She seemed to be of two minds how to respond to him. One part of her was angry and hostile, the other... neither. And the possibilities that swirled around the latter prospect were intriguing.
“Lee...Lee?” Diane delivered a restrained thump to his arm. “Hey, you! Lee!” When she saw that she’d finally gained his attention, she repeated her question. “Did you talk with Shannon last night? To ask about Nate Barlow’s story and the mysterious Parker reference?”
“I talked with her,” Lee said. “She doesn’t know any more about it than we do. There’s nothing in the family history. But there’s a lot of material she said Mae didn’t feel was necessary to include in the history. She promised to look through it again. Keep her eye out. She’ll let us know.”
“Well, that’s something,” Diane murmured...an exact repetition of his response to Karen last evening when she was on the stairs and challenging him by saying that she’d allowed him to walk with her.
Lee frowned, uncomfortable with what was happening. It was one thing to devote his resting thoughts to Karen, and another entirely to allow them to intrude on his work. “Western Rambles” came first in his life. It had since its inception. He wasn’t going to let that change.
To aid in maintaining their professionalism, Lee called a break so they could dress properly and eat breakfast before once again returning to work.
DIANE HAD LEFT for Del Norte by the time Lee’s noontime interview with Old Pete Tunny arrived. Originally the crew had planned to have several additional resident interviews taped by midday, but events of the morning had shoved everything else aside and the interviews had been postponed. No one objected. But Lee knew better than to chance letting this opportunity with Pete slip away. The old man could change his mind as easily as the wind could change directions.
Pete saw Lee and Manny into his one-room shack and with great dignity offered them some of his strongly brewed coffee.
As they sat around, steaming cups in hand, Pete rubbed his whiskered chin and said, “The first of the crazies are here, I guess. Couldn’t come into town nice and quietlike. N-o-o-o! They had to sound like a bunch of banshees, wailin’ and carryin’ on.”
“It’s hard to arrive quietlike in four large trucks,” Lee said, smiling at Pete’s description.
Pete’s bright eyes narrowed. “Four of ’em, huh. I thought there was more.”
“That and a van.”
“A van!” Pete repeated.
The way he said it, Lee wasn’t sure he understood the meaning of the word. “A big car,” he explained. “Carries eight or ten people.”
“Next you’re gonna be tellin’ me what a car is!” Pete snapped. “I know what a car is...and a van! I just think they’re awful. If God’d meant for us to ride around all the time, he’da given us wheels, not feet!”
Lee wished the tape was rolling. He tapped Manny’s shoe with his boot
Manny, who’d been staring at Pete as if he were some kind of anachronism, readied the equipment.
“You don’t mind if we start taping our talk, do you?” Lee asked.
“Not if you don’t mind me sayin’ what I think.”
“That’s what we’re here for.”
“I don’t like that,” Pete complained, squinting when the auxiliary light was switched on.
“We can go outside.”
“Nope,” he said, “let’s get this over with.” Then he positioned himself as stiffly as if he were standing before a firing squad.
It took a full hour for them to finish. Instead of being cantankerous, as Lee had expected, Pete had continued on his best behavior. He’d slowly relaxed and talked about Twilight and its past, including his own past. He’d told stories. He’d laughed and poked fun. It was an amazing interview.
Manny had managed to wrangle an invitation to lunch with the studio workers, so he hurried off. But Lee stayed a little longer to visit with Pete.
“You remember the first time I saw you?” Pete asked after an extended pause.
“Your... salute?” Lee murmured.
“I meant it!”
“I know you did. Why’d you give us the interview?”
“I got a question, too,” Pete said instead of answering. “Just what are you plannin’ for that little gal of ours?”
“Little gal?”
“I saw the way things was between you last night. Don’t think I didn’t!”
“I don’t have any plan,” Lee denied.
Pete snorted. “Yeah, and pigs don’t have snouts! She said it was your brother that hurt her before. You better not let me catch you doin’ the same thing.”
“I don’t intend to hurt Karen, Pete.”
Pete scooted forward in his threadbare chair. “Funny thing about intentions... they have a way of goin’ wrong. That’s what these people in town don’t understand. They don’t intend for things to get outta hand. But it happens. Without you meanin’ for it to. You start off with one thing, it turns into somethin’ else, then all heck breaks loose. You understand what I’m sayin’, son?”
“Why did you come back, Pete, if you still feel the same way?”
Pete didn’t appreciate being pressed. His answer was irritable. “I know it ain’t much, but this place is my home.”
“I thought your home was on the land, in the hills.”
“It was! It is! But—” He bent to pull off a worn boot, dropped it on the rough wood floor, then peeled away a holey sock to reveal a terrible-looking bunion. “Other foot’s got one just like it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“You should have that seen to,” Lee said quickly. It was hard for him to believe the man could walk at all!
“I ain’t been to a doctor in my life and I’m not startin’ now!”
“Pete, if it’s money—”
A light knock sounded on Pete’s door, followed by Karen’s voice. “Pete? Are you in there? Answer me if you are, Pete. Please.”
