Chapter One #3
“I did, thanks,” I called over my shoulder and then focused on the lady flipping pancakes.
The woman turned and gave me a look meant to kill me dead on the spot.
She wore loose-fitting jeans, a T-shirt with Rosalie embroidered on the right shoulder, and a bonnet printed with big sunflowers on her head.
She reminded me of Dr. Loretta Wade, the coroner on NCIS: New Orleans.
She was shorter than me—and I’m only five feet four inches tall—and had a round face that was still scowling at me.
Her body had probably been curvy about twenty pounds ago, but I would place a fifty-dollar bet on her if it came to a fight.
She wouldn’t have to lift a finger. Her glare alone would send anyone running for the hills.
“Get out of my kitchen,” she growled.
God Himself couldn’t have made me take a step back rather than forward to look at those perfectly round pancakes. Not even the dark-brown eyes that were still glaring at me could put me out of a room with food in it. Especially when I owned the place.
Rosalie shook her long-handled spatula at me. “I said get out!”
“I’m broke, hungry, tired, and angry, and I want food,” I said.
“I don’t take in strays—not any kind, two legged or four,” she declared.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I should have introduced myself. I’m Carla Wilson, the new owner of this place, and I am starving.”
“So, Larry finally found a buyer for the place, did he?” She tucked a strand of black hair up under the bonnet-looking thing on her head.
“No, he didn’t,” I answered. “I won it in a poker game.”
She made the sign of the cross over her chest, sighed loudly, and looked up at the ceiling. Her lips moved, but no words came out. When she focused back on me, her brown eyes were mere slits. “How do I know you are telling the truth?”
I set my purse on the table in the middle of the kitchen and brought out the quitclaim deed Larry had given me and handed it to her.
“If this is good, I’m the new owner. If it isn’t, then I’m about to ask for a job.
Like I said before, I’m dead broke and I am hungry.
And I’m out of fuel in my SUV, so I can’t go any farther. ”
She picked it up and studied it for what seemed like hours before she handed it back to me and yelled through the service window, “Hey, Scarlett, come on back here and meet the new owner.”
Scarlett was as pale as vanilla pudding when she came through the swinging doors. “Are we out of a job?”
“No, ma’am, you are not,” I told her. “Is it all right for me to eat while we talk?”
“I’m the only one who is allowed near my stove or my cooking pots, so you tell me what you want for breakfast and I’ll make it,” Rosalie said.
“I don’t like onions, but anything else is fine,” I told her. “Are you two the only ones who work here?”
“That’s right,” Rosalie answered as she cracked eggs in a bowl and whipped them into a froth. “Larry breezed through on Monday to pick up the money and go to the bank, but other than that, we’re on our own. We manage.”
Scarlett peeked out over the swinging doors at the customers. “So, you are not selling the café or closing it until a buyer comes along?”
“Not right now,” I answered. “How long has it been up for sale?”
“Since the day Larry took ownership,” Rosalie said without even turning around.
“Just how big is Tumbleweed, anyway? I guess this place is on the outskirts, right?”
Scarlett laughed out loud. “You are looking at it. Since you got here, the population has risen to three. It never was a real town, just a wide place in the road.”
Rosalie chuckled. “It’s never had a post office or a school.”
“Or a liquor store, which makes Rosie a happy woman,” Scarlett added.
“You have got to be kiddin’ me.” I was sure they were just yanking me around and that there was a real town named Tumbleweed not too far up the road.
“Nope.” Rosalie set a platter of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and biscuits in front of me, then slid another plate of pancakes covered in melted butter and a mug of coffee beside it.
“Everything else you might need is right there.” She pointed to a condiment tray in the middle of the small wooden table in the kitchen.
“If you want a town, you have to drive about fifteen miles north to Dell City.”
“I’m not sure you can call it a town,” Scarlett said, “but it does have a post office, a school, and a convenience store for the folks to buy gas, milk, bread, and that kind of thing. I’ve got to go refill drinks.
We can talk later when the bus crowd clears out, but welcome to Tumbleweed.
” She pushed through the doors and back out to the dining area.
“Dell City is a tiny town with only about three hundred people living there, but there is a church up there where I can go to Mass. So I’m not complaining one bit.” Rosalie made the sign of the cross again and sat down across from me.
Her gaze made me shift positions in my chair, twice, as I ate my eggs. From her expression, it didn’t take a genius to know that no one messed with her religion—or her kitchen.
I stood up, refilled my coffee mug, and then went back to finish my breakfast. “Well, this place sure got the right name. I had to fight tumbleweeds blowing around all the way from El Paso.”
“It’s that time of year,” Rosalie said.
