Читать книгу Desperately Seeking Daddy - Arlene James, Arlene James - Страница 7

It was as common a sight to Jackson Tyler as his own face in the mirror—a crayon portrait of some small artist’s favorite subject on notebook paper. In his five years as a primary and elementary school principal, he had seen thousands of such. What set apart this slightly lopsided rendition was its location. It had been pinned—not upon some lightly scuffed school corridor wall—but at waist height amid the jumble of the large, square, community bulletin board mounted upon the brick facade of the Lake City Grocery. Curious at seeing the familiar in such an unexpected place, Jack shifted the sack of groceries he’d just purchased into a more comfortable position and strolled over for a closer look. Ignoring the protest of his left knee, he crouched down to study this young person’s artwork.

Despite the awkward positioning of the drawing in relation to the edges of the paper, it was, without question, a masterpiece, an unusually piquant rendition of, Jack felt certain, a real woman’s face, a woman with enormous blue eyes that tilted upward at the outer edges, a rather pointed chin, and a great deal of long, light brown hair with bangs that covered her eyebrows. Interesting. Even given the young artist’s above-average expertise, Jack’s experienced eye told him he was looking at the work of a child on the underside of nine, a conclusion bolstered by the youngster’s deficiency in spelling. Jack first read the left-handed block printing with a chuckle, then sobered as the implications sunk in.

HUSBAN WANTED

FOR PRETTY LADY WITH 3 GOOD CHIDREN

WORKING TO MUCH

NICE SMART TIRD

CALL 555-1118

ASK FOR CODY

Some sensitive little person had been moved by a working mother’s exhaustion to advertise for aid in the form of a husband. Jack sensed a child in distress and a mother who was going to be very embarrassed.

Oddly disturbed, he took the “ad” from the bulletin board, slipped it into his grocery sack, pushed up to his full, considerable height and walked rapidly across the parking lot to deposit all in the back seat of his sensible, late-model sedan. He hoped for both child’s and mother’s sakes that no one else had bothered to investigate as closely as he had. He would hate for a child’s misguided attempt to help an overwhelmed parent to result in crank calls, derision, or—God forbid—even danger, and he felt himself to be in a unique position to head off disaster. It was, he felt, his duty, if not his responsibility.

After stopping briefly at his apartment to put away the groceries, Jack took the drawing and drove down the street to the sprawling blond brick building set high on a grassy knoll. Some neighborhood children were playing in the sand beneath the vacant swing set, and Jack made a mental note to ask the custodian to rehang the swings. They were always taken down at the end of the school year for routine repair and maintenance, but Jack knew from experience that the custodian would not rehang them until he was told to. Old Henley considered a fully equipped playground an open invitation to aggravation during the summer. Jack considered it a necessary service to a neighborhood lacking a decent city park.

Using his key and alarm code card, he let himself into the empty building and walked blindly down the darkened hall with ease. He knew every square inch of the school building inside and out, not from necessity but from sheer delight. He loved it here. He loved the building, the employees, the teaching, the organizing, even the problems, everything—but especially the children. He always missed them when they were gone, the humming, bubbling, laughing, shouting tumult of two hundred or so little bodies vying for space and attention and knowledge. This early in the summer vacation, the building was almost always empty, but soon the custodial staff would start to ready the building for resuming classes. Later the administrative staff would gradually begin planning and organizing until classroom assignments were again finalized and teachers themselves would return to begin sedately setting up their individual rooms and forming teaching plans. Every available resource would be divvied and balanced and parceled and traded until everyone had what was needed to educate, entertain, engage and otherwise meet the sundry needs of every student. Meanwhile he had the place to himself.

He unlocked the door to his secretary’s office, flipped on the overhead lights and booted up the computer that took up the entire side board of her desk. In short order he had pulled up the appropriate cross-referenced file on one Cody Swift Moore, eight years old, recently promoted to the third grade. Before going any further, Jack went to the file cabinet in the corner and looked up the sheet of photos that contained Cody Moore’s gap-toothed, grinning visage. Oh, yes. He remembered Cody well as a bright boy in clean, worn clothing, whose hair was sometimes not combed as neatly as usual and whose nose often ran relentlessly. He was one of those children on the cusp, an “at risk” child who somehow had thus far managed to have what he needed to thrive, but just barely.

