Drive-By Daddy & Calamity Jo

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  “I see,” Jo said slowly. “Don’t you think you over-did it a little? A garden slug could feel superior to you in that mode.”

  “I needed to put him off his guard.”

  She was desperate to know why. Her fingers itched to write all this down. “Is this how you usually conduct investigations?”

  “I do whatever is necessary.”

  “Sort of like I do to get the story I need,” she said slyly.

  He ignored that. “Tell me about Charlotte.”

  Sensing she wasn’t going to get the answers she wanted, Jo told him about Charlotte and her lectures.

  “I…I’ve never seen Charlotte spend a day away from her lectures. Those talks on the Harris hawk are her life, but she seems to have forgotten that completely. And that other lady, Freida—did you see those diamonds?”

  “Yeah,” Case answered. “And so did Purdy.”

  Jo immediately snapped around to face him, her eyes huge. “Is he a jewel thief?” she asked breathlessly excited at the idea of actually helping to actually catch a jewel thief. She pictured Purdy dressed all in black, dashing over rooftops with her in hot pursuit. Unfortunately, Case intruded on that exciting daydream, tumbling her off that imaginary rooftop and back to earth.

  “Not that I know of,” he said.

  Suppressing a sigh, she asked, “If you weren’t here to catch him, why did you go into the village-idiot act?”

  Case’s expression cooled. “Catch him doing what? Admiring Freida’s jewels? Taking little old ladies to brunch? Telling you you’re as fresh as a spring breeze?” He snorted in what Jo considered to be a most ungentlemanly way. “The guy ought to be advertising laundry soap.”

  Jo tilted her head and gave him a speculative look. “He does seem to have the personality of a great salesman.”

  “And you were buying.”

  “I was interested in what he had to say,” she defended, glancing away.

  “He didn’t say anything. But you probably didn’t notice that, since you were too busy drooling on his shoe shine.”

  Jo gave him an annoyed look, but kept her temper in check. “I think you’re jealous of him.”

  Case stared. “Jealous?”

  “You have to admit he has a certain…charisma that you lack.”

  Case put his hands on his hips and stuck his chin out. “You don’t think I have charisma?”

  “No.” Inwardly, Jo was flailing away at herself for ever starting this, but she couldn’t back down.

  “And he does? Let me tell you something, Jo. He works at his charm to get what he wants.”

  “Well, most people have to, Case. It doesn’t come naturally to them.” She gave him a pointed look as if to say that charm certainly didn’t come naturally to him. “Personally, I would have thought that if you were investigating him, you would have reacted in a more…direct manner.”

  Case met her gaze and one corner of his mouth kicked up. “While you looked like you were ready to sign up for whatever he’s selling.”

  A frisson of excitement began to hum through her. She’d been temporarily bewitched by Harold, that was true, but it had been the fleeting interest one would show in any new phenomenon. Case, now, he fascinated her with his shifting moods, his quick humor, and his single-minded focus on his goal.

  “Is that why he’s here? Because he’s selling something?”

  Case rocked back on his heels and gave her a long look followed by a sly grin. “Try to remember that whatever he’s selling, you might want to think twice before buying.” He leaned in close and surprised her by running the tip of his finger down her cheek.

  This time the tingle had nothing to do with her reporter’s radar.

  “Guys like that devour little girls like you for breakfast and don’t even have heartburn,” Case said. “You might want to watch out for him. Now, I have work to do. Don’t follow me, don’t get in my way, and don’t use me to get a story that will advance your career. I’m not your stepping-stone out of Calamity Falls.” Sketching a salute in the air, he strolled away, whistling.

  Annoyance came, swift and hot as she watched him go. Pompous know-it-all, she fumed, and then looked down. To top it off, he’d stuck her with the bill for the coffee.

  JO LEFT THE RESTAURANT a few minutes after paying the bill, but Case was nowhere to be seen. It was just as well, she thought. She had lots to think about and didn’t need him distracting her.

  Her thoughts circled back to Harold. Now that she’d been out of his presence for a few minutes, she could think about him more clearly.

