Home at Last Chance

by Hope Ramsay

  Sarah put a Sharpie in his hand, and he started signing stuff.

  Another half-hour of this and he could relax in the limousine and continue his poker lessons with Sarah. It was the only bright spot in his otherwise crappy day.

  After coordinating twenty-five of these horrible events, Sarah had learned not to wear black. Today, she had donned a Cottontail logo shirt and a pair of khakis. The outfit wasn’t precisely flattering—her backside should bear a sign across it saying “Wide Load”—but the natural fabric had the benefit of being better suited to the ruthless heat and humidity of the South. And besides, khakis and golf shirts were the uniform around Ferguson Racing.

  The heat percolated up from the blacktop right into the soles of her loafers as she headed across the parking lot at the Charleston Value Mart with some bottled water for Tulane. The poor man had been standing out there in the heat for almost an hour, showing a great deal of patience, given the circumstances.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, do you work for Tulane?”

  The voice came from behind her and was spoken in a deep drawl that had the same soft quality as Tulane’s.

  She turned to find a large man bearing down on her. He wore a black T-shirt, faded Wranglers, and a buff-colored Stetson. He was huge—taller than Tulane and broader across the shoulders.

  She stared up into a shadowed face that sported a trimmed goatee and a pair of gray eyes. A dark gem, probably a sapphire, winked at her from his left earlobe.

  He tipped his hat, briefly exposing dark brown hair pulled back into a long ponytail. He probably had a Harley stashed somewhere because he resembled a wicked bad biker boy in the flesh, precisely the kind who sometimes showed up and caused trouble. Biker boys seemed to think that stock car drivers should eschew the color pink.

  “Ma’am?” he said, tipping his hat.

  Sarah went immediately on guard and scanned the parking lot over his shoulder, searching for the Value Mart security.

  “Can I help you with something?”

  His mouth softened just a little, and déjà vu hit her. The guy reminded her of someone, probably some country-and-western singer like Trace Adkins or Tim McGraw.

  “I need to talk with Tulane privately,” he said.

  Yup, he was trouble with a capital T that stood for way too much testosterone.

  “Um, I’m afraid speaking with Tulane right now isn’t possible. If you’d like—”

  “Just tell him I’m here. He’ll see me. I’ll be waiting in the shade over yonder.” He pointed toward the storefront, which cast a shadow across the parking lot.

  The man certainly talked in short sentences, didn’t he? She watched him saunter off in the direction of the store with a loose-jointed walk that was part swagger.

  She turned back and crossed the blistering blacktop. The line of autograph seekers had diminished. She checked her watch. They were right on schedule. Five minutes and she could get Tulane into an air-conditioned limo and they could practice playing poker on the way back to the Ferguson Racing complex.

  She was lousy at poker, but playing it with Tulane was fun because the stakes were low and Tulane didn’t care about winning. That was odd, because when it came to racing cars, Tulane was all about winning. And when he didn’t win—which was pretty much every Sunday—it put him in a really bad mood.

  She handed Tulane a water bottle, which he opened and crushed in several long swallows, and then he turned back to the line of autograph seekers. He could be incredibly charming when he wanted to be. She had never seen him treat a race fan—especially a young fan—with anything other than the utmost respect and courtesy.

  She didn’t bother him with her concerns about the man in the cowboy hat. Instead, she leaned over to the security guard standing beside Tulane. She pointed to the man, who leaned against the store’s cinderblock façade with one foot cocked, in cowboy fashion. “I wonder if you could check that guy out. He’s got trouble written all over him. Says he knows Tulane and wants to talk with him, but you know how some of these guys are, ready to pick a fight.”

  The guard, a paunchy man with receding hair and bad teeth, assessed the situation and then pulled a walkie-talkie out of his belt. He started talking loudly and officiously in true Barney Fife fashion. Everyone could hear what he was saying, including the fans. Goodness, the man was a moron.

  The last three ladies in line let their gazes wander nervously in the direction of the store. Tulane looked up, too. The man standing in the shade tipped his hat again. Tulane’s shoulders tensed, but he didn’t say anything that might alarm the fans. He simply smiled up at the ladies and quickly finished signing the last few autographs.

