“I’m not gone yet.”
Yeah, but she would be. They always left eventually. He’d just always recovered and moved on. He wasn’t sure he could this time.
AS SOON AS SYDNEY was safely buckled into her seat, she wasted no time in locating her cell phone, which she’d tucked into her pocket, and turned it on. A couple of minutes later she had a decent signal and she punched in her father’s office number. She was pleased when he answered. At least he was going in to work without her badgering him.
“Hey, Dad, it’s me!”
“Sydney? Jeez Louise, girlie, I been worried sick about you. You okay?”
“Fine, I’m fine. I was stuck in a place that didn’t have any phones and no cell service. Aunt Carol called and told you not to worry, didn’t she?”
“You kidding? We were both worried sick. You better call her and let her know you’re alive. She’s minutes away from calling the National Guard.”
Oh, great. “I’ll call her in a minute. So what’s up with you?”
“Same as usual. Bills and more bills.”
“Don’t do anything with them,” Sydney cautioned her father. “Just stack them up and leave them on my desk. I have a system. I’ll deal with everything soon as I’m back.”
“Yeah, but they’re threatening to cut off the Internet.”
“They won’t cut it off.” Not till the end of the month, anyway, and she’d send them a check by then.
Lowell chuckled, an unusual sound for him. “You sound just like your mother sometimes. She used to juggle the bills like a cardsharp.”
Sydney considered that a high compliment. Usually all she heard from Lowell was how she couldn’t do anything as well as her mother. He often thanked her for stepping in to help at Baines & Baines and never intentionally insulted her. It was just that he missed his wife so much and each thing Sydney did that was slightly different from the way Shirley did it was a reminder of her absence.
“So, other than the bills, how are you?” Sydney asked.
He sighed. “Oh, you know, just passing time.”
“Working on any new cases?”
“Found a guy who’d lost track of a security deposit. Made a whopping fifty bucks.”
“Well, that’s something.”
Really, it was encouraging. Usually his depression didn’t allow him to focus the way he used to. He rarely brought any case to its conclusion. But it had been almost a year since her mother’s death, and Sydney was ever hopeful that with a few nudges from her, Lowell would catch the heir-finding fever again.
“I’ll try to get home tonight,” Sydney said. “If I can’t, I’ll call.”
They said their goodbyes and Sydney disconnected, her heart aching. When she returned to New York, her father would have to file for bankruptcy and she dreaded breaking the news to him.
“Everything okay?” Russ asked.
“Hmm? Oh, it’s just my dad. He sounds really sad and lonely and not much interested in work. I remember when he and my mom used to race each other to the phone. They always competed to see who could bring in the most business each month. They put up a bar chart on the wall and crowed each time they got to fill in another square. Now he doesn’t even bother to answer the phone. He just lets it roll to voice mail or lets me handle everything. He won’t tackle any of the challenging cases anymore.”
Her voice caught in her throat and she quickly swallowed back tears. No more, not now. It was thinking about the bar chart that did it. She’d finally taken it down last month and Lowell hadn’t spoken to her for a solid week.
“I’m sorry,” Russ said softly. “I wish I knew what to say.”
He could say he would accept his inheritance. Money didn’t solve everything, but it would be a helluva lot easier to deal with her father’s grief if they didn’t have to dodge bill collectors.
Sydney quickly called Aunt Carol and get her voice mail. Probably having her hair done, Sydney thought.
Next she called her travel agent. Most everyone made their reservations online these days, but Baines & Baines had been using Debra Grogan’s agency for twenty or more years. Debra was a miracle worker and even in the most trying circumstances could usually figure out a way to get her clients from point A to point B.
“Kiddo, I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” Debra said after searching fruitlessly for a flight from Austin to New York that departed that evening. “Because of the weather delays down there, everything’s booked solid. Earliest I can get you on a plane is ten-thirty-two tomorrow morning, and even then, you’ll be routed through Timbuktu.”
“Okay, go ahead and book it,” Sydney said, not all that disappointed. She didn’t want to have to rush, anyway, and Lowell had sounded reasonably calm.
“I figured you might have trouble getting a flight,” Russ said. “First hint of ice or snow in Texas and everything shuts down.”
“It’s okay. I can visit with my aunt-I hardly ever see her.” Then Sydney happened to look down at herself. “But I can’t go to her place looking like this. She’s one of those proper Southern ladies who wouldn’t dream of stepping outside to collect the mail without a perfect manicure and her face fully made up.” Sydney examined her ragged nails and chipped nail polish and moaned. “What have I done to myself?”
“I happen to think you look pretty good.” Which was a little surprising. It was the fancy clothes, the elegant hair and the long, polished nails that had first drawn him to Sydney. He’d never imagined he would find a woman wearing his cast-off clothes and a hairdo like a bird’s nest to be exciting. But, honestly, she was the most exciting woman he’d ever known no matter what she was wearing.
“Thanks, but you’ve had sex with me. That completely invalidates any and all opinions.”
Russ laughed. “I’ve got an idea. Since you don’t have to leave till tomorrow, why don’t you stay on another day? I’ll take you out for a first-class steak dinner, dancing, the works. I’ll even buy you a new dress. You can stay with me.”
“You wouldn’t mind?” she asked, thrilled, as well as blatantly curious about where he lived.
“Mind?” He laughed.
Sydney smiled. “All right, then, I’ll stay. Dancing is probably out, but I suppose a steak dinner is the least you can do after I was forced to endure a breakfast of succotash and pork-and-beans.”
“The food wasn’t all bad.”
“Not once you were there to cook. But it wasn’t steak.”
They’d reached Main Street. Russ pulled up behind Sydney’s car. “Go check out of the B and B and meet me back at the store. You can follow me home and we’ll get all gussied up at my place and we can paint the town red. Well, as red as Linhart gets.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
After retrieving her purse from Russ’s backpack, Sydney waved goodbye, then drove back to Gibson Street to the Periwinkle. The Milhaus sisters were kind enough not to charge her for the extra nights, since the only thing enjoying the B and B’s hospitality was her suitcase.
“It’s not your fault you were stranded by the storm,” Miss Gail said, holding one of the fat cats and stroking it. “We enjoyed having you and we hope you’ll come back.”
“Maybe I will.” The possibility cheered her.
She pulled up in front of the Linhart General Store once again, but she didn’t go inside because she spotted something that interested her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the Cut ’n’ Curl was just across the street and down the block, and Sydney needed a manicure in the worst way. Hopefully, someone at the salon knew how to do nails and would take her as a walk-in. If she didn’t get a manicure in the next twenty minutes she was going to go crazy.
Walking into the Cut ’n’ Curl was like taking a trip back to 1962. The salon was all done in pink and aqua, with three stylist stations in the front room and a row of old-fashioned hair dryers in the back. The smell of permanent solution hung heavy in the air, as did copious amounts of Aquanet hairspray.
Sydney had scarcely walked through the door when she was accosted by a woman with the biggest bleached- blond hair she’d ever seen. “Well helloooooo there,” the woman said. Despite her retro hairstyle, she was entrancingly beautiful. She had big, dark brown eyes, flawless skin and a long Audrey Hepburn neck.
She also had breasts the size of cantaloupes, the cleavage of which she displayed proudly in a low-cut, tight
