The Girl Most Likely To... Page 8

  He hated to think that he could be read this easily by someone like MacNee, who on most days couldn’t see past his own ego. Cal bracketed his face in his hands and tried to massage away the stress settling in his temples. Dana had him seriously off balance. He’d be a fool to think MacNee couldn’t spot it.

  Life in Sandy Bend had never been simple, but now it was downright complicated. Cal had the feeling that no matter which way he turned, he kept ending up right back on Dana Devine’s doorstep.

  OKAY, so life could be a little worse.

  Dana watched her insurance agent wrap herself in her full-length mink coat, pull on her kidskin gloves, then turn up her collar to protect those multicarat diamond earrings before she could brave the walk to her office next door.

  Missy’s a client, and a well-paying one, Dana reminded herself before she gave in to the impulse to pelt the woman on the back of the head with one of the curlers she had set up for Olivia Hawkins’s standing Tuesday appointment.

  “Bye, Missy, and thanks for coming to confirm the bad news in person.” Not only was Dana’s deductible the size of a third world nation’s budget, but the insurance adjuster had severely underestimated the cost to repair and restock the salon.

  Missy’s answering smile was a tad condescending, but then again, that was nothing new. “Anything to help a customer in need. I’ll make sure that adjuster comes back here one more time, and while you’re waiting, you can break open the piggy bank I’m certain you set up when you increased your policy deductible from five hundred dollars.”

  She paused, then sighed dramatically. “Not that you have a reputation for being prudent. I think people tend to think of you as more…experienced.”

  Whoa, a high school flashback. Missy couldn’t have been more catty in her meaning if she’d grown fangs and whiskers. Dana clutched the curler she was holding even tighter. “One question, Missy.”

  “Yes?”

  “When, exactly does one get forgiven for mistakes in Missy-land? Does the past ever die? I’d really like to know.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do, but just to make it clear, I’ll remind you that we both left Sandy Bend High a long time ago.

  “And I’d also like to point out that even if I was more ‘experienced’ than you back then—and I really don’t want to speculate on that—not once did I steal another girl’s boyfriend. Can you say the same?”

  Color rose on Missy’s porcelain cheeks.

  “Didn’t think so,” Dana said. “Now, how about if we limit our conversations to current events? I think we’d both like it better. Deal?”

  A reluctant, almost respectful, smile tugged at the corners of Missy’s mouth. “Deal…and I’m sorry. What I said was uncalled for. I guess old habits die hard.”

  Dana relaxed. “It’s already forgotten. Let me know when you hear from the adjuster again.”

  “I will.”

  As the bells above the door heralded her insurance agent’s departure, Dana turned back to her station. Taking charge of Missy had made her downright giddy. Rebuilding her reputation with one person at a time was a grueling battle, but winnable. She smiled as she considered the possibility that Cal would be the next to see her as she really was.

  Dana hefted the curler in her right hand. “And in an amazing over-the-shoulder shot from three-point range, Dana Devine shoots!” She sent the curler flying toward the door.

  “And scores!”

  She whirled around to see Mrs. Hawkins holding the missile in her upraised hand. There was nothing like accidentally clobbering a client to bring a woman down to earth. After an abject apology, Dana stuck to what she was good at—styling hair and pretending she wasn’t daydreaming about Cal Brewer.

  CAL KNEW that finding Mike Henderson was as simple as strolling into Truro’s Tavern. Every Tuesday night, Mike had permanent possession of the pool table and end bar stool in the front room—the “townie” room populated by born-and-bred Sandy Benders. Cal tended to hang with the trunk-slammers in the back room, since his best friend, Steve, was one himself even though his family had been spending weekends here for generations.

  Cal wasn’t much for social distinctions. In fact, he thought they were stupid. He was also pragmatic enough to know that nothing in Sandy Bend changed quickly. The fact that he could straddle both social sets was probably all the evolution the town would see for the next thirty years.

  Cal scanned the room. Football season was over, so the televisions strategically placed between deer heads and fishing and baseball trophies were tuned in to a rerun of last fall’s NAPA 500 NASCAR race.