Returning to the computer, Jack pulled up and printed out Cody Moore’s complete file, then carried both the printout and the portrait into his own office for perusal. Turning his chair at an angle, Jack lowered his six-foot-twoinch frame into its welcome embrace, leaned back and propped both feet on the corner of his desk. Idly massaging his left knee, he began to read.

It was just as he had suspected. Cody’s parents were divorced. He and a younger sister and a baby brother lived with their mother. No information was given on the father, but the mother’s name was listed as Hellen, a possible misspelling of a familiar but uncommon name in this day and time. No home phone number was listed, and the address given was a particular lot in Fairhaven Mobile Home Community. Jack knew it well.

One of the older such communities in the area, it lacked the modern amenities of the newer, tightly controlled parks that had sprung up along the interstate that connected Dallas and Fort Worth with what had once been “the country.” There were no swimming pools, meeting halls or game rooms in Fairhaven, no central post boxes, no newspaper kiosks, no picnic grounds, not even paved parking pads, or curbs and gutters for that matter. Yet he had always found the haphazard collection of older mobile homes inviting. Nestled beneath tall, stately shade trees, they were more homey than the fenced, cemented, landscaped, carbon-copy, postage stamp lots with their modern modular homes surrounded by sun decks, car ports, satellite dishes and storage sheds that resembled oversize doll houses.

Fairhaven looked like a place where a kid could play in the dirt with a spoon in some secret, shady bower that belonged to no one and everyone, building dreams and inventing games with easy freedom. It also looked like a place of last chances, where disaster was held off with one hand and survival clutched at with the other. The turnover in rentals was a sometime weekly thing. Odds were even money that the address was no longer valid.

Jack laid aside the papers and groomed his mustache with gentle strokes of his left index finger, thinking. He decided upon his approach, picked up the telephone receiver and punched in the digits written in crayon. A young woman’s voice greeted him at the other end of the line.

“Hello. My name is Jackson Tyler. Have I reached the Moore residence?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” He identified himself as the school principal and said that he was trying to update school files, which was perfectly true. “Are you by chance Cody Moore’s mother?”

She was not. She was the baby-sitter.

“Could you please tell me, then, how I can contact Mrs. Moore?”

“You mean, like, now?”

“Yes, please, if that’s all right.”

He was told that he would find Cody’s mother at the cashier’s counter of the Downtown Convenience Store. “But she don’t like to take phone calls down there.”

“I see. Well, thank you for being so helpful.”

“Sure. Want me to tell her you called?”

He considered. “It’s not necessary. I’ll get in touch.”

He hung up, logged off the computer in the other room and left the building.

Lake City was a small town on one of the most popular lakes in Texas. The recreation areas that serviced the town had been built by the Corps of Engineers. It was a short drive to the corner of Lake Street and Main—a prime location for a convenience store, given its gas pumps, lottery machines and drink coolers. It was without a doubt the busiest place in town, especially during summer.

Jack had to wait while a carload of swimsuited teenagers and a truck towing a pair of jet skis on a trailer got out of his way before he could even turn onto the lot. Vehicles were parked three deep at the curb, many of them linked to various types of water craft. Every gas pump was occupied, and a line had formed in front of the air compressor. Jack left the car well out of the gas pump lanes, locked it and walked across the hot pavement. He held the door open for a trio of women with a number of small children in hand, then slipped inside.

The cashier’s station was the hub of the store. It was a square of glass cases, polished chrome and Formica counters staffed by a single individual—a petite woman with a triangular face set with enormous, almond-shaped eyes and framed by a long, lush fall of light ash brown hair. Jack had little doubt that he was looking at Hellen Moore. Cody had captured his mother well—as well as possible with crayons and an untrained hand.

