Bella Luna

by Sharon Struth

  Rose got up, threw on her bathrobe, and opened the apartment door. Flipping on lights along the way, she checked the back door leading outside to the kitchen, the front door near the staircase, and peeked around the lower level. When she returned to the kitchen, she stood in one place, listening to the silent house. Nothing but the loud thud of her heart echoed in her ears.

  She hurried back to the apartment. Wide awake now, she went to the table near the sofa to grab a book she’d been reading to help her get back to sleep. As she reached for it, she noticed the photograph of the Drake’s again face down.

  A chill crawled up the back of her neck. This table might have a leveling issue. She wobbled it, but it held steady. Rather than dwell on the finding, she took the photo and tossed it into the drawer of the end table.

  After going to the bathroom, she went back to bed. Bella stood and came to Rose’s bedside, this time her expression registering concern…well, for a dog. Rose patted the top of her comforter. “Come on. I could use some company.”

  Bella hopped up and snuggled at Rose’s side. She hugged Bella, and it made her feel a little better. As she read, though, she strained her ears to hear each creak and groan oozing from the walls of the old house.

  * * * *

  For the first time since arriving at the Drake estate, Rose longed for Leo.

  Not because of the eerie sounds giving her a horrible night’s rest, but the idea she might not be able to have a morning cup o’ Joe. She yawned while trying to make sense of the disassembled percolator in the drying rack near the sink. This one appeared to have gone through WWII. How on earth did that man produce a decent cup of coffee using this contraption each morning?

  She lifted the dented, scratched steel base and considered the other components. After trying different configurations, she found that, like a puzzle, the pieces only fit properly one way. Measurements lines on the metal had faded long ago, probably around the time Richard Nixon resigned from office.

  She reached for the blue coffee can on the counter. Even though Leo wasn’t around, she’d make a full pot to get her through the day. After filling the basket, she tossed in one extra spoonful for good measure, added enough water to reach the top of the carafe, and flipped on the gas burner. Leo wasn’t the only one who could make coffee. She’d take a quick shower and let it brew.

  She turned to go to her apartment. A glimpse toward the staircase at the end of the center hallway reminded her how she’d raced from the attic like a scared little puppy last night. On this sunny morning, the task didn’t seem so daunting.

  “Come on, Bella. We’ve got a job to finish.”

  The dog followed her up the stairs, bravely passing her at the top and running straight for the attic door. She’d swear this dog could read her mind.

  Rose took one step and stopped. What if Leo had come home earlier, like in the middle of the night? That might explain the noises she heard when trying to sleep.

  She tiptoed toward his bedroom, holding her breath. At the sight of his empty bed, she exhaled her relief and hurried past.

  At the door to his office, she hesitated and knocked. “Leo? Are you there?”

  Bella woofed.

  No answer. She slowly opened the door, but Bella impatiently wedged between Rose’s legs and ambled up the stairs. Rose followed.

  At the top, the attic opened to a semi-finished room with sparse furnishings. A pine desk near the window had a few nicks in the legs but was otherwise functional. A table pushed to one of the walls held a bunch of messy papers, a legal pad, and several pens. On one side of the table stood a tall file cabinet and the other a trashcan filled with crumpled pieces of paper. An oversized fabric chair faced the room’s one window, stationed to see outside.

  Bella ran from corner to corner, sniffing like an airport drug canine on the scent of the bust of the century. Rose walked to his desk and chuckled at the ironclad typewriter, undoubtedly over fifty years old. Using her finger, she pressed the rounded button for the letter K and the metal key raised slowly then struck the cylinder-shaped black bar where paper belonged. Wait’ll Joanne learns that Leo uses one of these contraptions.

  Next to it sat a stack of papers. A cover sheet said Street Views. To look any further seemed a violation, so she kept moving.

  Rose turned a full three hundred sixty degrees, trying to figure out where he might hide money. A twin bed covered by a white-and–brown, psychedelic-swirled bedspread was positioned against the wall, beneath the slanted ceiling. While she slipped her hands between the mattress and box spring, she examined a creepy wall poster from Stephen King’s The Shining and was glad she hadn’t come up here last night.

