Page 10

10

J ack

As soon as we walked through the door, I knew it was a mistake.

Huge mistake.

Because every single person in the diner turned and stared at us.

And then they smiled.

It was like a horror movie.

“Tess! Jack!” Lorraine swooped down on us, uncharacteristically working on a Sunday. “Right this way.”

She gestured, and Tess headed for our usual table by the window. Before I could follow her, Lorraine elbowed me in the gut.

Hard.

“You didn’t think to talk to me before you told that Robin-Hood-wannabe?” she hissed.

Lorraine Packard had been the head and sometimes the only waitress at Beau’s for more than half a century. She’d also been mayor for a while but had refused to run for reelection after the flood. She was barely five feet tall in her pink orthopedic shoes, and seventy-something years old.

She’d also once made me and my friend Dave wash dishes to pay for a teen prank, and I’d been half-afraid of her ever since.

“I’m sorry! It just came out. And look what she did, after she promised to keep it a secret.”

“Serves you right!”

As we passed Emeril and Harold Peterson’s table, the twin owners of Dead End Hardware grinned at me, and one of them poked me in the leg. “Hey, Jack!”

I gritted my teeth, stopped walking, and leaned down.

“How about you hide the ring in a brand-new pink toolbox? We got some in for the ladies down at the store. She’ll go looking for a screwdriver and BAM!”

“I’d just hang around waiting until she needed a screwdriver?” I shook my head. I couldn’t engage, or I’d be here all week. “I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks! Please keep it to yourselves, okay?”

The other Peterson—Tess could tell them apart, but I never could—shook his head, glee mixed with sorrow on his face. “That ship has sailed, son.”

I had to dodge Mrs. Quindlen (“Bake it into a cake!”), Rick Peabody, the janitor at Dead End High, who snickered and reminded me of a particularly embarrassing memory (“Tie it to one of those racing pigs!”), and Sapphire Penn, editor of the Dead End Gazette , (“Take out an ad on the front page!”) on the way to our table.

If Tess hadn’t had so much on her mind, she’d have cut her way through the “subterfuge” like a hot knife through butter. I took a moment to be grateful to Joe Bob Turner and whoever sold Eleanor the disco ball, and then I finally reached our table in time for Lorraine to glare at me and walk away.

“She says we can take the special and like it,” Tess reported, looking amused. “You’re very popular today.”

“We always take the special and like it,” I said. “What is the special? And I’m not popular.”

I had a sudden, evil epiphany about how to distract her. “Everybody just wants to know the story about you and the cake at Eleanor’s wedding.”

I almost felt guilty when I saw the look on Tess’s face.

Almost .

All’s fair in love and secret marriage proposals.

Heh .

Though if I didn’t figure out what was going on with Quark and NACOS, it would be better to wait to tie Tess’s life any closer to mine.

“Why are you scowling?”

“I’m just hungry.” I forced myself to smile and started building a castle out of jam tubs and sugar packets. “What did you say the special was?”

She handed me the small container of butter tubs. “I didn’t, but it’s pot roast.”

“I love pot roast.”

“You love all food.”

“Not Brussels sprouts.” I shuddered. “They smell like feet.”

Within minutes, Lorraine was back with our lunches. She handed Tess a plate brimming with pot roast, potatoes, and carrots, plus a salad and a basket of biscuits.

She gave me a plate with a tiny piece of roast, two pieces of potato, one carrot, and a heaping helping of Brussels sprouts, and then she flounced off.

It’s hard to flounce when you’re wearing orthopedic shoes, but Lorraine managed it.

“What did you do to her?” Tess asked in astonishment.

“I hurt her feelings,” I said grimly, smelling dirty feet. “I’ll be right back.”

I scooped up the plate and, holding it as far from my nose as possible, tracked Lorraine down in the kitchen.

“I’m sorry!”

“You should be!”

“Well, I am! Now, what do I do to make this up to you?”

Suddenly, she burst out laughing. “You look pitiful standing there holding that plate. Here. Give it to me.”

She dumped the plate into the sink and dished me up a tiger-sized portion of pot roast.

“Thank you,” I said humbly. “Now. Do you have any advice? Wait. Any reasonable advice that doesn’t involve pugs or toolboxes or renting city hall?”

