His Daddy's Eyes. Debra Salonen

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СКАЧАТЬ unnerved, which was why she’d agreed to the makeover.

      “Yeah, but you’re a man, so what do you know?” Claudie said spitefully.

      Sara sighed. “Stop squabbling, children. I told you you could play with my hair, so be nice.”

      “And a new outfit,” Keneesha reminded her. “I am royally sick of those baggy dresses. You need some color, girl.”

      Sara looked at Keneesha’s leopard-print tank top plastered over fuchsia pedal pushers, and involuntarily cringed. “Maybe.”

      The bookstore bell tinkled, and Sara glanced at the nondescript gentleman in a baseball cap who quickly made his way toward the back of the building. The patron seemed vaguely familiar, but since he didn’t seem to require her assistance, Sara turned to Daniel, who was talking.

      “…and you can have first pick.”

      “What?” she asked, noticing how Claudie’s gaze stayed on the customer as he meandered into the cookbook section.

      “Jenny just cleaned out her closet. She never keeps an outfit longer than a year and she only buys the best. I was taking the bag to the shelter, but you can go through it first.”

      Daniel’s sister, a true fashion diva, was Sara’s size and had excellent taste. “That’s fantastic. Thanks!”

      “No problem,” he said, giving Sara a hug. “Now, where’s my godson?”

      Keneesha scurried around the desk to stand defensively in front of the playpen. For a large woman, she moved with surprising speed. “Back off, light-foot. He’s our godson, not yours.”

      “Do you have that in writing?”

      “I’ll show you writing, white boy,” Kee said, her bluster taking on volume.

      The noise woke Brady.

      Sara hurried to the playpen and picked him up. “Hey, baby love,” she said, kissing his soft, plump cheek. His sleepy, baby smell made her heart swell and her eyes mist. “How’s my boy?”

      Daniel walked over and planted a kiss on Brady’s cheek. The sleepy child chose that minute to rub his eyes, and his small fist collided with Daniel’s nose.

      “See, there,” Keneesha chortled, triumphantly, “he likes us better.”

      Sara saw a hurt look cross Daniel’s face and impulsively drew him close with her free arm. “We both love you, Danny boy, you know that,” she said softly.

      “I know,” Daniel replied. “I love you, too. I’ll see you Sunday, right?”

      Before Brady came into her life, Sara had participated on Sundays in a literacy program at a local shelter. Unfortunately, nowadays her free time was so limited, she seldom had the energy to join the other volunteers at the Open Door family shelter.

      “I’ll try, but Brady’s cutting teeth, and my neighbors don’t like the way my eaves look.” She rolled her eyes. “I keep getting nasty letters from the Rancho Carmel Homeowners’ Association.”

      Daniel gave Sara a peck on the cheek. “Don’t sweat it. You’ve done your share.” He picked up his box of books. “So? Who’s going to fetch the bag of clothes?”

      Claudie grumbled about being the company slave, but she followed him out the door.

      Brady squirmed, so Sara knelt to put him down. His bare toes curled against the sturdy nap of the new gray-blue carpet. Until recently, the store’s flooring had consisted of worn tile squares circa 1955—some black, some green, about half of them broken. Hank had refused to waste money on a building he regarded as “a piece of junk waiting for the wrecking ball.” Sara never had the funds to re-decorate, but finally decided to use some of the trust money Julia’s lawyer sent each month to make Brady’s play area safe and comfortable.

      “Mine,” Brady said, reaching for the bottom drawer of Sara’s desk. She’d been careful to have all the drawers fitted with locks—except one, which belonged to Brady. She made sure a healthy snack was in the drawer at all times.

      She couldn’t help smiling at his triumphant chortle when he pulled a thick hunk of toasted bread from the drawer. His ash-brown curls, as thick and lush as his mother’s had been, bounced as he toddled to his miniature cash register and sat down to play.

      Sara glanced around; she’d nearly forgotten the customer now unobtrusively tucked in a corner near the cookbooks. That’s odd, she thought. Her occasional male cook usually carried the tragic look of the recently divorced. This fellow didn’t strike her as needy or interested in cordon bleu cooking. And he definitely seemed vaguely familiar.

      She started in his direction, but was deflected by Claudie’s loud “Whoopee!”

      “Holy sh—shimany,” Keneesha exclaimed. “Look at this, Sara J. Lord God, what I wouldn’t give to be size eight!”

      Sara joined her friends at the counter to examine Jenny’s discarded clothes. It wasn’t until the bell tinkled that she remembered the cookbook man.

      BO POCKETED his palm-size camera and exited the bookstore, ducking into the alley. A mural of the store’s name was painted in five-foot-tall lettering along the brick wall. Clever name for a bookstore, he thought. I wonder if Sara made it up?

      Thinking of Sara made him scowl. Normally, Bo liked his job, but at this particular moment he felt like a piece of excrement wedged between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

      Ren Bishop was the brother Bo never had, his one true friend, and Bo owed him more than he could ever repay—but he wasn’t happy about the turn this case had taken.

      I should have seen it coming, he silently groused as he opened the door of his car, a twenty-year-old Mazda with peeled paint and two primed dents in the fender. His work car, like Bo himself, knew how to be inconspicuous. “Two years without a goddamn lead,” he muttered. “The only witness finally comes home after trekking through India, and what do I find? A dead Jewel and a kid that’s got Bishop written all over his face!”

      Lowering himself to the tattered upholstery, Bo pictured the sideswiped look on his friend’s face when he’d left the courthouse. It reminded him of that night two years ago when Ren had stumbled down the gangplank of Bo’s houseboat, vulnerable, exposed and all too human.

      “I screwed up, Bo,” Ren had confessed, pacing from one end of Bo’s tiny living room to the other. “Positively. Beyond all screwups.”

      “Did you kill someone?”

      “Of course not.”

      “Then stop pacing. You’re making me seasick.” Bo had been surprisingly unnerved by his friend’s agitation. In college, Ren had been known as Mr. Unflappable. Bo didn’t like seeing him flapped.

      Ren proceeded to spill his guts about the redhead who’d mysteriously disappeared after one night of passion. Bo recalled half hoping that Jewel was a blackmailer so he’d have a chance to meet her. But nothing happened. If that night clerk had stayed in India, Bo never would have had a clue to Jewel’s true identity.

      “That’s Mrs. Hovant. Julia,” СКАЧАТЬ