Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (10 page)

Quinn only nodded. It was either that or open his mouth to say something intelligent like, “Ah-hum, ah-hummina-hummina.” Which really wouldn’t have a been a good thing, hardly professional, and probably would have had her saying something else to him so that he would be left at a loss as to how to answer her yet again.

So he let John take his drink order, and told a gum-popping waitress with purple fingernails that the prime rib sandwich and bean soup would be just fine. He looked around the restaurant, wondering if he was the only one who could see that Shelby Taite looked as out of place here as a peacock in a henhouse.

Then he mentally slapped himself to attention and remembered that he was a professional, here to do a job. Whatever that was, for the Taite woman certainly looked as if she’d landed on her feet.

He mentally began preparing his first fax to Somerton Taite, grinning around a mouthful of what was actually some pretty decent bean and bacon soup. Definitely homemade.

Let’s see, how would that report go? Mr. Taite: Have heated
the subject and she is well. My only question so far is whether or not she accepts tips.

Quinn felt himself recovering from his initial shock, which really wasn’t anything close to the one he’d felt the day he’d suddenly found himself disarming his then-client’s former mistress before she could skewer the guy with a steak knife.

That was what he had to do. He used to be The Man. A guy who could keep a cool head in a crisis. He had to get some perspective here, find his feet, locate his head, and get on with the job.

Which wasn’t going to be easy. Not when Shelby Taite was blowing his every preconceived notion about the Rich and Repulsive straight to hell as she helped an old man with a walker and an oxygen tank into the no-smoking section, a separate area in the back of the restaurant.

He searched in his pocket for the small notebook he always carried and pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket. He began to take note of his surroundings.

Greasy spoon. Occupancy, according to the Fire Department sign on the wall, eighty-five. Average age of customers, according to his quick appraisal, eighty-five. If the owner gave a senior citizen discount, he’d be out of business in a week.

The decor was early rummage sale. Square tables with chrome center posts… and not quite level, he noted when the table rocked as he wrote. Three red imitation leather booths lining the half wall beside the entryway, a larger wraparound booth occupying the corner. Pink walls, blue vases on the tables, fake pink flowers in the vases. Ketchup bottles on the table, glass sugar containers as well. A sort of “You want it, here it is” sort of service, and “If you don’t see it we don’t have it.”

The service bar, or whatever it could be called, sat right out in the open, piles of dirty dishes stacked in plastic bins, the coffeepots jammed in alongside piles of plastic glasses and stacks of stuff Quinn didn’t feel necessary to add to his inventory.

Definitely not top-drawer. Probably not even bottom-drawer. The whole place was sort of a stand-alone hatrack, straining under a load of mismatched coats.

He began sketching the interior of the restaurant, the better to remember it, the better to pick what he’d already decided would be his table—the one in the far corner, where he’d have an unobstructed view of Miss Take at all times. He might only be playing baby-sitter, but he was going to do the job right

The door next to the service bar flew open and his waitress approached with his sandwich, plopped it down in front of him as he quickly rescued his notebook, and told him to enjoy his meal.

Quinn looked down at his plate and spared a moment to wonder where they’d put the other half of the cow. He turned the plate and looked at the sandwich from another angle, trying to decide how to attack it, then looked at the table next to him, at the four men dressed in jeans and T-shirts chowing down on their own meals.

He’d seen steak sandwiches before, but he didn’t remember any that were piled so high that the roll didn’t have a chance of closing around it.

Then he noticed something else as the lunch crowd began to thin out. Nearly everyone heading toward the cash register was carrying a Styrofoam box. Okay, that was good. He wasn’t actually expected to eat the whole damn thing. Hell, Godzilla after a ten-day fast couldn’t eat the whole damn thing.

He cut dthe sandwich in half, then did his best impression of eating the smaller piece. As he ate, he watched Shelby Taite.

Someone handed her their check and a pile of bills and she thanked him very much, then looked frantically toward one of the waitresses, who quickly relieved her of the check and rang the sale on the cash register while Shelby watched, her hands behind her back, her blond head nodding a time or two as she tried to learn the mysteries of the simple machine.

“Next time, you’re on your own, hon,” the waitress said, slamming the drawer and walking away. “And don’t worry, Shelley, you can do it.”

