Finding Mr. Right Now (14 page)

A small, round woman with hair the color of licorice sat at a desk tucked into a corner of the room, a cell phone lodged between her cheek and her shoulder while she rummaged through a file of receipts. “Yes, Bodie,” she said, “I know. You told me. You told Al. You told the world. You need it no later than this afternoon. We’ll do what we can.” She rolled her eyes at Monica.

“I should have called,” she muttered.

“Relax.”

“I’ll tell him.” The woman sighed. “No, don’t call me. I’ll call you when it’s ready. No, if you call Al, it’ll take him that much longer to finish. Just give him some time, Bodie. Yes, right.” Her lips tightened into a dry smile. “Oh, you have a nice day too.”

She clicked the phone shut and glanced in their direction again. “What can I do for you folks?”

Monica pushed her lips into a smile. “I just wanted to check on my car. Mr. Monteith towed it in yesterday.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. “You the television people?”

Monica nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

The woman smiled again, just as drily. “Honey, I’m not a ma’am. I’m Nona Monteith. Al’s my son. You mind me asking what show you’re with? I watch a lot of TV.”

“It’s a new program.
Finding Mr. Right.”

“Oh.” Mrs. Monteith frowned. “Like that lame-brained
Finding Miss Right
?”

Paul fought back a grin. “Just like that. Only with bachelors instead of bachelorettes.”

“Well, that might help, I guess,” Mrs. Monteith mused. “It was watching those stupid women all wanting to hook up with some idiot man that made me gnash my teeth. These bachelors aren’t as stupid as those bachelorettes, are they?”

“I hope not,” Monica said quickly. “That is, I really hope you won’t think anybody’s stupid on the show.”

She seemed to be deliberately not looking his way. Paul wondered if she thought his feelings were hurt. He could definitely have eased her mind on that score.

“We’ll see, I guess. I’ll watch it a few times, tell you what I think. Let me find out about your car.” Mrs. Monteith pushed herself to her feet and headed through a door at the side.

Monica rubbed a hand across the back of her neck. “Great. If she’s a typical viewer, we’re screwed.”

“You don’t think Brendan and Billy Joe are smarter than the bachelorettes?”

“I don’t think the bachelorettes are particularly dumb. They just come across that way sometimes because of the editing.”

Paul frowned. He’d done some of that editing himself. “We don’t try to do that, or I don’t anyway. When I’m editing, I’m usually just trying to find a coherent storyline in all of the blather. Sometimes everybody comes out looking dumb, including the bachelor.”

Monica nodded. “I know. It’s just…”

The door opened and Al Monteith stepped through, wiping his hands on a rag that seemed too grease-stained to do much good. He nodded at the two of them. “Looked your car over last night. Damage isn’t too bad. Battered fender and a couple of flats. And one of the rims got bent. I can do a quick and dirty fix. It should be drivable, but it won’t be pretty.”

Monica sighed. “Pretty doesn’t matter. We just need to be able to drive it. When can we pick it up?”

He shrugged. “I might get it done this evening, but more likely it’ll be tomorrow morning. I got a few people I might need to work on ahead of you.”

Including the phantom Bodie, judging from Mrs. Monteith’s narrowed eyes.

Monica dug in her purse for a card. “Can I leave you my number so you can call me if you get it done before then?”

Monteith shrugged. “Just call late this afternoon. I’ll know by then.” He tucked the greasy rag into the pocket of his coveralls and headed back into the garage.

Mrs. Monteith rolled her eyes again. “Okay, I’ll give you a number to call, one that somebody will actually answer. Call after four. I’ll give you whatever information I’ve got.”

Monica wrote down the number and tucked the piece of paper into her purse, thanking Mrs. Monteith. Paul followed her back into the yard.

“Well, the good news is you’ll actually have a car.”

She frowned slightly. “I guess that’s good news. I mean it’s definitely good news that we won’t have to wait around for Glenn to send somebody after us.”

“But?” He raised an eyebrow.

