A Table By the Window (27 page)

“No, I'll be here in the morning,” Brooke assured her.

Uncle Rory prepared Creole jambalaya in an iron pot, yeast rolls, and green salad for Deanna's farewell party, followed by hand-cranked ice cream flavored with the last of the figs from the Hudsons' tree.

“I'll see you at Christmas,” Deanna said when Carley embraced her and wished her safe flight.

Early the following morning, Carley unhooked her computer and loaded it into the GL. Time to start conducting most of the café business in her office, and Brooke could help with the wiring. She would miss having it at the house, but promised herself she would get another when the business proved itself.

Brooke was waiting on the sidewalk, practically spilling out of the tank top, and stuffed into her jeans.
You have no customers to offend yet,
Carley reminded herself. And she herself wore jeans, albeit loose enough to move around in without cutting off circulation. The girl helped her carry in monitor, modem, keyboard, and printer. They pulled the desk from the wall, and Carley crawled underneath to thread cords through the openings. Brooke had offered to get down there herself, but Carley doubted the jeans could take the strain.

“Okay, can you reach the cord I'm wiggling?”

“I've got it,” Brooke said.

“Pardon me.” A man's voice that time, familiar though muffled slightly by desk metal. Carley backed from the dark space and rose to her knees. Steve Underwood stood framed by the doorway, wearing light brown corded slacks and a blue chambray shirt.

“Good morning,” Carley said.

“Good morning, Carley…Brooke.”

“Hey, Mr. Steve,” the girl chirped.

Small town,
Carley reminded herself.

“I can't believe how good the place looks,” he said.

Carley smiled and got to her feet. “Doesn't it? And I can't wait to see the sign.”

“Do you need help with those cords?”

“No, thank you. We just about have it.”

A blanket-wrapped bundle lay on one of the tables. Steve undraped each side. “Protection against potholes and bumps in the road. Well, what do you think?”

Vera's Annabel looked poignantly off in the distance, hand pressed to her bosom as if waiting for her sweetheart. Of all the additions to the café, the sign moved Carley the most. Her dream had a name, carved in wood. Her throat thickened. “Please tell your mother I've never seen anything so beautiful.”

“Beautiful,” Brooke echoed. “Is that the girl from the poem?”

“It is.” Carley looked at her. “I'm sorry, Brooke. I didn't bring it over.”

“It's okay. Mr. Juban helped me look it up after I left here yesterday.”

For a minute Carley forgot about the sign. “You went to the library just to read it?”

“Well…yes, ma'am,” she said, clearly embarrassed. “I mean, yes.”

Why in the world did you drop out of school?
Carley thought. With some education behind Brooke's initiative, she could be president. Or a Mafia don. Clever did not always go hand-in-hand with good, but Carley suspected a streak of decency lay beneath those piercings, the heavy makeup, and outrageous clothes.

“Okay,” Steve said. “We'll leave it here for now. My tools and ladder are outside. Once I get the bracket attached, I'll need you to show me how high you want this.”

“I'll start unpacking cartons,” Brooke offered.

“Good idea.”

On the sidewalk, Carley held one side of the folding ladder steady. Steve used a cordless screwdriver to attach an iron bracket over the door. Pedestrians gave them wide berth on their way to and from the drugstore, trading good-mornings and asking the date of the grand opening.

“We're aiming for August twenty-third, thank you for asking,” was Carley's standard reply, while dancing inside over the thought of still another potential customer.

When Deputy Marti Jenkins stopped by, she did not mention the opening, just asked Steve how his folks were doing.

“Why don't you drive out there and see for yourself?” he replied.

Marti's laugh showed gums and pearl teeth. “I know, it's been a while. But they don't have to be such hermits either.”

“They're afraid someone will force them to take a real job.”

The deputy rolled her eyes and finally spoke to Carley. “We're cousins, couldn't you guess?”

