Drive-By Daddy & Calamity Jo

by Cheryl Anne Porter

HE KNEW! Jo dashed across the mesa, tripped over the hem of her pants and nearly went tumbling onto her nose. The action snapped the worn leather belt that had seemed like such a bargain at the thrift store and the baggy pants slipped down her hips. She jerked them up and hobbled away, looking like a little old man with a bad back. Behind her, she could hear Case chuckling.

  She turned and glared back at her nemesis. Even in the dim light from the bonfire, she could see him grinning. He gave her a cocky salute indicating that he knew it was her—probably had known all along, the rat—and that he was enjoying her predicament.

  Furious and embarrassed, her first thought was to run home—well, hobble home. She couldn’t do much running in pants that insisted on trying to head south with every step. The more she thought about running, though, the angrier she got. He’d told her that cock-and-bull story about walking naked over hot coals just to get rid of her.

  She floundered across the mesa, away from the light of the bonfire and into the shadows. When she came to a thick stand of mesquite bushes she stopped and glanced once again at the group of men. It would be a shame to miss whatever was going to happen, she concluded. Besides, she’d come all this way and made a fool of herself. So she might as well stick around.

  Recently fallen dried mesquite beans crunched and snapped beneath her shoes as she pushed her way in among the gnarled, smoky-smelling trunks and peered out at the group still gathered around the bonfire. She hoped they hadn’t heard her noisy entrance, but then, none of them seem to have noticed her flight from the fire, so she probably was safe. Even Case had returned to the group, obviously believing he’d run her off.

  She wasn’t that easy to get rid of. He should know that by now. Hadn’t she been practically stalking him all day? Jo winced at the truth of that statement as she leaned against the mesquite trunk and watched the group gathered on the mesa.

  Because she’d been distracted by Case when she’d been near the bonfire, she’d barely noticed that there were a number of men from Calamity Falls in the group. She’d known Purdy’s message, whatever it was, would appeal to tourists—after all, they came to town to see what the odd inhabitants were up to. But she saw a number of men from town, as well, including Lainey’s grandfather Julius, who looked fascinated by the proceedings.

  She noticed Stavros Pappas, who ran a Greek restaurant in town and had a strong interest in astrology. He didn’t cook certain dishes on days the stars didn’t seem in the proper alignment so the menu at his place was always a delicious surprise. Why would he be interested in Purdy’s Way of the Unbroken Man?

  Beside him was Cedric Warrender, a wealthy retired British landscape architect who liked to trim the pyracantha bushes in front of his house into the fanciful shapes of characters from Alice in Wonderland. He thought they spoke to him and recorded their conversations in three-ring binder notebooks.

  Nearby were several other of the town’s eccentrics, mostly newcomers Jo didn’t know very well. Jo felt a surge of concern when she saw how eagerly they seemed to be listening to Purdy’s message. She thought their interest in him was strange because most of Calamity Falls’ oddballs were determined individualists.

  They didn’t usually follow anyone else’s ideas, but tried to get others to agree with their own unusual theories. Something about Purdy must be very attractive to them. Perhaps it was the warm, fuzzy, get-in-touch-with-your-feelings method he was talking about.

  The rich timbre of Purdy’s voice was compelling. As she listened to the words rolling through the night air, she felt herself caught up in their flowing cadence. She blinked and shook her head. It was almost hypnotizing.

  She stood on her tiptoes to peer through the mesquite branches as she searched out Case. He stood with the other men, arms folded across his chest, head bent forward in an attitude of intense concentration.

  “Hmph,” she said scornfully, rocking back on her heels.

  She certainly couldn’t imagine Case Houston getting in touch with his feelings, if he had any, beyond irritation with her. She had to gulp down loud laughter when he joined hands with the other men and they began walking in a circle around the bonfire, chanting something that sounded like, “Male Power built the world. Male Power will preserve the world.”

  “And women had nothing to do with it?” she murmured, peeking out from her perch. Their circling and chanting went on for a while, then Purdy talked some more, then led them in more chants. It was easy to hear him in the still night air, but she couldn’t make much sense of what he was saying. “Maybe because I’m not a man,” she whispered to herself.

