Dana Marton - Broslin Creek 05 - Broslin Bride (3 page)

Luanne nodded. In their online communications, Brett had never been anything but a gentleman, kind, funny, romantic. She was more than looking forward to meeting him. She had butterflies in her stomach. “I better get going.”

“Kisses!” Mia launched into a frenzied hug immediately.

Luanne hugged her, then Daisy in turn. “You behave for Jen, okay? Go to bed without giving her trouble.”

They promised, with angelic faces that seemed impossible to doubt. If only she didn’t know better. She gave them the mother look. “I mean it.”

“Relax. They’ll be fine.” Jen walked her to the door, then dropped her voice. “I’ll want every dirty detail tomorrow. Take notes so you don’t forget anything.”

“What, no video?”

“Video will work. Hey, I’m a married woman, living vicariously through you.”

“Billy is a great guy.”

“Except when he has one too many beers and gets into a fight with one of his dumb Irish relatives.”

“Again?”

Jen rolled her eyes. “I’m sick of his Irish temper and his fifty Irish cousins. Well, at least he knows he’s done wrong, so he’s sweet as pie, trying to make it up to me. I’m so gonna milk that for all it’s worth.”

Okay, so that was a little messed up, but being in a relationship still seemed like an incredibly nice thing, not having to make all the decisions alone all the time, have someone to curl up against at night. Billy wasn’t perfect, but for the most part, he was one of the good guys. Luanne had high hopes for Brett in that regard.

“So what was the phone call with the doctor? Everything okay?”

Jen shrugged. “Switching me to a new drug. No big deal. I swear, some of the hormone injections make me wacky.”

“I’m keeping fingers, toes, eyes, and legs crossed for you.”

“Yeah, that’ll make you attractive for your date,” Jen deadpanned, then shook her head with a grin.

Luanne walked to her Mustang with a last wave. She was smiling too as she slipped behind the wheel.
Okay. Here we go. Hot date.
 

Finnegan’s was just a few blocks away, within walking distance, but she wasn’t sure how late she’d stay out and as safe as the town was, she didn’t like walking in the middle of the night. She was all the twins had. If anything happened to her, they’d be all alone in the world.

She shot down the road and was at the neighborhood bar in three minutes. Honestly, so fast she didn’t even bother switching the ABC song to adult music.

Finnegan’s kept with the Irish theme, green booths,
Sláinte
signs all over the place. As soon as she walked in, she could smell the bacon they sprinkled on their famous baked potato soup. Guinness flowed freely at the tap at the gleaming mahogany bar, the clientele several steps above the dive bars along Route 1. The owners’ son, Harper Finnegan, was a local cop who helped out when he wasn’t working at the station. His presence kept the shady element away.
 

Music filled the cavernous room, a local band covering everything from old Beach Boys hits to mournful Irish ballads. The bar was a safe place for a single woman on a Friday night, or any other night of the week.

Luanne scanned the hundred or so people around the tables and on the dance floor. No sign of Brett. She’d seen dozens of pictures of him on his Facebook page. She didn’t think she’d have any trouble recognizing him.

Tayron, tall, kind-eyed, spotted her as soon as she walked up to the bar.

“Hey, girl.” He flashed a wide smile. “What are you drinking tonight? My treat.”

She thought about a beer, then decided to go wild. “Something colorful and fancy.” She raised her chin. “Something with an umbrella.”

She could have one drink, spend a couple of hours here with Brett, then be perfectly fine to drive home later. “How’s school?”

Tayron studied engineering at West Chester University by day, bartended in the evenings. He also fit a second job into his schedule, at the local lumberyard—which gave him the muscles that got him the big tips, which helped to pay tuition, everything coming together in a circle of life, according to him.

“Finals are a bitch.” But he grinned, always upbeat.

In less than a minute, he had a cocktail glass in front of her, an orange-red drink with an umbrella
and
a plastic thingy that looked like a burst of fireworks. “Meet Finnegan’s very own Irish Comet.”
 

She sipped and moaned from the sweet, tangy flavor. She cast him a look that she hoped conveyed her full gratitude. Sipped again. “Makes me feel like I’m on a cruise ship.” The fanciest place she could imagine that would serve drinks like this.

