“I suppose this means you walk under ladders and refuse to throw salt over your shoulder when you spill it,” Brynne teased.
He grinned, pushed back his chair, took his plate in one hand and tossed Festus a scrap of bacon. “I like to walk on the wild side,” he told her. “If a black cat crosses my path, I just keep going. Straight ahead—that’s the only direction I travel in, Bailey.”
With that, he carried his plate to the sink, rinsed it, along with the silverware he’d used and dropped the works into the dishwasher.
Straight ahead. That’s the only direction I travel in.
“No going back?” she asked, very quietly.
He came to her, bent and kissed her forehead, then her mouth. “Everything worthwhile is out ahead,” he said. “Not behind.”
With that, he found his car keys, summoned his dog and headed for the door.
Brynne wanted to say so many things in that moment—Don’t go—be careful—I love you.
But her vocal chords wouldn’t cooperate.
“This will probably be another long day,” Eli told her, in parting. “I’ll check in later.”
Brynne could only nod. If she’d spoken, she would have pleaded with him to stay there, with her, and let Wild Horse County fend for itself.
Of course, he would have refused. He had a job to do, and he took it very seriously.
He left.
Brynne remembered then that she had a job to do as well, and it was time she got started.
She fed Waldo, who was willing to descend from his upholstered mountain now that Festus was gone, tidied the kitchen and retreated to her bathroom for a shower.
Half an hour later, she was downstairs.
Frank, the breakfast cook, was filling orders as fast as Miranda, working solo, could take and serve them.
“So,” Miranda remarked, with a twinkle, “Sheriff Garrett’s truck was parked out back when I came to work this morning.”
Brynne, reverting to childhood when she’d been constantly underfoot in the restaurant, according to her mother and Miranda, put out her tongue.
“You and Eli?”
“It was a robbery,” Brynne said, keeping a straight face. “Fortunately, no one got hurt.”
“A robbery, was it?” Miranda teased. “What was taken?”
“None of your business,” Brynne responded.
Since the customers were busy rehashing the latest development—Freddie Lansing’s suicide—no one picked up on the little exchange.
Speculation ran rampant: some said Freddie and the dead girl, Tiffany-something, had been dating.
A young guy who worked as a lineman for the electric company scoffed at that, said Freddie was an incel.
“What,” Brynne asked, “is an ‘incel’?”
“Involuntary celibate,” was the reply.
She turned to Miranda, who was delivering biscuits and gravy one table over. “I’m going to have to learn a whole new language. Forget English—nobody speaks it anymore.”
“Tell me about it,” Miranda replied. “My grandkids talk the same way they text. OMG. WTF—I tell them they ought to get their mouths washed out with soap for that one.”
And so it went, until the blessed lull between breakfast and lunch.
Doris Gilford arrived at five minutes after eleven, her elfin face hidden behind the massive bouquet of yellow and white roses she carried.
“These are for you,” Doris announced, coming to the table where Brynne was sitting, resting her feet and sipping coffee, and plunking down the enormous crystal vase in front of her. “From Sheriff Garrett.”
Brynne took a moment to breathe in the lovely scent of all those roses—twenty-four of them, unless she missed her guess—and to hide her smile from a beaming Doris.
She was a small, round woman with dyed blond hair, hit-and-miss lipstick, and very fancy fingernails.
“They’re beautiful,” she said. The card was tucked inside the bouquet, in a tiny envelope.
Brynne opened the card, read it, and smiled again.
The message read, “What happens at Bailey’s stays at Bailey’s.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A WEEK AFTER Brynne’s first and wildly wonderful night with Eli, her parents called, the old-fashioned way, reaching her by the landline in her father’s old office, behind the restaurant’s kitchen.
“We’re coming home early,” Alice Bailey announced, without a “hello” or a “how are you” to pave the way. “We’ll be there in less than a week!”
Brynne closed her eyes for a moment. She loved her mom and dad dearly, but she had a pretty good idea why they were returning to Painted Pony Creek two months early; they’d gotten wind that their only daughter was dating the sheriff, and they wanted to see what was going on for themselves, up close and personal.
“Brynne?” her dad prompted. “You there, honey?”
Brynne could picture them sharing a phone receiver, their heads touching, their smiles wide. “I’m here, Dad,” she said, late by a beat or two. “I’m just surprised.”
“I’ll call Hank and have him get the house ready,” Mike Bailey said. “Hope none of the pipes have frozen.”
Brynne suppressed a sigh, wondering who had clued the elder Baileys in that their daughter was involved with a man and how she could murder that person—or persons—with impunity.
Her money was on Miranda, but her parents had a lot of friends, having lived in the area for so many years, and they might have gotten the memo from any one of them. Or several.
In any case, they’d liked Eli, when he and Brynne had gone together in high school; they’d mostly kept their opinions and concerns to themselves after the break-up, though they definitely hadn’t liked seeing their daughter hurt.
“It’s still pretty cold up here,” she said.
Mike’s laugh was expansive, like him. Though not overweight, or very tall, he was barrel-chested and strong as a bull. He’d helped run the bar and restaurant for as long as Brynne could remember, but he’d worked blue-collar jobs before that.
He was a good husband and father, and he’d been a wonderful provider. He loved his wife and daughter without reservation, and often joked that he was glad Brynne had taken after her mother, not him, when it came to looks.
Alice, Brynne’s mother, was tall, slender and elegantly beautiful. Brynne’s blond hair and dark blue eyes came from her. Alice had been a successful model once upon a time, and given up her career without a qualm when, on a ski vacation in Montana, she’d met and fallen in love with Mike Bailey, a plain young man with a prematurely receding hairline and a soul as solid as the Rocky Mountains.