  She had to hand it to him. He knew how to listen with the greatest intensity, giving the speaker the impression that every word falling on his ears was pure gold. It was a gift, she’d decided, watching him, one he must have cultivated very carefully.

  What did his interest in Charlotte and Freida have to do with “men reclaiming their rightful place in society”? Or this cosmogony idea? She would keep an eye on him and if that meant she got in Case’s way, then so be it.

  Her conscience prickled with the memory of Case saying that she’d only been using him. Okay, maybe what he’d said had been justified. However, there were other ways for her to get the story she needed without compromising Case’s investigation, she thought, cheering up. She knew some of the men who’d been at the Unbroken Man rally. She would ask them what they thought. She wondered if their impressions of Purdy were the same as hers.

  Hurriedly, she dodged around people in her path, greeted many she knew, and climbed the steps up to Fallsview Loop to talk to Stavros Pappas. On Wednesdays, his restaurant was only open for dinner, but she knew she’d find him in the kitchen.

  He stood before a huge pot stirring something that smelled divine as it heated slowly over the fire. Stavros was a tall, stocky Greek with black eyes beneath bushy gray-salted brows and a head that was as bald as a billiard ball.

  When he saw her, Stavros greeted Jo with a beaming grin as he said, “Good news, Jo Ella, my friend. Venus and Mars are correctly aligned for making stefado.

  In fact, they have also ordained that celestial conditions are exactly right for me to become a little daring with the herbs.” His eyebrows waggled around like a couple of caterpillars playing shortstop and his hand hovered over piles of the fresh herbs he grew in huge terra-cotta pots on the restaurant’s patio. “This stefado will be divine, exquisite,” he declared with fervency. “It will be so perfect, my own mother—” he rolled his eyes heavenward “—my own dear mother, God rest her soul, would weep to see its perfection.”

  “That’s…that’s wonderful, Stavros,” Jo stammered, taken aback as always, and yet charmed by his enthusiasm. “What, exactly, is stefado?”

  “Stew,” he shrugged. “Today made with the leanest, freshest lamb, the most exquisite meat for this dish.” He went on, extolling the virtues of the ingredients in his stew while Jo listened, nodded, and tried to think of a way to work the conversation around to last night’s rally.

  When she’d first moved to Calamity Falls, it had taken Jo a while to become accustomed to the way the local eccentrics were so involved in their projects, almost to the exclusion of everything else. They were invariably cheerful, friendly and outgoing, glad to see any visitors, eager to share information about their particular area of expertise, but, truly, their own interests excited them as nothing else could.

  Stavros himself paid very little attention to anything except his astrological charts and his cooking, which was another reason Jo had been surprised to see him at Purdy’s rally.

  When she realized she wasn’t going to get him off the subject of his perfect stefado, Jo simply jumped right in.

  “Stavros, were you interested in what that Mr. Purdy had to say last night about the Way of the Unbroken Man?”

  Stavros stopped, blinked, and took a few minutes to focus. “No,” he admitted. “I thought it sounded like the ravings of a madman.”

  Jo gaped at him. “Really? Then why did you go?”

>   He answered with another of those big, extravagant shrugs. “Helen was having some women over for a lingerie party.” He nodded toward his wife, who was short, solemn, and as stocky as the butcher-block table where she stood chopping vegetables. She gave her husband a coy flutter of her eyelashes.

  “I wasn’t invited,” Stavros said.

  “So you don’t think you’ll be attending Purdy’s next meeting?”

  “No, not with all that marching and chanting. I’ve got bunions. I can’t do all that marching. Pah! What nonsense, anyway, to think we have to look inside ourselves to find answers. All one has to do is consult the stars…”

  Jo felt her eyes begin to glaze over as he talked. To keep herself from falling asleep standing up, she nodded and smiled her way toward the door.

  Just before she could make her escape, though, Stavros looked up and said, “By the way, Jo, Helen and I were sorry to hear of the death of your romance with Steve. Has he left town now?”

  Dismayed, Jo stared at their sympathetic faces. “I think so,” she answered, barely managing to keep from shuffling her feet and studying the floor in embarrassment.

