Читать книгу Down Home Carolina Christmas - Pamela Browning, Pamela Browning - Страница 8

Luke shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy couch in the office of the old seed farm, doing his best to convince Whip of the unsuitability of the Mullins garage for filming.

“It’s too far away,” Luke argued. “I don’t want to be running back and forth from here to there.”

“Neither do I, but what’s the big attraction of Smitty’s? The owner is dead set against renting to us.” Whip eyed him impatiently.

Luke had wanted to smile at Carrie’s feistiness in threatening poor Whip with pepper spray, but he’d managed to subdue his mirth when Whip told him about it. “Well,” he said, determined to choose his words carefully, “the set designers wouldn’t have to work too hard to make Smitty’s look authentic. There’s an old Coke machine from the fifties. A two-bay garage. A Marilyn Monroe calendar hanging over the desk.”

“Marilyn Monroe?” Luke had finally captured Whip’s attention.

Unsure why Whip had picked up on this particular, Luke took his time answering. “Right. The real Norma Jean, circa 1955.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Whip heaved himself out of the swivel chair. “What do you say we ride over to Smitty’s right now to follow up with Carrie Smith? The two of us together can wear her down.”

Luke’s spirits brightened. “Why this change of heart?”

Whip jangled his car keys. “Did you know I collect Marilyn Monroe memorabilia?”

“Actually I didn’t,” Luke said, wondering at this turn of good luck.

“Not that I think dealing with Ms. Smith will be easy,” Whip said.

“Of course not,” Luke agreed as he followed Whip to the parking lot.

With Whip at the wheel of the company van, they headed into the center of town, where renovations were continuing apace. As Whip turned sharply in to Smitty’s, they both spotted a dog drinking out of a blue plastic dishpan on the side of the building near the restroom doors. A bell sounded faintly from inside the garage as the van ran over the rubber signal beside the pumps, but as usual when Luke stopped by, there was no sign of Carrie Smith. This time, however, the doors to the garage bays were closed, as was the one leading to Carrie’s office, and there was no sign of Hub.

“Well, that’s a hell of a note,” Whip said after a cursory glance around. “The place is deserted.” He drove slowly past the building before backing up so they could see inside. “Could I get a view of the calendar if I peeked in the window?”

“Probably not. It’s hung over Carrie Smith’s desk, which is around a corner.”

“All right, we’ve ridden all the way over here for nothing. I say we go to Dolly’s and drown my curiosity,” Whip proposed.

“Wait a minute,” Luke said, his attention distracted by the dog meandering alongside the number two gas pump. “That dog over there looks as if it might be gagging on something.” The animal in question, hardly more than a pup, flopped down in the dust between the gas pumps and lowered its head to its paws. It gazed at them with eyes that were enormously dark and soulful.

“It looks fine to me,” Whip said with considerable lack of sympathy.

Luke jumped out of the van. “Maybe it’s just hungry or scared.”

“Oh, sure. That dog’s terrified. Observe how it’s lying there wagging its tail in sheer fright.”

Luke knelt and held his hand out so the dog could sniff it. “Come on,” he coaxed. “You’re going to let me pet you, aren’t you?” This produced a tentative lick of his fingers.

Whip was getting antsy. He called out the window, “Luke, stay away from that dog. She might have rabies or something.”

Luke paid no attention. The animal wasn’t exactly what you’d term peppy, but then, neither was anything else in Yewville.

“Luke! Hey, man, come on.” Whip revved the engine a couple of times to emphasize the urgency of his request.

Luke ignored him. The dog was drooling, probably just water she hadn’t swallowed. She flopped over on her back, squirming in ecstasy when Luke scratched her stomach. If this was Carrie Smith’s dog, shame on her for leaving such a winsome animal here to get run over or worse.

The dog licked Luke’s hand when he stopped petting her, and he couldn’t resist those big liquid-brown eyes. Beguiled by her friendliness, Luke made a quick decision.

“C’mon, girl,” he said.

“What are you doing?” Whip yelled.

“I’m taking the dog with us,” Luke answered. At his call, the dog stood up and obediently trotted after him.

“You don’t even know that dog. And you sure can’t keep him at that rental house where you’re staying.”

