Last Chance Knit & Stitch (9 page)

There was a small, weed-overgrown garden at the back with a couple of concrete planters that hadn’t seen living plants in some time. Zeph pulled out the remnants of long-dead flowers, then laid down a couple of rags that he’d tucked into his shirt to keep them warm.

He placed the dog on the makeshift bed, then backed into the shadows at the corner of the building. He checked his watch. On Wednesdays and Fridays, Ricki left the bar at ten-thirty.

He didn’t have to wait very long, and he wasn’t surprised when the dog woke up right on cue. The ghost had something to do with that. The critters could see the ghost, even better than Zeph could.

Ricki came walking across the lot on those high-heeled boots she always wore to Dot’s. Before she could
put one foot on the stair leading to her apartment, the dog raised her head and gave a little halfhearted bark.

Ricki gasped in surprise and turned toward the planter. The dog barked again and started shivering.

And that was all it took for the bond to be forged.

Molly ducked out of work on Thursday morning around ten-thirty, just as soon as she’d finished rotating the tires on Clyde McKeller’s Buick. She hurried up the street and into Arlo Boyd’s real estate office.

She probably should have had an appointment, but these were desperate times. Adelle Clarke, his receptionist, looked up from her workstation computer as Molly came through the door.

“Hey,” Molly said, “is Arlo available?”

“He’s back in his office reading the paper and eating his midmorning doughnut. Thursdays are pretty slow. You can go on back.”

Molly headed down a hallway, past a break room, and into Arlo’s standard-issue real estate office. The room had a faux-wood desk, blue carpet, and a conference table where Arlo helped his clients make deals and offers. Arlo had once been a really big dude. Big enough to be a linebacker on the 1990 Rebels dream team. But that had been a long time ago. His love of doughnuts and cigarettes had caught up to him. He was balding and paunchy and red-faced, and he was headed for an early coronary just like Ira. She caught him finishing a big, juicy Bavarian cream doughnut.

“Hey, Arlo,” Molly said. “I only have a minute. I’ve gotta get back to work. But I wanted to find out how much it would cost to lease the old Coca-Cola building.”

Arlo used a paper towel to dab the Bavarian cream that
had leaked from the corner of his mouth. “Sweet Jesus, what is going on in this town? That building’s been vacant for decades, and now, suddenly, in the space of three days, I’ve got two people wanting to lease it and a third who’s about to make an offer to buy it.”

“What? Someone is buying it? Who?”

“Well, the offer isn’t all the way in yet. To be honest. And I’m not at liberty to disclose that. But it doesn’t matter because the building is no longer available for lease. It’s been leased for the next three months.”

“Three months? You leased it for only three months?”

He speared the last few doughnut crumbs on his Styrofoam plate and conveyed them to his mouth with his finger. “Well,” he said after savoring the last morsels with half-closed eyes, “the building’s been vacant for a decade. I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. In fact, I would have taken the horse even if he’d been toothless and ready for the glue factory.”

“But that building’s mine.”

“Uh, no, not really. The building belongs to the First Bank of South Carolina, and they’ve been trying to off-load it for years. And it would appear that there is a buyer for it. Although the buyer is a mite ticked off that it’s been leased.”

“Who did you lease it to?”

“Simon Wolfe.”

“Dang!” She stomped her foot, turned around, paced three steps and then back. She wanted to put her fist through the wall. But that would probably hurt. A lot. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“Uh, don’t do that Molly. Stone would have to arrest you, and it would break Coach’s heart.”

“Ha. This is not funny.”

“Well, honey, you just bide your time for a while and maybe someone else will kill him for you. For a dude who’s been here for less than a week, he sure has managed to tick off a lot of people. You take my aunt Rose? She has a brand-new Ford Fusion, and she’s going to have to drive eighty miles to get that car its warranty service. Sure is a sad time.”

“Then why did you lease the building to him?”

“Easy. He’s a teammate. And the way I remember it, we wouldn’t have ever made it to the state championship without his foot. So I owed him one. And the building was empty, and he didn’t even want me to do any cleaning or upgrading, which was kind of a godsend because the place is a mess. And also, the bank would have been furious with me if I hadn’t.”