Jack saw at once that she was skilled at juggling half a dozen customers at any given time. Had she not been, she wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes in this madhouse. Unfortunately this was neither the place nor the time for the discussion he had in mind. Nevertheless he was in no way deterred. He had come this far, after all. He got into a line of customers and patiently waited his turn, which was more than could be said for some others.

“Hey, move it up there!” yelled a shirtless young man with blond hair straggling about muscular shoulders. He shook his head and flexed his muscles with impatience, his bare feet shifting restlessly as he moved a six-pack of beer from one hand to the other.

“Keep your shorts on, pal,” came the smooth rejoinder, “since that’s all you’re wearing.” She’d delivered the line without even looking up, ignoring the chuckles it elicited while punching prices into the cash register with one hand and placing articles into a paper bag with the other. “That’ll be six sixty-eight. Out of ten. Six sixty-nine, seventy, seventy-five. Seven. Eight. Nine and ten. Thanks. Come again. Next.”

She turned to the line on the other side of the checkout and began punching in a new set of numbers, while the previous customer moved away from the counter and was replaced by a new arrival from the line.

“You got first aid supplies in here?” someone called out from across the room.

“In the corner next to the ice machine,” she shouted, then dropped her voice to a more moderate level. “You owe me six cents, ma’am. That’s all right, forget the penny. Just remember when you hit that next pothole that the state didn’t get their full share. I’ll be right with you, sir. Want your candy in a sack, hon? That’s one, two, three, four, five at three cents a piece. Exact change. A cashier’s angel! Suppose there’s a patron saint? Saint Quick Stop, maybe?”

And so it went for a solid quarter hour, nimble fingers flying, answers, comments and wisecracks tossed out with dry humor and quick wit. In the midst of the chaos, she kept her cool, refused to be pushed by those who had nothing more taxing to do than wait their turns and complain about it, and made every movement a study in efficiency.

Jackson found himself watching her with interest and growing pleasure. He liked that wealth of light ash brown hair. It hung almost to her waist, thick and shining, with what, upon closer examination, appeared to be a smattering of individual silver hairs. She wasn’t exactly beautiful. Her facial features would never be called classical. Yet to Jack it was an extremely interesting face, with a broad forehead and delicate, pointed chin; thin, tip-tilted nose; and a small but mobile, rose pink mouth. She couldn’t stand more than five feet and two or three inches, petite but not really dainty, with small hands and short, almost blunt fingers. Beneath the open, oversize, cotton smock, faded T-shirt and worn blue jeans was a solid, compact body with all the requisite curves—ample curves and in comfortable proportions. Moreover she carried herself with confidence and pride, standing with back straight, shoulders squared, legs spread slightly, as if ready to take on all comers and expecting to walk away a victor. All in all, a very interesting woman. Very interesting.

Business was relentless, but as always she stuck with it, handling several tasks at once, keeping every sense alert and ignoring the physical discomfort of sheer exhaustion. The latter was especially difficult, given that her feet felt as if the soles had been pounded by metal rods, her back ached unrelentingly and her hand was cramping. Worse, she needed to make a visit to the ladies’ room, despite having confined her fluid intake for the whole morning to a few sips of badly needed coffee.

She winced inwardly even as she wished a regular customer good luck on the lottery ticket he had just purchased and turned to quirk a brow at the big, good-looking fellow who’d been blatantly staring at her from the moment he’d entered the store. He smiled, holding her gaze, and she barely resisted the urge to thin her lips in a gesture of disdain. The last thing she needed just now was a flirt. She kept her manner brisk.

“What can I do for you?”

He leaned forward slightly as if fearing that she couldn’t hear him from that great height. “My name’s Jackson Tyler.”

As if she cared. With neither the time nor the inclination to chat, she turned her back on him and started ringing up cigarettes, sodas and snacks for three women and a mob of kids.

He cleared his throat and said from behind her, “I’m, uh, the elementary school principal.”

