“So why isn’t she married? What’s my brother got to do to break the ice?”
“That’s what I wanted to know, so I staked her out. I felt like a damn criminal.”
“Yeah, yeah, and you didn’t like it, but we’re still here, so what’s the skinny?”
Miranda’s eyes narrowed. She would have liked some understanding, but Don was right. She was on the verge of being a full-fledged criminal. It might be time to quit whining. “She’s not very attractive. Looks kinda bossy.”
“A Moped, huh?”
“Those little motorbikes? What do they have to do with anything?”
Don grinned. “A jail term. A guy wouldn’t mind taking her for a ride as long as his buddies don’t know about it.”
“Whatever,” Miranda said, shaking her head. “She’s a Plain Jane. You know. Low on make-up and jewelry, bland clothes, hair could use a perm.”
“Now she sounds like a lesbo.”
“I was thinking that too, but she spoke well of men, so I went by her house several times. She stayed home on Friday and Saturday nights plus all day on Sunday. No men. No women either. To tell you truth, she seemed like a nice lady who is simply content with her life.”
Don lifted his chin. “Don’t be thinking that nice lady bullshit. You’ll feel sorry for her and that’ll make it harder to do what you got to do.”
Miranda bit lightly at her lip. She’d already told herself that she couldn’t afford to care about Rachel. She had to keep her feelings out of it.
“Five minutes,” Montoya warned.
Miranda glared at Don. “I have to get that money for my brother. What’s next?”
“Finally.” Don looked over at Montoya. He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “You gotta go to Rochester, New York in two weeks. They’re having their annual auto show and Mac never misses it. All you gotta do is volunteer to work at one of the booths or hang around the entry door until he shows up. Then turn on that good-girl charm of yours. He never could resist a good-looking blonde.”
Miranda smiled at the compliment. “Shouldn’t be difficult to recognize him.”
“Naw. People always got us mixed up. Have a drink with him, then go on a date. Stay with him a week or so if you have to, but get him to come to California, just like you did with me. In the meantime I’ll figure out how to hook him up with Rachel.”
“Time’s up.”
Already?
Minutes later Miranda was outside, on her way to her SUV. This was it, the end of the beginning. If things went as planned she’d be on her own for a week or so and this role wasn’t going to be anywhere near as simple as the one she had in high school.
Chapter Six
Jean drowned some cubes with a double shot of vodka, then added a like amount of pulp-free O.J. to her glass. Screwdriver in hand and having already donned her best dress and the only decent necklace she owned (neither one of which could possibly match the attire that Clifford Clifton’s other dates must have worn), she meandered into her tiny living room. There, she anxiously peered through the narrow crack she’d left between her frayed curtains. Finally, the tardy Mercedes rounded the corner. If she were lucky, Clifford wouldn’t come in. She closed the curtains and returned to the kitchen to finish off her drink.
A few moments later the anticipated thumps came from outside her door. Jean paused before opening it, then said, “Hi. You musta been busy?”
“Always am,” Clifford said from the porch, “but our reservation isn’t for over an hour yet so no big deal.”
An hour? Her shoulder-length brunette hair swished like a ballerina’s tutu toward the digital clock by the TV. That would mean nine o’clock. “Oh. I guess I misunderstood. I thought we said eight?”
Clifford shook his head. “You said to come by around eight and we could have a drink first, remember?”
It didn’t sound familiar, but she couldn’t make him stand on her porch for another hour. Besides, she wasn’t about to argue with a man of Clifford’s import. In addition to being ten years his junior, she was just a lowly receptionist at a Palmdale law firm, where he was one of their best clients. She had to let him in. She shrugged and stepped aside. He probably didn’t expect much from her home anyway. “Sorry. My mistake. Come on in. I can make us a couple of screwdrivers.”
Jean watched Clifford’s eyes as he entered. Based on what she’d heard, his local home resembled a palace with lush grounds, an Olympic-size pool and all the luxuries. Her eighty-year-old cracker box wouldn’t even match his guesthouse. “Nice place,” he said.
