The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  Minutes after that, Jessie arrived, looking fresh and mysterious and very cheerful. Doc Whitman had dropped her off; Hallie caught a glimpse of his truck through a new snowfall as he drove away.

  “Morning,” Jessie said, pulling her poncho off over her head and hanging it from a peg next to the door.

  “Morning,” Hallie answered, spatula in hand. She nodded toward the percolator on the counter. “There’s fresh coffee.”

  “Just what I need,” Jessie answered, taking down a mug and filling it, adding plenty of sugar and cream before taking that first restorative sip.

  “Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes,” Hallie said.

  “I could eat a whole side of pork,” Jessie admitted, and both women laughed. It was easy to get along with Jessie, easy to relate. Maybe Hallie ought to confide in her, about Joel, and Lou’s murder, and Charlie’s . . . and endanger her life? No. Very bad idea.

  Hallie smiled, glanced up at the clock. She was due at the Last Chance Café in just over an hour, and the girls were dawdling in their room. They were getting bored with spending their days at the restaurant with her—who could blame them?—and her attempts at home-schooling bordered on pitiful. Both Kiera and Kiley would be much happier in a real school, with other children, and they would learn faster, too, but registering them would be tricky.

  “Hallie?”

  She started slightly, looked at her friend, who was seated at the table, sipping coffee. Jessie’s eyes were luminous with compassion, experience and wisdom, and Hallie had to blink and look away.

  “Why don’t your children go to school?”

  Hallie swallowed, dished up a plate for her friend, carried it to the table. It was impossible to lie to Jessie, and yet she didn’t dare answer honestly. She sighed. “It’s complicated.”

  “I imagine so,” Jessie agreed. “Maybe I can be of some assistance.”

  Hallie’s eyes smarted with tears. All her adult life, she’d been pretty self-reliant, solving most of her own problems, paying her own way. Now, she truly needed help, and didn’t dare ask for it. It was dangerous enough, just accepting a temporary job and a place to live. “You’ve done plenty by letting us stay here. Lending me your car almost every day.”

  Jessie smiled a gentle, knowing smile. “Let me keep the girls here today, with me,” she said. “I’ll show them how the loom works. You can call it an art lesson.”

  Hallie bit her lower lip, considering. Then she shook her head. “We’re already imposing. I simply can’t ask you to baby-sit, too.”

  “You’re not asking,” Jessie pointed out, resting her elbows on either side of her plate and making a steeple with her long, slender fingers. “I’m the one doing the asking, Hallie. I love children. It would be a joy for me to have Kiera and Kiley here.”

  Before Hallie could think of another objection, her daughters came clattering down the back stairs and hurtling into the kitchen. It soon became obvious that they knew what was going on.

  “Please, let us stay here today!” Kiera begged.

  “I think I’m getting a cold,” Kiley added, for effect. Hallie automatically felt the child’s forehead for fever anyway, and found her flesh cool.

  “You wouldn’t want to make everybody at the Last Chance sick, would you?” Jessie put in, grinning.

  Hallie sighed. “All right,” she said, fixing her gaze on the girls and shaking a warning finger at them. “You mustn’t go outside alone, for any reason. Do you hear me?”

  “Because of the cougar,” Kiera explained sagely.

  Kiley folded her arms. “We aren’t babies.”

  “I’ll take good care of them, Hallie,” Jessie said seriously. “I promise. You just go to work.”

  Hallie sighed again, gave the twins their breakfast, and picked at her own. When she arrived at the café, forty-five minutes later, Bear was there alone. He’d started the coffee and switched on the Open sign, but so far there were no takers.

  “Where’s Madge?” Hallie asked, wiping the counter. All the while, she was thinking of the man Bear had killed, the time he’d spent in prison. She supposed she should have been afraid of him, but she wasn’t.

  “Feeling peaked today,” Bear said. “I think it’s the flu.”

  Hallie made a sympathetic face. “She seemed fine at the Grange Hall last night.”

  Bear shrugged a large shoulder. “You know how that stuff is. Creeps up on you, knocks you flat before you see it coming.”