“This is a her, not a him, and I’ll bring her back here after she’s had a square meal.” There wasn’t any food around, just the dishpan filled with water. Personally, he’d put the dog’s owner in jail for neglecting the animal, even though said owner was blond and had a beautiful set of legs, not to mention considerable other assets. But no matter how gorgeous she was, Carrie shouldn’t go off and leave a dog to fend for itself.

“The people who own your house specified no pets,” Whip reminded him with the defeated attitude of someone who understood that he was slinging weak shots in a losing battle.

“No one has to find out I’ve had an overnight guest,” Luke said, opening the sliding door of the van and placing his hands on both sides of the dog’s rump to shove her in.

“She’s probably got fleas,” Whip retorted. “If I have to pay to fumigate that house, I’m going to be mad as hell.”

“I don’t see a single flea,” Luke said.

“You don’t necessarily see fleas. You feel their bites eventually,” Whip explained with great patience. The dog hopped up on the backseat of the van and faced front, as Luke got in and buckled his seat belt.

“That’s it, girl, settle down,” Luke said unnecessarily, refusing to comment on the flea situation, if there was one.

“She smells,” Whip complained.

“She’s a dog, Whip. That’s the way dogs are supposed to smell.”

Whip threw the van into gear and wheeled onto Palmetto Street. “We were going to stop for a beer. Now, don’t walk up to the bartender at Dolly’s with that dog. ‘Have you ever heard the story about the talking dog?’ you’ll say. And he’ll say—”

“Oh, can it, Whip,” Luke said in disgust. “This is a fine animal we’ve got here. She’s much too smart to talk, aren’t you, girl? Talking only gets people in trouble. Anyway, we can swing by my house and you can drop both of us off.”

“Yeah, Luke, whatever,” was Whip’s gruff reply.

Luke patted the dog on the head. “Hey, Whip,” he said, an idea forming in his head. “How about if we draw up a contract and I hand it to Carrie Smith personally when I bring the dog back tomorrow? With her name on it and everything?”

“Not a bad idea,” Whip allowed. “Once she sees the offer in writing, that could change her mind, due partly, of course, to your movie-star charm, Luke.” He shot Luke a calculating grin.

“My so-called charm and a couple of dollars won’t even buy me a latte at the Eat Right Café,” Luke scoffed good-naturedly.

“They have latte?” Whip asked on a note of hope.

“Doubtful,” Luke said. And even though he was angry with Carrie about leaving the dog wandering around alone, he was sure he wouldn’t be able to stay that way for long.

A FEW DAYS after the casting call, Carrie had barely started to pick tomatoes and peppers in her garden, when the phone rang inside the house. She let it ring. Family and friends knew to call back or stop by Smitty’s if they were phoning about anything important.

She lifted the basket of vegetables and hurried to the back gate of the white picket fence, heavy with Carolina jasmine. On the other side of the fence was the house, a big rambling white Victorian with a deep porch hugging the front and sides. In the back, a screened porch jutted past a yew hedge, ending just short of a sundial on one side of the path, a birdbath on the other.

Carrie was grateful to whoever designed the home place back in the early 1900s; the porch overhang kept out the hot summer sun, and tall windows admitted a fresh breeze. Seventeen-foot-high ceilings coaxed hot air up above the inhabitants, who at present totaled only two—Carrie and her resident rabbit.

After setting the baskets on the big table where her great-grandmother had served meals to farmworkers long ago, she wiped her sweaty forehead with one arm. She’d have to hurry if she wanted to get to the garage at her usual time and set these vegetables out to sell. They brought in a few extra dollars from customers, and every cent counted these days.

The kitchen phone rang again, and this time she answered on the first ring.

“This is Mike Calphus,” said the young voice on the other end.

“Oh, Mike,” Carrie replied, wondering what was up. Mike was just ten, and she felt a worrisome niggle of alarm at the sound of his voice.

“Carrie, Shasta wasn’t at the garage this morning. Do you know where she is?”

“Why, no, Mike.”

“Me and Jamie, we looked all over. Hub wasn’t there yet.” Mike sounded as though he might cry.

The Calphus boys had become mightily attached to Shasta in the short time that she’d been hanging around. They’d been stopping by in the mornings on their way to baseball practice to give her treats and play catch with her out back of the garage.

“Oh, Mike, I’m sorry. Tell you what, we’ll hunt for Shasta as soon as I get there, I promise.”