  Mike sat at the corner of the bar. As always, he was laughing a little too loudly, almost as if he was begging for attention.

  Tonight, he’d get his wish.

  Cal settled on the stool next to him, but didn’t acknowledge him. Experience told him to let Mike do the talking.

  “Hey, Anna,” he said to the bartender. “How about a Police Chief’s Special?”

  “Sure thing, Chief,” she said, then grinned. “Thirty years behind the bar calling your dad ‘Chief,’ and now I get to say it to you. Sure hope it stays that way.”

  She wasn’t alone in the sentiment.

  Anna slid a tall club soda with two lime wedges across the bar. Cal handed her a couple of bucks to cover the drink and a tip. Ignoring Henderson, he drank his soda and exchanged hellos with everyone who stopped by. He could almost hear Mike’s nerves humming like a strand of tightly stretched piano wire.

  “You’re doing this to get to me, right?” Mike finally snapped. “You figure if you sit here long enough I’m going to slip up and say something.”

  Cal unfurled his best “good old boy” smile. “Heck, Mike, I’m just having myself a drink and watching a little television. Don’t mean to get on your nerves.”

  Mike took a quick swig of his beer and set it back on the bar. “That so?”

  “Sure. Even I take some time off every now and then.”

  Cal turned his attention back to the race, though he figured it was going to turn out pretty much the way it had in October.

  “So did you check out that DeGuilio guy?” Henderson asked after a stretch of silence.

  “Yeah, and it’s not nice to give me extra busywork. I’ve got enough to do as it is.”

  “He could have been involved,” Mike said, hunching over the bar in what Cal easily pegged as a defensive posture. “Jimmy knows all about hair salons. Anyway, lots of people have it out for Dana.”

  Cal echoed Mike’s earlier, “That so?” He waited for a downbeat, then added, “Just to narrow the list, I don’t suppose you’d like to come in to the station and get fingerprinted?”

  “Yeah…sure,” Mike said with no enthusiasm at all. “But you know I’m still in the salon a lot, so it wouldn’t prove anything if you found my prints, right? And I had an alibi.” He went to take another drink, noticed the bottle was empty and put it down.

  “We could eliminate yours from the unidentified prints.”

  “Oh.” Mike toyed with the empty bottle, looked down the counter where Anna was chatting with other patrons, and then back at Cal. “You get what I’m saying about Dana? You know her type…one slipup and you’re history. I wanted to give her another chance after I broke up with Suzanne, but she said she was worried I’d die in my sleep. When I least expected it…smothered by my own pillow.”

  Cal fought back a smile. That sounded like Dana all right. And it was a lot funnier to hear that biting humor when it wasn’t directed at him. Then there were all of the facets of Dana that Cal wanted to experience again—her sexy laugh, her sensuous touches, her lush mouth. Only four days had passed since they’d been together in Chicago. Already Cal was starving, and worse yet, knew he had to go hungry. Henderson was a fool. He’d found paradise and thrown it away.

  “I don’t know why I was with her in the first place,” Mike grumbled.

  Cal had his guesses, all of which cent
ered on sponging off Dana’s hard work, and all of which he planned to keep to himself.

  “So, are you seeing anyone new?” he asked.

  “Yeah, besides that Tiffany you talked to—isn’t she a babe?—I’ve got one or two others.”

  “Sounds like you’re over Dana.”

  “Like a bad case of flu,” he said. Not that Cal was entirely buying in, especially when Mike added, “We’ll see how long it takes her to come crawling back.”

  Cal made a noncommittal sound instead of the howl of laughter he wanted to let loose. Dana Devine crawl? Not in this lifetime.

  SHAKING WITH TERROR, Dana belly-crawled past the living room windows and toward the front closet, where she kept all the sporting equipment she seldom used—including Mike’s baseball bat. Lying to Mike and saying she had no idea what had happened to it had been sheer divorce-driven spite. That vindictive moment just might turn out to be critical in saving her life.