  The metaphor was disturbing, coming from a person who had beaten a man to death with a crowbar. “Is she planning to see her doctor?”

  Before Bear could reply, the bell over the front door jingled, and cold air surged into the café in a rush. Hallie turned to see a woman wearing heart-shaped sunglasses, big hair, and a faux-leopard coat. She didn’t need a formal introduction to tell her that the elusive Wynona, Bear’s legendary girlfriend, had finally arrived.

  12

  B ear came out of the kitchen and stood behind the counter, his brawny hands braced against the edge. His eyes seemed as big as his biceps. “Wynona,” Bear said.

  “Bear,” Wynona said.

  “Uh-oh,” Hallie said. So much for her brief period of gainful employment.

  “What kept you?” Bear asked, voice vibrating with quiet passion. They might have been alone in the universe, let alone the café, for all the notice they gave Hallie. She was afraid they’d start tearing off their clothes.

  “Oh, baby,” Wynona whispered. Hallie edged toward the door.

  “Do you two want to be alone?” She didn’t want to walk off the job, even if she was about to be replaced, but her choices were narrowing by the moment.

  Deaf to any other voice but Wynona’s, blind to any other face, Bear wrenched off his cook’s apron, tossed it aside. The veins in his neck were bulging, but he exuded a strange, sweet tenderness.

  “Oh, Lord,” Hallie whispered, almost to the door now, expecting the atmosphere itself to ignite at any moment.

  “My motor home is outside,” Wynona told Bear. “Right back there in the alley.”

  That was all it took. Bear rushed Wynona, swept her up like a leaf in a storm, and carried her out the front door, nearly trampling Hallie in the process. Through the front window, she saw them round the side of the building, and she dropped onto a booth seat, totally spent.

  “What the devil is going on around here?” asked Jase, taking off his hat as he pushed open the door and came inside. Hallie hadn’t seen him drive up, and she jumped a foot.

  “Wynona is back,” she said, at once pleased and despairing.

  Jase gave a long, low whistle, and approached the counter. “How about a cup of coffee?” he said, and proceeded to pour it himself.

  Hallie immediately got to her feet and rushed behind the counter. “Cream?” she asked automatically.

  “Black,” Jase said, and sat down. He was the only customer in the café, and Hallie hoped it would stay that way for a little while, just until she could get her equilibrium back. She had no idea when—or if—Bear and Wynona would be back from their motor home rendezvous. For all she knew, they meant to hit the road, take off for parts unknown.

  Hallie poured coffee for herself, still standing behind the counter, and was surprised to find that her hand was trembling a little.

  “You worried about something?” Jase put the question casually, but Hallie caught some nuance in his tone that set her nerves hopping all over again.

  “Losing my job,” she said. It was a partial truth, at least, and thus might have the appropriate ring to it.

  “Why would you lose your job?” Jase asked, frowning. “They need you around here. Madge is no spring chicken anymore, and Bear spends so much time at that grill back there, he hasn’t got a life.” He paused, grinned. “Or, at least, he didn’t, until Wy got back.”

  Hallie was cataloging information on one level, carrying on the conversation on another. On a third, she was going over the logistics of another fast getaway, becau
se her instincts insisted that Sheriff Stratton hadn’t come to the café just for coffee. He had questions to ask, questions she might not be able to answer.

  “ ‘Wy’?” she asked, belatedly. For some reason, she’d thought Wynona was an outsider, but Jase’s use of a fond diminutive suggested that he knew the woman rather well.

  He raised a dark eyebrow, assessing Hallie for a moment before he spoke. “You knew about the murder, right?”

  “Bear and the crowbar,” she said, and shivered a little.

  “Well,” Jase said, “Wy’s father owned the Texaco station at the time, and Bear worked there. They were already an item, Bear and Wynona, though she was still in high school. Pretty little thing, full of the dickens. Anyway, somebody came to the station and told Bear that Madge’s husband had beaten her half to death, and she’d been taken to Reno by ambulance. Bear headed out looking for the bastard, with blood in his eye. Wy went after him, saw the whole thing. It was her testimony that put Bear away, though he never denied that he’d done the crime.”

