Down Home and Deadly (2 page)

Harvey pushed open the doors. “You know why she’s got that table out on the porch?”

Alice shook her head
,
and I didn’t breathe. The table on the porch was just a tiny piece of the bigger picture my sister had in mind. But telling Alice and Harvey had been the fly in the ointment from the beginning. And I wasn’t about to take on the task.

Harvey grunted. “She’s got some fool idea about people playing dominoes and checkers out there.”

Alice gasped. “Did you tell her that this is a diner? The whole idea is to get people to eat and then leave so more people can eat.”

Harvey grabbed a hammer from the closet and headed back out. “I told her,” he called over his shoulder. “But beneath that soft drawl, she’s got a mind of her own.”

Did I detect a bit of admiration in his voice? Harvey and Alice had been our parents’ friends for so long, that I could definitely understand why it was hard for them to see Carl and
Elizabeth
’s little girls trying to make over the diner they’d poured their hearts and souls into all these years.

“Checkers and dominoes,”
Alice
scoffed under her breath as she finished off her tea. “Might as well put rocking chairs out there, too.”

I don’t play poker. And it’s a good thing. Because my poker face wouldn’t fool anyone.

Alice looked at me
,
and her eyes widened in disbelief. “You don’t mean it?”

I nodded. Why hadn’t Carly just come clean with them about her big plans? She’d convinced herself—and me—that they’d take it easier in small bites. I wasn’t so sure.

Alice huffed out. I savored the peacefulness of the quiet kitchen and considered calling Alex to invite him to
come help us paint
tonight. We needed all the hands we could get. And it’d definitely be more fun with him here. That was a no-brainer. I pulled my phone from my pocket and hit the button that redials the last number dialed.

“Hey, babe.”

I frowned. That didn’t sound like my fiancé, but I thought sure he was the last one I called. “Alex?”

“I’m sorry. I believe you have the wrong number.”

I held the phone out and looked at the screen. It read—
“
Connected to Me.
”
What did that even mean? I groaned inwardly. “Sorry. My bad.”

I pushed the
end
button just as the double doors opened again and Debbie walked in with a roll of wallpaper in her hand. The waitress had been so thrilled to stay on at the diner that she’d offered to help out with the remodeling. Carly had accepted and gladly agreed to pay her.
Even though I had two strikes against me with her—one, that she’d always liked Alex, and two, that she was Lisa’s best friend—she’d been nothing but friendly to me.

When she saw me, her eyes widened and she stopped. “Is that my phone?”

I smiled. “No, this is my new—” My smile faded as I remembered the wrong number. I held up the phone. “Does your phone look like this?”

“Yes.”

I ducked my head. “I’m sorry. So does mine. Exactly. I haven’t had mine long enough to tell it from someone else’s, I guess.” I held it out to her.

She snatched the phone out of my hand. “Did you use it?”

I stared at her. Talk about overreacting. Even if her cell phone minutes were limited, I’d only had the phone for a minute. “I hit the last call dialed, thinking I’d call Alex, but obviously it wasn’t him.”

She didn’t answer, just mashed a couple of buttons on the phone and stared at the screen. “Did you talk to someone?”

I’d been interrogated by police that weren’t this stern. “Just a guy who said I had the wrong number. I’m sorry I got confused.”

Her smile looked a little forced, but at least it was a smile. She pushed a strand of her bleached
-
blond hair behind her ear. “No worries. That happens. I just got mine too, yesterday.”

“And wouldn’t you know I’d steal it today? We need to get one of those label makers. Remember those? When I was about ten, Mama got one to label things at the cabins, and I labeled the whole house. Even the furniture.”

Her smile relaxed. “I do remember those. One summer I went to camp with ‘Debbie’ in raised white letters on bright blue tape stuck on everything I owned.”

Raised voices in the dining room interrupted our soft laughter.

“Do they know yet?” Debbie whispered.

I shrugged. “It sounds like maybe they do now.”

With trepidation, I walked over to the door and peeked out.
Marco
was gone
,
and Carly stood facing Harvey and Alice, who had their backs to me.

Carly saw me and motioned me to her. “Jenna, come tell them that you think the new name is great.”

I looked over my shoulder at Debbie who shooed me out. “I’ll just be in here hanging wallpaper and minding my own business.”

“Chicken,” I muttered. I walked over to the tense trio. “You have to admit that
‘
Down Home
Diner
’
has a ring to it.”

“What does
‘
Down Home
’
mean
,
anyway?”
Alice
asked, her nose crinkling like a skunk had suddenly crawled up under the diner and died.

“You know what
‘
Down Home
’
means,”
Harvey
insisted. “Country and common.” He waved his hand to the porch. “That’s why that table’s out there, obviously. Checkers and dominoes are
‘
Down Home
.
’
 
”

She narrowed her eyes at her husband. “Whose side are you on?”

“You know I’m on your side. I always have been. I was just answering your question.”

Alice took a couple of steps backward
,
and
Harvey
pulled a chair out for her to sit on.

Seated, she looked up at Carly, her eyes swimming with tears. “We should have put in the contract that you couldn’t do that.” She grabbed a paper napkin from the table in front of her and wiped her nose. She motioned toward the small delicately lettered sign Carly had just finished and placed on the pie counter. “It’s crazy enough to be giving police officers in uniform a free piece of pie. But I’d
never
have thought of anyone changing the name of the diner.”