Shelley? Oh,
this was good. She’d taken an alias. Quinn mentally bet himself a quarter that her last name was now Smith. Or Jones. Shelley Smith. Secret Squirrel. It fit. Pitiful.

He lingered over his sandwich, had a second glass of soda, and pretended to be scribbling in his notebook, just as if he had the entire afternoon to sit here doing pretty much next to nothing. Which was just about right, although he’d spend a long night with his laptop and modem, catching up on company business, working on the end-of-fiscal-year reports.

He bit his lip, trying not to smile as he watched Shelby struggle with the cash register, then cursed under his breath as she smiled brightly, having at last mastered this business of taking money and making change. Did she have to look so damn pleased with herself? So damn happy? Anyone would think she’d just figured out that pesky formula for cold fusion, for crying out loud.

When he couldn’t justify spending another minute in the place, Quinn asked for a take-out box, dropped a three-dollar tip on the table, and headed for the cash register himself.

“Did you enjoy your meal?” Shelby asked, taking the check and the ten-dollar bill he’d handed her. The bill had only been six dollars and twenty-six cents, and he’d toyed with giving her the ten and a penny, just to watch as she tried to figure out that she’d then owe him an even three dollars and seventy-five cents’ change. But then he decided that would just be plain mean.

“The meal was fine, thank you,” he told her as she turned to the cash register, sighed, and began punching in numbers with her beautifully manicured fingertip. “This is a nice place. Have you worked here long?”

“Hmmm?” she asked, still concentrating on what she was doing, then grinning as the drawer opened and she could count out his change. Okay, so he wasn’t one of the locals, or he wouldn’t have asked that question. He was just a very handsome man, passing through. How nice for him, and why did he have to be so nosy? “Have I worked here… ? Oh. Oh, yes,
yes,
I have. East Wapaneken born and bred, as they say.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Quinn raised one eyebrow as he looked at her, called her on her fib. “Must be a new cash register then,” he remarked, motioning toward the battered piece of machinery. “I mean, I couldn’t help noticing that you’ve been treating the thing as if it might bite you if you press the wrong button.”

“You’ve been watching me? Why?”

Well, that was better, Quinn decided.
Never explain, Miss
Taite, that’s the ticket. Just go on the attack, ask a question of your own. Keep this up, lady, and you might last out here in the big bad world for, oh, another twenty minutes or so.

“Sorry, force of habit, I guess,” he said, quickly falling back on his prepared story. “I’m a writer, you see. I guess watching people is just something I do. The human condition, all of that.”

Man, but she smelled good.

“A writer? Would that be for a newspaper? A magazine?”

He sensed her panic at coming face-to-face with the fear of discovery. He could tell her he wrote for the Philadelphia
Inquirer,
then watch as those lovely brown eyes filled with panic. But that wouldn’t do him any good.

“I was,” he said instead. “I wrote for a magazine, that is, a travel magazine you probably never heard of. But now I write travel books, going around the country on road trips, writing about the people, the sights, the little out-of-the-way places like East Wapaneken . I’m my own boss, and it does pay the bills. I’m really glad I discovered this place, you know. Full of local color, that down-home, small-town ambiance eveiybody loves to read about even if they wouldn’t set foot outside their penthouses even to look in this direction. I guess you could call me the Charles Kuralt of the coffee-table book set. Oh, and please let me introduce myself. The name’s Delaney. Quinn Delaney.”

“How very nice to meet you, Mr. Delaney. Your change?”

Quinn stopped smiling, feeling as if he’d just described a great set of encyclopedias to the little lady of the house who was now going to slam the door in his face. Not only had he made
no
first impression on her, he was making a pretty damn lousy
second
first impression on her.

He really didn’t like this woman. Not even a little bit. Worse, he wasn’t even feeling sorry for the poor little rich girl anymore. Not now that she seemed to have landed on her feet. Yeah, landed on her feet, and taken a good job away from some poor schmuck who really needed it. No, he really didn’t like Shelby Taite.

“Sir? Your change?”

“Oh, right,” he said, taking the money; then he decided to push at her one more time. “Thanks. Say, you wouldn’t know of a good place to stay around here, would you? I’m figuring I’d like to make East Wapaneken sort of my home base as I tour the area, drink up the local flavor. I mean, you did say you’ve lived here all your life, right?”

