Bitch Factor (22 page)

Taking a seat at the far end of the counter, she looked the place over. Only one table was occupied—a couple who had eyes only for each other—but the lunch crowd wasn’t officially due for another ten minutes.

Then Dixie noticed the nearest booth was also occupied, and a stillness came over her. The youngest Keyes child, El-lie, lay asleep on the padded seat, a gaily crocheted afghan covering her small body. Seeing her, Dixie realized how worried she’d been that yet another accident might have occurred in the Keyes family. Except for a chapped nose, the girl seemed fine. Brown hair tangled around her chubby cheeks. A bright Raggedy Ann doll clutched in her arms, and one bare foot thrust outside the afghan, she looked angelic and vulnerable. On the table beside her sat a Kleenex box and a
prescription bottle. According to Belle’s notes, Ellie was barely six, Dixie’s age the first time Tom Scully visited her bedroom. What made a person want to defile such innocence?

Dixie realized as she watched the sleeping girl’s shallow breathing that she’d been revisiting the past much too often lately. She resolved to stop. If she continued to muddle her own childhood problems with the Keyes accidents, she’d never find the truth. As a rule, she rarely thought about the bad years. Too much good had happened in her life to dwell on misfortunes. But the world was filled with casualties of life’s dark side, and if she could save just one child from harm, perhaps the past would redeem itself.

Her breathing fell into rhythm with the rise and fall of Ellie’s chest. Then a mucus bubble formed at one tiny nostril, and Dixie smiled. A head cold was reassuringly ordinary. She plucked a tissue from the box and gently wiped Ellie’s nose, as footsteps sounded behind the counter.

Dixie turned to find a pert twenty-year-old with springy black curls and lashes like paintbrushes. Her name tag said GILLIS.

“Sorry to take so long.” She laid a menu on the counter. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

Dixie had hoped to meet Rebecca Payne, but the mouthwatering aromas issuing from the kitchen suggested the chef was preparing lunch.

“Gillis, I saw your magazine write-up as I walked in. It said to ask for the house specialty.” Dixie hoped it wouldn’t be yogurt or tofu. In her limited experience with “healthful” food, those ingredients seemed overrated and overly abundant

“Today’s special is Chicken Piccata. Mrs. Payne does wonders with herbs. The Brandied Beef on Sprouted Wheat is good, too.” Gillis placed a white napkin and utensils on the counter. “Oops, there’s the buzzer. The produce truck is finally here. Be right back.”

Dixie studied the menu. After a moment, she heard a rustle behind her and turned to find a pair of solemn brown eyes
staring over the top of the afghan. Ellie had pulled it high to cover her nose.

“Hello,” Dixie said.

The brown eyes blinked.

“Bet you’ve got the sniffles. I hate having the sniffles, my nose all runny and sore. Can I get you anything? A glass of water, maybe? Orange juice?”

Blink.

“Hot lemonade? That always tastes good when I feel puny, hot lemonade and raisin toast.”

This time the eyes bounced up and down as the child nodded.

“Good. I hate to eat alone.” Gillis reappeared, as if on cue. Dixie ordered the Chicken Piccata and coffee for herself, hot lemonade and toast for the girl.

“That’s a nice big booth,” Dixie said, when the waitress left to turn in the order. “Think I could join you?”

The brown eyes moved side to side. “I’m kuh-
tay
-just.”

“Contagious?”

“Got the flu.” She coughed, a deep, phlegmy sound.

“Oh, well. I’m not one bit scared of the flu. Why, I’ve had the flu so many times I’ve lost count. If that’s all you’re worried about, you can stop worrying.”

The child was sitting up now, letting the afghan slip down to her waist. Her round brown eyes looked unconvinced.

“Your mommy tell you not to talk to strangers?”

The nod again.

“Suppose I clear it with your mommy. Then will you consider letting me share your table?”

A bright smile accompanied the nod. When Gillis returned with salad, Dixie handed her a business card with D.A. “DIXIE” FLANNIGAN printed above her telephone number and a post office box. In this case, the D.A. was for Desiree Alexandra—but few people asked. She had a thousand cards printed each year in exchange for a few pounds of pecans.

“Gillis, would you introduce me to this very cautious and slightly contagious young lady, and then ask her mother if it’s all right for us to have lunch together?”

Gillis looked uncertain, but read the name on the card exactly as it was written, introduced the little girl as Ellie, then disappeared into the kitchen.

