by Mary McBride
“Stay, Cal, and help us with these muffins,” Ellie said.
“I would, Ellie, but I've got a couple appointments.”
He didn't bother to tell her they were with old Bee at the track and then with a certain Dr. Heineken at Ramon's.
Ellie Young's house was as huge and welcoming as the woman herself. It was furnished with an interesting mix of antiques and comfortable contemporary pieces. Except for the pair of longhorn horns mounted above the big stone fireplace in the library, it might have been a country home in Connecticut or a fancy hunting lodge in Maine.
Holly counted at least a dozen rooms on the ground floor alone, each one of them reminding her of a museum. Every horizontal surface, from tabletops to mantelpieces to shelves and even the top of the concert-sized grand piano, was covered with framed pictures and knickknacks and memorabilia, and every object seemed to have a story that Ellie was only too happy to tell.
“That's probably more than you ever wanted to hear about my great-great grandfather,” the woman said, smiling rather sheepishly as she returned an ancient, heavily engraved pistol to its bed in a velvet-lined box. Augustus Young, Ellie's ancestor, had apparently used the weapon with much success and without regard to race, religion, or gender. “People tell me I spend way too much time in the past, but what's a historian to do?”
“It's fascinating,” Holly told her in all sincerity. “And I'm sure I can use a lot of this information as background for my story.”
“You work for the VIP Channel? Is that what Ruth told me?”
Holly nodded.
“I've watched pretty near every one of those biographies. I especially enjoyed that month-long series on the presidents. So, you did some of those?”
She nodded again. Well, she wasn't really lying. Not exactly. Her hostess hadn't asked if she'd produced them. Ellie asked if she “did” some of those biographies. What Holly did was tons of research, coordinate a slew of production schedules, and edit several of the final scripts, particularly the Millard Fillmore segment which nobody else wanted to do.
Her stomach growled again, as if to change the subject.
Ellie laughed. “Well, here I am, going on about things that happened a hundred and fifty years ago while you're starving to death, you poor little thing. Come on. Let's take those muffins of Ruth's out back and make quick work of them. How do you like your coffee?”
“Black, please.”
“Atta girl.”
It was only a bit after ten in the morning and the temperature was probably already ninety-five degrees, but the huge oak trees around the house helped to keep them reasonably comfortable as they sat on the flagstone patio in the back yard with Ruth's muffins and Ellie's cast iron black coffee.
Holly couldn't have chosen a better place to stay. Ellie knew everyone and everything about Honeycomb.
“I went to school with Cal,” she was saying. “From kindergarten all the way through high school.”
“Was he a good student?”
“Yep.” She took a few sips of her coffee. “When he wasn't raising hell, that is.”
“Really.” Holly leaned forward. “What kinds of hell?”
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “I'm not sure I should be telling you this. I wouldn't want you to get the wrong impression.”
“Well, I'd like to know the whole story in order to do it right.” Holly didn't add that her personal curiosity was piqued, as well. So, Calvin Griffin had been a hell raiser in high school, one of those wild, golden boys who never cast Hollis Mae Hicks a second glance. An inexplicable ripple of disappointment went through her, and once more she remembered why she didn't want to be back here in Texas, the place where her reputation as a dork was probably engraved on a chalice somewhere.
Ellie took the last bite of her third muffin, chewed inscrutably a moment, then sipped her coffee. “Here's what I'll do,” she finally said. “I'll make a list of former classmates, teachers, neighbors, people like that. People who go back a long way with Cal. Then if anything not-so-flattering comes to light, I won't be responsible. I like the man too much to say anything that might be considered detrimental.”
“That'll work,” Holly said. She'd been planning to ask the woman for a list like that anyway. “I'm not here to do a hatchet job on him, you know. The story is scheduled for Hero Week. I don't know if his sister told you that.”
“Oh, yeah. She told me.”
From Ellie's tone, and judging from her own experience this morning, Holly guessed Cal didn't exactly top his sister's list of personal heroes. She definitely wanted to look into that.
