Rude Awakening (5 page)

He hadn't been so sure about the gourmet cooking part, but everything else was right up his alley. But now that he'd gotten to know her, if she wanted to fix him some highfalutin meal with lots of forks and such, well, he'd just eat it; that's all there was to it. And he'd smile while he was doing it, too.

And then she'd walked in the door. She was wearing a skirt that fell below her knees, and a sweater set like the one in her picture, but this one was blue, a pale baby blue. The pearls he'd seen in her picture were around her neck, and a pale blue headband held back her blonde hair, more a strawberry-blonde up close and personal. He stood up as she approached, feeling his stomach drop to his toes, afraid that he wouldn't be able to speak at all.

‘Dalton?' she said shyly as she reached his table, her throaty voice reminding him of that actress Kathleen Turner, or maybe even his mama's favorite, Lauren Bacall.

‘Hey, Sarah,' he managed to get out.

She smiled and he thought he was going to pass out. Her smile was perfect. Her teeth were straight and white, her lips shiny pink. She looked pointedly at the empty chair at his table. ‘Oh, please, sit,' he said. She did and he followed suit.

Dalton stuck out his hand to shake hers, thinking that he shoulda done that before they sat down, but better late than never. She took his large hand in her dainty one, the nails polished an almost non-existent pink, the fingers long and slender. Her touch almost made his heart stop. It was like an electric current going through his body. Looking at her face, Dalton figured she must have felt it, too, because they just stared at each other for what must have been half a minute, their hands clasped together. Finally, Sarah broke the physical connection.

Looking down at the table, she said, ‘It's very nice to finally meet you face to face.'

‘You, too,' Dalton said. Then, seeing his own cup of coffee in front of him, and nothing in front of her, he said, ‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?'

Sarah looked up and Dalton got lost again in the blue of her eyes. ‘Yes, thank you. I mean, no not coffee, but tea. Chai tea and a packet of
Sweet'N Low
?'

‘You got it,' Dalton said, pushing back from the table. Dalton left to fetch her tea, repeating the word ‘chai' over and over in his head, lest he forget it and come back with the wrong thing.

It was one of the most wonderful days of Dalton's life. They talked at the Starbucks for an hour, finding out about each other. Somehow Dalton started talking about his father, Threepee; something he never did, not even with family, much less with someone he just met. But it was so easy to talk to Sarah, and in just the time they spent at Starbucks, Dalton felt like he'd known her forever, and known her better than any of his family members.

‘And you never saw him again?' Sarah asked, touching his hand after he told her of his father's disappearance.

‘Once,' Dalton said. ‘Me and my brother Hawke, he's five years older than me, we went to Oklahoma City to buy some supplies we needed to finish up this new bathroom he was building on his house. This was about ten years ago, I guess. And went to the Home Depot up there, and found everything we needed and started to check out. And there he was, right there in front of us. We both recognized him, even from the back. But he never turned around and we never said anything, 'cause, you know, how could we be absolutely sure it was him? And then he left and we saw his profile and it was him, all right. Me and Hawke just looked at each other and Hawke shrugged, but we never said anything about it. Not ever.'

‘You and your brother never told anyone about it?' Sarah asked.

‘Well, I didn't – not until now. And I don't think Hawke did. 'Course, I wouldn't know, 'cause him and me never discussed it. Ever.'

‘Why didn't you tell anyone? And why didn't you speak to your father?' Sarah asked, a pretty frown furrowing her brow.

Dalton shrugged. ‘Well, you know,
he
left
us
. Not the other way around. If anybody should be doing any speaking, it should be him speaking to us.'

‘But he never saw you,' Sarah said.

Dalton thought about that, recognizing the truth of it. If he'd seen them, would Threepee have spoken? Would he have taken his sons in his arms, dropping his Home Depot purchases to embrace them? Or would he simply have nodded and kept on going? Or maybe not even nodded. Maybe not even recognizing them. It had been a long time: ten years at that time. Twenty now.

Dalton nodded his head. ‘That's true,' he said. ‘But I just followed Hawke's lead. After my daddy left, Hawke was like my daddy, and I did most things he told me to do. And, well, he didn't speak to him, so neither did I.'