  Hallie was breathless. Bear and Wynona’s story was at least as dramatic as her own and, as such, it was something of a relief. “He wasn’t mad at her—Bear, I mean—for testifying against him?”

  Jase chuckled, shook his head. “Nope. It’s true love on both sides, with those two. Wy had to tell the court what she knew, and Bear understood that.”

  “Then what?” Hallie prompted.

  “Well, Wynona waited, as best she could. Got a job down in Reno, dealing Black Jack. Visited Bear as often as possible while he was in prison.”

  “I got the impression from Madge that Wynona sort of—well—comes and goes.”

  Jase smiled. “She’s a gypsy, all right, like her mother was. Can’t seem to stay put for very long. Like as not, she’ll be out of here again, in a day or two. One of these days, Bear will go with her.”

  Hallie sighed, completely forgetting, for the moment, her certainty that Jase Stratton had come to the café for something other than coffee and gossip. “Crazy as it seems, it’s kind of romantic.”

  Jase chuckled. “That kind of romance, I can do without,” he said.

  Hallie refilled his coffee cup. She was hoping for positive news about him and Katie, after seeing them together on decoration night at the Grange, but he didn’t seem to be leaning that way, either.

  In the next instant, he confirmed her suspicions. “It’s about your kids, Hallie,” he said. “You need to get them in school. It’s the law.”

  “I’m home-schooling them,” she said. The truth was, she was botching that, big time, but she was feeling cornered, so she didn’t clarify.

  “That’s fine if that’s what you want to do,” Jase allowed. “But you’ve got to make arrangements with the school system all the same. You have to lay out some kind of curriculum to keep the state happy.”

  “Okay,” Hallie said. What was she going to do now? To hell with keeping the state happy, she was trying to keep her children and herself alive.

  The bell sounded over the door, and two truckers came in, took seats side by side at the counter, exchanged good-natured greetings with Jase, gave Hallie shy, mannerly nods.

  Hallie served them coffee, took their orders, and went back into the kitchen to prepare French toast and eggs. It was good to be cooking again, even if she was about to jump out of her skin, and she made short work of the task, adding a garnish of lime slices to give the plates a little panache.

  The food was a hit. “This is better than anything old Bear ever slapped together,” commented the older of the two men.

  “Amen,” said the other. “They ought to put you on steady, Miss.”

  Hallie smiled, a little sadly. Even if Wynona didn’t stay on and take over her job, she, Hallie, might as well be twenty miles down the highway already, she was that gone. She had a feeling that Joel was catching up to her, a gut-grinding certainty that she didn’t dare ignore. Her fear had been rising ever since she came across the article about Charlie Long’s death.

  Yes, she was going to have to pack up the kids and hit the road, ASAP. Tricky, when she didn’t have a car. The bus was such an obvious choice that she probably wouldn’t get to the next town before someone came after her, and the train wasn’t any better.

  “Thanks,” she told the truckers, distracted by her musings.

  “Stop by Primrose Creek Elementary as soon as you can,” Jase said to her, standing up, laying payment for the coffee, plus a small tip, beside his saucer. “They’ll get you squared away with that home-schooling thing.”

  Hallie nodded. She wished she were a better, quicker liar, that she’d come up with a valid reason for teaching the girls herself, instead of enrolling them in the school system. Jase was no fool, and he was surely pondering her resistance in some part of his mind. It wouldn’t be long until he decided to sit down at his computer, or pick up his telephone, and start asking questions about Hallie O’Rourke.

  Hallie was profoundly grateful when the café filled with customers, because she was too busy to fret. Two full hours passed before Bear and Wynona returned to the café. Bear was freshly showered, wearing an expression of obstinate sheepishness, while Wynona, who was probably Hallie’s age, looked essentially unruffled. She wore her auburn hair big, and her makeup, though skillfully applied, was heavy.

  “Sorry to run off and leave you that way,” Bear said. Well, Hallie reflected wryly, at least she was visible again.

