Movies were self-explanatory, but Maddie couldn’t exactly explain why the Notes fascinated her. Some of them were annoying self-help aphorisms or outright religious dogma, but others were intimate snippets into other people’s lives. Some of them held mysteries to be solved, like the puzzles a lot of her clients presented. And once in a while, in an uncanny coincidence, a Note seemed to speak directly to a situation in her life.
She’d started collecting by accident four months ago, when Dan handed her a piece of water-stained paper he’d picked up. On it someone had scribbled, Who, What, When, Where, Why, How—these are the great mysteries of the universe, Mo. I just thought you should know. Your ever-loving Bear Cat.
They also happened to be the primary questions a private investigator asked, and Maddie had tacked the Note to the bathroom wall as a joke. She’d told Dan where she’d put it, and he started bringing her other Notes, random messages he found tucked under windshield wipers or taped to power poles or simply lying in the street.
“I can’t believe you have a friend who spends his life digging in trash bins. Yuck." Francie wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “You know, Maddie, there’s something so not healthy about that. Apart from the psychological implications, I hope you don’t actually touch him or anything; can you imagine the germs?” She sipped her frappe. “And you’re the one lecturing me about my choice in men.”
Maddie waved to Samaya Desi, the woman who owned the secondhand store just down the street. “I’m not exactly in love with Dan, Francie.”
“Well, I am. In love. With Sebastian.”
“Love?” This was serious. Maddie had figured infatuated, but love? “I’ve never heard you say you were in love with anybody before. And there’s been a trainload of guys.”
“That’s how I know this time’s different. Sebastian’s a keeper.”
Maddie recognized the intractable expression on Francie’s face, and her heart sank. That same stubborn look had been there when she tried to convince her sister that quitting college to join an obscure Buddhist cult wasn’t going to lead to enlightenment. Francie shaved her head and went off to the Gulf Islands.
Three months later, she gave up on Buddhism and enrolled in art school, until she decided stripping was a liberated art form. She got herself hired at Venus, a sleazy waterfront club, and it had taken four entire months for her to admit that drugs and violence really did go hand in hand with stripping and that maybe it wasn’t the best career choice alter all.
Maddie had spent those exhausting months hanging around Venus until three in the morning, making sure Francie got home safe after her shift ended. That was when she’d hired Hannah. She couldn’t sister-sit all night and run the business all day.
There was one more item on Fisher’s bio that might just have an effect.
“Did you know that Sebastian Fisher’s father died in prison? Walter Fisher was serving two years for forgery at the time, but he’d been in the slammer twice before that. They’ve done studies on whether criminal behavior’s an inherited trait, and there’s evidence to suggest that it’s probable.”
Francie shrugged and ran a hand through her shiny hair. “I know about Sebastian’s dad. He told me about him before we decided to live together.”
“Fisher’s living with you?” Patrick and Bernice were going to hyperventilate when they heard it had come to this. “I didn’t think you’d known him that long.”
“Long enough. We met four and a half weeks ago; he bought one of my cards and loved it. And he hasn’t exactly moved in yet, he’s going to next weekend. Plus it was my idea, so don’t start about him taking advantage and all that crap. He already gave me half the rent, and he fixed my car—he’s a great mechanic—and he’s going to do something about that leak in the bedroom ceiling.”
“The apartment manager should fix that. Or Dad said he’d come over and do it for you.”
“The manager has bad breath and he keeps trying to brush up against my boobs. Dad doesn’t know the first thing about fixing roofs. And besides, letting Dad do stuff for me just makes him think he has the right to lecture me and run my life. And getting upset isn’t good for the baby.”
“Baby?” Maddie choked, spraying frappe all over the table. She was thankful she was sitting down. “Holy moley. You’re pregnant?”
The gay couple holding hands at the next table turned and gave Francie congratulatory smiles and a thumbs-up. Maddie felt like throwing a glass at them, because this was a calamity, a full-scale disaster. Francie as a mother? Not good. So not good.
Francie waggled her fingers and smiled at them, hissing, “Maddie, lower your voice. I’m not quite pregnant. But I’m going to be soon.”
Thank you, goddess, for small mercies. Or the absence of them. “I suppose Sebastian knows you’re trying?”
Francie inspected her nails. “Well, not exactly. I’ll tell him after it’s happened.”
“Isn’t he liable to feel just a wee bit trapped and tricked?” How had she gone from despising the guy to feeling a little sorry for him?
Francie’s chin set. “It’s for his own good. See, all Sebastian needs is the love of a wild woman and a baby of his own. A little responsibility to settle him down. He’ll be the best father, the perfect husband, the ideal companion, you wait and see.”
Maddie had no intention of waiting. She had to figure something out fast, because this time Francie had taken total leave of her senses. There was no point getting into anything subjective like morality; Francie had never done moral. It was more effective to stick to fear-based issues.
“I can’t believe you’re having unprotected sex with a man you barely know. For God’s sake, Francie, you know how dangerous that is. Do you really want to commit suicide that way? ”
“He was tested. He gives blood. He’s the one who’s trusting me on that score.”
Fisher gave blood ? He probably sold it on the black market. Was there a black market for blood? Maddie was getting a headache, and it wasn’t the sun.
“And besides, we haven’t exactly been to bed together.” Francie’s voice was barely above a whisper and her cheeks were red. She wouldn’t meet Maddie’s astounded gaze. “Sebastian’s got standards.”
Whatever they were, Maddie was so relieved she felt like hugging the guy. Well, after she shot him.
“He’s a total gentleman, and he wanted to wait until we were living under the same roof.”
