Day Shift (Midnight, Texas #2) (5 page)

J
oe Strong, too, had watched the Rev walking back to his cottage with the child. He’d been so surprised that he’d called Chuy to their front window to see. Their apartment above the shop reflected their love of comfort and color, and Chuy heaved out of his easy chair with some reluctance. He’d been watching television, with a magazine at hand for the commercials.

But the sight was worth getting up for. “The Rev and a kid?” Chuy said. “Boy or girl?”

“I’m sure it’s a boy. I wonder where he came from,” Joe said after a moment of silent wonder. “Looks about four years old, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. The Rev didn’t steal him,” Chuy said, putting his arm around Joe.

Joe kissed the top of Chuy’s head. “Nope, that didn’t cross my mind. If the kid stays more than overnight, he’s going to need some help.”

“Who, the kid or the Rev?”

“Both of them.” Joe shook his head. “I have to say, I feel sorry for the kid.”

They both knew the Rev was a creature of habit, and a solitary one at that. Any man the Rev’s age, both silent and unsocial, was not going to be an ideal companion for a little boy—though the Reverend Emilio Sheehan was far from a typical elderly cleric, if such a person existed.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Chuy said. “To help.”

“And to fix antiques and fingernails,” Joe said, laughing. “I wish I didn’t love old furniture, and you didn’t love decorating women. I wish we were both accountants or bounty hunters. Something less predictable.”

“As long as we’re happy. And we take care of each other,” Chuy said, much more seriously.

“I try to take care of you,” Joe said, turning to take Chuy in his arms. “How’m I doing?”

“Pretty good,” Chuy said, and it was the last time he said anything sensible for a while.

The next morning, as they lay together in the old bed they’d restored, both of them reluctant to start the day, Joe said, “Lemuel went in the hotel a couple of nights ago.”

“Lemuel,” Chuy murmured, a note of exasperation—distaste?—in his voice. “What did he say?”

“He said it was almost finished. He couldn’t believe they’d accomplished it on schedule. He believes they’ve poured money into what should surely be a minor project for a big company like that.”

“That worries me.” Chuy snuggled closer. “And I was so relaxed.”

“Sorry, honey,” Joe said. “But I wanted to tell you . . . he thought people would be in the hotel by next week.”

“That soon. Damn.”

“Yeah, I know. Could be good, could be bad.”

“Why can’t things just stay the same?” Chuy asked plaintively.

“Good question. Boot that one upstairs.”

Chuy punched Joe in the shoulder and soon fell back to sleep.

But Joe forced himself to rise and pull on his running clothes. When he’d become conscious that the waist of his pants was getting a little tighter than he liked, he’d promised himself to resume running. This was his fourth morning in a row, and he was feeling really good about it.

He trotted down the outside stairs in the early-morning sun. The sky was clear as far as Joe could see, and a breeze was blowing steadily, for which he was grateful. Since the sidewalk (except around the hotel) was cracked and uneven, Joe ran on the road. This was normally quite safe, since vehicles on Witch Light Road were few and far between; the Davy highway was much busier. He went west out of town, waving at the only oncoming truck, driven by a local rancher named Mark Kolb. Mark lifted an index finger from the steering wheel in response.

Smiling to himself, Joe puffed along. When he’d run twenty minutes, he turned around to run back. His plan was to lengthen his run by five minutes every week. After he crossed the road to return, the sun was in his eyes, so Joe didn’t see the small crowd until he was much closer to home. Stunned, he slowed, ran in place for a moment until he could evaluate what he was seeing, and then bounded up the stairs to the apartment. “Chuy, come down!” he called, and returned to the sidewalk.

There were at least five nice cars and a television crew at the Midnight Hotel. There were concrete planters full of flowers outside the main door of the hotel, which was situated on the corner. There was a banner hanging over the entrance, which Joe couldn’t read until he’d walked to the corner opposite the hotel.

The banner read, N
OW
O
PEN!

Chuy was beside him in five minutes, fresh and clean in khakis
and an oxford-cloth shirt. His dark hair was carefully combed and styled, his mustache newly trimmed, and he smelled wonderful.

“Don’t hug, I’m sweaty,” Joe warned him.

“No kidding,” Chuy said. “Is this not crazy? How’d the Culhane woman get them to work so hard?”

“A spell?” Joe shrugged. “Plenty of money and lots of workers make for a quick completion.”

“But this is incredible. And how’d she get media coverage? This is an old hotel reopening in Midnight, not a casino in Vegas!”