  She’d been awakened from a nap on the living room couch by the sound of someone sneaking into her house.

  The guy on the other side of the door had already managed to pick the lock and was swearing like a keelhauled sailor because the security chain wouldn’t give. Intent on protecting herself, she didn’t see any point in asking exactly who the intruder was. Suffice it to say that she didn’t recognize the man’s voice.

  Dana reached the closet, frantically dug her way to the back, and came out with Mike’s cherished Louisville Slugger. Gripping the bat in both hands, she approached the door. A bony but very tan hand had reached inside. Dana dragged in a shaky breath and quelled the cowardly thought of screaming at the top of her lungs until Cal Brewer magically appeared and rescued her. Tempting, but so unlikely that she was better off coming up with a way to rescue herself.

  “Try getting out of this, buddy,” she muttered as she planted her shoulder on the door, pinning the evil hand.

  Swearing gave way to howling.

  “The police are on the way,” she lied over the noise.

  “They should be. You ought to be arrested,” groaned the man. “You broke my hand!”

  Dana glanced down. “Your fingers are moving just fine.”

  As he struggled and she dug in with her shoulder, it occurred to her that she was now at a bit of an impasse. If she let up on the door to go make good on her threat of calling the police, he’d be back at the safety chain, alleged broken hand and all. If she didn’t let up, there was a good possibility she’d be standing here until tomorrow morning, when Trish would be locked out of the salon, and might check on her.

  She needed a plan.

  Dana tightened her grip on the bat. “I’m the forgiving type, so I’m going to step back. If you get off my porch and go away, we’ll call it even. And if you don’t, you should know that I’ve got a baseball bat and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  “A baseball bat? You think a little girl with a baseball bat scares me? I have a big, fat pack of Miami lawyers I’ll sic on you as soon as I get out of here.”

  “Yeah, well, I know a big, mean police chief,” she semibluffed. Then it struck her. Had he said Miami?

  “Uh-oh,” Dana murmured, and then leaned her head against the door. “Um, would you by any chance be Mr. Vandervoort?”

  “You bet your last Havana cigar, I am. Now let go of this door so I can get my hand out.”

  She stepped back. Mr. Vandervoort pushed the door inward to the extent of the safety chain, and removed his hand. While he muttered about knuckle-crusher women, Dana tried to pull together her composure, but it was a losing battle.

  “Are you going to open the door the rest of the way or are you just going to slip some bandages and a Manhattan straight out the crack?”

  She eyed the chain.

  “Come on, I drove all the way from the airport in Detroit. The last rest stop was over half an hour ago and my bladder’s not what it used to be.”

  Dandy. A gangster who had to plan his hits around potty stops. Dana sighed. “Fine, I’ll open the door, but I’m not letting go of the bat.”

  Vandervoort wheezed. At least, Dana thought it might be a wheeze. She swung open the door and then held the bat at ready.

  Her landlord—well, soon-to-be former landlord—was about six feet tall but weighed maybe one hundred thirty pounds. She guessed he was somewhere past seventy, but he was still pretty jazzy looking—almost like a retired pirate. His receding silver hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he had a gold hoop earring in his left ear.

  “Nice pajamas,” he said, cradling his scraped hand with his good one.

  Dana looked down and realized that she was wearing her favorite flannel pajamas emblazoned with 1950s style buxom ski bunnies.

  “Do you think you could find me some bandage and antiseptic?” he asked as he stepped across the threshold.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were seated at the kitchen table. In hopes of restoring her dignity, Dana had pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans. She’d also served up a thick slice of chocolate cake with an eye to buoying Mr. Vandervoort’s mood. He’d seemed pretty down when she explained she didn’t have the ingredients for a Manhattan in the house.

  “One question—when you got here, why didn’t you use the bell?” she asked.

  “I did, and I knocked and called your name, too. I saw you in there sprawled on the living room couch. You sleep like a corpse, you know that?”

  Dana figured given his past, he’d have reason to know. “I haven’t been getting much rest lately. I guess my body was making up for lost time.”