She closed the door behind him. “We’re going to fix things up next spring. At least get a coat of paint on it.” She pointed a few feet away to the bedspread-covered sofa that she’d vacuumed a little earlier. “Have a seat while I mix our drinks.” Thankfully, she’d gotten most of the dog hair off.
After taking a few short steps into the kitchen, Jean grabbed some glasses and then the orange juice from her magnet-covered refrigerator and took a position behind the table so that Clifford would have to look at her instead of her home.
“Back at the office,” he said from the sofa, “you mentioned you have a son. Is he around?”
“Stump? Oh, no. He usually stays with his cousin at my sister’s when I have things to do.”
“Stump?”
She nodded and grinned as she finished pouring the vodka. “A nickname. My sister gave it to him when he was learning to walk. His real name is Neal.”
“I take it he’s short and pudgy?”
She curled her lip for a second, and added some O.J. to his glass. “Not really. He‘s a little shorter than some of his classmates, but he’s not as chubby as he used to be.”
Clifford crossed his leg and draped his arm across the back of the sofa. “Tell me a little about him.”
Strange. “Why would you want to know about him?”
“Simple. Most moms love to talk about their kids. It gives me good insight into both of them.”
He was right. It would be a lot easier for her to discuss her son than her home, or any of the important things that Clifford had going on. She grinned. “Well, okay. You asked for it. He’s thirteen, a bit more independent than most kids and pretty interesting, actually.”
“Interesting?” Clifford rose and moved toward the kitchen. “How so?”
Jean slid a couple steps to her right, so Clifford wouldn’t be facing her embarrassingly dirty kitchen window. “I dunno. Lots of ways, I guess.” She handed Clifford his drink.
He raised the glass. “Here’s to an enjoyable evening.” As nice as he was, he had to feel out of place.
After they tapped their glasses Clifford tasted his cocktail. His tongue rimmed his lips as he looked at the drink more closely. “You like it?” Jean asked. “I use cucumber-flavored vodka.”
He nodded approvingly. “I’ll have to remember that.”
Just then, in the backyard, the neighbor’s cat bolted across the top of the privacy fence. Right behind it, Stump’s aging long-haired mutt, Dogg, chased after it the best he could. Jean’s eyes and thoughts shot in Clifford’s direction. If he’d seen the ruckus, he had to see the dirty windows too—and the security bars. If she had to, she’d explain that the former owner had installed the non-releasing type, which made the windows nearly impossible to clean.
“He must be one of these perfect kids I hear about. A mama’s boy. Straight A’s. President of his class. Things like that?”
Jean nearly laughed out loud. “Hardly.” Fortunately, Clifford seemed unaware, or at least unconcerned, about her windows.
“Well then, what makes him so interesting? Has he ever been in any trouble?”
Another strange question. He must’ve had a special reason for that one, too. “Not anything major. But there was one time when I nearly killed him.” She put one hand on her hip. “You sure you want to hear this?”
“Why not? I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
“Okay then,” she said as
they returned to the living room and shared the almost-hairless sofa. “It was four years ago, during the holidays, when Stump was just nine. We’d already lived in Palmdale for a couple years. I tried to explain that I didn’t make enough money to buy all the things the rich people had, like Christmas trees, but he’d heard enough of my old-people excuses and he was determined to do something about it.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
Jean shifted her feet and looked straight in Clifford’s eyes. “Before I answer that, would you mind if I ask you a question of my own?”
“Guess not.”
“This place must make you uncomfortable,” she said while waving her hand toward the kitchen. “I mean, from what I hear, you own several nice homes in addition to your three car dealerships. You even drive a Mercedes. Why would an important person like you ask me out in the first place?”
Clifford swigged at his glass. Then, “Don’t you sell yourself short. There’s something genuine about you. I like that, so I asked one of the attorney’s about you and he said that you’re a lot of fun, too.” Clifford held out his glassless hand, palm up. “Who wouldn’t want to know a woman like that?”