“Happy to meet you, Ellie. Please don’t call me Ms. Flannigan. I’m Dixie, plain and simple.”

“Hi, Dixie-plain-and-simple!” Ellie piped, breaking into a fit of giggles.

“Whoa! I walked right into that one, didn’t I? Where’d you learn such a good joke?”

“From Courtney.” The light winked out of Ellie’s eyes.

Dixie didn’t want to put a damper on what promised to be a pleasant lunch. She filled the silence quickly.

“I don’t know any jokes as good as yours, but I know the best
knock-knock
joke in the whole world. You know what a knock-knock joke is?”

Ellie nodded, eyes wide and solemn.

“Want to hear the best knock-knock joke in the world?”

Another nod, a tiny smile.

“Okay, but I think we should warm up to the best. Let’s try this one: Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Oswald.”

“Os-wald who?”

“Oswald my gum.”

The child’s giggle was high and frothy, like champagne bubbles bursting. “My turn?” she said.

“Go for it.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Awch.” She giggled again, anticipating her own punch line.

“Awch who?”

Giggle, giggle. “God bless you!” Giggle, giggle, giggle.

Dixie whooped, genuinely amused, but also hamming it up.

“Okay, are you ready now for the world’s greatest knock-knock joke?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, you start” Dixie said.

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

Ellie looked blank for a moment before she realized she’d been had. Then she grinned. “You fooled me!”

“Yep. That’s me, an old fooler.”

Gillis appeared with a tray. She set the hot lemonade in front of Ellie and Dixie’s meal across from her.

“Mommy said I can join Ellie for lunch?” Dixie asked.

“That’s right, but she did say to warn you that Ellie has a bronchial flu and might be contagious.”

“I already told her that,” Ellie said. “Come on, Dixie, sit down.”

Ellie nibbled at the toast and sipped the lemonade. Dixie put away the Chicken Piccata, which was excellent despite the green specks that Gillis assured her were fresh herbs from the garden outside the door.

Even more than the meal, Dixie enjoyed the company. But she couldn’t help envisioning Elbe’s two sisters alongside her, as they appeared in the Christmas snapshot. According to Rashly, the older girls had a different father from Ellie, yet they looked very much alike and had identical coloring.

Ellie coughed. Dixie wanted to scoop her up, take her home, rub her chest with Vicks VapoRub, feed her chicken soup, and keep her safe. Rebecca Payne probably felt the same protectiveness, bringing Ellie to the cafe instead of hiring a sitter, terrified of letting her remaining child out of sight.

“You don’t like your toast?”

“My tummy hurts.”

“Oh.” Dixie touched the back of her hand to the child’s forehead, not sure exactly what she should feel. Warm. Maybe the girl needed aspirin or one of the the little white prescription pills—AMOXIL, the label said. Lord, she didn’t know a thing about kids.

She called Gillis, who said Rebecca had gone next door to the hardware store to take Mr. Payne some lunch. Minutes later, Rebecca Payne appeared with Tylenol and water. Unlike
her brown-haired daughters, Rebecca had radiant blond hair pulled back in a ribbon that matched her print dress. She wore a white cook’s apron over a trim figure and stood about five-foot-seven. Not quite pretty, yet attractive, she had a bobbed nose and striking bottle-green eyes a bit too close together.

“The chicken was wonderful,” Dixie told her. “Every bit as good as the restaurant critic proclaimed.”

Rebecca’s smile brought her closer to beautiful. “The newspapers have been kind, but I’m not one for false modesty. I serve some of the best food in town.”

She settled Ellie for a nap. As she tucked the afghan around the child’s neck, Dixie noticed Rebecca’s left hand was missing the first two fingers.

Next door, at Payne Hardware, Dixie tried to think of an item she needed at home—garden hose, faucet washers—did people browse in a hardware store? Certainly, that would give her more time to check out Travis Payne.

The cowbell over the door rang more insistently than the baby tinkler at the Payne Garden Cafe. The air smelled of sawdust and machine oil. From somewhere near the back, a power saw buzzed shrilly.

Dixie scanned the room for the angry face in the news clip of Dann’s arraignment. The only man in sight was a stout-nosed shopper wheeling an overburdened cart to the register.

“Get out here, Travis,” he shouted over the power-saw whine. “I’m ready to go.”