“That so?” She counted six sodas at sixty-five and one on sale at forty. Make that two. She jerked her head at one of the mothers. “The little one in back there is about to drop her drink.” The little girl screeched like a banshee when her anxious mother rescued it from her too-small hands. No one paid her the least mind. Anyone with experience with a kid that age knew that most of them were banshees.

“The thing is,” Jackson Tyler was saying in his deep voice, “I need a moment of your time.”

“Don’t have a moment,” she said over her shoulder, whipping open a sack and dropping packets of cigarettes and candy bars into it. “Is that everything, ladies?” Receiving a nod in the affirmative, she gave the women their total and continued sacking while a whispered conference took place, bills and coins trading back and forth.

“You are Hellen Moore, aren’t you?”

He was persistent, she’d give him that. “Hellen? No.” She shook out another brown paper bag and began carefully setting cold drinks inside.

“Oh.” He sounded disappointed and puzzled. “Well, do you happen to know where I might find her?”

“Couldn’t say. Who gets the receipt and the change? Watch the bottom of that bag. Those bottled drinks sweat right through them in no time.”

She turned back to the big man, her gaze flicking over him in the seconds that it took those three mothers to start their brood toward the door. She was almost sorry that she couldn’t spare the time for a little banter. He looked like a pleasant sort, prosperous, cool and neat in soft tan slacks and a green-and-white-checked shirt with short sleeves and a button-down collar. His straight, golden blond hair had been parted just so, but was too fine and thick not to fall over his forehead. Soft hazel eyes were set beneath straight, thick brows the same bronze brown as the neatly trimmed mustache. He had a full upper lip and balanced features too large for any other face, any face without those brick jaws and that square, jutting chin. Ah well. No help for it.

“I’m kinda busy here,” she said bluntly. “Want to move along?”

He flattened enormous hands on the countertop and expelled a breath. “This is important. I was told that I could find Mrs. Moore here.”

She folded her arms, wondering if she was going to regret this. “I’m Mrs. Moore.”

“Cody’s mother?”

She was definitely going to regret this. “That’s right.”

“Isn’t your name Hellen?”

“No.”

“No?”

She rolled her eyes. “The name is Heller, all right? H-E-L-L-E-R. Now spit it out, bud, or disappear. I’m working here.”

“Yeah, she’s working here,” put in a wise guy from the other side of the counter.

She shot him a deadly look. “Put a clamp on it, youngster, and I’m going to need ID on the beer.”

“Uh, I must’ve left it in my other pants.”

“Yeah, right, and I’m a fairy princess, which makes you the toad. Better luck next time, and put it back in the cooler where you got it.”

He stomped off in disgust, sixteen if he was a day. She shook her head. Kids.

“Maybe you didn’t understand me the first time,” the big guy said. “I’m the principal at your son, Cody’s, school. Name’s Jack Tyler.”

For the first time, his urgency touched her. “Something up with Cody? School’s out, for pity’s sake. What could be wrong?”

He looked distinctly uncomfortable, the tip of one finger stroking his mustache. “Look, I’d rather not discuss it here. What time do you get off work?”

“Late.”

“Oh. Well, what time do you start in the morning?”

“Early.”

“I could meet you in my office at eight.”

Eight. She’d have to leave the house an hour early, lose a whole hour of sleep, leave the kids that much longer. She sighed, dead on her feet already, with eight hours still ahead of her and knowing that she would be aching in every bone come morning. Jack Tyler seemed to take her hesitation as a lack of concern. He put on his principal’s face, the one he must use when doling out discipline. She’d have taken issue with that assumption on his part—if she hadn’t been busier than a starved cat in an aviary. Cody was her oldest—a good, solemn little boy who sometimes got strange ideas. Oh, Cody. Cody, honey, what have you done? No use thinking on it now. She wouldn’t know what was up until Jack Tyler chose to tell her, and she didn’t believe in borrowing trouble. She had plenty already, thank you. Just living was trouble.

“I must insist on a conference,” Tyler stated firmly.

Heller sighed and nodded. “Okay.”

“I’ll expect you in the morning at eight, then.”