  She walked over to the metal filing cabinet. First she tugged on the top drawer but it didn’t open. The lock button was pushed in. Damn. Moving to the desk, she opened the drawer but only found some business cards and some paperclips.

  At the messy table, her gaze landed on a legal pad. The top sheet was scribbled with dates and names, plus several descriptive words sounding like personality traits. The word theme was written multiple times and underlined.

  Next to the table was a floor to ceiling bookshelf. She browsed each row, the books stacked orderly and tight. Certainly with no wiggle room for something as thick as her envelope.

  On the bottom shelf was a stack of magazines. Leo’s image stared up at her from a Writer’s Digest cover. She lifted it. Dressed in a plain black T-shirt, he crossed his arms near his chest showcasing the same biceps she’d admired her first morning here. In the photo he wore the thin, wire-rimmed glasses that she’d seen him wearing whenever he read. The eyewear gave him a scholarly appeal, perfect for the publication. Rose flipped to his interview.

  WD: Tell us about winning the Pulitzer Prize. Did it come as a shock to you?

  Drake: Sure, I was surprised. Writers tell the story inside of them. Not once in the process do I stop and worry about awards or how the public will receive my work. Yes, I hope the finished product is well received, but it’s secondary to the message of my novel.

  WD: In The Gospel According to Stan there are two brothers. At times, the lines between the good brother and bad becomes blurred. Was this intentional?

  Drake: Very much so. Even in a case where it may seem obvious who the bad people are in life, we really never fully understand what goes on in someone’s private world. Inside their heads. Good and evil could be only illusions. Labels we designate to make things fit into a perfect world.

  Rose speculated over how much of this fictionalized work rested in his relationship with Everett. According to Leo, Everett was to blame for her showing up at the house. Were they both to blame for some obvious strain in their relationship?

  She carefully closed the magazine and sifted through the rest of the stack. A Time magazine with him on the cover caught her eye. He looked the same. Wispy, layered bangs brushed his dark brow, but this time his hair hung a little longer, over his ears.

  A day-old layer of whiskers shaded the cheeks of his long face and chiseled chin. His soft expression carried none of the tenseness she observed in real life. The first few buttons of a white dress shirt lay open, showing off his thick neck and a smattering of chest hair. He stared face-on at the camera, those soft, serious dark eyes stirring her interest.

  She tore her gaze from the mesmerizing image to the words next to the photo. Pulitzer Prize and Sex Appeal…Meet Leo Drake. Under different circumstances, meeting a man like Leo would have been nice. A relationship with someone like a writer, who wanted to live in a quiet town far from the public eye, could offer the simple life she’d always wanted.

  She flipped open the magazine and found the article about him. One photo showed him with the beautiful woman from the picture in his bedroom. The caption read, “Drake and wife, the late actress Camille Caron.”

  An actress? Interesting—

  Rose sniffed. Coffee. Oh good.… She sniffed again. Burning coffee! She threw the magazi
ne back into the bookcase. “Come on, Bella!”

  She hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen. Water and wet grounds covered the stove and dripped along the oven door, stopping at a pile on the floor. The stench of burnt coffee filled the air.

  Rose cleaned up, annoyed at herself for being so careless. After wiping the last sopping grounds, she tossed out the paper towel, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a Coke. At this point, caffeine was caffeine.

  * * * *

  Leo bumped open the back door with his hip and entered the kitchen. Muted rock music played behind the closed door of Emma’s apartment. He sniffed. Burnt food? Before she’d arrived, whenever he left, he’d return to the same quiet house. Now he was never sure what he’d walk into.

  He hurried upstairs and tossed his overnight bag onto his bed, anxious to get to work. His fingers itched to get on the keyboard. Talking about his current project on Good Morning Boston got the creative juices flowing; the interest expressed by the show’s host a good sign.

  As he neared the attic, the partially opened door sent a prickle up the back of his neck.