  “Ah, too bad. I was going to offer to have a little talk with him on your behalf.” Stavros picked up a knife and examined the blade meaningfully. “He shouldn’t have broken your heart that way.”

  Jo blanched. “My heart’s fine, Stavros, but thank you for your concern.”

  “With your next boyfriend, come to me and I’ll help you consult the stars. You shouldn’t be choosing a man with no help.”

  No kidding, Jo agreed silently. “I’ll do that, Stavros,” she said, and left him to his work.

  Fifteen minutes later, she was standing beside Cedric Warrender, who had a small pair of clippers in his hand and was carefully edging the Cheshire Cat’s whiskers. Because a large number of tourists crowded the sidewalk in front of his house every day, Cedric kept the pyracantha characters from Alice in Wonder-land meticulously groomed. When he had heard about Calamity Falls’ welcoming attitude toward people with unusual interests, he had rushed to buy this small house with its big yard. Out back, he’d created an English gardener’s paradise, though the corner of poisonous herbs he grew might not be what most people would want in an English garden. His pet project, though, was the Lewis Carroll characters. He had struggled for two years to get the thorny, overgrown bushes into their fanciful shapes.

  As he’d labored on them, they’d become real to Cedric, which was why he talked to them—and listened to them. When he was finished with the cat’s whiskers, he stepped back and smiled fondly. “There. Perfect.”

  Jo looked on. The cat was, indeed, perfect with his wide grin neatly edged into the thorns and leaves. Even his teeth were trimmed as evenly as shoepeg corn. “How do you do that?” she asked in admiration.

  “Just like Michaelangelo,” Cedric answered dreamily. “I simply cut away every part of the bush that isn’t cat.”

  “You’re a true artist, Cedric.”

  He blushed a tide of red that washed up his neck, over his face, and finally faded out at his hairline. Avoiding her eyes, he turned and picked up his three-ring notebook and began fiddling with the pages.

  Seeing she’d embarrassed him, Jo hastily asked, “I hear you were at the Way of the Unbroken Man rally last night, Cedric. What made you interested in Dr. Purdy’s message?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t interested, but I saw the notices around town and then I told the crew here about it.” He nodded toward the line of pyracantha bushes. “The Mad Hatter thought I should go. He said a person should always be willing to learn new things.”

  “Did he?” Jo asked cautiously. She had to be careful what she said, because to Cedric they were real. “And what did you think of what Dr. Purdy said?”

  Cedric smiled his charmingly innocent smile. “Oh, it was pretty interesting, but I felt there was more to learn.”

  Uh-oh, Jo thought uncomfortably. “And do you intend to go to his next meeting?”

  Cedric looked up and down the line of his Alice in Wonderland crew. “I probably will,” he said. “If I’m not too busy and if my friends think I should.”

  Jo knew he was talking about his leafy friends, not his human ones. “I see.”

  “Charlotte…”

  Jo turned back from the gate. “What about her?”

  Again embarrassment washed his face beet red. “Charlotte thinks I should go.”

  Jo didn’t know quite what to say. She knew he and Charlotte were close, but the way he was blushing, she wondered if there was more to it on his part. “Charlotte seems to be friends with Professor Purdy, so she probably thinks he’s going to say something you’d like to hear,” she said, feeling like a hypocrite because of her own doubts about Purdy.

  “That’s what I thought,” Cedric answered.

  Jo said goodbye again, and as she closed the gate behind her, she thought that she was one for one now. Although the chef hadn’t been interested in Purdy’s message, Cedric was, but mostly because of Charlotte’s influence. The look of adoration she’d seen in Charlotte’s eyes was what really had her worried, though.

  The next stop was at Lainey’s grandfather’s house, but when she swung through the back gate, she saw that someone else had had the idea before her.

  Case sat in Julius’s backyard. He rolled a frosty bottle of beer back and forth between his palms as he watch the older man tie fishing flies. Fly-tying and flyfishing were two of Julius’s many passions. Everyone who knew him tried to avoid getting him started talking about either one.

  She paused when she saw Case there, then decided she had as much right to talk to Julius as he did. More, in fact.