“I'll go write that list,” Ellie said, “and then I'm going to have to leave you. I'm giving a talk at the Kleberg County Historical Association this afternoon. Come on upstairs, Holly honey, and pick out a room.”
The room Holly chose was a Victorian delight, papered in huge white cabbage roses on a deep pink background. The big hand-carved walnut bed was covered with a white spread crocheted by Ellie's grandmother. The Gone With the Wind lamp had belonged to old, shoot-em-up Augustus himself.
There were two tall windows with wavy glass, and between them a small door that opened onto a rusty fire escape. Ellie had told her she could use it as her private entrance and exit, if she wanted, then she'd laughed when Holly asked her for a key.
“Honey, this house hasn't been locked a minute since it was built. I wouldn't even know where to look for a key if I needed one.”
Was that comforting or terrifying? Holly, who'd spent the past few years behind safety chains and triple locks and dead bolts, couldn't quite decide.
Left to her own devices then, she unpacked, located her cell phone at the bottom of her handbag, then clambered up on the high bed and called her office. She had to wait a full five minutes for Cheryl, Mel's secretary, to track him down.
“Hey, kid. How's Texas?” His gruff, three-pack-a-day voice had never sounded so good.
“It's right where I left it,” she said. “Big and hot as ever. What's going on in the office?”
“Nothing,” he growled. “Maida started her vacation early, and Arnold's pissed so he's not coming in today. What a way to run a station, huh?”
Holly laughed.
“So, how's your hero?” he asked.
“Sexy.”
Good God. Where had that come from? It was as if Mel had said, “Hey, kid. Let's free associate. Color.”
Blue.
“Eyes.”
Blue.
“Calvin Griffin.”
Sexy.
Thank God her boss chuckled at her unprofessional remark. “Sexy, huh? Hey, Maida's going to love that. The word is that they're having trouble getting more than a word or two out of Neil Armstrong, and that NYPD hostage negotiator is turning out to be a heroic pain in the butt.”
“Griffin's very cooperative,” she said.
“That's because you know how to get a story. These other idiots .. .well, don't get me started. So, where are you staying?”
Holly flopped back on the pile of soft pillows at the head of the bed. “A bed and breakfast in beautiful downtown Honeycomb. I wish you could see this room I'm in, Mel.” Her gaze drifted around the room as she spoke. “The wallpaper's bubble gum pink with humongous white roses. The bed's comparable to an ark, and the bedspread's handmade, almost seventy-five years old.” Holly snapped up to a sitting position. “God, maybe I shouldn't be sitting on it.”
“I'm sure it's okay. So Texas isn't so bad after all, huh?”
“Well…”
“How's your story going?”
“Great. I met Griffin's sister this morning. He's living with her.”
“Wait a minute. I thought he was married.”
“He is.”
“So, where's his wife?”
After Holly hung up a few minutes later, she stared at one of the dinner plate-sized white roses on the wall. Good question, she thought. Just where was Cal Griffin's wife?
Chapter Five
Later that
afternoon, Holly stood on the sidewalk in a measly square of shade provided by the awning over the drug store, riffling her fingers through her damp corkscrewed curls. The thermometer on the bank's sign said 103, which probably put the humidity at two thousand. Holly hated Texas all over again.
Mel couldn't have been more wrong about her knowing the territory and speaking the language. She was as out of place here as she had been in Manhattan three years ago when she'd stepped off the bus from Albany. Actually she was more out of place now. Back then in New York, if she kept her mouth shut and didn't gawk too much at the tall buildings, people couldn't tell she didn't belong. Here in Honeycomb she might as well have had PERFECT STRANGER tattooed on her forehead.
Nobody in town was talking. Not about Calvin Griffin anyway. At least, not to a perfect stranger. She'd approached three of the people on Ellie's list this afternoon. Bobby Brueckner, the balding bank manager, claimed he was too busy with Friday afternoon receipts and reconciliations, although Holly hadn't noticed anybody putting money in or taking it out of Honeycomb Savings and Loan while she was there. Nita Mendes, on the other hand, was legitimately busy in her beauty shop on this Friday afternoon and suggested Holly come back Tuesday when things were slow. Tuesday. That was four long, hot days away.
