Buddy nodded as if what Bobby Tom had proposed was only fitting and slipped the ring back on his finger. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate that.”
With the possibility that Gracie had rented a car eliminated, Bobby Tom spoke next with Ray Don Horton, who operated the Greyhound depot, then Donnell Jones, the town’s only taxi driver, and, finally, with Josie Morales, who spent most of her life sitting on her front step keeping track of everybody else’s business. Because he’d played ball with so many black, white, and Hispanic kids, Bobby Tom had always moved freely across the town’s racial and ethnic boundaries. He’d been in most everybody’s house, eaten at all their tables, felt at home everywhere, but despite his network of connections, no one he spoke to had seen Gracie. All of them, however, expressed their disappointment that he wasn’t wearing his ring and everybody either had a girl they wanted him to meet or needed a loan.
By eleven o’clock, Bobby Tom was convinced that Gracie had done something stupid like hitch a ride from a stranger. Just the thought of it made him crazy. Most of the people in the state of Texas were good solid folk, but there were lots of certifiables, too, and with Gracie’s overly optimistic view of human nature, she was likely to have run into one of them. He also couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t tried to retrieve her suitcase. Unless she hadn’t been able to. What if something had happened to her before she got the chance?
His mind rebelled at the thought, and he debated stopping at the police station to talk with Jimbo Thackery, the new chief of police. He and Jimbo had hated each other’s guts since elementary school. He couldn’t remember what had started it, but by the time they’d reached high school and Sherri Hopper had decided she preferred Bobby Tom’s kisses to Jimbo’s, it had escalated into a full scale feud. Whenever Bobby Tom came back to town, Jimbo’d find some excuse to act nasty, and somehow Bobby Tom couldn’t imagine the police chief going out of his way to help him find Gracie. He decided to make one last stop before he threw himself on the dubious mercy of the Telarosa Police Department.
The Dairy Queen sat on the west end of town and served as Telarosa’s unofficial community center. Here, Oreo blizzards and Mr. Mistys managed to accomplished what all America’s civil rights legislation had never been able to achieve. The DQ had brought the people of Telarosa together as equals.
As Bobby Tom pulled into the parking lot, he saw a pickup held together with baling wire sitting between a Ford Bronco and a BMW. There were a variety of family vehicles, a couple of motorcycles, and an Hispanic couple he didn’t recognize climbing out of an old Plymouth Fury. Since it was a weeknight, the crowd had thinned out, but there were still more people inside than he wanted to face, and if he weren’t so worried about Gracie, nothing would have made him come here to this cemetery of his old glories, the place where he and his high school teammates had celebrated their Friday night victories.
He parked on the farthest edge of the lot and forced himself to climb down out of his truck. He knew that, short of using a loudspeaker, this was the fastest way to get the word out that Gracie was missing, but he still wished he didn’t have to go inside. The door of the DQ swung open, and a familiar figure came out. He cursed softly. If someone had asked him to make a list of the people he least wanted to see right now, Wayland Sawyer’s name would have been right on top of Jimbo Thackery’s.
Any hope he’d had that Sawyer wouldn’t notice him disappeared as the owner of Rosatech Electronics stepped down off the curb and halted, the vanilla cone in his hand stalling in midair. “Denton.”
Bobby Tom nodded.
Sawyer took a bite of ice cream while he stared at Bobby Tom with cool eyes. Anyone looking at Rosatech’s owner in his plaid shirt and jeans would have figured him for a rancher instead of one of the top business minds in the electronics industry and the only man in Telarosa who was as rich as Bobby Tom. He was a large man, not as tall as Bobby Tom, but solid and tough. At fifty-four, his face was compelling, but too rough-hewn to be classically handsome. His dark, wiry hair was cut short and threaded with gray, but his hairline had barely receded. It was as if Sawyer had drawn an invisible boundary on his scalp and declared that not a single follicle dare shut down behind it.