“Eight,” she confirmed, following him out the door with her eyes even as she smiled at the next person in line. Her son’s principal was limping, but it wasn’t her problem. “What’s this,” she quipped, winking at the elderly gentleman who pushed forward a pint of milk and a banana, “moo juice and monkey pod?”

“Health food,” the old man replied, a twinkle in his eye.

“Dollar fifteen.”

He forked over two bucks and gave her a good look at his dentures. “Keep the change.”

“Ooh, a true gentleman! Thanks.”

The jaunty tone was so practiced that it was second nature, a useful trait for a single mother with too much worry and too little of everything else. She’d buy something sweet for the kids with her extra eighty-five cents, a small treat for Betty to give them with their lunch tomorrow, something to let them know that Mom was thinking of them—a package of cherry licorice whip, maybe, something they wouldn’t recognize as a pathetic attempt on her part to give them what other children routinely took for granted.

Her manner was a little softer with the next few customers, her eyes glistening with a brightness that no one watching her would have taken for tears. She couldn’t have said herself why she had to beat down the impulse to cry. Maybe it was the combination of a new worry and a small kindness. Maybe it was the unending weariness of working two jobs just to keep body and soul together, and maybe it was the vision of a future that was merely the present all over again, never changing—unless it was for the worse.

Jack gritted his teeth, determined not to look at his watch again. It would only tell him what he already knew. She was late—and getting later by the second. He told himself again that she would definitely show. The subject of this conference was her own son, after all. Of course she would come. He looked at his watch.

Thirty-five minutes! Where the devil was that woman? Sleeping in? Sipping an extra cup of coffee? If she didn’t care enough about her boy to expend just this much effort on his behalf, then he was wasting his time trying to help.

It wasn’t his problem, anyway. He couldn’t force her to listen to him. Fact was, he wasn’t even certain what he would have said. Well. So. That was that, then.

He leaned back in his comfortable leather desk chair and expelled a long, cleansing breath. Okay, what now? Might as well do something useful since he was already here. He consulted his calendar, thumbing through the daily pages. The few items on his agenda were either already in the works or simply held no interest for him. Oh, well. He was supposed to be on vacation for the next couple of months, anyway. He’d do something fun, maybe call up some of his old teammates, set up a fishing trip or two, talk about old times. He could even drive down and hang around training camp when that started—except he really didn’t want to. He’d lost his enthusiasm for football even before he’d pulverized his knee.

He laid his head back and closed his eyes, waiting for a good idea to come to him. He thought of movies he wanted to see and books he wanted to read and letters he ought to write. Problem was, he didn’t want to do any of those things just then. Golf. He’d get out the clubs, rent a cart and make a day of it. All he needed was a partner, someone who could get away on the spur of the moment and hit the links. He picked up the phone and started calling some of the other educators he knew. The three he caught at home, he also woke. He put down the phone with a mutter of disgust, snatched a pencil from the hand-painted cup presented to him at the end of the year by Mrs. Foreman’s first-grade class and began bouncing the eraser on the edge of his desk, tapping out words and phrases in Morse code. When he realized that he was tapping out H-E-L-L-E-R, he threw the pencil at the trash can. It ricocheted off the rim and flew into the corner, the lead breaking off.

Blast that woman! Didn’t she know her kid was hurting for her? Didn’t she realize that Cody could see her struggle, that it scared him? He was a little boy who desperately needed some reassurance. Jack pushed his hands over his face, telling himself that it wasn’t his job to see that the kid had his fears eased. His job was to educate children, not baby-sit them. But just how well could a worried little boy learn?

Jack bit back an oath, the sound coming out as a choked growl, as he launched himself out of his chair and left his office, slamming the door behind him. No woman, he reflected savagely as he strode out of the building and toward his car, was ever more aptly named than Heller Moore.