“What?” But then she shook her head, her white curls flying. “Never mind. Yes. Here’s my advice: you and Tess already have a glorious life together. Crazy, sure, but a great life. Your proposal should reflect that and show her memories of your time together.”

With that, she walked out, leaving me staring after her in dismay. “I’m not going to propose to her while we hang upside down from a zip line at an alligator farm!”

But she was gone.

I looked at Beau, the owner and the cook. “Got any ideas?”

“Nope.”

Beau was a man of few words.

The entire lunch was more of the same. Everyone kept calling Tess over to talk so I’d be left alone and helpless, at the mercy of anybody who wanted to stop by and give me ever-more ridiculous suggestions:

Dress up like the Dead End Swamp Cabbage Festival mascot—a giant swamp cabbage—and chase her around holding out the ring.

Create a music video and sing her the proposal.

Go to Disney World and ask her on a roller coaster so we could get a picture of the exact moment I proposed.

Put it on a billboard in some town that has billboards.

Wait for next year’s town softball game and tape it to the ball and then throw it at her.

Tie it to the neck of Bubba McKee’s pet boa constrictor and hide the snake in her living room. When she finds him, voila!

I said “I’ll keep it in mind,” a lot.

Through clenched teeth.

When we finished our lunch and left, I dropped a few paces behind Tess and stopped by the Frosts’ table on my way out.

“Thanks a lot .”

Mrs. Frost tapped her hearing aid and blinked innocently up at me.

She made it until I was almost at the door before she started giggling.

T ess was so quiet on the ride home, I worried she’d overheard something. Finally, when we turned onto her road, she twisted in her seat and stared at me.

“It’s not like I plan these things! I didn’t start it, either! Why is it my fault?”

Ah.

“Eleanor’s wedding, again? Tess. Don’t worry about it. Eleanor and Bill were laughing so hard, I was afraid he’d end up peeing his tuxedo.”

She sighed. “I know. It’s just … everybody in Dead End is such a busybody. It’s lovely to live in a small town sometimes. But other times, I wish I could move to a huge city where nobody knew my name!”

“No, you don’t.” I parked and turned to look at her. “You love it here.”

“I do. Mostly. Anyway, I’m looking forward to a nice, quiet afternoon.”

I agreed, but my mind had been working on the problem of General Barstow and NACOS all day.

“It might be time to take this federal. Tess, we should call Alejandro.”

Her face lit up. And if I didn’t know the reaction was all about the babies and not about the overly handsome Special Agent Alejandro Vasquez, FBI Paranormal Operations division, I might have felt a twinge of jealousy.

“Let’s go inside and change clothes. Then we can call, and I can find out how my namesake is doing.”

When events had turned frantic during Rose and Alejandro’s visit to Dead End, Tess had wound up delivering one of their twin babies. They named the girl twin Jasmine Tess Cardinal Vasquez. Tess and I were also one set of godparents to the twins, which meant mostly that we send a lot of presents that Tess happily selects, shops for, and wraps, and that I happily take to the post office.

Perfect division of labor.

After the catching up part of the phone call, during which they promised to send more pictures, Rose rushed off to feed the twins, and we told Alejandro everything.

“That’s not good.”

Since we were on a video call, I could see by his face exactly how not good it was.

“This NACOS is bad news. Not that I think a national organization to protect shifter rights is a bad idea. I think it’s great, and maybe something you should get involved in, Jack.”

“Not me. I’m done with all that,” I said firmly. I’d told him the same thing on the many occasions that he’d asked me to consider joining P-Ops as his partner.

Definitely not.

“Anyway, I talked to Carlos last night and put our analysts here to work. To be honest, I don’t think Quark dying has anything to do with NACOS. There’s a pretty serious split in the Riverton wolf pack. Quark was about to challenge the alpha, a guy named Reynolds, for leadership. There’s a pretty good chance that this Reynolds killed Quark. Everything we found out points to him being a very dangerous guy.”

Tess and I stared at each other.

“That’s not good, Alejandro,” I said slowly. “Because our new Dead End deputy sheriff Lizzie Underhill, a currently non-shifting werewolf, and I are scheduled to go with the Riverton pack for the full moon run tonight.”

“We wanted to get Lizzie help, so she could learn to shift,” Tess said worriedly. “Alejandro, what do you think?”

“I think Reynolds may be a killer who’s going to take advantage of the situation. Be very careful, my friends.”