Molly made an inarticulate sound that verged on a Rebel yell.

“Honey,” Arlo said, “relax. Maybe I can find you something else. What are you looking for?”

“Garage space. Someplace to start a restoration business.”

He snorted. “Well, you just wait and Wolfe Ford will eventually be available. After Ira’s family strips it clean.”

She glared at him.

“All right,” he said with a professional grin. “I’ll just do a little search for you and see what might be available. How’s that?”

Molly let Arlo appease her. “All right.”

“Good, I know where to find you. I’ll give you a call tomorrow sometime, okay?”

“Okay.”

She turned and trudged right out of the real estate office, across the street, and up into Eugene Hanks’s law office. If she was going to spend the money to rent commercial space, she had better get her hands on the Shelby, and fast.

But when she found out that Eugene couldn’t represent her, on account of the fact that he was already representing Simon Wolfe, she was, really and truly, ready to commit murder.

O
n Saturday, a week after his father’s untimely death, Simon sat amid the flowers in his mother’s perennial garden. He’d spent the last few days making himself useful by weeding the bed, edging the garden’s border, and staking up foxgloves and delphiniums. This morning, he was hiding out with his sketch pad, doing studies of the flowers while Mother got ready for her garden club meeting.

The gardening aside, he felt like a prisoner in this house. Not only had Mother failed to recognize him, but, thanks to Aunt Millie, Mother was convinced he was the new combination handyman, caretaker, gardener, cook, butler, chauffeur, and footman.

He didn’t mind taking care of his mother or her garden, but he hated every minute she treated him like an employee. His emotions were so deep and complicated he didn’t even have words to express them. It was painful to realize that the scars of his childhood still festered.

He was itching to paint. But his painting equipment wouldn’t be there for another couple of days. His assistant
was on his way with the unfinished Harrison commission. At least he had a place to set things up. The old Coca-Cola bottling plant was way too big for him, but the lease had been cheap, and Arlo Boyd had allowed him to take a short-term deal on the place.

He added shading to his sketch and let the morning sunshine soak in. It was hot here, in a humid way that he’d forgotten. Northern California could get hot, too. But not the same way. This humidity wasn’t comfortable, but it was bone-deep familiar.

His cell phone rang. He checked the ID—no one on his contact list, but the area code wasn’t local.

Maybe this wasn’t another nasty call from someone who owned a Ford and now had to travel eighty miles to get it serviced by a dealership. Molly Canaday had been right. There were hundreds of people with F-150 pickups who were ticked off about Wolfe Ford’s closure. Unfortunately, they mostly blamed Simon, even though the real villain was his uncle Ryan. It didn’t matter who was at fault; the town’s animosity had been justifiably earned. And Simon felt it every time he ran down to the BI-LO for groceries.

He continued to stare at the caller ID for a moment, then decided to take the call. He wasn’t a villain. The least he could do was listen to people vent. It wouldn’t change a thing, but maybe folks would come to realize that he wasn’t afraid of hearing what they had to say.

He pressed the talk button. “This is Simon Wolfe.” He braced himself for another round of verbal abuse.

Instead a low and slightly husky female voice said, “Hello, Simon. You and I met at your father’s funeral.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Lark Chaikin, Stone Rhodes’s wife.”

He closed his sketch pad. “Oh, hello. I’m a fan of yours.”

Silence for a beat. “A fan? Really?” There was a definite northern edge to Lark’s accent.

“Yeah, I have a copy of
Rural Scenes
. I love your images of the swamps. I recognized some of the local scenes the moment I picked it up at the bookstore.”

“I guess that means you spent a lot of time in the swamps.”

He chuckled, thinking about Luke and Gabe Raintree. “Yeah, I did. So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I heard from Arlo that you leased the old Coca-Cola building.”

He had forgotten how fast news travels in Last Chance.

“Only short-term. I need a place to paint while I settle Daddy’s estate.”

There was another slight hesitation before Lark spoke again. “Look, Simon, I’m calling because I’ve had my eye on that building as studio space for a while now. I was thinking it could be transformed into a number of studios.”