Tayron grinned at her. “So who’s the guy?”

She sipped again. “Who says I’m here on a date?”

“Your sexy shirt.”

Too sexy?
Okay, no. She was not going to start obsessing over that now.
 

“Someone I met on Facebook a while back.” While the twins were at story hour at the library Tuesday nights, she usually hung out online. “He’s single. Dog lover.”

Which was pretty important to her. She and the girls sometimes volunteered at the local shelter. They used to have Macy, the best dog that ever lived, had lost her last year, and were waiting until money wasn’t so tight to get a new puppy.

Tayron leaned forward so he wouldn’t have to shout over the music. “From around here?”

“Philly. He has three goldendoodles. He’s a dog walker.” Apparently, you could make a living from something like that if you lived in a big city. Seemed like a dream job to Luanne. Like being a resort-spa secret shopper. “He has two sisters. Loves kids.”

Brett had told her he was usually the default babysitter for his two nieces, ages two and three. “He gets me.” She smiled. “Not the type to look down on a small-town motel maid who is raising two little girls.” One of his sisters was a single-mom waitress.

“Sounds like a good guy.” Tayron moved off to serve another customer.

Luanne stirred her drink and allowed herself a dreamy smile. Brett was great. Easy to talk to, at least online. She glanced at her watch. He was also five minutes late. Not a big deal, considering he was driving out from the city. Friday night traffic could be crazy.

She stayed at the bar, facing the door, and slowly sipped her drink as she kept an eye out for a tall blond guy with a dimple in his chin. She was looking forward to a great night. Not that she could stay out too late. Big day tomorrow. She had a lot planned for the twins’ birthday.

They were going to go to the playground in the morning. Then home to a party with friends, super simple, just games and sandwiches. Then the park had a free children’s play that afternoon,
The Wizard of Oz
. Broslin had its own amateur theater company that put on several plays each year.
 

The presents were already bought but not yet wrapped, all from garage sales. Amazing how people gave away twenty-dollar toys for a dollar when their kids got tired of them. Their loss, her gain.

Luanne considered the ladybug cake. Well, no help for that. She took another sip and thought several uncharitable thoughts about the guests who’d stiffed her on the tip.

While she was at it, she allowed herself a brief daydream where she smacked the trucker upside the head when he’d grabbed her ass. She felt the weight of the spray bottle as she swung it, heard the satisfying clunk, saw the dazed expression in the man’s eyes, then the shame as he came to his senses. He issued a hasty apology, then a ten-dollar tip to make up for his assholery.

There, that made her feel much better.

She glanced at her watch. Brett was definitely late. Didn’t matter really. She had nothing else to do. She didn’t have to work until Monday. She shuddered at the thought of another encounter with Earl.

He’d be walking home around now. He didn’t like to get up early, usually ambled into work around noon, but then he tended to stay pretty late. He lived two blocks from here. For a moment, she thought about going out back—he usually cut through the alley behind the bar—to demand her five hours of overtime money.

But since she knew it would be pointless, she stayed in her seat and slipped into another little daydream. This one involved her red Mustang in the back alley, speeding toward Earl, making him dive for the garbage containers. She lingered over the thought of him emerging coughing and cursing, covered in rotten banana peels.

She rather liked that image.

But she liked her job better, so she stayed where she was and entertained herself by watching the crowd. A couple of inebriated college kids performed some pretty interesting dancing. By the time she glanced at her watch again, Brett was forty-five minutes late.

“You look bored,” a pleasant voice came from behind her before she could admit to herself that she was seriously disappointed.

She turned to look into nondescript brown eyes, in a nondescript but pleasant face, matching brown hair. The guy was in his midthirties, a couple of inches shorter than her.

A shy smile made his face interesting. “Can I buy you another drink?”

Before she could decline, he flashed her a puppy-dog look and added, “I was stood up. Giving up and going home seems too pathetic. If I at least have a drink with a pretty woman, it’d do wonders for my self-esteem.”

She found herself smiling back at him.

“Okay,” she said, and finished her drink. “I’m Luanne.”