  When he was finished, Tulane pushed up from the table and turned toward Barney, the security guard. “Call off your dogs. The man over there is my older brother.”

  Sarah’s stomach dropped to her ankles as Tulane gave her one of his annoyed eye rolls. “Sarah, this ain’t New York, you know. We don’t have drive-by shootings out here in the boonies, unless it’s pheasant season. Next time, ask before you call out the cavalry. That’s Clay, the brother you didn’t meet before.”

  He shook his head in disgust, then turned and sauntered in Clay’s direction. Now she realized why the cowboy had seemed so familiar and perhaps so dangerous. Clay was bigger than Tulane. But like his other brothers, Clay had the same build, the same walk, and the same deep, soulful Southern drawl. And his eyes were very much like Elbert’s—the palest shade of gray.

  “Uncle Pete’s dead,” Clay said in a low voice. “He collapsed this morning. Momma sent me to come get you. The funeral’s going to be on Saturday. Aunt Arlene and Momma pushed it up so you could attend.”

  Tulane and Clay stood in a little scrap of shade cast by the Value Mart. It was hotter than hell out there, but suddenly Tulane felt icy to the point of numbness. He needed to get out of this heat. He needed to go someplace private so he wouldn’t make an a-hole out of himself right there in public.

  Pete was dead.

  “Shit.” Tulane stared up at the blue Carolina sky searching for something that he couldn’t even name. His eyes started to water up. Sarah was standing right there, eavesdropping like she always did. He really didn’t want that woman to see him cry like some kind of sissy. That would be the height of humiliation.

  “Tulane,” Clay said and took him by the shoulder—a steady, familiar, brotherly touch. It didn’t make the ache in his heart go away. “Momma’s at home waiting on you. She’s pretty upset, and—” Clay’s voice pinched. Pete was Momma’s only brother, and Pete had been a surrogate father for Clay as well. Pete had been everything Daddy was not.

  Tulane studied his brother’s pale eyes, stained at the moment with a goodly amount of red. Clay had done some crying recently, by the looks of things.

  “Crap. I’ve got all these arrangements made for me. I’m supposed to race in the truck race on Friday and—”

  “I can fix everything,” Sarah said, pulling her BlackBerry out of her pocket. “Let me get on it.”

  Bless her heart, the woman understood. She had that phone attached to her ear inside of five seconds. She started talking a mile a minute, just like a little Yankee, and something inside his chest eased a bit.

  It sure was impressive the way Sarah could manage things, and Tulane felt a surge of gratitude toward her, not only for doing the arranging for him, but because she understood why going home was important.

  He was suddenly mighty glad she was there, even if she was getting a bird’s-eye view of the unwanted tears in his eyes.

  One minute Sarah was standing on the blacktop at the Value Mart, and the next moment she found herself in the back seat of Clay Rhodes’s minivan, sandwiched between a fiddle and a guitar case. Despite the soccer-mom qualities of the well-used Windstar, Clay Rhodes drove that thing like he was the stock car driver and not Tulane. He headed north at a speed that didn’t faze Tulane, but had Sarah hanging on to the strap handle above the back door with her right hand and her
BlackBerry with her left.

  She faced her fear and discovered a talent for working her smartphone one-handed. She got Tulane out of all the races he was scheduled to run on both Friday and Saturday, as well as the hospitality tent appearances for National Brands and a number of his smaller sponsors. She even fixed it with Jim Ferguson so that a private jet would be waiting for Tulane Saturday night at the Allenberg Municipal Airport to take him directly to Charlotte, where the weekend’s racing events were taking place. A replacement driver would qualify the No. 57 Ford on Saturday. Tulane would still race Sunday afternoon.

  It wasn’t until the green watermelon stripes of Last Chance’s water tower came into view that it occurred to Sarah that she should have gotten into the limo at the Charleston Value Mart and headed back to Florence, instead of riding in the back seat all the way to Last Chance.

  Of course, she had gone into crisis mode the moment she had realized the situation, and Tulane had kept her preoccupied for most of the ride as he issued directives to her like the celebrity he was supposed to be. She had handled the crisis beautifully, like a real experienced advance person, and not the virgin she had been a few weeks ago.