Since the rumors had surfaced about the closing of Rosatech, Bobby Tom had made it his business to learn everything he could about its owner before he’d met with him last March. Way Sawyer had grown up poor and illegitimate on the wrong side of Telarosa’s railroad tracks. As a teenage troublemaker, he’d been tossed into jail for everything from petty theft to shooting out porch lights. A stint in the marines had given him both discipline and opportunity, and when he’d come out, he’d taken advantage of the GI Bill to earn an engineering degree. After graduation, he’d gone to Boston, where, with a combination of intelligence and ruthlessness, he’d climbed to the top of the growing computer industry and made his first million by the time he was thirty-five. He’d also married, had a daughter, and divorced.
Although the people of Telarosa had followed his career, Sawyer had never returned to town. Therefore, everyone was surprised when, after announcing his retirement from corporate life, he’d shown up eighteen months ago with a controlling interest in Rosatech Electronics and announced his intention to run the company. Rosatech was small potatoes to a man with Sawyer’s reputation, and no one could figure out why he’d purchased it. Then, six months ago, rumors had surfaced that he would be closing the plant and moving its equipment and contracts to an operation in San Antonio. From that point on, the townspeople had been convinced that Sawyer had only purchased Rosatech to take his revenge against the town for not treating him better when he was a kid. As far as Bobby Tom knew, Sawyer had done nothing to dispel that rumor.
Sawyer gestured with the cone toward Bobby Tom’s damaged knee. “I see you got rid of the cane.”
Bobby Tom set his jaw. He didn’t like to think about those long months when he’d been forced to walk with a cane. Last March, during his recuperation, he’d met Sawyer in Dallas at the request of the town fathers to try to persuade him not to move the plant. It had been a fruitless meeting, and Bobby Tom had taken a strong dislike to Sawyer. Anyone ruthless enough to ruin the well-being of an entire town didn’t deserve to be called a human being.
With a flick of his wrist, Way tossed his barely eaten cone into the stubbly grass. “How are you adjusting to retirement?”
“If I’d known it would be this much fun, I’d have done it a couple of years ago,” Bobby Tom said, his expression stony.
Sawyer licked his thumb. “I hear you’re going to be a movie star.”
“One of us has to bring some money into this town.”
Sawyer smiled and pulled a set of car keys from his pocket. “See you around, Denton.”
“Bobby Tom, is that you?” A female shriek came from the direction of a blue Olds that had just pulled into the parking lot. Toni Samuels, who’d played bridge with his mother for years, came rushing forward and then froze as she saw who he was talking to. Her cheerful face hardened with hostility. No one made a secret of the fact that Way Sawyer was the most hated man in Telarosa, and the town had turned him into a pariah.
Sawyer seemed impervious. Palming his keys, he gave Toni a courteous nod, then walked away toward a burgundy BMW.
Thirty minutes later, Bobby Tom parked in front of a big white colonial on a tree-shaded street and got out of his truck. Light splashed on the sidewalk from the front windows as he approached. His mom was a night owl, just like him.
The fact that nobody at the DQ had seen Gracie had escalated his worries, and he’d decided to stop and see if his mother could come up with any additional ideas about how to locate a missing person before he went to see Jimbo. She kept a spare key under the potted geraniums, but he rang the bell instead because he didn’t want to scare her.
The spacious two-story house had black shutters and a cranberry red door with a brass knocker. His father, who’d built up his small insurance agency over the years until it was the
most successful one in Telarosa, had bought the house when Bobby Tom went off to college. The home Bobby Tom had been raised in, the small bungalow the city foolishly planned to convert into a tourist attraction, lay on the other side of town.
Suzy smiled when she opened the door and saw him. “Hello, sweetie pie.”
He laughed at the name she’d called him for as long as he could remember and, stepping inside, tucked her under his chin. She slipped her arms around his waist and gave him a hard squeeze.
“Have you had anything to eat?”
“I don’t know. I guess not.”
She gazed at him in gentle reprimand. “I don’t know why you had to buy that house when I’ve got plenty of room here. You don’t eat right, Bobby Tom. I know you don’t. Come on into the kitchen. I’ve got some leftover lasagna.”
“Sounds good.” He tossed his hat on the brass rack in the corner of the hallway.
She turned to him, her forehead creased in an apologetic frown. “I hate to bother you, but did you get a chance to talk with the roofer? Your father always handled that sort of thing, and I wasn’t sure what I should do.”
