Jackpot Baby. Muriel Jensen

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      “Hi, doll!” he said as Shelly stepped onto the sidewalk. “Want to share with your fans what you’re doing with the dough?”

      “Nothing exciting,” she replied politely. “Just taking it to the bank.” What she really wanted to do was push him into the old trough in front of the Heartbreaker to clear his head and remind him that he was in Jester, Montana, not Afghanistan, and that this was the twenty-first century.

      But the trough that once held water was now a planter, and if he hadn’t figured out what time he was living in, there was little she could do to help him.

      “There’s got to be something you can tell us, Shelly,” he pleaded, hurrying along with her as she passed the barbershop and headed for Jester Savings and Loan. “You selling the coffee shop and going to Europe? Staying home, but spending all your moola on new duds?” His cursory glance at her blue corduroy slacks and the wool-lined red parka that covered a blue turtleneck suggested that she really ought to consider that. “Nobody ever gets to see what you look like under that big apron you always wear.”

      She kept walking, determined to suggest at the next city council meeting that they put water back in the old trough.

      Cameras flashed and microphones were pushed in front of her face as she walked through the savings and loan’s leaded-glass double doors.

      “Shelly! Are you finally going to live your dreams?”

      “Can you tell us what they are?”

      “What does the man in your life think of all this money!”

      “Does it make up for not having children?”

      She imagined her mother looking down on her and saying, “Patience, Shelly. Courtesy at all times. When you run a restaurant, your business is hospitality.”

      This wasn’t her restaurant, but she’d been so conditioned to that creed that she tried to be kind to everyone and seldom lost her temper. Though this invasion of Jester was threatening to undermine her good humor. Still, she reminded herself, all these reporters, photographers and gawkers were eating regularly at The Brimming Cup.

      She knew them by name now. When they were eating with her, they were friendly and fun and never asked questions, though they did make her feel as though she was being watched all the time. And when they were doing their jobs, they were unrelenting.

      She answered their questions in order and smiled at each of them in turn. “I love Jester, but I might travel a little, the only man in my life is Sean Connery, and I doubt that anything would ever make up for not having children.”

      “Sean Connery!” Gloria Russo from the Helena Herald gasped. She was short and plump and around Harvey’s age.

      Harvey leaned toward her as Shelly walked past them toward a teller. “Relax,” he said. “It’s a cat.”

      “Oh.”

      “Ladies and gentlemen!” Sidney Brown, manager of the bank, was tall, slender and gray-haired in a three-piece gray suit. He pushed the reporters back as they tried to follow Shelly. “How many times do I have to remind you that the business transacted in a bank is private? Please! You’ve been harassing my depositors all day. I’d call the sheriff on you if he wasn’t already busy!”

      Only slightly chastened, the reporters moved back to a refreshment table set up across the room with cookies and punch.

      Shelly spent the next hour talking to Sidney about various savings plans, and opening a savings account until she could finally decide just what to do with her million. Her million! She loved thinking that word.

      She deposited everything except four months’ mortgage payments so that she could be one month ahead, a bonus for Dan Bertram, her cook, and several thousand dollars to “play with.” The very thought gave her goose bumps. Money to play with. After the hardworking, frugal life her parents led, the words sounded like sacrilege.

      When Shelly left the bank, the mayor and his assistant and self-appointed shadow, Paula Pratt, were on the sidewalk, being interviewed by the press. Bobby was wearing the earnest face he used in public.

      He was in his late forties, a big, broad-shouldered man with light brown hair graying at the temples. He might have had a look of sophistication, except that he seemed always to be trying to project that and the effort seemed to negate the impression. Many of the townspeople considered him an opportunistic good old boy, but Shelly thought he was more complicated than that.

      Randolph Larson, Bobby’s father, had also been mayor twenty years earlier. He’d been a wildcatter with a nose for oil. Though the family had been wealthy, he’d been a humble man with a sense of family and civic duty. And he’d given Bobby everything he wanted.

      Now Bobby, who’d played away his years at college and married a beautiful young girl who’d become a sour, childless, middle-aged woman always longing for Seattle society, was trying to fit into his father’s shoes. But he was prideful rather than humble, and it was obvious to everyone, certainly even to him, that the shoes were just too big.

      Consequently, hungry for the love and respect his father enjoyed, he took every opportunity for publicity, and fooled around on his wife, Regina.

      Shelly suspected that, at the moment, he was doing it with Paula Pratt.

      Paula was blond and shapely with a bra size higher than her IQ. She wore sheer blouses and lycra skirts and followed Bobby everywhere, calling him “Robert.” She carried a clipboard with her, and everyone speculated at Jester Merchants’ Association meetings about what was on it. Some thought it was the cartoon section from the morning’s Plain Talker. Other less trustful souls were sure she was taking down information to use against them later.

      “…town’s always been a wonderful place to live,” Bobby was saying to Marina Andrews from the television station in Great Falls. “And someday all the excitement will die down and it’ll just be us again, but until then—” he smiled with boyish charm for the camera “—please come to Jester and spend your money.” He laughed at his own clever patter.

      As Shelly tried to sneak by them unnoticed, Bobby reached an arm out for her and drew her in front of the camera. “And when you come, be sure to have pie at The Brimming Cup coffee shop owned by Shelly Dupree, here, one of our Main Street Millionaires. It’s an experience you won’t forget.”

      “Okay.” Marina made a throat-cutting gesture to her photographer. “Got it. Thanks, Mr. Mayor.”

      As Bobby and Paula moved on in search of another camera, Marina rolled her eyes at Shelly. “Someone who won’t stop talking on camera is almost as bad and someone who answers your questions with yes and no.” She offered Shelly her hand. “I’m Marina Andrews with…”

      Shelly nodded. “I recognized you. Isn’t there something more important going on somewhere else in the world?”

      Marina shrugged. “Well, there probably is, but this is the most interesting thing happening in Montana at the moment. I don’t suppose you’d like to round out my interview by telling me what you think of Jester and how you think it’ll be affected by twelve millionaires?”

      “I СКАЧАТЬ