“Let’s go listen,” Joe suggested, and they crossed the street to stand just behind the gaggle of people in front of the hotel.

Eva Culhane looked even sleeker and more powerful than she had the day the redo had begun. She was all glammed up in a formfitting gray herringbone skirt and a white sleeveless blouse. Ridiculous black high-heeled sandals made the most of her legs. Her hair was loose, rippling down her back.

“That’s a first,” Chuy said. “The hair.”

Joe nodded. “I’m trying not to worry about this. She did buy the sofa and the sideboard from us,” he said. “You can’t say she doesn’t shop locally.”

“She picked up a couple of pieces from Bobo, too.”

“Oh. What?”

“Vases, some old keys that she had framed, a couple of old weapons she had shadow-boxed. Family photographs that look interesting.”

“Stern woman with her hand on the shoulder of seated man with handlebar mustache?”

“Yeah, that kind of thing.” Chuy shrugged. “Let’s get closer.”

“MultiTier Living is experimenting with this mixed residence concept,” Eva Culhane was saying. “This is a small hotel, so it was one of the first on our list. We wanted to start small, to work out the bugs before we tried the concept on larger properties. We’re catering to the
extended-stay people, but we’re including not only businesspeople who need to be close to Magic Portal for a few weeks, but the able elderly who—for one reason or another—need to have a minimum-care place to live until they can make more permanent arrangements.” She paused and smiled brilliantly. “Questions?”

A reporter from the Davy paper said, “How able do these elderly people have to be?”

“Good question! Don, they have to be able to dress themselves and manage their own toilet needs,” Eva Culhane said, so cozily that Joe thought she must have grown up with the reporter. “They’re certainly not required to do any cleaning—or furnishing—of their own rooms. Each unit has a bedroom, a sitting room, and a bathroom. In the eldercare-designated rooms, there are features you might expect: safety bars, a panic cord, and so on. Why don’t we go on the tour, and you can see for yourselves.” Culhane swept open the door of the hotel and ushered in all the media: two newspaper reporters, an area magazine editor, and the film reporter, who’d come from . . .

“I don’t see a station designation on his microphone or on the van,” Joe said quietly. “Who would film this? What TV station would cover a hotel opening in Midnight?”

“I don’t know what to think about that.” Chuy looked up at his lover. “Hey, let’s go home. You have to eat some breakfast before the shop opens, my rugged runner.”

Joe laughed. “I’m ready for it. Maybe one egg and a granola bar.”

“You’re just a martyr,” Chuy said, as they crossed over to the shop and started up the stairs.

After Joe had eaten and showered and gotten ready for the day, he went down to find Chuy doing Olivia Charity’s fingernails. Olivia was one of Chuy’s few steady customers.

“Chuy tell you about the grand opening?” Joe said, after greetings had been exchanged.

“He did,” Olivia said. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had a grand opening in Midnight. Even as far back as Lemuel can remember.”

“I haven’t seen him in a couple of days,” Joe said, getting out his feather duster. He tried to go over all the furniture in the shop every other day, at least. The duster had been a gag gift from Chuy a couple of Christmases ago, but it had taken Joe’s fancy.

“Lemuel’s not here,” Olivia said. Though she didn’t emphasize the words, it was easy to read her unhappiness in them. “Those old books that Bobo found? Well, he couldn’t translate all of them, so he’s gone to find someone who can. He’s on his third city.”

Chuy concentrated on the job he was doing, but Joe could tell simply from the way he held his head that he was curious. But they both knew that Olivia probably would not—perhaps could not—answer a single question.

“I hope he returns soon,” Joe said, which was safe enough. “Midnight’s not the same without Lemuel.”

Olivia turned a little to look at him. “That is the truth.”

She really loves him,
Joe thought, with wonder. He’d never thought of their relationship as a love affair. More as a “like attracts like” joining, like magnetized metal filings. But he hadn’t figured the tenderer emotions entered into it.

He caught a glance from Chuy and understood that Chuy was thinking along the same lines.

“Maybe he won’t be gone long,” Chuy said. And then he changed the subject. “Olivia, do you want the little wing brushstrokes on your nails this time?”

“Sure, that was pretty,” she said, but her face simply expressed indifference. As Chuy bent his head over her hand, Joe turned back to his dusting.

O
livia stood opposite the hotel for several minutes, her mind not made up to action. The vehicles were gone from the curb. The banner was still flapping above the doorway, but there was no one on the sidewalk. The petunias in their pots tossed their bright heads in the wind.