The whine ceased, and after a moment a sturdy, white-haired man in orange overalls appeared from behind a partition. Travis Payne didn’t look nearly as fierce as his photograph. The two men chatted at the register like old friends.

Sidling in that direction, Dixie feigned an interest in a shelf of cleaning agents. She picked up a bottle of Tarnex.

“Travis, I can’t see any advantage in that new department you’re adding,” Stout Nose stated.

“The computer center? Got to keep abreast of the times, Tate. You know that.”

Dixie heard excitement in his voice, the same excitement her hacker friends exhibited when discussing their latest passion. Travis Payne had been bitten by the computer bug.

“Pah! A money pit, that’s what it’ll turn into. Who’s going to buy a computer from a hardware store?”

“Lay you odds that department will
double
what the rest of the store brings in.
Double
it, just you watch. Soon as it’s completely stocked and I get the word out.”

“That’s what you said when you added kitchen gadgets. Now you’ve got a truckload of pots and pans gathering dust.”

Dixie noticed a neat yellow sign that marked the kitchen-ware section. Others advertised plumbing, electrical, and building supplies. A bright blue sign marked the computer area.

“Everybody these days needs a personal computer,” Payne said. “Everybody. Including you, Tate. You can be my first customer.” He had finished ringing up the sale. Now he stacked the merchandise on a cart.

“If I recollect rightly, my wife was your first customer when you put in that fancy decorator section. Rugs, curtain rods, lamps—now I ask you, what kind of hardware store carries such nonsense?”

“It’s called forward thinking, Tate. Look at what’s to come, not what’s past. You’ll see—”

“I know. ‘Soon as you get the word out.’ Well, I won’t hold my breath. Be glad I’m not your business partner.” Payne opened the door, and the customer wheeled his cart through, muttering, “Computers in a hardware store. That takes the cake.”

The cowbell clanged wildly as Payne shut the door.

“May I help you, ma’am?” He smiled at her, pale blue eyes twinkling, white mustache defining his bow-shaped mouth, orange overalls tight over his roundish belly. Dixie wondered if he ever moonlighted as Saint Nick.

“I’m trying to decide between these cleaners,” Dixie said.

“Take your time, ma’am. Take your time. I’ll be in the
back working on some shelves when you’re ready to check out.” He scurried away, and a moment later she heard the power saw.

Travis Payne had to be ten or twelve years older than Rebecca, Dixie thought as she wandered idly down the rows of hardware, kitchen, and decorator items. A man happy in his work, business apparently expanding, his wife’s business written up favorably in the press. The only dark cloud in their lives seemed to be the deaths of two children.

She found a bin full of key holders, including the kind Dann had used to hide a spare key under the chassis of his Cadillac. Payne had sold it to him. He would’ve known exactly where to look if he wanted to steal—or borrow—Dann’s car. For that matter, anyone shopping in the store that day might have observed the sale.

In the new computer area, unfinished shelves covered half of one wall. Sealed boxes of merchandise sat in the middle of the floor draped with a plastic drop cloth. Expansion in progress.

Dixie focused on the Tarnex bottle in her hand.
What the hell was this stuff for, anyway?
According to the label, it instantly cleaned copper, brass, and other metals. Dixie wondered if it would make Kathleen’s copper teapot shine like the one pictured.

She didn’t like admitting it, but her sleuthing skills were producing less than brilliant results. At the moment, her best suspect in Betsy’s death was the salesman who had stayed late talking with Dann at the Green Hornet, the man with a butterfly tattoo. The bar wouldn’t open until late in the afternoon. She could ask Rashly to put out a bulletin with the man’s description, but she was already indebted to the homicide chief for more hours than she wanted to spend. She’d take her chances later with the bartender. Meanwhile, she might as well have a talk with Ellie’s real father, Jonathan Keyes.

Deciding the word “instant,” when applied to cleaning, had unbeatable sales appeal, she carried the Tarnex to the register. Outside, she used the cellular phone in the Mustang
to call the architectural firm of Keyes & Logan. Like Ellie, the receptionist had a stuffy nose. She kept saying “excuse me,” then sniffing.

“Mr. Keyes is oud of towd today,” she said. “I can’t give oud his home dnumber, but he’ll be back in the office domorrow.”

Keyes’ home telephone was unlisted. Dixie could get it, but she didn’t like using resources unnecessarily. Tomorrow would be soon enough to meet Jonathan Keyes.