Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(72)

Chapter

14



Naomi Jaffe Tanaka had to restrain herself from jumping up from her desk and dancing a jig as she set down her telephone. She'd found her! After an incredible amount of work, she'd finally found her Sassy Girl! Quickly she called in her secretary and dictated a list of instructions.

“Don't try to contact her; I want to approach her in person. Just double-check my information to make certain it's right.”

Her secretary looked up from her steno pad. “You don't think she'll turn you down, do you?”

“I hardly think so. Not for the kind of money we're offering.” But for all her confidence, Naomi was a natural worrier, and she knew she wouldn't relax until she had a signature on the dotted line of an ironclad contract. “I want to fly out as quickly as possible. Let me know as soon as the arrangements are set.”

After her secretary left her office, Naomi hesitated for a moment and then dialed the number of her apartment. The phone rang again and again, but she refused to hang up. He was there; her luck wasn't good enough to make him magically disappear. She should never have agreed to let him stay in her apartment. If anyone at BS&R found out— “Answer, dammit.”

The line clicked. “Saul's Whorehouse and Crematorium. Lionel speaking.”

“Can't you just say hello like a normal person?” she snapped. Why was she putting herself through this? The police wanted Gerry for questioning, but he had received a tip that they planned to frame him on trumped-up charges of drug dealing, so he refused to go in to talk to them. Gerry didn't even smoke grass anymore, let alone deal in drugs, and she hadn't had the heart to turn him back out on the street. She also retained enough of her old distrust of the police to be unwilling to submit him to the unpredictability of the legal system.

“Talk to me nice or I'll hang up,” he said.

“Terrific,” she retorted. “If I get really nasty, does that mean you'll move out?”

“You got a letter from Save the Children thanking you for your contribution. Fifty lousy bucks.”

“Dammit, you have no business reading my mail.”

“Trying to buy your way into heaven, sis?”

Naomi refused to jump to his bait. There was a moment of silence, and then he made a grudging apology. “Sorry. I'm so bored I can't stand myself.”

“Did you look over that information on law school I left out for you?” she asked casually.

“Aw, shit, don't start this again.”

“Gerry...”

“I'm not selling out!”

“Just think about it, Gerry. Going to law school isn't selling out. You could do more good by working inside the system—”

“Knock it off, okay, Naomi? We've got a world out there that's ready to blow itself up. Adding another lawyer to the system isn't going to change a thing.”

Despite his vehement protests, she sensed that the idea of going to law school wasn't as distasteful to him as he pretended. But she knew he needed time to think it over, so she didn't press him. “Look, Gerry, I have to go out of town for a few days. Do me a favor and try to be gone when I get back.”

“Where are you going?”

She looked down at the memo pad on her desk and smiled to herself. In twenty-four hours, the Sassy Girl would be signed, sealed, and delivered. “I'm going to a place called Wynette, Texas,” she said.

Clad in jeans, sandals, and one of Miss Sybil's brightly colored cotton blouses, Francesca sat next to Dallie in a honky-tonk called the Roustabout. After nearly three weeks in Wynette, she had lost count of the number of evenings they had spent at the town's favorite night spot. Despite the raucous country band, the cloud of low-hanging smoke, and the tacky orange and black Halloween crepe paper hanging from the bar, she had discovered she actually liked the place.

Everyone in Wynette knew the town's most famous golfer, so the two of them always entered the honky-tonk to a chorus of “Hey, Dallie's” ringing out over the Naugahyde stools and the twang of the steel guitars. But tonight, for the first time, there had been a few “Hey, Francie's” thrown in, pleasing her inordinately.

One of the Roustabout's female patrons pushed her witch's mask to the top of her head and planted a boisterous kiss on Skeet's cheek. “Skeet, you old bear, I'm going to get you to the altar yet.”

He chuckled. “You're too young for me, Eunice. I couldn't keep up with you.”

“You said a mouthful there, honey.” Eunice let out a shriek of laughter and then went off with a friend who was unwisely dressed in a harem costume that left her chubby midriff bare.

Francesca smiled. Although Dallie had been in a surly mood all evening, she was having fun. Most of the Roustabout's patrons were wearing their standard outfits of jeans and Stetsons, but a few wore Halloween costumes and all the bartenders had on glasses with rubber noses.

“Over here, Dallie!” one of the women called out. “We're going to bob for apples in a bucket of draft.”

Dallie slammed the front legs of his chair down to the floor, grabbed Francesca's arm, and muttered, “Christ, that's all I need. Quit talking, dammit. I want to dance.”

She hadn't been talking, but his expression was so grim that she didn't bother pointing that out. She just got up and followed him. As he dragged her across the floor toward the jukebox, she found herself remembering the first night he'd brought her to the Roustabout. Had it only been three weeks ago?