  Wynona merely smiled.

  Hallie waited to be fired.

  “Looks like you’ve done a good job of holding down the fort,” Bear said instead, noting the lunch rush. Everyone was munching away contentedly, and Hallie had obviously done the cooking, as well as waiting tables, without a problem.

  “No big deal,” Hallie demurred, though her feet were hurting and trouble was closing in and it looked like she had no way to escape it. She was going to have to leave this place, these people—and Chance. Just by caring for him, she’d put him in danger, too. The criminals she was running from wouldn’t hesitate to mow down anyone who got in their way—Lou and Charlie were proof of that.

  “You could take the rest of the day off if you wanted,” Bear said magnanimously. “Wy can wait tables while I sling hash.”

  Hallie felt another pang. There would be no sense in coming back; she was history. “Sure,” she said, and felt her chin wobble slightly.

  “Just make sure you’re back in time to serve breakfast,” Bear added, smiling beatifically at his girlfriend. “Wy doesn’t do mornings.”

  Wynona giggled and inspected her acrylic nails. “You can say that again,” she commented.

  Hallie got her coat and bag, rummaged for the keys to Jessie’s Jeep, and left the café. She had no idea where to go, or what to do, and drove aimlessly for some time, before coming to a decision. Jessie was scheduled to leave on her next tour in the morning. Hallie would “borrow” her Jeep, then drive herself and the kids to Reno, where they could hop a bus for somewhere far, far away. Once they were at a safe distance, she would simply go into a library or an Internet café, log on to a computer using a fake address, and send Jessie an e-mail, thanking her for her kindness, explaining where the car was and apologizing for any trouble she’d caused.

  Once she’d gained some distance, so that Joel couldn’t get to her as quickly as he would in Primrose Creek, which wasn’t all that far from Phoenix, she would call the FBI, tell them her story, retrieve the cashbox from its hiding place, and hand it over. They could take it from there. Heck, maybe they’d even put her and Kiera and Kiley in the Witness Protection Program, or at least help them establish new identities. Hallie had no illusions that she would ever be truly safe, no matter how many people went to jail. In a big operation like the one Lou had been investigating, somebody always slipped through the cracks, and one “somebody” was all it took.

  She drove back to Jessie’s in a virtual haze, never so much as glancing toward Chance’s place when she passed it. Saying goodby
e to him would be impossible, for a number of reasons. She would simply leave.

  Like a sleepwalker, she fed the horses in Jessie’s barn, taking the time to pet each one for a few minutes. Being near the animals soothed her a little, made her feel more centered.

  Inside the house, Jessie was at the loom, and Kiera and Kiley were seated on high stools on either side of her, watching with rapt attention as designs took shape. It must have seemed magical to them, the colors, the pattern appearing, row by row, thread by thread.

  “You’re back early,” Jessie observed, looking up, but never breaking the ancient rhythm. Thunkety-thunk, sang the loom. Thunkety-thunk.

  “Slow day,” Hallie said. She’d washed her hands in the kitchen sink, but she was anxious for a shower and a change of clothes. “All packed?”

  Jessie sighed. “Yes,” she said. “I’d give anything to stay home and keep working on this piece. I’m going to lose my momentum, I just know it.”

  Hallie smiled, a little sadly. When Jessie returned to this warm, wonderful, refuge of a house, she and the twins would be long gone, never to return. Why did it seem that they would be losing so much more, she and the girls, than they had by leaving Arizona?

  Jessie stopped working, helped Kiera down from her stool, and Kiley from hers. “You girls need a break,” she said. “We’ve done enough weaving for today.”

  “Can we go look at the horses?” Kiley wanted to know.

  Hallie thought of the cougar. “In a little while. Why don’t you color, or watch TV for a few minutes. I’ll take a shower, then we’ll say hello to the horses together.”

  “Okay,” Kiley agreed, spokesperson for the group. Then she and Kiera hugged Hallie hastily and bounded up the stairs.

  “They’re wonderful children,” Jessie said softly, watching them go.