  Except that she had advanced herself to Last Chance, South Carolina—a place with one stoplight and not much more. She had no luggage, no car, and her BlackBerry’s battery was just about dead.

  She wondered if there was somewhere nearby where she could rent a car. It was a good two-hour drive back to Florence.

  Clay pulled the van to the curb a half block down the street from Ruby and Elbert’s house. Tulane and Clay got out of the van and started striding up the sidewalk, both of them tense through the shoulders, both bearing that hollow-cheeked appearance men get when they grieve and don’t want to break down and show it.

  Neither of them paid any attention to her as she hopped down from the back and struggled with the slightly sticky sliding door of the old Windstar. Her dying phone rang as she hurried after the big men, who were eating up the distance between the van and the house on their long, good-ol’-boy legs.

  She checked the display—Deidre Montgomery.

  Oh great, just what she needed. Last Chance might be in the middle of nowhere, but unfortunately it still had cell phone service.

  She accepted the call. “Hello, Deidre.”

  “I heard about the death in Tulane’s family. Are you still with him?”

  Sarah should have known that Deidre would hear about today’s events sooner rather than later.

  “Uh, yeah, I’m here.”

  “Here, where?”

  “In Last Chance, South Carolina.”

  “Where?”

  “Last Chance. It’s Tulane’s hometown.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Deidre said.

  “No, that’s the name of the town.”

  “How quaint,” Deidre said in her snide New York tone.

  Sarah didn’t bother to explain that Last Chance was not even remotely quaint. Quirky was a much better adjective. “Yes, it’s very quaint. It has a water tower painted to resemble a watermelon,” she said.

  Deidre sniggered. “Nice work, kid. Now, I want you to stick to Tulane like superglue the next couple of days. Just tell him National Brands is making you available 24/7 to handle anything he needs in his hour of grief. There’s a hotel there, right?”

  Sarah didn’t want to explain that the only lodging nearby was a place called the Peach Blossom Motor Court, which, if Mrs. Randall was to be believed, sold rooms only by the hour.

  “Uh, yeah,” she said. “There’s a hotel.”

  “Good. I want you to put on that Boston charm and worm your way into his whole family scene. You know the drill, help them brew coffee and bake cookies and that sort of thing. And you can use the National Brands expense account to purchase catering or whatever for the funeral. It’s on us…” She paused dramatically. “And I want a full report on Monday. And don’t think I won’t notice if you don’t send a report. I asked you for a full rundown on Tulane three weeks ago. I’m still waiting.”

  “About that, Deidre, I—”

  “It’s fine, Sarah; with the current marketing plan in place, we don’t need to find a replacement until next year.”

  “A replacement?”

  “Well, that will depend entirely on the report you file on Monday, won’t it?”

  “A report on what?”

  “On everything. His parents, his siblings. I want to know who we’re dealing with. If he’s going to be a spokesperson for car seat safety, he’s got to be squeaky clean, you understand? I figure a funeral is just the sort of time when the family shit is liable to hit the fan. You know what I mean?”

  Heat crawled up Sarah’s face, but maybe it wasn’t because of Deidre’s casual profanity. The woman was a witch. She wanted Sarah to spy on Tulane and his family during a funeral? Did the woman have no heart?

  “Um, Deidre, there’s been a death in the family, don’t you think—”

  “Sarah, grow up. We need to make sure this guy is the right spokesman. And it’s not just National Brands that needs to know all the little details. I’ve been talking with the producers of Racer Rabbit. If we do that deal, Tulane has to be worthy of the endorsement. I’ve been researching possible replacements. Augie Tallon might be available.”

  Sarah’s stomach clutched. Deidre had stolen all the ideas she had put into that memo she’d written three weeks ago. National Brands was putting all her ideas into motion, and not a single person had given her any credit.

  “Augie Tallon would be an amazing representative for our brand. He’s considerably smoother than Tulane,” Deidre said into Sarah’s ear.