Francie had tried, and failed, to seduce this guy? Maddie found that astonishing, peculiar, and potentially significant. Dangerous? Maybe, if he was impotent. That would explain a lot. She’d dealt with impotent men in her line of work. They were always having their partner followed, and they were insanely jealous and insecure. And a lot of times they acted out in violent ways. Big-time anger when the old toolie wouldn’t perform. But saying so to Francie would be like stepping into a minefield.
“Does he even have a job? Or are you planning to support him?” Which would require a major increase in either the card market or the amount Francie borrowed from Maddie. One thing about Francie, though, she always paid it back. Eventually.
Francie did the eye roll. “You are so not up on what’s going on out there in the real world. Why shouldn’t a woman support a man? Men have been doing it forever.”
“Maybe that’s because men don’t get pregnant. Society set the model up so that kids are cared for and fed, honey.” A little late, Maddie recognized the diversionary tactic. “So, does he have a job, Francie?”
“Of course he has a job. It’s only temporary, of course; he has so much potential for better things. He works at a plant nursery, Bloomers over near the Market”
Just until he breaks into professional golf, right ? Putting plants in pots, now there was a hot choice on the career ladder. But Maddie knew enough to hold her tongue. She’d already said enough to get Francie’s rebellious nature jump-started.
“You know, Maddie, Gram’s met Sebastian, and she likes him a lot.”
; “He probably flirted with her, right?”
Francie’s grin was reluctant. “You know Gram.”
Maddie did, and she loved her, but that didn’t change the fact that her father’s mother was a geriatric nymphomaniac. At seventy-six, Thelma Feathering went through men with astonishing enthusiasm and speed. None of them lasted, but as one departed, another appeared as if by magic. Maddie wished she’d inherited at least a smidgen of whatever it was that drew men to Thelma like fish to bait. God knew Francie had gotten a healthy dose of it. The entire available dose, Maddie concluded with a sigh.
“Well, just don’t make judgments based on hearsay, OK?” Francie glanced at her watch. “I hate to run while we’re having such a fab time arguing, but I have orders on cards that need to be delivered by the end of the week.”
After the stripping fiasco, Francie had discovered she had a real knack for designing hip and mostly X-rated greeting cards. She called her business Off The Wall and sold to a variety of small shops and boutiques. “I have to come up with something really naughty; they’re for In Tu It, that store on the Corridor that sells sex toys?”
“Oh, yeah.” But Maddie didn’t know. She’d only set foot inside a sex shop once. The massive display of vibrators in eight different colors right inside the door had been all she could handle in one gulp. So to speak. Besides, she still had the plain skin-toned one Francie had given her for her eighteenth birthday. It had staying power.
“Maddie, promise you’ll come by and meet Sebastian before Daddy hires a hit man? You’ll change your mind about him, trust me.” Francie gathered up her things and gave Maddie a hug before she sailed off down the sidewalk, high heels tapping out a staccato rhythm, men doing a triple take as she passed.
Watson whined and gave a huge sigh and then farted so long and loud the friendly couple at the next table turned and gave Maddie the fish-eye.
She pointed at the dog. “Soy. It always does that to him.” She could hear them laughing as she and Watson slunk across the street and up the stairs to the office.
She’d no sooner transferred calls back to the office phone when it rang.
“Hey, boss,” Hannah said. “Just wanted you to know that I’m on my way, be there in ten minutes.”
Maddie was flipping through the file on Fisher. There it was, R. Chubbik, the owner of the red Thunderbird. She scribbled the address on the back of her hand.
“Good, I’m just on my way out, so I won’t lock the door.” In a flash of brilliant desperation, she’d figured out the first step in getting rid of Francie’s felon.
******
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And, the third book in the RUNNING WILD series,
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?
About the Author
Bobby Hutchinson was born in a small town in interior British Columbia in 1940. Her father was an underground coal miner, her mother a housewife, and both were storytellers. Learning to read was the most significant event in her early life.
She married young and had three sons. Her middle son was deaf, and he taught her patience. She divorced and worked at various odd jobs, directing traffic around construction sites, day caring challenged children, selling fabric by the pound at a remnant store.
She mortgaged her house and bought the store, took her sewing machine to work, and began to sew a dress a day. The dresses sold. The fabric didn’t, so she hired four seamstresses and turned the store into a handmade clothing boutique.
After twelve successful years, she sold the business and decided to run a marathon. Training was a huge bore, so she made up a story as she ran, about Pheiddipedes, the first marathoner. She copied it down and sent it to the Chatelaine short story contest, won first prize, finished the Vancouver marathon, and became a writer. It was a hell of a lot easier than running.
She married again and divorced again, writing all the while, mostly romances, (which she obviously needs to learn a lot about,) and now has more than fifty-five published books.
She decided she needed something to do in the morning in her spare time, so she opened her first B&B, Blue Collar, in Vancouver, B.C. After five successful years, she moved home to the small coal-mining town of Sparwood, where she now operates the reincarnated version of the Blue Collar.
She's currently working on three or four or eight more books. She has six enchanting grandchildren. She lives alone, apart from guests and two rabbits, meditates, bikes, walks, reads incessantly, and writes compulsively.
She likes a quote by Dolly Parton: “Decide who you are, and then do it on purpose.”
Try some other books by Bobby Hutchinson:
HOW NOT TO RUN A B&B
EARTH ANGEL
A LANTERN IN THE WINDOW
A LEGAL AFFAIR
ALMOST AN ANGEL
SPECIAL EDUCATION
LOVE MEDICAL ROMANCE???
TRY THESE:
THE BABY DOCTOR
PICKING CLOVER
FULL RECOVERY
ARE YOU MY DADDY
DOUBLE JEAPORDY
DRASTIC MEASURES
NURSING THE DOCTOR
AND A FUN, EDUCATIONAL KID’S BOOK:
DEETER, THE DOG WHO DIDN’T LISTEN
MAKE ME A MATCH (Running Wild) Page 25