Jean raised her glass in a mock toast. “How nice. What about your TV commercials? Why do you hire somebody else to act like you when you could just do them yourself?”
“Good question. Our studies indicated that people would rather buy cars from a younger guy like Chris because his blonde hair and suntan reek of California.”
Jean nodded and sipped at her drink. Now that she thought about it, Clifford’s thinning dark hair, tiny crow’s feet and turned down mustache did make him look a little like an aging con man. Oh, well. At least he seemed to be a little more comfortable with the simple people than she expected. Her home didn’t seem so bad after all.
“Now tell me more about Stump and the Christmas tree. What did he do?”
“Well,” she said with a new calmness, “there was one of those temporary tree lots up on the corner. Stump had figured out that they weren’t very crowded right after school let out, so he hid behind a hedge until the sales guy took his only customer to the back of the lot to inspect some trees.” Jean snickered. “I still can’t believe he did this. That ornery little monster of mine snagged a six-footer from the front of the lot and dragged that big old tree all the way back to our house.”
“No kidding. That must have been a challenge.”
“Three blocks,” Jean said proudly, “but Stump’s never been a quitter. By the time he got home he had sap all over his hands.” She giggled. “You should have seen the mess on the door frame from his sticky fingers.”
Clifford grinned, shook his head.
“Well anyway, he got an apple box from our laundry room and covered it with an old sheet. Then he crammed this sofa next to the chair in the corner over there and stood the tree on top of the box to make it look even taller.”
“Clever kid,” Clifford said, bobbing his head. “He’d make a good car salesman.”
Maybe the owner of the dealership or the credit manager, but never a salesman. They talk people into doing things they don’t want to do. “Somewhere, he’d seen popcorn on a string used as a garland, but we only had the buttery kind, so he threw a bag in the microwave.” She threw her arms in the air like she always did at that point. “Oh my God, what a mess.” Both she and Cliff giggled. “He tried to tie some sewing thread around it. But was only able to get about twenty pieces to stick on his string. As far as he knew, that was good enough. So he drooped it across the front of the tree the best he could.”
Cliff rubbed his knee against Jean. He was smiling now, obviously enjoying her story.
“Then he made a picture frame from some wood scraps he found out in the yard. He got some glass and added a picture of me and him that my sister took on his first birthday.” She pointed across the room. “That’s it over there. We gave him his very own chocolate cake, with extra icing, and let him have it.” She grinned, “You know how kids are. He became a chocolate disaster so my sister wanted to get a picture. I stuck my fat head in there, just as he smeared a big gob of icing on my eyes and nose. You never heard so much laughter.”
Cliff glanced to the wall and back, apparently eager to hear more.
“Then he wrapped the picture with some birthday paper because that’s all we had and he proudly leaned what would become my favorite Christmas present of all time up against the sheet-covered box.”
Cliff placed his hand on Jean’s knee. “I already like this kid.”
Jean beamed. “Everybody does. But by that time this place looked like a battlefield.” She glanced around the room. “It was even worse than it is now.”
“But you must have known he didn’t buy that tree?”
“When I got home, all I wanted to do was decompress. You know, kick my shoes off, maybe take a hot bath, but Stump was sitting in the corner with the biggest grin you could imagine. He gave me this bit about how he worked at the lot for an hour after school for a few afternoons and they gave him the tree for free.”
“But you knew otherwise?”
“Not yet, but the guy from the tree lot banged on the door. He said he saw Stump walking off with the tree and the neighbors knew where we lived.”
“Uh-oh.”
Jean grinned. “I was so mad I could have spit fire. I’m sure Stump would have loved to hide, but where’s he going to go in this tiny place?” She sipped at her drink and enjoyed the warmth that always engulfed her when she got to this part. “He said he did it all for me. He wanted me to have a tree and my very own present for a change, just like everybody else. It was so unselfish, I wanted to cry.”