  He climbed the steps fast and entered the warm room, glancing everywhere for signs someone had been snooping around. Nothing caught his eye, and he went over and opened a window. Not only was Emma’s presence a surprise a minute, but distracting enough to make him do dumb things, like leave his office door open.

  He yawned on his way over to his worktable for a legal pad. A quick outline of the next few chapters would be a good way to start work. A Time magazine lying on the floor caught his eye. He picked it up, noting it was an old issue previously stored in the pile on his shelf. The partially opened door raised more suspicions about his tenant.

  He pictured her snooping around his house for her missing money, going places he’d specifically asked her to keep away from. If she did, much as it annoyed him, he’d give her credit for persistence. He might do the same in her shoes.

  She could be gone soon anyway—at least if the recording he’d left on had gone off at the right time and had the desired effect. He returned the magazine to the stack.

  Another yawn escaped. At this rate, he’d fall asleep before he could type one paragraph.

  He left the attic and went to the kitchen. The burnt scent lingered. Flipping the window over the sink open, he glanced into the drying rack where the percolator lay sideways and assembled, not in the pieces he’d left yesterday after washing it out. Dried crumbs of coffee stuck to the edges. He took the stem to the trashcan and wiped off the mess. Coffee-stained paper towels filled the pail. He should’ve shown Emma how to use this. People were so spoiled by today’s easy devices.

  Once he got the coffee heating on the stove, he took down two mugs. His stomach growled, so he grabbed some chips and sat down with his notepad.

  The apartment door down the hall opened. Bella entered the kitchen, spotted Leo, and trotted over with a happy gait.

  “Hey baby.” He rubbed her chest, cooing softly, “Did you miss me?”

  “Not really.” Emma entered, her bare feet shuffling on the floor.

  Leo smiled, the obvious disdain for him strangely stimulating. For some reason most women tended to his whims, leaving him feeling as needy as he did as a child. But not this one. Not one bit of fuss.

  Emma squinted through her lopsided black glasses at the percolating pot. “At last. Coffee.”

  Her disheveled red waves were pinned back on each side with little brown barrettes. She glanced at her dog and raised a brow, but Leo didn’t want to offend Bella by taking away his attention, and Bella didn’t seem to want to leave. He took in Emma’s fitted tank top and flannel bottoms, the fabric’s pattern a collage of cartoon dogs. “Nice pants.”

  She shrugged. “One of the perks of working at home. This hairdo is the other.”

  He ignored what he’d heard from eavesdropping and figured it wouldn’t kill him to be nice to her. The way he used to behave around a pretty woman. “And what kind of work do you do?”

  “Travel agent. It’s computerized, like everything these days. An easy job to do from a remote location.” She glanced at the stove; then her gaze drifted to the counter then to him. “Why do you do that? Take down a mug for me each day.”

  “Habit.” Heat crept up his neck from her intense stare. “My family had a rule…first one up made the coffee and got down mugs for everyone.”

  He pretended to read his notes, but instead could only think about the day Camille had told him how much she loved when he took the time to remember her with a ready mug and hot coffee. He looked up. Emma watched him, her stare intense, like she’d caught wind of his thoughts.

  Leo embraced the ache in his chest and said, “It scored big points with my wife after we married. The little things…they mean everything.”

  She nodded, watching him in the most knowing kind of way. “Yes. I suppose they do.”

  Sadness resonating in her eyes sliced right through a place he reserved for those close to him. He wanted to ask her more, learn what details rested in her answer, but he discarded the notion fast as it entered his head. “Any problems while I was gone?”

  “Problems? Like wha—oh yes, there was a big problem.”

  Leo tried not to smile. How could he get lucky enough to have this fake haunting work twice?

  Emma pushed her large glasses against the bridge of her nose. “I think something is wrong with your coffee maker.”

  “It’s worked fine for decades.”

  “Exactly. Its days are numbered.” She went to the cabinet near the sink and took down a glass. “Why don’t you donate that thing to the Smithsonian? They can put it next to Archie Bunker’s chair. Gosh, I’ll even spring for new drip-maker.”