“Mom went to work, and Grandma doesn’t drive, but if you ride us around the neighborhood and we holler out the windows, maybe Shasta will come.” Mike still sounded perilously near tears.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes or so,” Carrie said. She hung up in dismay. Last weekend, the boys had carried the dog home with them, but Ginger Calphus, a single mother, had put her foot down and refused to keep her. The boys’ grandmother, who lived next door, had too many other responsibilities to take on a dog, and despite Carrie’s best efforts, no one else had offered a home.

Killer, Carrie’s lop-eared rabbit, so named because of his aggression toward almost everyone but her, hopped into the kitchen and wiggled his nose hopefully. “If it weren’t for you,” she told him sternly, “Shasta would live with me.” Carrie had developed a true affection for the pup, but Killer would not have much chance of survival if the two ever found themselves in the same room together, even though the rabbit owed his name to a deadly hind-leg kick.

Leaving Killer happily chomping on a newly harvested lettuce leaf, Carrie headed for town. She called ahead on her cell phone to inform Hub that he’d be doing the brake job and drove straight to the Calphus house. Ginger Calphus had been a classmate of Carrie’s and lived next door to the house where she’d grown up. This simplified child-care arrangements for Ginger, who had been divorced for a couple of years and worked at the bank with Joyanne. Ginger’s parents, Edna Earle and Fred Hindershot, kept an eye on her two boys during the day, and Carrie stopped to ask Edna Earle if it was okay for Mike and Jamie to come with her to look for the dog.

“Sure, go ahead. They do love that dog, but Ginger’s devoted to those cats of hers and can’t consider adopting another animal. I’d give Shasta a home myself, but Fred says I don’t need a pet, considering that I’m busy enough taking care of Mike and Jamie and him, too.” Fred had retired on disability and could barely get around anymore.

“I know, Edna Earle. I always figured that I’d find the perfect person to adopt Shasta if I let her hang around long enough. She’s a sweet little old thing.”

“Well, maybe she’ll turn up.” Edna Earle called into the house, “Mike! Jamie! Carrie is here. Y’all come on out.”

The boys erupted from the house, and Carrie held the SUV door open for them as they swarmed in.

“Can we drive down Begonia Street? Sometimes Shasta goes down there to drink from the creek,” Jamie said, sounding worried.

“Of course we can,” Carrie assured him. “Then we’ll check Memorial Park and make sure she isn’t having a good old time chasing ducks around the pond.”

They drove slowly down Begonia, waving to Mrs. McGrath, who was kneeling in the dirt, deadheading her marigolds. On the corner of Cedar Lane they stopped to talk to Jason Plummer, a high-school athlete who was jogging around the block. He hadn’t seen Shasta, but he promised to notify Carrie if he did.

Finally, after driving up and down every street in Yewville calling the dog’s name, Carrie gave up.

“Maybe Shasta found a real home,” Mike suggested.

“Yeah,” Jamie said mournfully. “With her own yard and everything. But how are we going to play catch with her if we don’t know where she lives?”

Carrie had her own private concern, namely that the dog had wandered out to the bypass and met with a gruesome fate that she’d rather not discover while in the company of two small boys.

“Tell you what,” she said. “Let’s get some ice cream.” She hoped she didn’t sound as forlorn to the boys as she did to herself.

“I’d rather find Shasta,” Mike said, showing a hint of stubbornness, but Carrie convinced him to accompany them inside the Eat Right, anyway. They all sat down in a booth, where the boys ordered rocky-road ice-cream cones and Carrie asked for a dish of chocolate and strawberry. The ice cream distracted them from thinking about their failure to turn up any evidence of the missing dog.

Kathy Lou Watts, the waitress behind the counter, was in a cheerful mood. “I hear Luke Mason stopped by your gas station a couple of Sundays ago,” she said chattily.

“He did,” Carrie answered. She watched helplessly as ice cream dripped onto Jamie’s spotless blue T-shirt.

“Is he as handsome as he is on the screen?” Kathy Lou asked.

“Handsomer,” Carrie answered without really thinking about it. “Imagine! Luke Mason himself was right here in the Eat Right this morning. The girls on the early shift said he ate eggs and bacon for breakfast, just like any ordinary person. And link sausage. He must really like sausage ’cause he asked for three orders to take out.” Kathy Lou scrubbed energetically at a stain on the counter with one corner of a damp dish towel.