She shrugged. “But that leaves us with a day to fill. I guess I need to find Ronnie.”

“Why?”

“Well…” She paused, thinking. “Because she might want to do something.”

“And she can’t do it alone?”

Monica glanced back toward where the Praeger House perched on the hillside. “I guess she could. I just…I always feel like I should look after her. Like she can’t really handle things on her own.”

“Right. And so does every red-blooded male who crosses her path.” Paul put his hand on her elbow again, turning her gently down the street. “Trust me on this—if she needs somebody, she’ll find somebody.”

She blew out a long breath. “Probably true. Which means I have a whole day to kill on my own in Salt Box.” She glanced up at him, her lips curving slightly. “Any ideas?”

He felt a quick jolt of heat, pushing his pulse up a notch, something he’d begun to think of as the Monica Reaction. He linked his fingers through hers, drawing her closer. “How do you feel about ice cold streams and lukewarm beer?”

Chapter Ten

The corner booth at the Blarney Stone was probably meant to hold around six people. Currently it held ten, with occasional drop-ins. Monica had sort of lost track of who all was sitting with them. Paul was on one side, Ronnie on the other, Brendan and Faisal on their flanks. Billy Joe came and went, mostly went since he’d found some interesting and apparently gullible girls at the bar.

She tried to remember the names of the locals who were sitting with them. Clark Denham from the hotel was one. There was also an older man with a cropped beard and longish gray hair whom Faisal called Dick, apparently the man who’d repaired the camera. Two of the men who’d danced with Ronnie last night were hovering. Clearly they wanted to sit beside her and just as clearly Brendan had no intention of moving. Monica hoped they wouldn’t end up in a fight, but she wouldn’t take any bets on it.

The owner of the Blarney Stone, one Ted Saltzman, was currently sitting opposite Brendan and Ronnie. He looked vaguely amused by the whole thing. Monica wouldn’t rate him as a serious contender in the Ronnie sweepstakes.

She leaned back in her chair, taking a quick swallow of her beer. The bridge of her nose was sunburned, probably bright pink, in spite of the sunblock Paul had bullied her into applying and the baseball cap the owner of the tube rental place had given her. Her hair was standing out around her head as if she’d just taken hold of a high voltage cable. She was a mess.

She was also absurdly happy. It was the best afternoon she’d spent in months, floating down a creek whose name she never found out, icy cold water against her butt and warm sunshine on her face and arms. Paul had a six-pack of Fat Tire tethered to his tube with a mesh bag for the cans. Between them they’d finished four cans by the time they’d reached the final pull-out and then used the other two to bribe a guy from a river rafting place into giving them a ride back to Salt Box.

“Salt Box.” She turned to Clark Denham. “Why is it called Salt Box? Is it the name of a mountain?”

He gave her a lazy smile. “Do you want the real answer or the classic answer?”

“Can’t I have both?”

“Sure.” He picked up his beer. “The real answer is nobody knows exactly.”

“And the classic answer?”

“…is a story, of course. Starts when the town wasn’t a town yet. Just a stagecoach stop and a potential stop on the railroad that was supposed to go through and didn’t.” He took another swallow. “Sorry—off topic. Anyway, the people who lived here decided they needed to be an honest-to-God town, which meant they needed a name. With me so far?”

Monica nodded.

“Anyway, they figured they’d let the people in town vote on what name they liked best. So they asked people to write down their suggestions and put them in an empty salt box at the general store.”

Paul raised an eyebrow. “I think I see where this is headed.”

“Yeah, well, keep it to yourself. You’ll ruin my concentration.” Denham gave him a dry smile. “So they had a couple of weeks for everybody to come up with their suggestions for a name and put them in the salt box. Then they called a town meeting so they could have a vote to choose the name everybody liked best.”

Ronnie frowned. “But they should have given people time to think first. I mean, they should have told them the names everybody came up with and then let them kind of talk it over. Because at first they might not have liked some of the names, but after a while they might have decided, okay, that’s not a bad name after all. So everybody would have been happy.”