Carley felt an odd and faint surge of relief. She supposed it was because the Underwoods had treated her like an honored guest, so it was a letdown to know others were just as honored. Unreasonable, yes, but that was sometimes the way of emotion. But with Marti being family…well, people needed to have family over.

“Okay, back up several feet,” Steve said after Marti had left.

Carley backed away to stand in front of Peggy's Pastimes. He held the sign at differing distances from the bracket, until she said, “That looks good. What do you think?”

“It works for me. High enough not to bang the heads of us tall folks.”

Carley walked back over. “Does that mean you'll try us out sometime?”

He smiled down at her. “Absolutely.”

After cutting the chains the proper lengths, he attached them to the hooks and hung the sign. This time they both walked back to admire it from a distance. Not only did the sign give texture to Carley's dream, but it validated her as a businesswoman. No longer was she fixing up “Emmit's old hamburger joint.” This was Annabel Lee Café.

“I'll get my checkbook,” she said as he folded his ladder. “Come on inside when you've finished.”

She could hear the clatter of cutlery outside the kitchen door. When she went through it, Brooke turned from the stainless steel worktable and asked, “How does it look?”

“Go see for yourself,” Carley said.

“Okay if I wait a minute? I'm almost done unpacking knives.”

“Sure.”

As Carley took her café account checkbook from the desk, she noticed the purse she had parked so casually atop the filing cabinet.

She wouldn't.

You don't really know her,
went through her mind next.

Cutlery was still clattering. Still, Carley sent several glances toward the doorway while taking inventory of her wallet for cash and her debit card. It was all there. She replaced the purse feeling both relieved and guilty.

“What sort of history do you teach?” she asked in the dining room while writing out the check.

“American, Mississippi, and Civil War.”

“I know almost nothing about those last two,” Carley confessed. “Only that the North won.”

“And rightly so.”

When she gave him a look of mild surprise, he said, “Most Southerners feel that way. Slavery was simply wrong. But we're still miffed about having our homes burnt and the severity of restoration.” He smiled. “I didn't mean to step up to my lectern.”

“It's actually interesting.”

“Well, thank you. I wish all my students felt that way.” Handing her a receipt, he got to his feet. “This has been a pleasure, Carley.”

She rose as well, and held out a hand. “Do tell your parents how pleased I am.”

“They'll be delighted.” After releasing her hand, he hesitated. “If you're interested, Vicksburg has a Civil—”

Someone was rapping at the door. Dale Parker, framed by the half-window, waved and then turned the knob. He leaned into the doorway to say, “The sign looks great. I guessed it was your folks' work, Steve.”

“Thank you, Dale,” Steve said, but with the warmth of chocolate mousse.

“Sorry to interrupt your business.” Dale smiled at Carley. “But I wanted to warn you I've got a meeting this afternoon and might be a few minutes late.”

“That's fine.”

“Thanks!” He backed out of the door, waved again on his way past the picture window.

Carley gave Steve an apologetic smile. He was a decent man, she thought, with a nice family. In this case, it was a good thing that the fruit did not fall far from the tree. She had never dated two men during the same time frame, and certainly had little time for romance. But if Steve was working up to asking her for a date, she wouldn't mind.

“I'm sorry, Steve, what were you saying?”

He picked up his clipboard and smiled at her. “Just that there's a Civil War battlefield and museum in Vicksburg you might enjoy visiting sometime. Well, I've got to deliver a sign to Lumberton. I'll give you a call when the bench is finished.”

****

What do people here wear to movies?
Carley thought at her closet. She decided upon her knee-length, sleeveless dress of subdued pink and white checks. As an afterthought she grabbed her white three-quarter sleeve cardigan. The temperature had reached ninety today and even now had only cooled to eighty-two. But it would come in handy if the theater or restaurant was too cold.

Dale arrived twenty-six minutes late, full of apologies.

“An investigator for the state police was in the office all afternoon,” he drawled, steering the Mustang down Highway 589. He looked like a college student, in a yellow polo shirt that revealed the muscles of his tanned arms, and khaki slacks and loafers. “That's why I figured I'd be late. You ever meet anyone in love with the sound of his own voice?”

