"When do you want to go?" She reached for the phone on her desk with one hand and cyber-twirled an old-school rolodex app with the other until she came to the appropriate card.
"As soon as possible. Leave the return open-ended. I'm not sure when I'll be back." He pushed away from the desk and went to talk to his editor.
Twenty minutes later Ty was back at his desk, going through his notes again, meticulously harvesting all the minutia he could find.
Experience had taught him paying attention to detail nailed a story every time.
His concentration kept getting fractured, however, by one of the photographs included in the info the little weekly in Gravers Bend emailed him. Finally, he set everything else aside and reached for it, turning it up to the light.
Flipping it over he read the name penciled on the back. Kurstin Olivet McAlvey. He went back to studying the photo. Put together with the facts supplied in the accompanying report, it did not take a genius to see what he had here. Hayley Prescott's best friend.
Ty found himself smiling in bemusement at the black and white printout in his hand. There was something about the face gazing back up at him. She was blonde, she was beautiful, and she had a little half smile that spoke directly to his hormones. As an extra added bonus she looked…trusting. Tracing the outline of her jaw with the edge of his thumb, he smiled tenderly.
Elementary, dude. Simple as one-two-three.
It was the band's final break of the night—and it took every ounce of effort Hayley could summon to hang in there to the end of her shift. Her feet hurt, her breasts ached and a band of cramps squeezed her stomach and lower back.
"So, hey," Brian Dorsey addressed her genially as he accepted his drink across the bar. "I imagine you're prob'ly looking forward to them icing the guy who did your old man, huh?"
The splinter of pain stabbing her stomach suddenly had nothing to do with the imminent onset of her period. "You would think so, wouldn't you?" she managed to say in reasonably neutral tones. She picked up the ten he had set on the bar. "Let me get you your change.” Good God, would this night never end? She felt like she had been here a week.
Jon-Michael materialized behind the guitar player and his eyes briefly met hers. "I'll have my usual, Hayley," he said, reaching out with the flat of his fingers to smack his fellow band member on the back of his head.
Brian's bourbon and seven sloshed onto the bar. Swearing, he slammed the glass down and flicked the liquid from his fingers. "Christ almighty, Olivet!" He twisted around. "Why'd you go and do that for?"
"Because sometimes you are too dumb to live," Jon-Michael replied through his teeth. He had been tense all night in the wake of his cozy little chat with the old man, and he was just itching for a fight, any fight. The guitar player’s lack of sensitivity was just the opening he was looking for.
Brian, however, apparently had too much weed floating through his system to take offense and before Jon-Michael could goad him into doing something rash, Hayley intervened.
"Here," she said, shoving his club soda at him with one hand as she wiped up the spilled bourbon from the bar with the other. "Give me that, Brian," she said, indicating his drink. "I'll freshen it for you. And you," she said sternly, tossing the wet bar towel aside and raising her hazel-eyed gaze to pin him in place. "Either take it outside or drop it."
"Hey, no skin off my teeth. Just trying to lend a hand."
"Well, thanks heaps, but don't do me any more favors, okay? Help like yours could end up getting the joint closed down." Her hands suddenly stilled in the middle of rebuilding Brian's drink, and her eyes narrowed as she considered him across the bar. "Or maybe that is what you're aiming for," she said slowly. "Ooh. Yeah. I bet you'd like that, wouldn't you, Johnny?"
"Don't call me Johnny, Granger.”
“It’s Prescott, remember?” Brian said, but they were too focused on each other to pay him any attention.
"Omigawd, I bet you would love that,” she reiterated, “since any fight involving you would be good for a headline or two in the Chronicle." She studied him through dense narrowed lashes. "I can see it now. Olivet Heir Involved in Brawl in Eighth Street Blues Bar." Then her gaze locked on his. "What an absolute, perfect opportunity to piss off dear old dad."
Jon-Michael looked at Brian. "My apologies for jumping down your throat, dude," he said. "Mood she's in tonight, the state of New Hampshire oughtta just let her ice Wilson herself and save the taxpayers some money. She’d probably enjoy it."
Hayley sucked in a sharp breath, recoiling from a deep, ice pick stab of inner pain. Jon-Michael looked her up and down with analytical eyes before taking his club soda down to the opposite end of the bar where he fell into an immediate flirtation with a pretty brunette. Hayley watched him for a minute, then turned away.
God, what a night. If things got any damn cheerier around here, she just might open a vein.
She hated it when she got like this. Putting up with a period every month was bad enough, but while never a laugh a minute it was a fact of life women had to live with. But she sure as hell had not signed on for the shit that occasionally came her way before one even began, when for no better reason than crashing or spiking hormones, she got a case of PMS so severe she could not decide whether to kill or be killed.
So sue her if tonight she was depressed and testy and unwilling to take crap off anyone.
It had nothing to do with Jon-Michael's parting shot, she assured herself. Nothing. She was simply furious with herself because she had no real excuse for turning into the psycho bitch from hell. She detested that she couldn't control her moods, that she itched to take it out on someone else…and all because of a lousy monthly cycle. It made her the worst sort of cliché.
Well buck up, she ordered herself bracingly. It could be worse. At least she had been spared the weeps. Now, those were truly horrifying.
"Oh, damn it to hell," she whispered fifteen minutes later when Jon-Michael raised his sax to his lips for the last song of the evening and began to play Harlem Nocturne. Evocative of film noir movies of the Forties, the sinuous, haunting melody wove its way beneath her defenses and wreaked havoc with the few remaining emotions she had managed to keep under control. A crushing sadness settled heavy as stone on her chest. Staring at Jon-Michael across the room, thinking—oh, any number of unacceptable thoughts—she could not quite drag enough air into her lungs.
Tears pooled in her eyes, scalding and viscous, blinding her for brief moments until she blinked and sent them spilling over her lower lids. Immediately, they refilled. "Perfect," she whispered. "Now I’ve just got it all." Scrubbing furiously at her cheeks, she tried for several unsuccessful minutes to pull herself together.
Conceding defeat when a male patron approached the bar, took one horrified look at her face and veered away, she flagged Lucy over to take charge. She headed directly to Bluey's office.
Roughly scrubbing her fingers over her cheeks, she sniffed, took a deep breath, and pushed open the door. "Bluey," she croaked. "I gotta take off early."
"There's only fifteen lousy minutes to go," he snarled at her. "What's so goddamn important that—" Looking up, he caught sight of the steady stream of tears trickling down her cheeks and charged to his feet. "What is it?" he demanded. "Somebody out there givin' you a bad time? ‘Cause I don’t stand for nobody giving my girls shit."