The place took about five minutes to find. He sat in his car next to the mailbox, which clung to a leaning metal post and bracket by a single screw, and just looked around for several minutes. The house itself, a mobile home sitting up on cement blocks, was small and sagging and rusty in places, but it had a neat, orderly look about it, a certain aura of “home.” The far end sat smack up against the trunk of an old cottonwood tree. A hickory that had been planted too close to a wide side window stood at an odd angle, its upper branches literally lying on top of the structure’s metal roof, while its lower ones jutted out over the rickety stoop. The back of the long, narrow lot was a tangle of woody shrubs and withered cedars. Someone had tied bows to one of the bushes with strips of cloth.

Leaving his car parked at the side of the street, Jack got out and walked hesitantly across the yard to climb a trio of steps to the stoop. He paused, combing his mustache with his fingers, then abruptly sent out a fist and rapped on the door. He heard a muffled voice speaking unintelligible words. It sounded as if Heller Moore might have tied one on the night before. He raised his fist and rocked the door repeatedly in its frame. Suddenly the door swung open and a large brunette with long, stringy hair waved a hand at him before disappearing inside.

Jack stuck his head into the dim interior. “Hello?”

“What do you want?”

The croaking voice came from his left. He looked into a small, open kitchen to his right. A round maple table with a scorched spot, four rail-backed chairs and a painted wooden high chair took up almost all the space, leaving a mere path in front of the L-shaped cabinet and stove. The enamel on the sink was chipped, the countertop faded. An empty plastic milk jug and an open sleeve of crackers sat in the middle of the chipped yellow stove. An assortment of cereal boxes were lined up neatly across the top of a small, ancient, olive green refrigerator. Jack stepped inside and turned in the direction of the voice.

The living area was little more than a wide hall. A worn, brown, Early American-style sofa with small, round, ruffled throw pillows sat against the wide window, over which ugly green vinyl drapes had been parted to allow the sunlight into the room. A small coffee table had been pushed up beneath the window on the opposite wall. Upon it rested a small television with rabbit-ear antennae wrapped in strips of tin foil, a can of wildflowers at its side. A brown, oval, braided rug covered most of the pockmarked linoleum. A half-eaten bowl of popcorn had been tipped on its side, spilling fluffy white puffs of popcorn across the clean brown rug. The fake wood paneling on the walls gleamed with fresh polish. The glass in the windows shone crystal clear. A dark, narrow hall led, presumably, to the bedrooms. It wasn’t much, but it was somehow welcoming.

The brunette was lying in a heap on the couch, her face turned into a pillow. A thin blue blanket was crumpled at her side. She was wearing pink knit shorts which had long ago lost their shape and a huge T-shirt sporting a cartoon character front and back.

Jack cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Heller Moore.”

The brunette rolled over to stare at him. Her face was puffy, her eyes rimmed with smudged mascara. She pushed her lank hair out of her face and said, “She ain’t here.”

Jack’s eyes roamed around the dingy room. “Where is she?”

The brunette sat up and gave a shrug. She looked him over frankly, then smiled. He saw to his surprise that she was considerably younger than he’d assumed. “Who’re you?”

The question irritated him. “Seems to me you should have asked that before you opened the door.”

She shrugged again, unconcerned, and said, “I don’t know where Heller is. She didn’t come home last night.”

Jack felt the taste of acid in his mouth. Why was he surprised and, yes, disappointed? He shook his head. “You tell her Jackson Tyler was here.” He pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. Extracting a card, he laid it on the arm of the sofa. “You tell her to call first chance she gets, either number. Understand?”

The big girl nodded and picked up the card. “You’re from the school?” she asked, but Jack ignored her, turning back to the open door as a rusty old behemoth of a car bounced up into the yard and came to a halt.

Heller Moore gathered her things and got out from behind the steering wheel. She leaned against the side of the car for a moment, head back as if absorbing the sunshine, then she straightened and walked around the front end of the car. Jack moved into the doorway and lifted his arms above his head, bracing them against the frame. She was at the foot of the stoop before she looked up. Shock and something else registered in her face.

“You!” she exclaimed.

Jack bared his teeth in a smile. Heller Moore had come home, and he meant to give her a welcome she’d never forget.