  “I would have just gone and grabbed a motel room for the night, but I was worried you were sick,” he said between bites of cake. “I knocked on the door some more, and didn’t even know you’d gotten up until you tried to take off my hand.”

  Dana winced. “Sorry, but you nearly scared me to death.”

  A twinkle shone in his eyes. “Then I wouldn’t have to worry about evicting you.”

  “Nice.”

  He fixed her with a glare, all the more effective because of his Jack Nicholson brows. Dana saw through the act, though. “But you know,” he said, “I just can’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  He hitched a thumb toward the back door.

  “Oh, throw me onto the street in the dead of winter, that what you mean?”

  “Funny,” he grunted.

  Dana found herself relaxing. Besides the one mistake with Mike, she considered herself a pretty good judge of character. Len Vandervoort was okay. She suspected he hadn’t led a squeaky-clean life, but neither had she.

  “Now listen up,” he growled. “Before you go thinking I’m some big softy, I have some rules. First, none of that loud rap music you kids listen to.”

  Dana bit back a smile. She was more of a rock and roller.

  “And I like my cigars. If I want to smoke one in the middle of the kitchen while you’re cooking dinner, that’s the way it is.”

  No problem. One good “dying swan” scene complete with consumptive coughing would cure him of smoking cigars in front of her.

  “And since there’s the chance I’ll be entertaining a lady friend every now and then, you’re going to have to move to the third floor.”

  “The—the attic?”

  “It has walls and lights and heat.”

  “Yeah, and stuff that no one’s touched in ninety years.” Plus she was pretty sure that was where the ghost of Old Lady Pierson hung out.

  “If you don’t want it…” A man with a clear conscience, he again dug into chocolate cake. Dana knew she had little leverage. None, actually.

  “Fine, I’m Cinderella.” She leaned across the table. “Now here are my rules. You make a mess in the kitchen, you clean it up. I’m paying rent—and I think about one third of what I was paying for the entire house would be fair—which means I’m not going to be your handmaiden. I get the small bathroom on the second floor to myself. Under no circumstances are you to enter it. And while you’re free to entertain your lad
y friends, don’t expect me to lie to them if you happen to be seeing more than one.”

  Mr. V began to wheeze, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort. At first, Dana thought he was choking. She rushed to the other side of the table while mentally reviewing what she knew of the Heimlich maneuver. He held up a hand to still her. Tears ran down his leathery face.

  She finally realized he was laughing.

  “More than one lady friend. Who do you take me for, Frank Sinatra?”

  “Okay, so I’m a little touchy on the faithfulness thing.”

  He wiped his eyes and shook his head. “More than one…keep that up and I’ll let you live in the attic for free.”

  “You’re a prince among men.”

  He looked at her appraisingly. “I don’t suppose you play poker?”

  Her smile grew. “This is the beginning of an interesting friendship, isn’t it?”

  “Could be,” said her landlord. “Could be.”

  7

  WEDNESDAY’S GOOD AND BAD NEWS was that Dana had no clients booked until eleven. It was good because she needed the time to straighten out her living situation, and bad because she also needed cash. Desperately.

  After opening the salon for Trish, she hustled back to her attic apartment to assess just what she’d gotten herself into. She instantly concluded that she was about to take on a ton more work with no additional hours in the day.

  When she was a kid, Dana’s favorite book had been A Little Princess. She’d really related to kind-hearted Sara, who had been transported from beggar girl to beloved ward. After her father died and her family had disintegrated, Dana had dreamed that she would be transported into the bosom of a family that loved her—or at least noticed her. Sadly, this miracle never occurred.

  “Instead, I get the attic,” she murmured, running her finger across the dusty top of an ancient steamer trunk. To the attic’s credit, it was heated, had lovely multipaned windows and was plenty tall for her to stand up in. Back in the house’s heyday, this had been a servants’ dormitory. That heyday had passed about ninety years ago, which coincidentally was the last time anyone had cleaned up here.