Читать книгу All-American Baby - Peg Sutherland - Страница 6

PROLOGUE

Hope Springs, Virginia

“TOOD GRUNKEMEIER, you’re ornery as an old rattlesnake today.”

That was Whiskey Rowlett, a regular at Fudgie’s Barbershop whenever he wasn’t out for a few weeks pursuing the interests that had earned him his nickname.

Tood eyed Whiskey. Whiskey wasn’t known for his sweet disposition, either, so it was no surprise Tood’s complaints about the heat had struck Whiskey the wrong way. “Rattlesnakes don’t bother you if you don’t bother them,” Tood pointed out.

“Besides, Tood’s right,” said another of the regulars, who liked to keep peace at Fudgie’s because his daughter-in-law and three grandkids had moved in with him and the missus, making peace a scarce commodity in his life at the moment. “It’s too dang hot for May.”

“’Specially if you’ve got a houseful, eh, Eb?”

Eben Monk nodded ruefully and conversation drifted off to kids and approaching summertime. Tood’s attention strayed. He didn’t know much about kids. The last kid he knew anything about was his nephew and he’d had bad news about the boy this very day, from the detective hired by Tood’s attorney. His nephew was dead. Found in an abandoned warehouse in Omaha, dead from an apparent drug overdose. Thirty-four and he’d already beat his old uncle to the promised land. And the capper was that nobody seemed to know what had happened to the boy’s teenage daughter.

“Lookie there!”

Everybody in the barbershop turned in response to Whiskey’s excitement. Whiskey was pointing at the TV mounted in the corner, its sound muted to a low murmur. On the screen, a dark-haired young woman was being scurried from a jet to a limousine waiting across the tarmac.

“That’s Melina Somerset,” Whiskey said.

Eb and Fudgie took two steps closer to the television.

“Naw. Can’t be.”

“The devil it’s not.” Whiskey grabbed the remote and inched up the sound.

“How do you know?” Eb asked. “Ain’t nobody seen a picture of her for I don’t know how long—fifteen years, maybe.”

“I know ’cause I seen it on the noon news outta Roanoke. Announcer said it was her.”

“Then what’s she doing here?” Fudgie said.

“She ain’t here, you old fool. She’s in San Francisco.”

“What for?”

“Well, now, if I knew that, I reckon I’d be putting up with Jerry Springer’s fool questions instead of yours, wouldn’t I?”

“You’re cross, Whiskey. Just as cross as can be. You ought to go off on another one of your benders. You know that? We’re tired of listening to you.”

Then the barbershop grew quiet as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the young woman. She was dark and thin, with eyes too large for anyone’s face beneath the brim of a man’s gray felt fedora. The collar of her raincoat was turned up, but neither it nor the hat had managed to hide her delicate beauty.

Someone in the barbershop whistled low as one of the men surrounding the young woman moved in to block her from the camera. She disappeared into the limousine and the camera panned to a female reporter who did not look nearly as elegant in her raincoat.

“Dang! Imagine that,” Fudgie said. “Melina Somerset. How old’s she now? ’Bout twenty?”

“Musta been more than a dozen years since they wiped out her mother,” Eb said. “She was just a little one then.”

“Her mother and her sister,” Whiskey said. “She’s twenty-six now. Said so on the noon news.”

“Low-life scum.” Fudgie sat in the empty barber chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “Never did catch ’em, did they?”

The debate raged about whether justice had been done for the people who had killed Melina Somerset’s mother and sister, but Tood didn’t much care. Oh, he knew how the country felt about the mysterious young woman who had apparently arrived in San Francisco the evening before. Melina Somerset, daughter of computer magnate Tom Somerset, was like America’s royalty. And all the more intriguing because she’d lived in seclusion, her whereabouts shrouded in mystery, ever since the tragedy had struck her family. Tom Somerset had paid a big price for his enormous wealth.

At least, Tood thought, Somerset had his daughter. Whereas Tood had nobody.

Seventy-one and a bad ticker marking his days and not a soul in the world to care. The only one on God’s green earth who even shared his blood was a runaway fourteen-year-old. He supposed he could send the detective off on her trail now. But he had about as much chance of ever seeing her again as he had of seeing Melina Somerset walking through the door at Fudgie’s, that’s what Tood reckoned.

Yep, he was going to die alone. That was about the size of it.