  Finally, thinking she wasn’t going to see anything worthwhile, she started to creep from the mesquite bush, ready to go home. Small thorns and branches plucked at her loose clothing and it took her a few minutes of grappling with the bush to get herself loose.

  Just as she finally staggered out of the branches, however, Purdy once again climbed on top of a small stool and called for the men’s attention. Jo paused behind the mesquite to listen.

  Purdy lifted his hands into the air and grasped them together so that he looked like a prizefighter proclaiming victory. “I can fe-e-e-e-el the power,” he said, his head thrown back, his magnificent voice rolling out through the desert night.

  “Yes sir,” some of the men answered, nodding solemnly.

  “There’s power here tonight,” Purdy went on, fisting his hands and punching them into the air above his head. “There’s something in the air. I can feel it.” He waved his hands, paused for effect and turned his head. “I can smell it.”

  “Maybe it’s just that his underarm deodorant has failed,” a deep voice rumbled above her head.

  With a squeak of surprise, Jo jumped and whipped around. Or tried to. Her baggy pants tripped her up and as she grabbed at them and tried to right herself, her elbow connected with Case Houston’s midsection.

  “Oof,” he grunted and rubbed his stomach. “Hey, watch out.”

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on people, Houston,” she hissed, giving her baggy clothes a jerk to pull her pant legs out from under her heels. She did a staggering dance around in a circle before she got her feet straight again and her pants out of the way.

  “And you shouldn’t lurk around in the bushes, Ms. Jo Ella Quillan,” he responded, muffled laughter in his voice. “Although in that getup, I can understand that you wouldn’t want to be recognized.”

  “I was merely trying to do my job,” she said in a haughty tone. She lifted her chin and gave him a superior look that she knew was a major failure in the darkness.

  “You were following me.”

  No point in denying it. She changed the subject instead. “Aren’t you going to stay for the rest of Purdy’s talk?” she asked, tongue in cheek. “Or are you fully in touch with your unbroken inner man after all that hand-holding and chanting?”

  Case surprised her by leaning close and whispering, “My inner man and I are just fine, thank you.”

  The scent of his spicy cologne teased her nose and the feel of his breath brushing against her ear was disconcerting—and exciting. She gave him a sideways glance, noting how the moonlight made shadows appear along his high cheekbones and eyebrows. The outer man wasn’t bad, either, she decided with a sigh.

  She hadn’t meant the sound to be audible, but he responded by asking, “Are you annoyed with me? Good, then maybe you’ll quit being such a pain in the keister.”

  “I could be a big help to you, Case, if you’d only let me.”

  “The day I need help from the Little Tramp is the day I hand in my investigator’s license,” he grumbled as he gave her outfit a dismissive glance.

  Jo’s lips pinched together. Did he know that in that insult he’d just confirmed what she’d been thinking all along? That he was in Calamity Falls to investigate something—and now she was almost positive that it was Purdy. “What’s Harold Purdy up to, by the way?”

  Case’s brows drew together in a ferocious frown as if he was regretting what
he’d said. “Oh, hell,” he murmured. Before he could say any more, though, Purdy’s voice boomed across the mesa. “Our inner man compels us to take control once more of our world and to that end, I would like to invite all of you to a lecture on the fascinating subject of cosmogony. You’ll find what you’re truly looking for,” he said in his intriguing voice. “Cosmogony is the story of earth’s past and future, a new, but proven, science that tells us exactly what each individual’s place is in this universe.”

  “Cosmogony?” Jo asked.

  “Shhh!” Case said, grasping her shoulder and giving her a gentle shake. “I’m trying to hear what he’s saying.”

  “Then why didn’t you stay with the group?”

  “Because, damn it, I had to come find out what you were up to. I knew I hadn’t been lucky enough to get you to leave.”

  Jo shrugged him off, alarmed by the sudden spurt of awareness that bolted through her. She dragged her attention back to Purdy just in time to hear him say the lecture on cosmogony would be held later in the week at the house he was renting. Jo immediately began making plans to attend, if it wasn’t for men only.

