The two old men collapsed against each other in gales of raucous laughter while Angie frowned and shook her head. “Phone bank,” she repeated more loudly. “For Joanna Brady. For the election.”
“Oh,” Archie said. “That’s right. The election. Isn’t that today? You voted yet?”
Everyone in the room shook their heads. For the first time in her life, Angie Kellogg had actually wanted to vote. She had even found a candidate she wanted to vote for-but she had come to town too late to register for this election.
The guy at the booth waved to her again. She went over to him, expecting him to order another drink. “Would it be possible to use the phone?” he asked.
Angie Kellogg studied the man Don Frost had called Burton Kimball. She was gratified to realize her first impression had been right. The man really was a lawyer. At first glance, she had assumed he must be better than the lawyers she had known, the ones who had plied their trade by bailing whores out of jail, their retainers paid by pimps or drug dealers. But she had been wrong. If Burton Kimball was defending a child molester, a man who screwed his own daughter, then he was no better than the lawyers she had known before. In fact maybe he was worse.
Local?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
Bobo didn’t generally allow customers to use the house phone. An Outgoing call could be made only from the phone in the back room. Angie’s first instinct was to tell this pervert-loving bastard to take a hike and go make his precious phone call from a pay phone, preferably one in the middle of a busy street.
But then another thought came to her. Hadn’t Don Frost just told her that the attorney’s big-deal trial was due in court the next day? What would happen if the attorney for the defense was too damn hung over to hold his head up? Keeping him out of court probably wasn’t realistic, Angie decided, but she could maybe make him wish he’d stayed home. Even a novice bartender was capable of inflicting that much damage.
“You can use the phone in the back room,” she told him with a beguiling smile. “The number’s on it in case someone needs to call you back. By the way, what’s your name?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer. “I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”
“Burton Kimball,” he said, but he dropped his voice as though he really didn’t relish the idea of other people hearing him.
Angie held out her hand. “I’m Angie. Glad to meet you, Burton. Welcome to the Blue Moon. Care for another drink? It’s on the house. Sort of an introductory offer.”
“Sure,” Kimball said. “As soon as I make this call.”
When he came back, the new Bloody Mary was waiting in his booth. It seemed quite a bit stronger than the previous ones, and hotter.
Angie Kellogg watched with satisfaction as Burton Kimball stirred the new drink with the stalk of celery and swilled some of it down. His eye brows shot up and down and he made a face as though he was surprised by the extra jolt of Tobasco. But instead of complaining about the extra heat or the extra booze, a triple instead of a double, he nodded his thanks.
Angie smiled in return and returned to looking after her other customers, anticipating with some pleasure the moment when, because he was so drunk, she would be justified in throwing Burton Kimball out into the street. With any kind of luck, he’d have to crawl back down Brewery Gulch on his hands and knees.
“Another?”
“Sure,” Kimball said. “As soon as I make this call.”
As HE drove home to the Rocking P, Harold Patterson found himself in a state of hopefulness that verged on euphoria. It was going to work. Holly would see him. The woman named Amy, who was Holly’s therapist or nurse or whatever, had been genuinely helpful. That was something he had never anticipated. He had built her up in his mind, expecting her to be some kind of monster. Rather than throwing him out of the house as soon as she learned who he was, Amy Baxter had been almost cordial.
He had sat nervously in Cosa Viejo’s long, box beamed living room, waiting for Amy to return from upstairs to tell him whether or not Holly would see him. When she first said Holly wouldn’t be down right away, he had been crushed. Then after learning she would see him later on in the afternoon, he was almost ecstatic.
Talking to Amy had given him some clues as to what he might expect of Holly’s current state of mind. “Don’t be surprised if she acts a little odd” Amy had said. “She has these little spells. They come and go. Sometimes she’s better, sometimes worse.”
No doubt, had the lawyer been there, had either one of the two lawyers been there, Harold was sure things would have gone in a far different fashion. He had been right to go on his own.
But now, with the prospect of finally confronting Holly, he had to break the news to Ivy as well. He had two daughters, and they were going to be neighbors on the Rocking P. if they were going to live in such close proximity then one couldn’t be privy to the terrible secret without the other knowing as well.
Harold pulled into the yard and was relieved to see Ivy’s faded red four-by-four Chevy pickup parked near the front gate. She was home. The only question now was would she listen to him? Would she give him a chance to talk?
Moving stiffly, slowly, Harold climbed out of the Scout just as the front screen door slammed open. A man named Yuri Malakov came out of the house, his arms stacked high with boxes.
“Hey,” Harold said. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
Harold knew the man to be a newly arrived Russian immigrant and a friend of Ivy’s. Marianne Macula, the pastor up at Canyon Methodist Church, had hooked Ivy up with some kind of literacy program. For the past few weeks, the huge Russian and his stack of books had become a constant evening fixture at the Patterson kitchen table.
By day, Malakov worked as a hired hand over at the Robertson place a few miles closer to Tomb stone on Highway 80. By night, he and Ivy studied grammar and vocabulary.