  “But—”

  “Don’t be a fool, Sarah. If you want to help Tulane, then you need to dig up the entire backstory. Who hates who. All the bad things he did as a kid and a teenager. The girls he knocked up and deserted. You know, all that stuff.”

  Sarah had reached Elbert and Ruby’s front yard, trailing after Tulane and Clay by several yards. Fortunately, her phone began to emit a low-battery warning. “Uh, that’s a lot of stuff, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. But I know you can do it. And Sarah, the way you handle yourself in this could make or break your career. Don’t disappoint me.”

  Sarah knew precisely how to translate those words. Deidre was eager to keep her around so she could continue to steal her ideas. That made Deidre no different from Steve. Did everyone in business have to be so sharp and driven and dishonest?

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, trying hard not to let her disgust show in her voice. The idea of using the death of a beloved family member to violate Tulane’s privacy made Sarah nauseated. She wasn’t going to do it.

  “We’ll talk on Monday,” Deidre said into her ear. “And remember, I want every little detail.” Deidre rang off without actually saying good-bye.

  Sarah followed Clay and Tulane up the front porch steps and into the house. At least thirty people had descended on Ruby Rhodes and her sister-in-law, Arlene Whitaker, widow of the late Peter Whitaker, owner and operator of Lovett’s Hardware for the last thirty-some-odd years. And since everyone in Last Chance had shopped at Lovett’s at one time or another, more people were expected.

  Sarah almost heard Mother’s voice echoing in her ears the moment she entered Ruby’s parlor and registered the sheer number of people there. There were some things that one didn’t do, and spying on a grieving family and their friends was one of them. Sarah wasn’t going to do that, no matter what happened to her.

  Tulane and his brother went straight to their mother and the grieving widow, bestowing manly hugs as they went. Grief pinched Tulane’s face.

  It was time to get out of Dodge.

  Sarah hugged the living room wall and made her way around the clot of people as unobtrusively as possible. She headed toward the kitchen, where she figured she could plug her—

  No, wait, she couldn’t plug her cell phone in. She had left her briefcase in the limo at the
Charleston Value Mart, and her cell phone charger was in the briefcase.

  What an idiot.

  She headed toward the kitchen anyway. There was probably a phone in the kitchen. She needed to call someone at Ferguson Racing and arrange for a car to come down with some appropriate clothes for Tulane. The car could pick her up and take her back to Florence.

  She finally made it to the kitchen, only to discover that the Last Chance church ladies had already staked out this territory. She should have expected this, because really, nothing brings out church ladies like a funeral. Sarah herself had been dragged to countless funerals by her mother, and put to work brewing coffee, making sandwiches, and whatever else was necessary to feed the multitudes that always descended.

  She knew the drill. She was not a funeral virgin, unfortunately.

  The Last Chance church ladies had arrived with the energy and zeal of missionaries bent on saving heathen souls. They had come bearing casseroles, Jell-O molds, and banana pudding. Deidre was going to be disappointed. There didn’t seem to be any need for professional catering—assuming there were actually caterers in Last Chance.

  In the middle of the chaos in the kitchen, like some preternatural hurricane’s eye, sat Miriam Randall, dressed in a blindingly bright purple-plaid pantsuit. Little Haley Rhodes sat on her lap.

  Haley’s hair was coming out of its ponytail holder, and her face was smeared with what appeared to be chocolate. Nevertheless, the indoctrination of the next generation was well under way. Haley was helping to drop chocolate chip cookie dough onto baking sheets.

  Sarah cast her gaze around the room, searching for a telephone. She found it, bolted to one of Ruby Rhodes’s sunny yellow walls.

  Unfortunately, someone who resembled Ruby’s younger clone had beaten her to it, and in grand style, too. The Ruby lookalike had the landline pressed to her right ear, and a cell phone pressed to her left. She was masterfully handling two conversations at once.

  She did this juggling of conversations wearing an immaculately tailored gray summer-weight worsted suit with a cream-colored silk blouse of the same luster as the pearls at her throat and ears. Her nails were perfect, her makeup flawless, and she gave the appearance of a woman who had never sweated a drop in her life—the sort of woman who could actually wear tropical-weight worsted suits in the Carolina sunshine and remain fully and actively conscious.