Carley thought. “There was a girl in Biology 101 who asked at least two questions every lecture. Most had such obvious answers that you had to wonder if she just wanted the attention. You could feel the tension around the auditorium five minutes before dismissal, because that was her favorite time to raise her hand.”

“I know that girl!” Dale clicked on his signal light to pass a pickup truck. “She took Intro to Sociology at USM.”

That made Carley smile. “We can wait and have dinner after the movie, if you like.”

“Oh no, we'll make it.”

She had a feeling they would. She could not look at the speedometer without being obvious, but the farms and trees and houses on either side of the road were zipping by too quickly for her comfort zone.
It's just this car,
she told herself.
The chief of police wouldn't speed
.

To distract herself from the curvy hill and solid yellow line ahead, she asked, “Do you work closely with the state police?”

“Sometimes. The guy had what he thought was a new lead on an old case. If he had told us the reason he was coming, we could have saved him the trouble, because the information didn't match our evidence.” Dale waved a hand. “He's a good cop. But while he was rattling on, I was getting antsy, just like those students in your biology class. I was afraid we'd have to call off our date.”

Another charming thing to say, in his repertoire of charming statements. Carley said, “You mean, you were afraid you'd miss
The Hulk
.”

He looked at her long enough to smile in the sheepish way that had caught her attention in Corner Diner. “Well, maybe that too. The Hulkster's my man.”

Carley smiled and looked at the road again. Her heart went up into her throat. He was gaining on a black sedan and signaling to pass. A white van approached in the left lane, with little margin for error. She clenched her fingers, held her breath, and didn't let it out again until they were in the right lane again.

You're being ridiculous,
she said to herself as her heartbeat settled back into a less frenzied rhythm.
Are you so flattered that he asked you out that you're just going to let him kill you?

“Dale?” she said.

“Um-hmm?” He smiled at her again.

“Will you please slow down?”

“Sure,” he said, and the car immediately decelerated. “Sorry. I guess I'm still wired from that meeting.”

“I understand.”

“So, help me to de-stress. Tell me about your day. What did you do besides put up the sign?”

“Well, we hooked up my computer.”

“Computer, eh? That's relaxing.”

“And put away dishes.”

He flexed his shoulders. “I'm feeling better by the minute.”

“Flatware too.”

This time he leaned his head and feigned snoring.

Carley laughed. “I don't want you
that
relaxed.”

“Oh, okay.” He smiled back at her. “How's the Kimball girl working out? You didn't let her around the knives, did you?”

“I'll have you know she unpacked the cutlery by herself. And she had access to my purse for a good while.”

“And how much was in it?”

“Well, seven dollars.”

“She's not foolish enough to risk getting in trouble over seven dollars.”

“
And
my debit card.”

“Where would she use it? You can't get too far on a bike.”

“I believe you're wrong about her, Dale.”

“Well, I hope so.” His expression sobered. “Just don't be too trusting, Carley. You'll have lots of cash around once the place opens.”

“I'll be careful.”

Barnhill's was a popular restaurant, judging by the number of parked vehicles. Carley and Dale only had to wait five minutes for a table. The buffet was impressive, with regional dishes such as barbecue ribs and chicken and dumplings, but also teriyaki chicken and spaghetti with meatballs.

And vegetables. Baked sweet potatoes, steamed white potatoes, cabbage, turnip greens, black-eyed peas, and more. Dale's plate was full.

“Thank you for suggesting here,” he said, splitting a sweet potato with a knife. “I worked through lunch, as you can tell. It would have been depressing, having to order a salad.”

“This seems a good place,” Carley said.

“But look around. Mostly families. It's not exactly a date spot. Garland ribbed me about it.”

“Well, tell him these ribs are fine.”

He laughed. “That's what I like most about you. Your sense of humor.”