He watched as Shelby almost visibly squirmed inside her designer suit that screamed “Made anywhere but East Wapaneken.”
Gotcha, sweetcakes! That’ll teach you to have me stuck in this one-stoplight burg until you ‘re ready to cry uncle and rush back to your cushy life and your dipstick fiance.

“Two blocks up, just past the Pouting Petals flower shop. It’s the old East Wapaneken schoolhouse. You might try there. It… it has high ceilings.” She was staring at him. She knew she was staring at him.
Why
was she staring at him? “You know, ceilings,” she said to fill the sudden, tense silence, raising one hand above her head. “High ones. And big windows. Now, if you’ll excuse me? I understand I’m to—that is, I have to refill the sugar canisters before customers start showing up for the early-bird special.”

“The early-bird special? Pure small-town gold for this scribbler. What’s that?”

“Pork and sauerkraut. All you can eat if you get here before five o’clock ,” Shelby told him, mentally beating herself back under control. Goodness, you’d think she’d never seen a man with gray eyes before. And she could read the word
adventure
in both of them. Did they put something in the water here in East Wapaneken that she was now suddenly sensing a second, quite interesting definition for the word
adventure?

Quinn patted his stomach, held up the Styrofoam container. “Nice bit of folklore for the book, but I think I’ll pass on the actual thing. But, hey, thanks for the information. And I’ll see you again, I hope. If I can get a room, I’ll probably be eating most of my meals here.”

“I would imagine so. Most of East Wapaneken does,” Shelby told him, then turned and walked away. It was either that or throw her silly self into this handsome stranger’s arms and say something dreadfully cliched like, “Take me. Take me
now!”

Oblivious to Shelby’s designs on his body, Quinn left with nothing else to say. More than a little mad— at her, at himself—Quinn returned to his Porsche and headed up the street until he passed the flower shop, then spied the large, square, redbrick building that still had the words
East Wapaneken School
visible in gray granite over the front door.

There was also a sign nailed to the front door:
Aparts to
let. Rooms, fernished and unfemished. Bye the week, bye the month.
Inventive speller, his prospective landlord. No wonder they’d closed down the old school.

He pulled to the curb, got out, gave a passing thought to the brand-new motel he’d seen as he’d gotten off the highway, then climbed the cement stairs two at a time and walked inside. Because if Shelby Taite knew about this place, it was dollars to doughnuts she was living in this place. That was what all good detectives would call real logic, not that Quinn considered himself a real detective, but it was better than calling himself a baby-sitter. Damn better.

There were three rows of mailboxes built into the vestibule, one for each floor of the building, he imagined, and there were only names on six of the twelve mailboxes. None of them were Shelley Smith or Jones, which wasn’t surprising. He doubted if she was going to advertise the fact if she did live here.

Quinn pressed the doorbell on top of the mailbox labeled
Manager,
and waited less than a minute before a large, low-to-the-ground woman in a flowered muumuu that could have served as a dustcover for a 1956 Buick rolled out of the first door to the left beyond the vestibule.

“Afternoon, son,” she said, smiling around a smear of cherry red lipstick and a filtered Marlboro. “Need some help?”

God.
East Wapaneken was so small-town cliche he almost didn’t believe any of this was actually happening.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in what he hoped was a nonthreatening, not-so-big-city tone. “I was just down at Tony’s, and the hostess there told me I might be able to rent a furnished room here for a couple of weeks if you’ve got one.”

“The hostess? But Thelma’s out of— Oh, yeah, the new girl. She’s staying with Brandy a couple of weeks. No more, mind you, or I’ll have to up the rent. Told Brandy that. Now, you want a room, right I’ve got five, so you can have your pick. What is it you’re doing here in East Wappy ?”

Brandy, huh?
Now, that name he
had
seen on one of the mailboxes. The lies were coming easier now, as Quinn was more than halfway comfortable with his cover story, and really pretty damned pleased to have been proven right. Miss Shelby Taite did live here, ludicrous as that seemed. “I’m a writer, ma’am, and I’m just here for a few weeks to take in some of the local color, maybe pound out a few chapters of my next book.”