The old man hurriedly thrust his foot back into the sock and redonned the boot, not wanting her to see. “Yeah...yeah...I’m here,” he said gruffly. “Give me a minute.”
“Would you like me to—” Lee had been going to say “get the door,” but Pete was already on his way, shuffling across the short space.
“Pete, I need to talk to you. It’s really important,” Karen said as she hurried inside, a frown marring her brow. Then she saw Lee and all movement stopped.
“I already got company,” Pete grumbled. “We barely fit as it is.”
Lee stood up. “I was on my way out.”
“I—I can come another time,” Karen said.
The pink in her cheeks made her look even more appealing. Her coloring was beautiful. She was beautiful.
She pushed a fall of chestnut curls away from her face, a nervous movement. “Truly, I can come back.”
Lee didn’t want to go, but he could see that she wouldn’t be comfortable with him around. “I’ve been here over an hour. Now it’s your turn.”
“An hour...for Pete’s interview? I—I thought you’d be gone long before this.”
“Pete was great,” Lee said. “He’d make a wonderful ambassador for the town if he’d let himself. Our audience will love him.”
Pete crossed his arms. “It’s still crowded in here.”
Lee laughed. “I’m going.” Then at the door he said, “Thanks, Pete,” and gave Karen a little nod.
KAREN COULDN’T SETTLE. She moved around Pete’s small room as she had when a child, examining the numerous mementos from his desert treks. Tiny animal bones bleached white by the sun, interesting rocks, pieces of dried wood.
There was no getting around it. She had to acknowledge it and not take it back later. Lee Parker bothered her. Bothered her in a way she shouldn’t let him. She could still feel the vibrations of his presence in this room and from earlier this morning at the trucks.
“You have somethin’ you wanna say?” Pete demanded after a brief observation of her jerky movements.
“Uh, yes. Y
es, I do.” Karen forced herself to concentrate. She had to stop thinking about Lee, at least for the moment. “It’s—it’s about you coming back.”
“I got somethin’ to say about that, too,” Pete declared, and he said it with such conviction that Karen looked at him fully. “I decided you was right about Augusta,” Pete said. “If she was here, she’d be kickin’ my butt all over the place for not helpin’ out. I still don’t think she’d want Twilight to change, but it’s gonna change either way. Like you said—be a real ghost town or a pretend one with lots of visitors.” He paused. “I guess the pretend one’s best.”
Karen absorbed what he said. In effect, he was telling her that he was going to stop making trouble. That he wasn’t going to continue upsetting everyone with his pronouncements and his high jinks. And he’d already made a start by giving Lee a “great” interview.
“Oh, Pete!” she cried, and hurried to hug him whether he liked it or not. “Pete, you’ve made me so happy. Everyone will be happy!”
Pete wiggled free. “Hey, little girl. Don’t do that. That’s enough,” he protested.
She looked at him with glowing eyes. “Everyone’s going to want to do that, Pete. Better get used to it.”
“Maybe I should get outta town again.”
“Don’t you dare!” she said, grinning. “I’ll come find you this time. And I mean it!”
Pete grumbled and fussed some more, but Karen could see that, for the first time since she’d known him, he was deeply touched.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE NEWS of Pete’s capitulation spread around town like wildfire. It wasn’t widely accepted at first, but with Lee and Manny’s concurrence about the interview—even to the point of playing some of the raw footage back for them—everyone became believers.
Typically, Pete hid himself away. And unwilling to give him any excuse to change his mind, no one insisted on him joining the merriment. As a result, so much gratitude was extended to Karen that she began to sympathize with Pete’s reclusiveness. She was barely able to get any work done at all, for people stopping by to talk.
Excitement reigned for the whole day, even after Carmelita and Mary, who’d envisioned setting up a small café, learned that the movie studio had made full provisions for their workers in the tiny toadstool of a town that had suddenly sprung up adjacent to Twilight.
“I bet we’ll get ’em into the saloon later on, once they settle in,” John consoled everyone. “We’ll make sure they have an invite, that’s for sure!”
“And when the souvenirs show up, they’ll want some of those, too, I bet,” Mary had proclaimed.
The general outlook was rosy as it began to dawn on each of them that their project stood a good chance of success.
“Wow,” MANNY SAID at what had become almost a nightly meeting for the crew in the Cruzes’ bedroom. “These people are really excited.”
“I have to confess,” Diane said, “I’m getting excited, too. I’m looking forward to Twilight’s big show.” She glanced at Lee. “What did that Melanie Taylor person have to say? Did we get the okay to tape?”
“She’s talking to her boss, who’ll talk to his boss, but she says it’s only a formality. She knows ‘Western Rambles.’ Says they’ll cooperate in every way they can. Even ensure interviews with the appropriate participants during the junket. She’s smart. She sees it as free PR for the film.”
“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours,” Diane murmured.
“Exactly.” Lee paused. “What about your trip into Del Norte? Did you have any luck?”
“I didn’t find a thing.”
Lee tapped his bent knee. “I haven’t heard from Shannon, either.”