The final non-talker had been Hec Garcia in Ye Olde Print Shoppe, who smiled rather cryptically and said his mother had taught him if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. End of interview.
Holly squinted up at the cloudless sky as if she were seeking celestial guidance. As an interviewer, she didn't seem to be aggressive enough. At least she didn't seem to have the correct approach. People loved to be interviewed, didn't they? People jumped at the chance to see themselves on TV, whether it was wearing silly stuff on their heads and two-tone paint on their faces at football games or providing solemn but useless commentary after a crime or a catastrophe.
Maybe she should say she was from 60 Minutes or 20/20. Maybe nobody in Honeycomb had ever seen the VIP Channel. No. Wait. Ellie Young had. But even gabby Ellie didn't want to go on record.
Holly pulled the list of prospective interviewees from her handbag, perused it once more, then looked at the clock on the bank. It was four-thirty. Five-thirty in New York, where the workweek had already wound down and the weekend officially begun. If she were home, she'd probably be elbowing her way out of the train at the Lexington Avenue station right now, hotfooting it down 59th, grabbing something to eat, hoping to be in her robe in front of her two TVs in order to catch most of the local news on at least two major networks. It was how she spent most Friday evenings, barring the occasional date that turned out badly, making her wish she'd stayed home with her TVs.
For a moment, she considered going back to Ellie's and flipping on the big-console TV she'd seen in one of the rooms downstairs, but decided that getting a news fix wasn't going to help her get any closer to her story here in Honeycomb.
Muttering a curse, Holly crammed the list back into her handbag. The hell with it. If nobody wanted to talk to her this afternoon, she'd opt for local color. She was going to find someplace to sit and have a bite to eat and something cold to drink. She eyeballed the street, instantly dismissing the Longhorn Café with its banner telling her that Friday promised all the fried catfish she could eat for $6.99.
As far as she could tell, that only left the asphalt-shingled dive in the middle of the block. Ramon's. Worst case, she'd have a beer and pretzels, then climb her fire escape and call it a day.
When she stepped through the door, the darkness nearly blinded her for a second. The chilled, recycled air was rank with booze and peanuts, and Patsy Cline was wailing somewhere in back by the pool table. God Almighty. Holly took a deep breath and headed toward a vacant stool at the end of the bar where a kid who looked almost young enough to be her son was drying glasses.
“Hey,” he said after she'd managed to hoist herself onto the tall stool. “What can I get for you?”
“Is there any chance I could get some kind of sandwich?”
“Sure. No problem.” He stepped a few feet to his left and bent to open a small refrigerator. Its light washed over his face. “I can give you ham or…ham.”
“I'll take ham,” Holly said, smiling, already feeling better.
“One ham sandwich, coming up,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”
Holly gazed at the assorted neon signs that decorated the place. A cold beer sounded so good, but it would make her way too sleepy to get any work done after dinner. “I'll have a diet cola,” she said.
A moment later the young bartender set a tall, ice-filled glass in front of her and deftly poured the soft drink so that not a drop of foam spilled over. “You're not from around here, are you?” he asked her as he poured.
It was the nicest thing Holly had heard all day. “No,” she said. “I'm from New York.”
“Cool.” Without inquiring what a nice, obviously sophisticated, big-city girl was doing in a dump like this, he began fixing her sandwich, a process which amounted to slapping square pieces of processed meat onto square slices of soft white bread.
Holly sipped her drink. The only other person sitting at the bar was a blonde who looked like a permanent fixture down at the other end. There were people in the back of the room, but it was so dark she could only distinguish their shapes. Every minute or so, there was the thunk of a billiard ball falling into a pocket, followed by a delighted whoop or a disgruntled curse.