Sarah nodded her head. ‘I understand.' She reached for Dalton's hand again and squeezed. ‘There's a Chinese restaurant two doors down,' she said. ‘Would you like to grab some lunch?'

There wasn't a Chinese restaurant in Longbranch, or in all of Prophesy County, except over in Bishop, where the people with money lived. His mama had fixed Chung King once, but he didn't like it much and she never fixed it again. So if someone were to ask Dalton point-blank, ‘Do you like Chinese food?' he would have had to say, ‘No.' But Sarah didn't do that. She just said, ‘Would you like to grab some lunch?' And he was able to answer truthfully, ‘Yes, I would love some lunch.' Not Chinese, but food would be good.

The place was all gussied up Oriental-like, with one wall covered in a picture of the Great Wall of China. There were paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and Buddhas everywhere. Right in the middle of the room was a gigantic aquarium that went from floor to ceiling, filled with the most wondrous and beautiful fish he'd ever seen – bright blue fish, yellow fish, little fish with huge, fluffy-looking tails.

‘That's a saltwater aquarium,' Sarah said as they sat down. ‘Saltwater fish are a lot more colorful than freshwater, aren't they?'

‘Yes, Ma'am,' Dalton said, mesmerized by the aquarium.

‘Do you know what you want, or would you like me to order for you? I've been here before,' Sarah said.

Relief flooded through Dalton. ‘Yeah, you order. That would be great. Thanks.'

The food started coming right away. First, soup with stuff in it he didn't even
want
to identify, but it was spicy like good Mexican food and he couldn't say he didn't enjoy it. Then little pieces of toast with cut-up shrimp and little puffy things that you broke open and inside was cream cheese and crab. He was beginning to think he might like Chinese food.

Then came the entrée. Dalton just stared. Some things he recognized: like the shrimp and the tiny baby ears of corn, which he thought were pretty cool, and the great big red peppers that he was a little curious about. But there were other things he'd never seen before. He decided to hell with his lack of knowledge, and asked Sarah, ‘What's this?'

‘A scallop,' she said. ‘It's a shellfish.'

‘And this?' he asked, using his fork to point at something with legs.

Sarah grinned. ‘A squid?'

Dalton pulled his fork away from it. ‘Like an octopus?'

‘Well, no, an octopus is an octopus and a squid is a squid,' she said.

‘Yeah, but they both live in the ocean and got too many legs, right?'

Sarah laughed. ‘Well, you got me there! Yes, it's just like an octopus.'

‘And you're suppose to eat it?' Dalton asked.

‘Millions of people do,' she said, taking one off the large serving tray and popping it in her mouth.

‘What does it taste like?' Dalton asked, leaning forward as she chewed.

‘Seriously?' Sarah asked.

‘Yeah,' Dalton said. ‘Seriously.'

Leaning in as well, Sarah whispered, ‘An art gum eraser, but don't tell anybody I said that, OK?'

Dalton grinned and speared himself a shrimp.

I got up to my house on Mountain Falls Road that Friday evening around six o'clock, before Jean and Johnny Mac got home. Johnny Mac went to preschool until noon every day, then Jean picked him up and they went to lunch, sometimes fast food, sometimes a picnic in the park – and in the afternoon he went to the hospital with her, staying in the little day care they have for employees' kids. He had friends at both places and seemed to be thriving with his new schedule.

I walked in the house and into the kitchen, where Jean had left out some meat to defrost. I loved the nights I got home before Jean because we had a rule that whoever got home first cooked, and whoever cooked got to cook whatever they wanted. I looked at the skinless, boneless chicken breasts Jean had left out and could only think of one thing: rabbit-fried chicken. This was one of my mama's specialties that I dearly loved, and I hadn't had it in twenty years.

What you do is you dredge the chicken in milk and flour, then fry it like you would normal fried chicken, then put it aside. In the leavings, you mix milk and cornstarch to make cream gravy and add lots of pepper, of course. Then you take the fried chicken and plop it back in the pan, making sure it gets the cream gravy all over it, let it cook a little longer so the gravy soaks in good, then you serve it along with mashed potatoes and a can of green beans. Real good eating.