  “You’re not going to that meeting,” Case growled into her ear.

  “Excuse me,” she said angrily. “The last I heard, this is a free country and I can go to that lecture if I choose. Besides, it might be of interest to the readers of the Ingot.”

  “You’re only interested because you think I am.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Case took her arm and started marching her toward the edge of the mesa and the trail that led down to the road into Calamity Falls. “If you don’t stop following me, I’ll have you arrested.”

  “Oh, I’m so sure you’d do that,” she responded sardonically. She would have stopped and dug in her heels but she didn’t get the chance. He kept hustling her along and she couldn’t fight him off and hold up her pants at the same time. Her only defense was to stick out her elbows and try to deflect him, but he responded by grabbing both of them so that he was marching her along like a prisoner heading for a padded cell.

  “Don’t doubt that I will have you arrested.”

  “Won’t trying to have the reporter for the local paper locked up bring you attention that you don’t want?”

  Case let go of one of her elbows and from his pocket took a small flashlight to light their way down the path. It wasn’t steep or rough, but Jo was grateful to be able to see. She hadn’t thought to bring a flash-light.

  When they reached the road, Case roughly urged her around to face him. He leaned close and stared into her wide eyes. “Stay out of my way, Jo. Stop following me. I’ll do whatever is necessary to keep you out of my investigation.”

  The determination in his face had her gulping down a lump in her throat, but she couldn’t resist saying, “Investigation? Of Purdy? Why are you investigating him?”

  A low sound of annoyance was her only answer. The look in his dark eyes would have been enough to singe her whiskers off if they’d been real. He didn’t say anything else, but pocketed his flashlight, placed both his hands on her shoulders, and moved her away from him. “Good night, Miss Quillan. Stay away from me.”

  Or you’ll regret it.

  The unspoken threat hung in the air. For all of her bravado, Jo flinched. He sounded like he meant it. If he hadn’t been holding her in place, Jo suspected her knees probably would have crumpled. She forced a little starch into them by reminding herself that good investigative journalists didn’t back off at the first sign of trouble, that they persevered and didn’t become intimidated. Looking into the displeasure in Case’s eyes, though, she wondered if any of her hero journalists had ever faced anyone like him.

  Without another word, Case set her away from him, turned and strode into the darkness. Jo stared after him in dismay. She wanted to stand still for a few minutes and think things through, but Purdy’s audience was coming down off the mountain and she needed to scurry out of the way so she wouldn’t be seen.

  Holding her pants up with both hands, she scuttled through the dark streets toward home. Fortunately, Calamity Falls was small and Jo knew every staircase and back alley that would lead her to the little house she rented on Cholla Circle, a fancy name for the narrow street that had been built a hundred years ago for carriage and foot traffic.

  She fervently hoped that none of her neighbors saw her. Old Mrs. Rios was convinced people were peeping into her windows at night. She kept a ready supply of rocks stacked inside her front and back doors in case she needed to defend herself. If the old lady saw Jo in her tramp’s garb, those stones would be zinging through the air in record numbers.

  Jo scurried past Mrs. Rios’s house and in her own front door. As she shut it behind her, Lainey came out of the kitchen carrying a thick sandwich and a can of diet soda. She looked at Jo’s bedraggled appearance and laughed. “What happened to you?”

  “The belt broke,” Jo answered in disgust.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Lainey said, sitting down on the couch, propping her feet on a small trunk that Jo used for a coffee table, and taking a huge bite of her sandwich.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.” Jo hurried into her bedroom and shucked off the baggy outfit, vowing to return it to the thrift store first thing in the morning.

  “What happened?’ Lainey called out.

  As she scrubbed off her fake beard and then donned a nightshirt and fuzzy slippers, Jo reported on the Way of the Unbroken Man meeting.

  “Your grandpa was there.”

  “Oh, great,” Lainey muttered. Julius loved checking out any new events going on in town. “And was Case there?”

  “Oh, yes.” She returned to the living room, took the sandwich from her friend, picked up the uneaten half and sat down beside her. “Hey, that’s my sandwich,” Lainey grumbled.