Hearing this sort of uncertainty from the woman who so competently oversaw the budget for the public school system worried Bobby-Tom, but he kept his feelings to himself. “I called him this afternoon. He seems to be giving you a good price, and I think you should go ahead with the job.”
For the first time he noticed that the pocket doors leading into the living room had been pulled shut. He couldn’t ever remember that room being closed off and he gestured toward it with a tilt of his head. “What’s going on?”
“Eat first. I’ll tell you later.”
He began to follow her, but came to a sudden stop as he heard a strange, muffled sound. “Is somebody in there?”
No sooner had the question slipped out than he realized his mother was dressed for bed in a light blue silk robe. He felt a painful constriction. She’d never mentioned anything about seeing other men since his dad had died, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t.
He told himself it was her life, and he had no right to interfere. His mother was still a beautiful woman, and she deserved every bit of happiness she could find. He certainly didn’t want her to be lonely. But no matter how much he tried to convince himself, he felt like howling at the idea of his mother being with any man other than his dad.
He cleared his throat. “Look, if you’re seeing somebody, I understand. I didn’t mean to walk in on anything.”
She looked startled. “Oh, no. Really, Bobby Tom . . . “She began fiddling with the sash on her robe. “Gracie Snow is in there.”
“Gracie?” Relief rushed through him, followed almost immediately by anger. Gracie had scared the life out of him! When he’d been imagining her dead in a ditch somewhere, she’d been cozying up with his mother.
“How did she end up here?” he asked in short, clipped tones.
“I picked her up on the highway.”
“She was hitchhiking, wasn’t she? I knew it! Of all the damn fool—”
“She wasn’t hitchhiking. I stopped when I saw her.” Suzy hesitated. “As you can probably imagine, she’s a bit upset with you.”
“She’s not the only one who’s upset!” He pivoted toward the sliding doors, but Suzy’s hand on his arm restrained him.
“Bobby Tom, she’s been drinking.”
He stared at her. “Gracie doesn’t drink.”
“Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that until she’d gone through my supply of wine coolers.”
The idea of Gracie slugging down wine coolers made him even angrier. Gritting his teeth, he took another step toward the doors, only to have his mother once again interrupt him.
“Bobby Tom, you know those people who get giddy and happy when they drink?”
“Yeah.”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Gracie isn’t one of them.”
7
Gracie sat curled up on the sofa with her clothes rumpled and her hair standing out from her head in coppery clumps. She had a blotchy face, red eyes, and a pink nose. Some women could cry pretty, but Bobby Tom saw right away Gracie wasn’t one of them.
She looked so miserable that his anger faded. As he gazed down at her, he found it hard to believe that this sorry excuse for a female was the same spunky, bossy lady who’d done the worst striptease in history, thrown herself over his car door like a human cannonball, sabotaged his T-bird, and given Slug McQuire a blistering lecture on sexual harassment after he’d come on a little too strong to one of the waitresses at Whoppers.
Normally, he would rather have been locked in a room with a swarm of killer bees than a crying woman, but since this particular woman was Grade, and she’d somehow become his friend, he made an exception.
Suzy gazed at him helplessly. “I invited her to stay the night. She was fine at dinner, but when I came home from my board meeting, I found her like this.”
“She sure is carryin’ on.”
At the sound of his voice, Grade looked up, gazed at him with bleary eyes, and hiccupped. “Now I’m”—a drawn-out sob—“not ever going to”—another sob— “have sex.”
Suzy made a beeline for the door. “Excuse me, but I believe I have some Christmas cards I need to address.”
As she disappeared, Gracie fumbled for the box of tissues that sat on the sofa next to her, but she had trouble locating it through her tears. Bobby Tom walked over, plucked one out, and put it in her hand. She buried her face in it, her shoulders shaking, pitiful mewing sounds coming from her lips. As he sat down next to her, he decided she was, without a doubt, the most miserable drunk he’d seen in his life.
He spoke softly. “Gracie, honey, how many of those wine coolers did you drink?”
“I don’t d-drink,” she said between sobs. “Alcohol is a cr-crutch for the weak.”
He rubbed her shoulders. “I understand.”