Denham’s mouth edged into another smile, this one friendly. “That makes a lot of sense, but I think the people in town just wanted to get the whole thing over with. Decide on the name so they could get a post office and then move on.”

Ronnie gave a little puff of disapproval. “Patience is a virtue.”

Denham blinked, then took a breath. “Okay, so we’ve got the townspeople all coming together at the general store. Gonna choose a name and get cracking on having a real town. Civilization here we come.”

Monica leaned forward. “And?”

“And they upended the salt box to get all the suggestions, but there was nothing there.”

Ronnie’s eyes widened. “Nothing? No names or anything?”

“Not even salt?” Paul murmured.

Monica gave him a quelling glance.

Denham shook his head. “Nothing. Nobody had suggested anything. So they decided to name the town after the box. Sort of a reminder that community spirit isn’t always too reliable around here.”

“But that’s
sad
.” Ronnie’s eyes were suspiciously bright. “Why didn’t somebody suggest something when they found out there weren’t any other suggestions? Maybe name it after their wife or their girlfriend or something. Didn’t they even care about what happened?”

“That’s one possibility.” Denham took another swallow of his beer. “Of course, it’s also possible that nobody could think of anything good enough, and they were afraid to suggest something bad.”

“Or maybe they all figured somebody else would come up with something, so they didn’t bother. That happens a lot.” Saltzman, the bar owner, grinned at Ronnie.

“Maybe.” Her eyes still looked faintly tearful.

Monica sighed. “It didn’t turn out too badly, Ronnie. I mean, Salt Box is a unique name. It’s a lot more memorable than some places I’ve been.”

“Thank you.” Denham bowed slightly in her direction. “I feel that way myself. Better to live in Salt Box than to live in someplace called Highland Park Acres. The town’s got a flair for the unexpected.”

“Such as?” Paul signaled to the barmaid for another beer, but Saltzman beat him to it, bringing over a pitcher.

“Well, there’s this place, for example.” Clark began pouring beers. “When Colleen told you it was called the Blarney Stone, what did you expect?”

Ted Saltzman took a large swallow from his stein. Monica hoped she wasn’t going to offend him too much if she answered honestly. She shrugged. “Shamrocks. Guinness on tap. Lots of brass and dark wood. Maybe some cryptic sayings on plaques, written in script.”

“Celtic music on the sound system,” Paul added as Three Dog Night blared from the jukebox.

Saltzman grinned at Denham. “Screw you.”

Denham shook his head. “Now, now. You knew that’s what they’d say. That’s what people always say.”

“So why were we so far off?” Paul asked. “What did you want us to expect?”

Saltzman, the bar owner, was still grinning, fortunately. “I don’t necessarily want you to expect anything in particular. But the only reason this place is named the Blarney Stone is that it’s always been named the Blarney Stone. When Jeff Bingham sold it to me six years ago, he advised me to hang onto the name even if I didn’t hang onto anything else. He said it would draw people in. He was right. And we do have one hell of a St. Patrick’s Day party.”

“So it’s never been an Irish bar?”

He shrugged. “Oh it probably was once upon a time, way back before anybody remembers who owned it. It’s been around for thirty years or so. But it’s been like this pretty much as long as I’ve been in Salt Box. No shamrocks, no Guinness, no Lord of the Dance. Just local beer and the jukebox, with dinner in the room across the hall. It’s sort of a Salt Box kind of thing. You just call it what you want and let it go.”

Around them the crowd began to swing across the dance floor, singing along to “Bad Moon Rising.” One of the locals asked Ronnie to dance, ignoring Brendan’s slightly threatening expression. Brendan’s gaze followed them to the dance floor. He looked a lot like the Church Lady all of a sudden.

“Who chooses the music on the jukebox?” Paul asked.

Saltzman shrugged. “Whoever. I think I’ve got 45’s from half the people in town in there. Everybody who actually still owns 45’s, that is. We switch out occasionally, but if you donate records, you get to play the jukebox for free.”