“I suppose just about everybody around here will get a gander at Luke Mason before they’re through filming that blamed movie,” Carrie said.

“I heard that the casting director is going to interview local people for minor speaking parts,” Kathy Lou told her.

“Is that so?” Carrie asked with little interest. Kathy Lou talked nonstop; how she could run on.

Kathy Lou stopped scrubbing and leaned toward Carrie confidentially. “My niece is going to try to get herself a part. Wouldn’t that be something? Mikaila Parker from Yewville, South Carolina, in an honest-to-goodness Hollywood movie?”

“Mmm,” Carrie said absently, wondering if she should close the station and haul Hub with her out to the bypass after she dropped the boys off at their grandparents’ house. She and Hub could call Shasta; they could whistle. Maybe they’d even find her alive and well, thumping her tail in someone else’s dust.

Kathy Lou was still talking. “You get paid by the day. For being in the movie, I mean. If they pick you, that is. Big Jessie is going to take Little Jessie for an interview so she can sing “Tomorrow” from that play. Annie. Little Jessie already got her a part in the parade twirling her baton, but Big Jessie says she’s got more talent than that.”

“Um, yes, indeed,” Carrie murmured, though the specter of Little Jessie decked out as Little Orphan Annie and twirling her baton while singing an off-key rendition of “Tomorrow” tended to curdle the ice cream in her stomach.

“You should aim for a speaking part, Carrie. You and Dixie. Either one of you girls is pretty enough to be a movie star. And Dixie’s already been chosen to be a beauty contestant, I hear.”

“She can get off work at the real-estate office to be in the movie, but I have a garage to run. Jamie, hurry up and finish your cone. Your grandma is going to worry about what happened to us.”

“Like I’m worried what happened to Shasta,” Jamie said disconsolately. He kicked his heels against the bottom of his seat.

“I wonder where that dog’s gone. Dog gone. Doggone, Jamie, get it?” Mike said.

This ended the morning on a slightly cheerful note. The boys wiped their hands obediently with the damp napkin that Carrie dipped in her water glass and uncomplainingly left their seats when she said it was time to leave.

“Bye, Carrie,” Kathy Lou called after them.

“Bye,” Carrie called back.

Carrie shepherded the boys out of the restaurant. She certainly didn’t want a speaking part in the movie. But she sure would have liked to know where Shasta had disappeared to.

LATER THE SAME AFTERNOON, Carrie was setting her vegetables out on the table in front of the station, when she spotted the Ferrari coming down the street, convertible top down. The car didn’t really register at first. She was sick at heart because there was still no sign of Shasta. Out on the bypass, she and Hub had explored every cul-de-sac, but they had seen no sign of the pup. At least they hadn’t found her dead on the side of the road.

The Ferrari’s turn signal was blinking, and the car slowed in front of the station. Carrie rushed through her task, meaning to go inside. Luke Mason could pump his own gas. She didn’t want to be involved in any discussion about what had happened out behind the refreshment stand the other day, nor did she think it would be a good idea to engage in more kissing. The trouble was that she wanted to. But she wasn’t going to give in to unwieldy desires. She had her principles.

She started inside, telling herself that it wasn’t the man who was the big attraction, only his car. She sneaked a peek at the Ferrari out of the corners of her eyes. She couldn’t believe it when there was Shasta, sitting on the front seat big as you please.

“Shasta!” she cried, so glad to see the dog that she wanted to hug her. While Luke Mason gazed at her from behind his sunglasses, she hurried over. It was Shasta, all right, no mistake about that. No mistake about Luke, either. “What are you doing with this dog?” she demanded as he got out of his car in a leisurely manner. He wasn’t smiling, so maybe he’d had the same second thoughts as she had about that kiss.

“I’m bringing the dog back. How could you leave her outside after you closed for the day? Something could have happened to her.” He sounded angry.

She glared at him. “She’s not my dog. I feed her and give her water, and I’m trying to find her a good home. I don’t suppose you’d be interested,” she suggested pointedly.

At that, Luke backed off a bit. “I can’t have a dog, but I can certainly provide temporary quarters when an animal is being mistreated,” he said self-righteously.

“Shasta is not mistreated. She’s homeless, that’s all. Has she been with you all night? I’ve searched everywhere for her.” She figured she had at least as much right to be angry as Luke Mason.