She looked up and, tissue in hand, pointed toward the oil painting of him that hung over the fireplace. His father had given it to his mother as a Christmas present when Bobby Tom was eight years old. It showed him sitting cross-legged in the grass hugging the dog he’d grown up with, a big old golden retriever named Sparky.
She jabbed her finger toward the portrait. “It’s h-hard to believe a sweet child like that could grow up into such a d-depraved, egotistical, immature, w-womanizing, job-stealing rat!”
“Life’s funny that way.” He handed her another tissue. “Gracie, honey, do you think you could stop crying long enough for the two of us to talk?”
She shook her head in a wobbly arc. “I’m not ever going to st-stop. And do you know why? Because I’m going to sp-spend the rest of my life eating m-mashed potatoes and smelling like disen—disen—fectant.” Another wail. “Do you know what happens when you’re around d-death all the time? Your body dries up!” She startled him by clasping her hands over her breasts. “They’re drying up. I’m drying up! Now I’m going to die without ever having s-sex!”
His hand stilled on her shoulders. “Are you telling me you’re a virgin?”
“Of course I’m a virgin! Who would want to have sex with someone as h-homely as me?”
Bobby Tom was too much of a gentleman to let that one go by. “Why just about any healthy red-blooded male, honey.”
“Ha!” She withdrew her hands from her breasts and reached for another tissue.
“I’m serious.”
Even drunk, Gracie wasn’t taking any of his malarkey . . “Prove it.”
“What?”
“Have s-sex with me. Right now. Yes! R-right this very minute.” Her hands flew to the buttons on the front of her white blouse, and she began pulling them open.
He stilled her arms and kept a firm rein on the smile that wanted to break loose. “I couldn’t do that, sweetheart. Not with you so drunk and everything.”
“I am not dr-drunk! I told you before, I do not drink.” She snatched her hands from beneath his and clumsily stripped the blouse off he
r arms. Before he knew it, she was sitting before him, bare from the waist up except for a bra made of transparent pink nylon embossed with tiny hearts that looked like little love bites sprinkled over her breasts.
Bobby Tom swallowed hard as his groin shot from soft to hard in 0.9 seconds. He had the wild thought that he was going crazy, right along with Gracie. After secretly worrying because his sex drive seemed to have deserted him at the same time his career had ended, he was now even more worried to find himself being turned on by something so tame.
She looked at the expression on his face and promptly burst into fresh tears. “You don’t want to have s-sex with me. My br-breasts are too small. You only like women with gr-great big ones.”
She’d spoken the truth, so he didn’t understand why it was so hard for him to drag his eyes away from those pint-size morsels curving out from her chest. Probably because he was tired and coming back to Telarosa had lowered his emotional defenses to the point where he’d react to anything. He was careful not to hurt her feelings. “That’s not true, honey. It’s not size that counts so much as what a woman does with what she has.”
“I don’t know w-what to do with what I’ve got,” she wailed. “How am I supposed to know when nobody’s ever sh-shown me? How am I supposed to know when the only m-man who’s given me any encouragement is a p-podiatrist who kept asking me if he could k-kiss my instep?”
He didn’t have a good answer for that one. One thing he did know, however, was that he wanted Gracie to put her blouse back on.
As he reached over to pick it up from the floor where she’d dropped it, she jumped unsteadily to her feet. “I’ll bet if I stripped n-naked right in front of you, you still wouldn’t want me.”
His head shot up just in time to see her fumbling with the button on the side of her ugly navy skirt.
He got to his feet. “Gracie, honey . . .”
Her skirt dropped to her ankles and he couldn’t quite conceal his surprise. Who would have thought those ugly clothes could have been hiding such a sweet little figure? Sometime that evening, she’d gotten rid of both her shoes and her hose, leaving her only in bra and panties beneath her clothes. Her breasts were small, it was true, but she had a slim waist to match, round, well-proportioned hips, and straight, slender legs. He told himself the contrast she presented with those perfectly toned, hard-muscled Amazons he’d been keeping company with for half his lifetime was the only reason he found her appearance so appealing. Her hips weren’t rock hard orbs sculpted by two hours of step-aerobics every day, and her biceps hadn’t been molded with free weights into ropes of steel. She had a natural woman’s body, soft and slim in some places, round in others.