It reminded her of the place in Sandy Springs where her parents used to go every Saturday night. What was it called? Joker's? No. Wait. Jester's. That was it. She could remember the boot heel of her daddy's good foot hooked over a rung of a bar stool, and how her tiny mama's feet never touched the floor once she was perched at the bar. In some ways it seemed a million years ago, but in others it seemed like just last week. Even the same song—Crazy—was playing on the jukebox back then.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. That was about all she could remember from the French course she'd taken her sophomore year in college, hoping it would help eradicate her twang. It didn't. All it did was lower her grade point average. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Man, wasn't that the truth. Holly fished in her glass for a diamond-clear chunk of ice, then popped it into her mouth. Fourteen years spent heading to New York, and here she was back in a crummy little bar in Texas, drinking diet cola, sucking ice, feeling as if she'd never left. She half expected the ghost of Bobby Ray Hicks to limp in and tell her she was expected home right quick to do her chores.
Just then, in the bottle-lined mirror that backed the bar, she saw the front door open and bright daylight cut briefly into the perpetual midnight of the tavern. A man ambled in. Holly couldn't distinguish his features, but his Stetson and outsized belt buckle and slim-legged jeans all branded him pure cowboy.
“Here's your sandwich, ma'am.” The young bartender plopped a paper plate in front of her. He had stuck frilly green cellophane toothpicks into each sandwich half, and put a fat hot pepper on the side.
“Thanks,” Holly said. “It looks good.”
“You need anything to put on it? Mayo? Mustard?”
“Mustard, please. Dijon, if you have it.”
“Dee—what?”
“Never mind. Plain ol' mustard'll do me just fine.” She couldn't believe those words had come out of her own mouth. And not just the words themselves, but the twang that had accompanied them. After less than twenty-four hours. Dear God. What was she going to sound like in a week or two?
“Hey, now. Don't that look good?” The newly arrived cowboy slung his dusty denim butt onto the stool beside hers. “Rick, fix me up one of those, will you? Hell, make it two. But gimme a beer first.”
He tilted his hat back, gave Holly's elbow a nudge, and grinned. God's gift to all the women south of the Nueces River. “Can I buy you a beer, honey?”
“No, thank you.”
Holly picked up her s
andwich and turned away from him. She had barely swallowed the first bite when he moved closer, his arm fully in contact with hers.
“You're not from around here, are you?” he asked.
She took a sip of her cola to wash the sandwich down. “No.”
“Yeah, I didn't think so. I'd've noticed you, for sure. The name's Tucker Bascom.” He stuck out a dirt-creased, cal-lused hand. “People just call me Tuck.”
Oh, God. Why was it so easy to say “buzz off in New York and almost impossible to do it here? Holly ignored his hand in favor of another bite of her sandwich.
“I bet I can guess your name,” he said, oblivious to the subtlety of her brushoff.
From the opposite end of the bar came a female drawl. “She don't want nothin' to do with you, Tuck.”
“Shut up, Patsy,” he growled. “Nobody's talkin' to you.”
“Thank God,” the woman said.
The cowboy lifted his bottle of beer, knocked back half of it, then turned toward Holly again. “You're almost done with that cola, honey. Rick, bring this little lady a light beer. On me.”
The young bartender raised an eyebrow at Holly. “Ma'am?”
She shook her head.
“Aw, come on now, Jennifer or Jessica or…wait. I bet it's Tiffany. Am I right?”
Holly leaned forward across the bar. “Could I have a plastic bag or something to put the rest of my sandwich in?” she asked Rick. “And a can of diet cola to go?”
“Tiffany! Darlin'! You can't leave me like this. Why, hell, we've just met and…”
A pair of shoulders wedged between Holly and the cowboy. “Take a hike, Tucker. The lady's with me.”
There might have been a time when Holly would have taken great umbrage with this game of Got Testosterone?, when she might have snapped to her would-be rescuer, “Thanks, but I can handle this myself.” But this wasn't one of those times. She'd never been happier to see anybody than she was to see Cal Griffin right now.
He had wedged between them so he was facing Holly, and while he told the cowboy to get lost, his beautiful blue eyes were trained on Holly's face. Blue? Surely she could do better than that. She searched for a more descriptive word. Azure, perhaps. Heavenly. Celestial. That was close. Silly, but for one heart-stopping second she was wishing she really were “with” him.