  Leo laughed. How did she relax him so easily, leave him calmer than he’d felt all day? The same calm that swept over him around Bella. And he rarely opened up to strangers about life with Camille, yet he’d just handed her a piece of himself on a platter.

  Guilt over trying to scare her with the dumb recording ambushed him out of nowhere. A foolish stunt, and one she thankfully hadn’t noticed last night.

  “A drip-maker is a generous offer, but we don’t need one. Based on evidence in the garbage pail, I’m going to guess you used too much water or grounds.”

  Her ivory skin reddened and she glanced to the garbage pail as if it had betrayed her. She filled the glass with water. “Is the coffee ready yet?”

  “Almost.” He leaned back and stretched his legs, taking note of how oddly cute her derriere looked with puppies prancing around on the curves. “The percolator has been in my family since I was a kid. People want things instantly. No one appreciates the value of time spent crafting a good cup of coffee. A symphony of actions, exact measurements.”

  “I suppose. I never thought about it much before.” She drank her water and watched him over the rim. When she finished, she put the glass in the sink. “Well, thank you for making me coffee. I do appreciate it.”

  “Any time.” An idea hit him and, without overthinking it, he rose and moved to her side. “This coffee is about done. You want a few tips on using this, in case you try again yourself?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m going on Amazon right now and ordering something manufactured in the past decade.”

  “Very funny.” He tried to keep up the act of being annoyed, but a smile crept to his lips as he shut off the burner. He waggled a finger at her to move closer to the stove. “Come on. Percolator Coffee 101 is about to start.”

  She laughed and stepped to his side. “Guess my grade in this class can’t get any worse.”

  “You didn’t do too badly. I’d give you a C for your first attempt. Your assembly was about ninety percent correct.”

  “C? I’m an A student.”

  He grinned and their gazes met, lighting a spark inside him. “I’ll bet you are. Pay attention. First, you don’t want to overcook the coffee. Boil for no more than three
minutes. How long was it on yesterday?”

  She blushed. “Let’s say more than three minutes.”

  He suspected way longer, but kept it to himself and lifted the pot to fill their mugs. Normally, he wouldn’t take time to explain his beloved old coffee maker to someone, but he wanted to show it to her, for reasons he couldn’t quite define.

  She reached out to take a mug and he rested his hand over hers. Her soft skin reminded him how he missed touching a woman. “Hold your horses. This lesson isn’t over.”

  She rolled her eyes but didn’t move away. “Fine. My horses are held.”

  He removed his hand, but the touch left an invisible imprint on his skin. “Based on the assembled pot I found this morning, you were almost there, but the basket lid probably wasn’t on.”

  “A basket lid?”

  He removed the top from the pot he just brewed and pointed at a flat cylinder piece. “Look familiar?”

  “No. So this is what keeps the grounds down, huh?” She studied the part with serious consideration, like she expected a quiz on the topic. “It explains my mess.”

  Her long lashes flickered behind the eyeglass frames. He inhaled a mixture of coffee and the floral scent of her hair. Their nearness, and the need for his help, cued him into a certain vulnerability she possessed, like she wasn’t as tough as she seemed. Unexpected need for her stirred inside his chest, leaving him strangely desiring this woman who didn’t seem to fit properly in the skin she’d arrived in.

  “Got it. Basket lid. Three minutes.” She smiled. “Thank you for the lesson, Mr. Coffee.”

  She laughed and stepped away, going to the cabinet. Her nearness had made a piece of him melt.

  He returned to his seat and struggled to erase the warmth smothering his chest, almost afraid to feel so good. Emma busied herself removing a bag of salad and making her lunch. Leo tried to get back into his outline, but couldn’t. Instead, he noted the movement of her slender arm and roundness of her buttocks beneath the flannel. He dragged his gaze along the curve of her waist and to the generous curves of her chest outlined in the ribbed tank top. Despite her offbeat wardrobe, she glowed with a womanly aura.