“I’m Gregory.” His eyes moved in a good-natured roll. “I know. Even the name is geeky, right? You’re probably thinking I’m the kind of guy who deserves to be stood up.”

“Nobody deserves to be stood up,” she told him. And when he ordered another round for her, she thanked him.

Chapter Two

Luanne struggled in a dream where someone was using a chain saw to slice up her head like a watermelon, the noise as overpowering as the pain.

She woke with an unbearable headache, forced her eyes open to a slit, and glared at the phone ringing on the nightstand. Ever so slowly, the events of the night before came back to her. The bar. Brett not showing. The other guy. She closed her eyes again. She couldn’t remember the name. Then it came to her on a thunderclap of pain: Gregory.

She groaned. Good God, how much had she had to drink? She hoped she’d had the good sense to walk home instead of driving.

The phone kept ringing, each chirp drilling into her brain. She picked it up just to quiet it.

“Luanne!” Jackie yelled on the other end.

Luanne pulled the phone a little farther from her ear. “What is it?” Was she late for work? She blinked. No. She had the weekend off.
The twins’ birthday.
She glanced at the clock. She had to pick them up from Jen in an hour. In spite of the pounding in her head and the rolling in her stomach, she forced herself to sit.
 

“I thought you might not have heard yet,” Jackie rushed to say. “Earl’s dead.”

“What?” Luanne’s hand froze in the middle of rubbing her forehead.

“The police found his body in the alley behind Finnegan’s. A car ran him over. He was covered in garbage.”

The alley. Earl. Car. Piles of garbage.
Fuzzy images swirled in Luanne’s mind, making her dizzy. Her stomach rolled.
 

“Luanne?” Jackie asked, but then kept talking even when she didn’t receive a response. “The police are here at the motel. They want to talk to all the employees. Can you come in?”

Luanne cleared her throat. A long moment passed before she could line her thoughts up straight. She could probably ask Jen to keep the twins for another hour or so. “Sure.”

She hung up, fell back into the bed with a groan, but after a pain-filled moment got up again, all the way to her feet this time. She cleaned herself up, then she called Jen.

“Oh my God. What do you know? I just heard,” Jen tore into her before Luanne could say a single word.

Why was everybody shouting today? “I need to go to the motel. The police want to talk to the employees. Could you please keep the twins a little longer?”

“Of course. They’re no trouble. Call me the second you find out anything. I can’t believe this is happening. Let me know what the police say.”

Luanne promised, her mind struggling to catch up to full speed as she made coffee, only half hearing as Jen said, “You sound terrible. What time did you get in?”

Luanne tried to think back. “Not sure.”

“Date went that well?”

“Brett never showed.” But she couldn’t think about Brett. Last night was a fuzzy mess in her head. Her thoughts circled around Earl.

She hung up with Jen and caffeinated, hanging on to the hope that some java would untangle her brain. Her mind was a disjointed, foggy mess, the mother of all hangovers using her head for a punching bag.

Her dollar-store coffee was as dark and thick as tar, and just as tasty, but it did the trick. She felt half-human by the time she walked to her front door, ready to leave, dark premonitions circling in her semicoherent brain.

Think.

But she couldn’t remember anything past meeting Gregory.

Prior to that, she could remember being mad at the trucker, Brett, Earl. She could clearly recall thinking about Earl in the alley, her hands gripping the steering wheel.

She walked through the door, squinting against the morning sun, biting her bottom lip against the pain.

Earl. Dead.
She had a very bad feeling about this.
 

She tried not to panic. She might have fantasized about fighting back, but so had the other maids—a harmless way to blow off steam. She would never have acted that fantasy out, could never cross over to actual violence. Could she?

“No.” She said the word out loud to settle her brain.

Earl was an equal-opportunity jackass. He harassed every woman he came across, stiffed every employee he’d ever had. There had to be at least two dozen people in town pissed enough to want to kill him.

But how many of them had a dented grill?

OhGodohGodohGod.

She came to a staggering stop in the middle of her lawn to stare at her Mustang parked by the curb, the same color red as the fire hydrant ten feet or so in front of it. Both the car’s bumper and the grill were crushed in the middle. Clearly, at one point last night, she’d run into something.