  When she walked in, Case looked up and his expression hardened. She ignored him, swinging breezily across the patch of lawn to greet her friend with a hug.

  Julius smiled. “Good afternoon, Jo. What’s the occasion? You haven’t been up here to see me in months. Do you know Mr. Houston? He’s new in town.”

  “We’ve met.” Pointedly, Jo pulled up a chair and joined the two men at the round table where Julius had set up his fishing equipment.

  “Ah, well, good.”

  “That’s what you think,” she murmured under her breath, smiling at Julius, who was too involved in his fly-tying to hear her.

  Case answered with a slow, dangerous curve of his lips. The challenge in his eyes silently reminded her that he’d warned her not to follow him. She gave him a serene stare.

  “Would you like something to drink?” Julius asked. “We’re having beer, but I could get you some iced tea. I think Martha left some here.”

  “Only if the tea is decaffeinated. Caffeine impairs her hearing,” Case said, pointedly reminding Jo that over the coffee they’d shared that morning, he’d told her to quit following him.

  Julius drew back in surprise. “Really?” He gave Jo a fascinated look. “I’ve never heard of that before.”

  “Caffeine doesn’t affect my hearing, Julius,” she insisted. “Case was only joking.” She gave her nemesis a pointed look. He toasted her with his beer bottle.

  “He was?” Julius asked. “Okay. I’ll get your tea as soon as I finish this. I know you probably don’t want beer,” he continued guilelessly as he picked up a small spool of shiny black thread. “Since two glasses of wine send you into a crying jag.”

  “Julius!” Appalled, Jo stared at him.

  “Don’t be embarrassed,” he answered with a shrug. “All of us have troubles in our love lives once in a while. Lainey says you really loved Steve, but even a heart as crushed as yours will mend if you give it time.”

  “Oh, really?” Jo decided instantly that she was going to hold a murder-mystery evening that very night starring Lainey Pangburn in the role of the corpse.

  “Some guy named Steve crushed your heart?” Case said, grinning as his gaze swept over the fire in her cheeks. “That’s too bad.”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Steve Grover was her
boyfriend. He broke up with her over dinner at the Copper Pot Restaurant the other night. Pretty callous of him, if you ask me.”

  “Nobody asked you,” Jo said desperately, clapping her hand down on the tabletop. “And it’s no one’s business, anyway.…”

  “Broke her heart,” her friend wound up, giving her a look full of love and sympathy.

  “It didn’t break my heart.”

  Case leaned forward and propped his chin on his fist as he regarded her with devilish laughter in his eyes. “Please go on, Julius. As a friend of Jo’s, I’m heartsick that she went through such a trauma.”

  Julius gave him a big smile. “You’re a good man, Case.”

  “A real peach,” Jo seconded, looking daggers at him.

  “Some of us were thinking about finding him and teaching him that you can’t treat our Calamity Falls women like that. It’s just not right.”

  First Martha and her friends, then Stavros, now Julius. Was it some kind of Calamity Falls vigilante group? While she was glad her friends were concerned, she wished they weren’t so outspoken with their interest.

  “A crime,” Case agreed.

  “However, there are some people who say there’s a curse on the women of this town, anyway.”

  “A curse?” This was the first Jo had heard of it.

  “Destined to fall in love with the wrong men over and over until the right one comes along. Jo, exactly how many times have you been in love since you’ve lived in Calamity Falls?”

  “None! And could we please change the subject?”

  “Now, Jo,” Julius said in a sympathetic tone. “You don’t have to try and cover up with us. You’re among friends here.”

  “Yeah, Jo,” Case said, all but guffawing out loud. “You’re among friends.”

  “If only that were true.” Jo rolled her eyes and looked back at Julius just in time to see him giving Case a speculative look. Alarmed, she sat up straight. Whatever he was thinking, she needed to distract him. And quickly.

  “Uh, Julius,” she broke in desperately. “I need to ask you something about the rally you went to last night.”

  “The one with Purdy?” he asked. “That’s just what Case and I were discussing. How did you know I’d been there?”