time to the message. The name Walsh had a familiar ring, but he couldn't associate it with a person or an event. And he didn't remember any of the girls he dated in high school. As for the message itself, it was only an extension of problems and depressing times from long ago. Those he did remember, though he didn't want to.
He plopped into his ergonomic desk chair, his thoughts settling on his little brother. He had heard reports of Lane's different accidents and injuries for years. He’d had car wrecks before. Dalton only hoped the little bastard hadn't been driving drunk. A vain hope, he knew, thinking back on some of his phone conversations with his mother. Apparently the kid had craved liquor ever since he was old enough to drink and drive. In that way, he was like his old man. Come to think of it, a session with whiskey and a sharp curve in the highway between Lovington and Hatlow had sent Earl Cherry to purgatory.
He propped an elbow on his chair arm and rubbed his eyes with his fingers, family issues pricking at him. He didn't have time to make a trip to Texas. He looked across the room to the corner of his office. His cameras, camera bags and other equipment, as well as duffel bags and backpacks, still lay in a heap. He had been home a month, but he hadn't been able to muster the enthusiasm or the energy to even sort them. All he had done was unpack his dirty clothes.
He was taking a break. And he needed it, he had to admit. He had shot some priceless photographs during the three-month tour from which he had just returned: a month in Afghanistan, a month in Iraq and a month in Israel. The book he was putting together would be the best he had done yet. Might even get him a Pullitzer or some other high-hat award and he was thinking about writing a book.
But the experience had drained him physically, mentally and emotionally. And the last leg of it had damn near killed him. A suicide bomber had detonated himself inside a bus stopped in front of a cafe in Haifa where Dalton happened to be eating lunch. His custom of sitting in the back of the room had saved him that day from what could have been a fatal result.
As an American photojournalist documenting controversial people, places and events in the Middle East, his MO had been to go about his business as inconspicuously as possible. Being beheaded with a dull knife held even less appeal than being blown to bits in a cafe. Through the years, curiosity and a thirst for adventure had led him into any number of hair-raising incidents. But the one in Haifa had been enough of a close call to make him decide to wait a spell and allow himself to tame the nightmares before tackling another of the world's hellholes.
He needed to do something simple, he had told himself, so he had chosen to paint his office. He did not need to make a trip to Texas to visit his family. By any stretch of the imagination, that would be anything but simple.
Chapter 3
Well after noon, Joanna put in an appearance at her downtown shop. She, herself, took customers in the beauty salon only one day a week nowadays and those were her friends and patrons of long standing. She and her mom, also a hairdresser with her own clientele, shared a chair. Joanna did still attend schools to stay up with the latest styling trends and products. Thankfully, she had no difficulty keeping hairdressers to man the other three chairs in the salon.
After greeting everyone, deflecting conversation about Lane Cherry's accident and parrying an attempt by Judy Harrison to arrange an introduction to a newly divorced cousin in Denver City, Joanna finally made it to her office. It was nothing more than a desk tucked behind a half wall in the back of the long room that was the retail store, and it offered no privacy. To keep her mother from snooping, Joanna was cautious with what she left in plain sight or even in desk drawers and had password protected everything on her computer.
She had no sooner sat down than a ping came from the chime mounted on the wall over the plate glass front door, the signal that a customer had entered the store. She stood up, looked over the half wall and saw Bert Marshall, Hatlow's elementary school custodian. "Hi, Bert. Be right with you."
"Hi, Joanna," he said from across the room. "Need a couple o' gallons of that high-powered disinfectant floor wash."
Joanna's Salon & Supplies was Hatlow's only janitorial supply. For that matter, it was the only one in half a dozen surr
ounding counties except for Lubbock. After Joanna bought the beauty salon and the building that housed it ten years ago, she had more space than she needed for the salon. She hired a carpenter to build a wall between the salon and what was now the store area and added beauty products and fragrances.
After the construction work was completed, while cleaning up the disorder, she stumbled across another need—this one for easily available janitorial supplies. On a hunch, she converted one entire wall of the beauty supply store to a display of commercial cleaning products and rental cleaning equipment.
Now the janitorial products produced as much income as the beauty supplies. Customers drove from other small towns to the south to keep from driving to Lubbock and dealing with the traffic madness. Most small-town West Texans, used to the wide-open spaces, equated a trip to Lubbock with a trip to hell. If requested to do so, Joanna even provided shipping.
She walked out into the store to talk to Bert, a wiry-haired older gentleman and a Hatlow native. "What needs disinfecting at the elementary school?"
"Oh, nothing different," Bert answered. "Just trying to keep the place clean and wipe out a few germs." He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a purchase order from the Wacker County School District. "Those kids sure do mess things up." He bent over the counter and filled in the blanks on the purchase order forms. "Makes you wonder what they're like at home."
"I know what you mean," Joanna said absently, though she really didn't. She had no children. And at her age, unmarried and too busy to even think about kowtowing to some man, she wasn't likely to have any.
"I heard about Lane Cherry's wreck." Bert shook his gray head.
"Yeah, I suppose everybody’s heard about it by now."
"That boy's gonna kill hisself one o' these days."
Joanna had heard that comment about Lane for years, but she was unconvinced. He seemed to have nine lives. "I know."
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