“What would it mean if we did find something?” Diane asked. “I mean, found something that contradicted... What would we do?”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” Manny moaned.
“Then why are we looking?”
“You’re asking that?” Manny challenged. “Ms. Accuracy in Reporting?”
Diane examined her hands. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to do anything that will hurt these people.”
“The truth is the truth, Diane,” Lee said.
“Yes...but they’re so happy.”
“And may continue to be that way. We haven’t found anything contradictory yet. Just information that’s not there. All we’re trying to do is fill in the blanks.”
“Like always,” she agreed, but it was easy to tell that her heart wasn’t in it.
KAREN SAT at her bedroom window, looking out into the night. There was something so lonely and yet so reassuring about the vast emptiness of the land. A coyote called, another coyote answered. Distant, haunting. She’d loved to listen to them as a young girl, their wild natures speaking to something buried deep within her.
Was it the evolution from city girl to country girl that was again causing her problems? Was that why, at times, she felt as if the world in which she’d existed previously were somehow slipping away?
She knew she had to make some decisions. Decisions that would have long-range effects. Whether or not she cared enough for Martin to accept his proposal. Whether she wanted to open her own shop. And if she did, where it would be. In Twilight or elsewhere.
Her most vexing problem was something else, though. Or rather, someone else. She couldn’t believe it, but Lee Parker was starting to consume her every waking thought, and sometimes her dreams! She didn’t want it to be that way, but—
The coyote yipped again, his elongated cry a plea to the universe surrounding him.
Once again she felt a kinship to that distant desert wolf and silently echoed his cry in her spirit.
KAREN WAS AT WORK the next morning, nearing completion of her first inventory of the articles in the shop proper. By now she’d done a full-scale sweep from one side to the other, assigning numbers to most of the furniture and larger objects that also corresponded to notations in her notebook. As before, she wasn’t taking time to look anything up, just continuing the list she could refer to later. Next, she would start on. the storage shed and do the same thing. Once that was accomplished, she would take up where she’d left off several days ago—trying to make some sense of it all by studying the reference books, and possibly, this time, even making a few calls to people with greater expertise than she had.
She was on her hands and knees, peering under a table, when Bette came rushing into the shop.
“Oh my heaven! You are not going to believe it!” Bette’s eyes were wide, her expression slightly shocked as Karen looked at her. “You’ll never guess who’s sitting in my living room right this very minute! I told them I was slipping out to get some coffee from downstairs, but it was really to come over here to tell you—to warn you, I suppose.”
“You’re not making any sense, Bette,” Karen said, straightening.
“The Parkers! The Parkers are in my living room! Mae Parker and a younger woman she calls Shannon. Doesn’t look like a Parker at all, though. Got blond hair and blue eyes. Maybe she’s one of the in-laws—”
“Mae Parker?” Karen repeated as memories of the aborted wedding burst into her mind. Mae Parker saying in her imperious way, This is a travesty... a complete and total travesty! In one of her bitterer moments, Karen had determined that if she ever met the woman again, she’d tell her straight to her face what she thought of her. That her behavior had been even more atrocious than that of other members of her family.
“They’ve come to visit Twilight,” Bette said, rushing on, “and Lee, of course.”
Lee! Karen remembered what she and Lee had talked about concerning her parents. But even though they were guilty of elitism themselves, her parents hadn’t gone out of their way to cause pain, as Mae had with her words.
“I’ve got to get back,” Bette said. “They’ll notice if I’m gone too long.”
“They’re visiting Twilight?” Karen called after her, seeking to confirm what she thought she’d heard. “They plan to look ar
ound?”
Bette paused at the back door. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Mae says she wants to see everything. And believe me, she’s the kind of person who means what she says!”
BY NOW LEE WAS as competent as a native when it came to guiding his relations around Twilight He introduced them to the citizenry they came upon, showed off the well, told the story of the outlaw as legend had it, showed what the studio workers had started doing first thing this morning in the music hall, ushered them through the saloon, the mercantile, the hotel still under renovation.
Mae’s hawklike eyes missed nothing. “More here than I remembered,” she said. “Why don’t they put a coat of paint on the place? It’d look a lot better.”
“The movie studio wants it as it is, Mae. They like it looking old.”
Mae stopped to lean on her cane. She was dressed neatly in a conservative tan skirt and a white blouse with a black belt that matched her shoes. Her snowy white hair was in its accustomed knot on top her head. Few would believe she was eighty-eight.
“Wait’ll they get old. They might not like it so much!” she grumbled.
Shannon laughed. “Mae!”
“Well, it’s the truth. Place probably wouldn’t mind bein’ spiffed up a bit.”
They stood on the sidewalk outside the saloon’s front doors.
“What’s that?” Mae asked, pointing to a storefront down the way. “Sign says Antiques. Aren’t we goin’ to look there?”
Lee had been dreading this moment. “Uh, Mae? Before we go in—”
“I know the place belongs to Augusta Lamb,” Mae cut in. “You don’t have to pussyfoot around. Might think you do, but you don’t!”
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