I dove into the pancakes like a hungry hound dog with a big soupbone.
That vision almost put a smile on my face, but it soon faded when I remembered that Frank often said that very thing when we stopped at a place to eat.
I didn’t want anything to remind me of him or his wife or the two little boys they’d produced.
He called them my brothers when he talked to me on my birthday each year, but I felt more of a kinship to the two women in this café than I did for those two kids, whom I had met only one time.
And that was at the Thanksgiving family reunion in Kentucky—a disaster I did not plan on going through again.
I must’ve had a strange look on my face, because Rosalie studied me with an odd expression.
“January is our worst month for tumbleweeds. The folks on the buses that stop here think they’re cute.
If they had to deal with them every day, they wouldn’t be taking the things home with them to use for decorations. ”
“Are you serious? They really take them home?”
“Yes, they do,” Rosalie answered with a nod. “I tell them to be careful and watch out for thorns. And to be sure that a scorpion or two haven’t hitched a free ride in the middle of one to get from one place to another.”
I tried not to shiver—I really did—but there was no controlling it when I remembered the curly-tailed thing on the tumbleweed I’d had to remove from the wiper blade.
“But nobody listens to me,” Rosalie went on. “Where were you playing poker with Larry, anyway?”
“Tucson—and for the first time in my life, I walked away broke, except for owning this place.” Another shudder chased down my spine and made me wonder if all the previous owners of the café had bad luck or if it was just Larry.
“Are you trying to scare me, or are there really lots of scorpions in this part of the state? And why is the dining room suddenly quiet? What’s going on? ”
Rosalie refilled her coffee mug. “We will be slow until closer to lunchtime, when the next bus comes through here. Matilda—that’s the former owner, the one before Larry—said that in the beginning of days here at the Tumbleweed, it was really a bus stop.
One where folks could get a ticket to go west toward El Paso or east to Dallas, but that ended years ago.
And yes, I am serious about the scorpions, and the lizards that manage to sneak into both the café and the house.
Not to mention the snakes that come out to pester us in the spring. ”
Mice, roaches, and spiders were the only things I hated worse than bugs and snakes. Lizards could possibly land on the list if I didn’t make enough money in the next six months to get out of this godforsaken place. I didn’t care if it did have a church fifteen miles up the road.
“Do buses come through every day?”
“Twice a day,” Rosalie answered. “Once in the morning for the breakfast rush and then around noon. The rest of the time, we only see a few folks from the RV park, or maybe a traveler who stops on their way across this part of the state.”
The bell above the door jingled, and Scarlett’s voice drifted back to the kitchen. “Good mornin’, Miz Ada Lou. How are things at the RV park?”
“Cold and it’s spittin’ snow, but the weatherman says that the sun will come out tomorrow, so I’m not worried.” The voice belonged to an elderly woman. “I’ll have my usual brunch.”
“Coffee coming right up,” Scarlett said. “And we’ll have those pancakes and sausage out soon.”
I stood up and peeked out the window into the dining area. Miz Ada Lou was a wisp-thin little lady with a bright-red streak in her chin-length gray hair.
“That’s our regular customer,” Rosalie said as she went to the grill and poured out batter for three pancakes. “She’s here every morning after the bus crew leaves, and has pancakes, sausage, and coffee.”
“Is the café ever closed?” Seven days a week did not sound good—but then, that would bring in more money, which meant I could possibly leave the place sooner.
“No, but we are only open for breakfast and lunch. We’re usually done with everything by three o’clock,” Rosalie told me. “Have you ever worked in a diner?”
“When I was sixteen, I waited tables for a few months.” Not a happy memory.
Frank had remarried that year. He’d decided we were both giving up our gambling.
He was serious. I was not. He landed a job as a bank teller.
Paula, his new wife, put me on the payroll at her café.
I worked after school and on Saturdays. That didn’t leave much time for making friends—but then, the heart doesn’t miss what it never knew.
Which was another of Frank’s sayings. I never told her or Frank that I earned less as a waitress and cleanup girl than I did playing poker every day during lunch hour at school.
Rosalie flipped the pancakes over. “Ever done any cooking?”
“No, ma’am.”
“What do you intend to do as the new owner?”
I polished off the last bite of pancakes and carried my plate, silverware, and mug to the sink. This place was only about a quarter the size of my stepmother’s café, and didn’t have the dish pit or the commercial-size dishwasher that she had. “Whatever you tell me to do.”
“Then you can take this food out to Miz Ada Lou and help Scarlett clean off all the tables from the bus run. She would have had it done, but I called her back here to meet you. And if you were serious about not selling this place, you can take down that sign from the window.”