Harvey ran his finger around the collar of his checked shirt. “Actually, remember when Mom and Pop first turned the diner over to us? You wanted to rename it
Alice
’s Restaurant. But Mom had a fit.”

For a second,
Alice
’s face opened as if she were remembering a younger her—full of plans and hopes. But then she pinched her lips together and shrugged. “And rightly so. I was a silly kid who didn’t know what was what.”

I glanced at Carly
,
wondering how she’d handle the inference. But her
S
outhern
graciousness won out.

“I’m sorry I hurt your feelings,
Alice
,” she said softly. “But this is a fresh start for me. And the
Down Home
Diner is what I need.”

My sister, the quintessential steel magnolia.

Alice slumped. “Oh, it’s okay. You bought it. You should be able to call it whatever you want. I’m just an old fool.”

Harvey sat down beside her and patted her hand. “This is a fresh start for us, too, Allie. Heaven knows we need one. And I think it’ll be easier for us to let go of the
Down Home
Diner than the Lake View Diner.”

She nodded. “You might be right.”

In unspoken agreement, we left them to their own conversation and walked out onto the front porch.

Carly sat down at the small table that had started all of this and motioned me to sit across from her. She mussed her dark curls with her hand in a mannerism I recognized meant she had something on her mind.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She picked up a red checker and tapped it against the table absently. “Nothing really. Not yet
,
anyway.”

“What does that mean?
Is it about the diner? Or Elliott?
” Ever since I’d gotten engaged a few weeks ago, I’d been wondering about Carly and Elliott. Apparently that old adage about those in love wanting everyone to be in love was true.

“You know Elliott and I are getting pretty serious.”

I propped my elbows on the table and leaned toward her. “Yes?”

She turned the checker up on its edge and rolled it from one hand to another across the wooden surface.

“Carly! What’s going on?” Patience wasn’t my strong point. And she knew it.

“I’m thinking about trying to find Travis,” she said in a rush.

“Why?” I blurted out. Her ex-husband, Travis, had divorced her when she was pregnant with the twins and Zac was six. He’d run off with an emaciated model and eventually skipped the country to
Mexico
. We assumed he left the country to keep from paying child support. I’d loved my brother-in-law once, back before he betrayed our whole family and broke my sister’s heart. But going searching for him made about as much sense to me as trying to bring back a bad migraine once it was gone.

She carefully placed the checker back in its original place on the board and looked up at me. “For closure for the kids. And for me, too, really. If we get married, Elliott would like to adopt them, and I’d like that
,
too. Even though I feel sure we could get it approved on grounds of abandonment, I’d rather have Travis’s permission.”

I shook my head. “My gut is saying
that
finding Travis
is
a terrible idea, Carly. In this case, I can’t think of any better advice than to let sleeping dogs lie.” Or in Travis’s case, let lying dogs sleep, but I didn’t say that out loud. “What does Elliott think?”

She bit her lower lip and pushed her curls back from her face. “He agrees with you.”

I didn’t know what to say. Nobody likes to feel ganged up on. “So how’s the hiring process going?”

She grimaced to let me know she knew what I was doing, but picked up the new subject. “Pretty good. I kept Arnie to wash dishes but hired a new guy, too. Same with the cook. Of course
,
most of the new staff isn’t starting until after the
g
rand
o
pening
,
since Harvey and Alice are going to help out
with
that. Hard to believe those two were doing half the cooking and dishwashing themselves.”

I idly moved a black checker. “They don’t have kids,” I reminded her. “The twins and Zac would be disappointed if you turned into a workaholic.”

She laughed and slid a red checker forward one space. “The twins might be. But now that he’s a senior, Zac thinks he doesn’t need his mama anymore.”

“Is he going to work here after school?” I moved another checker.

She nodded as she responded with a move of her own. “I’ll have some part
-
time hours for him. Most of the waitresses stayed on, though. And I hired
Marco
as a waiter.”

I smiled. “Oh good. He always impressed me with his work ethic at the
gym
. He’s punctual and never goofs off.”

“I hired him already. You can stop the streaming reference message.”

“Did you call Lisa about him?” I asked as I considered my next move.

“Didn’t think I needed to with you here,” Carly said, edging her checker close to being able to jump mine. “Especially since he was honest about her firing him.”

I frowned and pushed my black playing piece out of harm’s way. “Did he say what reason she gave?”

Carly shook her head and countered with another move. “Just said she fired him for no good reason.”

“Sounds like her.” With Lisa on my mind, I shoved my checker hard without really thinking.

Carly reached across, jumped over two of my checkers, and scooped them up.

“Wait a minute!” I protested. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“When you play on my porch, you should always pay attention,” she said facetiously. “Welcome to the
Down Home
Diner.”

*****

“Jenna.”

I spun around with the dishcloth still in my hand.

Carly, her dark hair curling around her sweaty face, beamed at me from the kitchen window. “Can you snag the garbage when you’re done?”

“Sure. Why not?” I wiped the crumbs from the counter into my hand and waggled my fingers over the trash
can. Across the room,
Harvey
patiently showed
Marco
how to clean the salad bar at the close of
the
day.
I pushed the kitchen door open with my shoulder. “Carly, if success can be measured by garbage, I’d say your grand opening was a resounding triumph.”