it.”
“That’s for sure.”
He was a big man around sixty. Overweight, with a thick, ornery crop of yellow-gray, strawlike hair and square face and rosy cheeks—like a sixty-year-old little boy with big ears. She saw a face she could only describe as accessible. Open. He had friendly blue eyes set in the crinkles of age, a double chin and an engaging smile—one tooth missing to the back of the right side. “I got biscuits and gravy,” he said proudly.
“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “Just cold.”
“You been outside long?”
Oh-oh. He suspected she was homeless. The army surplus fashion, the backpack, the ball cap. “No. Well, maybe a little. I’ve a room at that roadside place about six blocks from here and I woke up freezing. No heat. And the motel office wasn’t open yet.”
“Behind that scrap heap and junkyard?”
“That’s the one.”
“Charlie is not generous with his guests,” the man in the booth said with a heavy Spanish accent. “You should say he give you the night free.”
“He should,” the man behind the counter said. “But he won’t. They don’t come much tighter than Charlie.”
The man in the booth folded his paper, stood up and stretched. Then he took an apron off a hook and put it on. Ah, the cook, she realized. “Um—are you done with that paper?” she asked him.
“Help yourself, mija.” He proceeded around the counter to the grill and began heating and scraping it. The sounds of breakfast being started filled the diner and soon the smells followed. Jennifer settled herself into the same booth so she could spread the paper out in front of her.
A little while passed, then the owner brought the coffeepot to her. “Have any interest in breakfast yet?” he asked.
“Really, I’m not very hungry.”
“You don’t mind me saying so—you look a little on the lean side.”
“I’m just lucky that way.”
“If it’s a matter of money—”
She was startled. “I can pay,” she said, maybe a little too proudly. Truly, if he had any idea how much money was stuffed inside the Kate Spade bag that was stuffed inside the backpack, he’d be stunned. Not to mention the jewelry. The dawning came slowly. Don’t protest too much, she told herself. It was perfectly all right if people thought she was a little down on her luck. And it wasn’t as though she didn’t know the role—she was intimately acquainted with it. “I might have something in a while. I just want to warm up. And have a look at the paper.”
“Sure thing. Just say the word when you’re ready. Adolfo has started breakfast.”
She drank two more cups of coffee while she combed the paper and found nothing about the Nobles or herself. How long would Nick get away with pretending his wife was out of the country? Surely someone would begin to miss Barbara! Her masseuse, for example.
But who would miss you, Jennifer? she asked herself. Would her boss raise an alarm? Ah, her boss actually introduced her to Nick, whom he would probably call. “Nick,” he would say. “Jennifer didn’t come back to work. Do you have any idea…?” “Oh, Artie, my fault,” Nick would say. “I should’ve called you. She skipped in Las Vegas with most of the cash in my wallet. Met someone with a bigger yacht, I guess. You know these bimbos.”
And the women in the office who didn’t like her would be just as glad she was gone. She had eschewed the friendships of women to avoid the inevitable jealousy. And, to be free of the commitments friendship brought so she could be available at the whim of her current gentleman friend. Nick, like the others before him, didn’t like to plan in advance; he expected her to be ready at a moment’s notice. She had kept herself virtually friendless. For the first time in ten years, she regretted that.
Oh, why didn’t I go to the police right away! Too afraid. Afraid that, unable to prove anything, they wouldn’t believe her. They wouldn’t protect her, and before very long she would meet with some unfortunate accident. Or maybe she’d leave the country, like Barbara Noble….
A shadow cast over her newspaper caused her to jump, and there he was again, coffeepot in hand. “Ah, I maybe ought to say I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to make light of your—you know—hair. Was it, ah, chemo? Something like that?”
She had a momentary temptation to pretend to have had cancer, but she didn’t dare tempt fate that far. Her head bald, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, she probably looked horrible to the old guy. What to tell him? But then, did she have to admit to anything at all? This was a diner, for God’s sake. Not a shrink’s office or police interrogation.
The look on his face was so sweet. “You just worry about people all the time, don’t you?”
“No, I—” He stopped and seemed to gather himself up. “I worry about people,” he admitted.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m not sick and I’m not homeless.” I am merely a brainless bimbo on the run from a murderer, she wanted to add.
“Good,” he said. He warmed her coffee again before turning away.
The drizzle outside suddenly turned into a relentless splatter against the window. She walked to the front of the diner to look out and was startled to see an elderly woman with a walker and a dog struggling up the curb. The wind and rain lashed at her so hard she almost lost her footing. Jennifer bolted out the door to help her. She hadn’t even given the dog a thought, and maybe that was a good thing because she might’ve hesitated. The dog growled, but not convincingly. Jennifer grasped the woman at the elbow to steady her and told the dog to hush.
The other thing she hadn’t thought about was letting the dog in the diner, which she also did. Well, the dog was with the old woman and both were drenched. Adolfo came running with a couple of dish towels and some rapid-fire Spanish, but he wasn’t fast enough. The dog, an old and overweight yellow Lab, immediately gave a vigorous shake.
“Aiiee, Alicia,” he said. “I’ll be mopping all the morning.”
“Oh, Alice, you’re going to get us kicked out of here for sure. Morning, Buzz.”
“Louise,” he said. “Don’t you have a lick of sense? You shouldn’t be out in this weather.”
“It’s not a hurricane, for God’s sake,” she grumbled.
“I thought maybe you’d stay home today. It’s awful out there. I’ll get your tea.”
She looked into Jennifer’s eyes and said, “That was nice of you. And brave—how did you know Alice wouldn’t chew off your arm?”
She continued to lead the woman into the diner and pulled out a chair at one of the few tables. “I’m not brave, but maybe stupid. I didn’t even think about the dog till she growled.” She gave her a pat. “Alice, is it? How do you do?”
“Well, fortunately, she’s sweet as honey—”
“And as old as God,” Buzz added, bringing a cup and saucer to the table. He sniffed the air. “Nothing smells quite as bad as that, does it? Wet dog?”
Things in the diner seemed to settle into a routine that everyone but Jennifer was accustomed to. The dog lay under the table at her mistress’s feet, Louise pulled her own paper out of the large satchel hidden under her coat, Adolfo muttered in Spanish as he mopped the floor inside the door, and Buzz was putting out coffee cups along the counter. Mopping done, Adolfo was back at the grill, cooking and whistling. Louise seemed to be humming along, albeit off-key.
Jennifer went back to her paper and coffee. It wasn’t very long before he was back again. Buzz. This time he had a plate. Unable to resist the temptation to feed her, he brought scrambled eggs, wheat toast and sausage. He put it down in the middle of her paper. “You