The wind was one thing that reminded her of home. In San Francisco, where she’d spent a significant part of her youth, the wind off the bay was a given. She had always felt good when it brushed her face. It was part of being out of her parents’ compound, out of the high walls that sealed her in: or, as her father always insisted, kept her safe.

Kept her safe from everyone and everything but her family.

“Fucking assholes,” she said out loud. She said that every time she thought of her parents. The words slipped out no matter where she was. Here in Midnight, it didn’t make any difference. Who was there to hear, or who would question her if he did hear? But she’d startled a lot of people out in the real world. That was the way she thought of it.
Here in this little hole-in-the-road of a town, with so few people remaining that a P
OPULATION
sign would be a joke, she’d found the most unlikely place to live and the most bizarre creature to be her lover.

He siphoned off her agitation.

There was a long list of things she liked about Lemuel Bridger. But his ability to drain her of the tension and anger that propelled her into terrible places . . . that was priceless.

And it helped him to thrive, too. Win-win.

Looking over at the reopened Midnight Hotel, she felt that familiar anger building, at least partly due to Lemuel’s absence. And before she knew it, she was striding across Witch Light Road and pushing open the restored door to the lobby, which smelled like a mixture of new and old. There was the dust of decades buried deep between the refinished boards of the floor, and it added flavor to the smell of the paint and varnish and wax and the sharp tang of new nails and hardware.
This depth of scent made possible by Lem’s blood,
she thought. Lem loved it when she bit him.

A bell had chimed over her head as the door opened, the electronic rendering of a real bell. In seconds, a brisk step from down the hall to the left of the registration desk announced the approach of a woman in her fifties. She had short brown hair with a lot of gray mixed in, and she had thin arms and legs and a thick middle.

“Good morning,” the woman said pleasantly, walking behind the desk as if prepared to check Olivia in. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Olivia Charity.” She watched the woman with the close attention of a hawk who’d glimpsed a mouse, but there wasn’t any indication the woman had heard her name before. “I live here in Midnight,” she continued.

“Oh, nice to meet you. I’m Lenore Whitefield.”

“Will this be an old folks’ home?” Olivia asked, though she’d read
all the material. She just wanted to engage Mrs. Whitefield (there was a plain gold band on the woman’s left hand), draw her out.

“Oh, no,” Mrs. Whitefield said, smiling. “It’s really a hotel for long-term renters. Shall I show you around? We do have a few rooms for what we think of as pre-assisted-living people, just places to stay if they have to leave their homes. Before an opening comes up in the facility of their choice. Not a nursing home.”

Hmmmm. Very definite. Olivia was sure if Mrs. Whitefield had said, “Yes, we’re a nursing home,” there would have been all kinds of government involved. This way, they were skirting the issue.

“I would like to take you up on that tour,” Olivia said, with a charming smile. (She knew she could be charming when she chose.) “If you have a few minutes? I have an elderly aunt who might be interested.” Olivia did have an aunt, a brittle and attractive widow in her fifties, who would have rather have been shot than be called “elderly.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Whitefield said. “Well, down here we have the rooms equipped for her . . .” Olivia looked at one of the rooms. Though each suite was on the small side, they’d been restored with some charm and talent. The chairs were low and comfortable, the beds low and comfortable, too, and the bathrooms were designed to help people who might be having a little trouble getting up and down, with handy grab bars.

Next they visited the small dining room, where Mrs. Whitefield explained the dining policy. Through an open hatch, Olivia saw a middle-aged Latina with her hair in a net. She was chopping something on the work counter in the kitchen. There were people to cook for already?

Before she could ask a question, Mrs. Whitefield steered her into a little parlor off the lobby, sort of a common room for the residents, and pointed out the card table, television, and stack of magazines.

Back in the lobby, Mrs. Whitefield showed Olivia that a small elevator had been installed in the spot where (Olivia figured) the phone booth had been. But she chose to walk up the stairs with Mrs. Whitefield. The first rooms up there had been adapted for the modern traveler. Not only was there free Wi-Fi, there were abundant and handy outlets for charging e-readers and telephones and anything else you wanted to plug in. The televisions were flat-screen. There was a deck for your iPod. The beds were high and white and looked comfortable. There was a microwave and a coffeepot and a small refrigerator. If you were stuck with being away from home for a night or a month, you could do a lot worse than stay at the former Río Roca Fría Hotel, now reborn as simply the Midnight Hotel. There were also two more “elderly” rooms.