  “Made from food in my refrigerator.”

  “Mine’s always empty.”

  “Perhaps you should shop for food.”

  Lainey nodded, considering the idea. “I could, I suppose, when I buy supplies for my shop, but food tastes better at your house.”

  “A likely story, Lainey.”

  Lainey grinned. “It was the best I could come up with at the moment. Tell me about Case.”

  Jo gave her a grumpy look. “It might have been a more effective disguise if I’d stayed away from Case and hadn’t let him panic me.”

  Interested, Lainey sat up. “He panicked you? This is getting good. How’d he do that?”

  Jo gave a simplified version of the walking-naked-over-hot-coals story, but it still sent Lainey into peals of laughter. While Lainey howled, Jo chewed and scowled.

  When her friend came up for air, Jo said, “He unnerves me. He’s not what I’m used to.”

  “Because most of the men you know in Calamity Falls are either retired, eccentrics, or…”

  “Retired eccentrics,” Jo finished.

  “Or men like Steve who are here on short-term surveying assignments, then break up with their girlfriends, leaving their hearts crushed into itty-bitty pieces just before they breeze out of town.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Jo insisted although the thought of Steve still dismayed her. The previous night’s embarrassment had begun to fade. She no longer wanted to crawl under her bedcovers and hide. She could thank Case Houston for that. He’d given her something to think about besides her broken heart.

  It wasn’t broken, she reminded herself sternly. It wasn’t even cracked or dented. She had been accustomed to Steve, that was all. They’d gone out for months, had regular Monday and Saturday night dates. They were accustomed to each other’s company, and while she hadn’t thought of him in terms of a husband, she’d been comfortable with him. She was used to him. True, she’d been in a rut and she supposed she should be grateful to him for catapulting her out of it and into the path of Case Houston and his investigation.

  She simply had to remember that Case might be an attractive man, but he was only a source
, someone who would help her with the story she needed. The fact that he was dark, dangerous and sexy couldn’t be allowed to affect her objectivity.

  She couldn’t say all that to Lainey, though, she thought, giving her friend a sidelong glance as she got up to rifle through Jo’s freezer for ice cream. Lainey would build it up into something it certainly wasn’t.

  The two of them enjoyed late-night ice-cream sundaes, which Lainey assured her would put her right to sleep with no regretful thoughts of Steve. Jo gave up her efforts to change her friend’s mind, realizing she was only trying to save Jo from another evening of wine imbibing.

  When Lainey breezed out at ten o’clock, Jo headed for bed. Whether it was the ice cream or not, she didn’t spend any time thinking about Steve. Instead, her mind was on Case—his presence in Calamity Falls, his investigation, his dark, glittering eyes. It was disturbing, but better than thinking about being dumped on a busy Monday night at the Copper Pot, she reflected as she drifted into sleep.

  TAPE RECORDER in one pocket of her jacket, notebook in the other, dark glasses firmly in place, Jo strolled easily down Battlehaven Avenue. She stopped in front of a plate-glass window to adjust the brim of the low-crowned slouch cloth hat she’d bought last year to protect her from the sun on a trip to the Grand Canyon.

  With a satisfied nod, she turned away, sure she blended in perfectly with the tourists. She smiled as she passed a man wearing plaid Bermuda shorts and argyle socks and considered that maybe her jeans and T-shirt were too conservative. On the other hand, she needed to be a little less conspicuous in her efforts to get Case to talk to her, so subtlety would be the best approach.

  She had already nosed around that morning and discovered that Purdy had no meetings scheduled for the day. He was often out and about in Calamity Falls, though, and she suspected that where Purdy led, Case was sure to follow. She could observe them both and see if she could discover what it was that Case was investigating. She had to be careful, though, that she didn’t follow so closely that she looked like the tail end of a parade.

  She made her way in and out of the shops, surprised by the Wednesday-morning crowds, but pleased for the merchants who were doing brisk business. It took her an hour of supposedly aimless wandering but at last she located Harold Purdy at an outdoor café. He was in the middle of a group of people who had pushed a couple of tables together to be near him. He was speaking and they leaned close to hear him.