While I was making the chicken, my mind got to wondering about what Charlie Smith had told me earlier in the day. Seemed strange. Seemed familiar
and
strange. Then I remembered. Had to be fifteen, twenty years back, we had a case just like that. Man at home alone, cleaning the bathroom. I mean if that doesn't prove cleaning toilets is a woman's job, I don't know what does.

Just then Johnny Mac came running in the front door, yelling, ‘Daddy! Daddy!'

Ya gotta love it. I picked him up on the fly, swung him around, yelling, ‘Johnny Mac!' right back as loud as I could. He belly-laughed at that one, like he always did. It was a thing we did. A father–son thing. A guy thing.

‘What are you cooking?' Jean asked, suspicion in her voice. Jean has this thing about fried foods: she thinks they'll kill you. Flat out kill you. She lifted the lid on the frying pan and looked in at the wonder that is rabbit-fried chicken. Glancing back at me, she raised one eyebrow. That was a killer thing she did, raising that one eyebrow. Depending on what was going on, it could mean several things: ‘You randy?' (meaning me, of course), ‘You said what?' (again, me) or, in this case, ‘What the hell is this?'

‘Rabbit-fried chicken,' I answered her unspoken question. ‘Fried is just an expression in this case,' I tried to assure her.

Again, the eyebrow.

This new eyebrow meant she wasn't buying it.

‘I swear you're gonna love it,' I said, going back to the stove. ‘And we hardly ever have anything fried. Just this once isn't going to kill us.'

Without answering (I mean, how could she argue with that kind of logic, right?), she walked right through the kitchen and into our bedroom.

I was serving up plates when the phone rang. We've got an extension in the kitchen and I picked it up after the first ring. ‘Sheriff Kovak,' I said.

‘Sheriff, I still haven't heard from Dalton,' came Clovis Pettigrew's unpleasant nasal twang.

‘Well, Ma'am,' I said, stretching out the long cord as I placed Johnny Mac's plastic divider plate at his place at the table. ‘I tried to get the message to him, but when somebody's undercover, it's kinda hard to know whether or not they got the message . . .'

‘Now you listen to me, Sheriff,' she said. ‘You got no call putting Dalton in harm's way like that! Dalton's a deputy, not some
dee
-tective you put undercover with prostitute trash and drug dealers and such. He better not be consorting with prostitutes and drug dealers!'

‘No, Ma'am,' I said, thinking on the fly. ‘It's not that sort of case.'

‘Then what sort of case is it?' she demanded.

‘I'm not at liberty to say,' I said, liking the sound of that. I thought about saying, ‘It's on a need to know basis,' or ‘If I told you, I'd have to kill you,' but thought that might be a little over the top.

‘I'm giving you ten minutes, Sheriff, to produce my son,' Miz Pettigrew said, ‘then I'm going to . . .'

She stopped. Even Clovis Pettigrew didn't know what to do at this point. Call the Feds? Sic her preacher on me? Tell my mama?

‘Ma'am,' I said, letting her off the hook. ‘I'm not sure if Dalton will be able to call tonight, but I'm sure we'll hear from him in the morning and I'll have him call you first thing.'

‘You do that!' Clovis Pettigrew said and slammed the phone down in my ear.

All I could think at that point was that Dalton was going to get a piece of my mind come Monday morning – or whenever he called.

THREE

A
fter eating lunch together and talking all this personal talk, Dalton hoped Sarah felt safe enough to say yes when he said, ‘I don't know Tulsa that well. If you'd like, I'd love to take a tour in my truck with you as my guide.'

Sarah smiled. ‘I'd love it.'

They went to the Will Rogers Museum and Birthplace, and the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame. Dalton, of course, knew who Will Rogers was – everybody in Oklahoma knew that – but he had no idea there was a Jazz Hall of Fame, or so many jazz musicians from Oklahoma.

As they drove around the city, Dalton had to stop his truck at the sight of a humongous pair of bronze praying hands.

‘My goodness,' he said to his tour guide. ‘What's that?'