“Are there that many artists in Allenberg County?”

“Well, no,” she said, “but there’s you and me, and I looked you up. You’re up and coming, as they like to say.”

He focused his gaze on the tall, showy spikes of foxglove. “Uh, my press clippings exaggerate. I can assure you that, while I’m not starving, I’m also not Thomas Kinkaid.”

“But I spoke with Rory Harrison, and he says you’re brilliant. And if Rory Harrison likes your work, then you are probably more than merely up and coming.”

Wow, she was well connected. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why exactly did you call?”

“It’s complicated. I’m part of a group of investors interested in renovating the downtown district. And we’ve had several conversations about the Coca-Cola building. It’s turn-of-the-twentieth-century commercial architecture and ought to be registered as a historic site. And abandoned, like it is, it’s a terrible eyesore. So I thought we might use it to create an artists’ colony.”

“An artists’ colony in Last Chance? Are you nuts?”

She laughed. “Well, probably. But there’s precedent. Up in the Washington, DC, area, where I lived for a while, there was an old factory that the city of Alexandria renovated into studio space for working artists and artisans. I’m thinking our Coca-Cola building would be perfect for the same thing, on a smaller scale. Having a place where people can buy art and crafts on a year-round basis could be wonderful for the town’s economy.”

“Uh, well, that’s a fabulous idea for an urban area like DC, but I don’t know about Allenberg County. And besides, I’m not staying. I’m just leasing the place for a short time.”

“Oh.”

“I have a life in California.”

“Oh. Well. I just thought with your mother and all …”

“I’m sorry.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone before Lark spoke again. “You know, I don’t give up so easily. I’d like to have lunch with you. If not to talk about this project, then to just connect with an up-and-coming artist. At the Red Hot Pig Place? This noontime?”

His mother came through the French doors at the rear
of the house. She was all dressed up for her garden club meeting, and she gave him a wave through the windows. “Uh, lunch is out. Mother’s garden club meeting only lasts until eleven-thirty or so. But I could meet for a quick cup of coffee at the Kountry Kitchen if you could be there in half an hour.”

“That’s perfect.”

It was past nine o’clock when Molly finally dragged herself out of bed. Even sleeping in, she’d only managed about five hours of shut-eye last night. She’d stumbled home at four in the morning after spending hours at the Grease Pit making up time. She’d been pretty disorganized the last couple of days what with attending funerals, putting out fires at the Knit & Stitch, and looking for a lawyer who could help her get her car back. Thank God it was Saturday—her day off.

She opened her dresser drawer and was greeted with a vast emptiness.

Crap. She was out of clean underwear. And, not surprisingly, her laundry basket was overflowing. Not to mention that dirty clothes littered her bedroom floor.

She stared at her unwashed laundry for a long moment. Momma always took care of the laundry. Just like she took care of the grocery shopping. Who the hell was supposed to do that stuff now?

She knew the answer. It sure wasn’t going to be Allen, and Beau was off working in Columbia.

She hoisted the laundry basket up and headed to the small laundry room right off the kitchen. She didn’t get very far.

The living room was a disaster area. Empty beer bottles and cans were strewn across every horizontal surface.
Pizza boxes littered the floor. Someone had been sick in Momma’s schefflera. And the entire room reeked of beer and vomit.

Worse than that, some guy Molly didn’t recognize was sprawled on the couch wearing nothing but his plaid boxer shorts. He was snoring with his mouth wide open.

Molly had missed all this destruction when she’d come home in the wee hours. She’d come in the side door and never switched on the light. Which was probably a good thing, because she needed her sleep. Thank God, Allen’s no-account, redneck friends hadn’t decided to use her room for something nasty.

Or maybe they had, and she didn’t even know it.

Disgust and the overpowering odor of vomit made her gag. She was on the verge of rushing to the bathroom for a moment. She concentrated on breathing through her mouth and hollered. “Allen!” The guy on the couch didn’t even budge. She let her voice move up the range from holler to yell. “Allen, you get your ass out here this minute.”

Nothing but silence.

She dropped the laundry basket and headed toward the bedroom hallway. Allen’s door was locked. She banged on it.