“So you think this multipurpose type of residence is the future thing?” Olivia said.

“Oh, definitely, especially in small towns where specialization isn’t economically viable,” Mrs. Whitefield said.

“You’ll be working here full-time? In residence?” Olivia smiled, encouraging her companion to expound.

“Yes, I’ll be here, and my husband will do the handyman-type jobs. In addition, we’ll have a trained nurse stop in once a day to visit the elder residents, checking their blood pressure and so on.”

“That sounds ideal,” Olivia said. In fact, it did, if she had an aunt who needed to be stowed somewhere until an assisted-living place had an empty apartment. “I hope that the hotel is a great success. Whoever thought of reopening such an old place? Was it your idea?”

Mrs. Whitefield looked surprised. “Oh, honey, I don’t have that kind of money,” she said, laughing. “No, some big corporation has lots of projects like this, and God bless ’em, they didn’t mind hiring someone like me who’s been out of a job for a year, and my husband longer than that.”

Desperate people whose loyalty can be bought and relied upon,
Olivia thought. She came from a line of opportunists who specialized in sizing up employees that way. “That’s a blessing,” she said soberly.

“You bet. We get a place to live, we get to work for our living, no handouts.”

“Do you have kids who’ll be visiting?” Olivia said, while her face was turned away to look at the new thick curtains hanging at the window of the last room.

“We weren’t blessed with children,” the woman said. “But we’re plenty glad for each other.”

“Of course,” Olivia said, infusing understanding and sympathy into her voice. “Thanks for taking the time to show me the place. I’ll call my aunt’s kids and tell them all about it. It looks wonderful to me.”

As they went down the stairs, a heavy man in his fifties was coming in the front door with several bags weighing down his hands. Plastic grocery bags from the Kroger in Davy, Olivia noted.

“Harvey, I’m coming,” Lenore Whitefield said, and hurried ahead of Olivia down the stairs. “You should have called me.”

“No problem,” Harvey said, though he was breathing heavily as if it pretty much
had
been a problem. “I should have parked in back and gone through the kitchen.”

His wife looked as though she wanted to know why he hadn’t done just that, but she took several bags from him to even out his load. She said, “Sorry, Miss Charity, I’ve got to get back to work. Thanks for stopping by.”

Olivia said, “A pleasure to meet you, and thanks for taking me around.” She left out the double doors that led onto the sidewalk by the Davy highway. An ancient pickup truck was parked there; that must be Harvey Whitefield’s vehicle. Either he’d wanted his wife to
see how hard he was working, or he’d wanted to get a look at Olivia, or he wasn’t bright at all. Maybe all of that.

She set out walking west briskly, as if she were going to Home Cookin. She glanced down the alley. There was a battered Ford Focus parked outside what had to be the doors to the kitchen, and there was also a beautiful shiny Escalade taking up the remaining room. Was Eva Culhane still there? If not, who owned the Escalade? It was way too deluxe for the long-unemployed Whitefields.

Olivia had no sense that she was being watched, but just in case, she kept on going. She crossed Witch Light Road to go back into the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon. Joe and Chuy looked up, surprised at her return. “I took the tour, and it’s really nice,” she said. “You should go see it. The couple running it is called Whitefield. Lenore and Harvey.”

Joe said, “Well, thanks for telling us.”

Chuy grinned. “The excitement just keeps on coming.”

She raised a hand in farewell. She strolled back to Midnight Pawn, going up a few steps to the door on the right of the building and entering there, turning right to go down to her apartment. She could have entered the pawnshop and spent some time talking to Bobo, but she wasn’t in the mood. She was fond of her landlord, but she found him a little boring. She still couldn’t believe he’d hidden those books that Lem had been looking for so hard and so long. Not that Bobo had done it maliciously; he hadn’t known the smelly old volumes were important to Lemuel.

But still.

In her silent apartment, she checked her special e-mail account, the one she used only for work. Her agent said,
Everyone pleased
.

That was his usual comment, and it meant the money had been transferred as they’d specified.

But he’d added another sentence.
Other party collateral damage?

He meant Rachel Goldthorpe. She answered immediately,
No. Coincidence. And natural?

Right after she hit “Send” she got up to turn on the television. But she heard the ping that indicated she had e-mail. Surprised, she returned to her desk. The response read,
Sources tell me unnatural
.

“Huh,” she said out loud. “But that’s a big complication.” Should she alert Manfred? On the whole, she thought not.

She was sorry two hours later when news crews rolled into Midnight.

Sorry she hadn’t left town.