“You let him keep it, didn’t you?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. I told him that even though we both knew what he did was wrong-headed, just knowing that he cared enough about me to do something so stupid made that my all-time favorite Christmas.”
“So you paid the guy for the tree?”
“Oh, no. Couldn’t afford it, and I sure wasn’t going to approve of stealing. I made him apologize and take it back. Then I told him he was grounded until the day after hell froze over.”
“Cute story, but I think I would have worked something out with the guy from the lot.”
“Then he’d think he could break rules and laws and expect me to cover for him. That wouldn’t have been right.”
”I guess not.” Cliff finished his drink and held up his glass. “You were right. He is interesting. Very interesting.” He checked his gold watch. ”Looks like we still have some time. Mind if I make us another round?”
Chapter Seven
Upstairs and away from Aunt Gerry, “I call bullshit,” Stump said. He sprawled on his cousin’s brand new bed. “If my mom was arrested again she would’ve told me about it.”
“She’s been hiding it from you, cuz.” A year younger than Stump, Willie was sorta cool most of the time, especially when he let Stump play with his video games. “It was yesterday. My mom and dad picked her up from the jail again. They made me come up here so they could talk, but I heard them say she called in sick and got caught driving when she went out for some cigarettes. My dad said it was her third DUI. One more and she’s going to jail for a long time.”
“Ain’t no way, Willie. I know her better than any of you. She’s learned her lesson. She never drinks and drives anymore.”
“My mom told me not to say anything to you, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Nope, nope, nope. I don’t care what you guys think. My mom ain’t no alcoholic. She told me she hardly ever drinks anymore, and I believe her.”
Willie’s head bounced back and forth. “We’re talking about a couple sisters here, cuz. They know each other pretty well. Ask yourself which one has a reason to lie. Think about it. How many times have you found your mom passed out?”
Willie might as well have scratched off one of Stump’s biggest scabs. Truth was, if he had to make a fli
p-the-bird guarantee that she’d cleaned up her act he couldn’t do it. She said she’d straightened up before only to have more problems. “I dunno. A few times I guess.”
Willie threw an old chunk of a carrot at Stump. “Now I’m the one calling bullshit. I’ve been with you at least four times when we found her zonked out at your house. I bet you’ve found her other times, too.”
Stump grabbed at the bed covers. “Alright, I guess that’s true, but what the hell am I supposed to do about it? I’m not lucky like you. You have a whole family. You live in a better house and a better neighborhood. You’ve got video games, an iPad and your own phone.” He rubbed the top of his fuzzy head. “Hell, I don’t even know who my friggin’ dad is.”
“Yeah, I know. Have you asked her about him?”
“All she says is he was some guy she used to date. And once he knocked her up, he split. Nobody’s heard from him since.”
“Maybe if you found him, he’d help out? He might throw in some money. You guys could sure use it.”
“No shit.” Stump sat up, draping his scuffed-up tennis shoes over the edge of the bed. “It’d be cool if he was rich like you guys. I might even get an allowance.” He looked at Willie’s carrot, wishing it were a cookie.
“We could ask my mom who he was.”
“I doubt she’d tell us anything. If my mom doesn’t want me to know who my old man is, you can bet her little sister has been sworn to secrecy.”
“Guess so. What about your birth certificate? His name would be on there.”
“Never seen it.” Stump hesitated, and then quickly stood. “But there’s a locked metal box in our laundry room. It might be in there.”
Willie grinned. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think so, Dude. My mom’s on a date, won’t be home for at least a couple hours. We might be able to find the key to that box.”
“It’d just take us twenty minutes to get there if we use our trick. We could be back in an hour.”
“I’d like to check on Dogg too. He ain’t been getting around too good lately.”
Willie jumped to his feet. “I’m in,” he said, as he grabbed three bucks off his dresser and then his new tennis shoes with the flashing red lights built into the soles. “I’ll tell my mom we’re going to the gas station for some beef jerky.”