Last Chance Knit & Stitch Read online

  The kid stopped squirming. Instead, Junior rested his head on Simon’s shoulder and played coy. Then he got distracted by the handkerchief in the pocket of Simon’s suit jacket.

  “I’m taking him off his mother’s hands for a while. He trashed the Knit & Stitch, and the girls have a meeting going on over there. I’ve been sent out for doughnuts. Zeph, how are you doing?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. Just the same as always. I heard about your daddy. I’m so sorry.”

  Simon looked up at The Kismet’s marquee. “So you’re working here. Doing carpentry?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you go hunting much?”

  “I do. And fishing. I built myself a little house out near the swamp. Near the governor’s place.”

  Junior dropped Simon’s handkerchief onto the sidewalk. “Uh-oh,” the toddler said, looking down at the object like a redheaded angel.

  Zeph picked up the handkerchief and handed it back to the baby.

  “Do the Raintrees ever go out there anymore?” Simon asked.

  Zeph shook his head and studied the concrete sidewalk. “No, sir, the old governor is long passed, and Gabe—well he’s famous now. Lives in Charleston.”

  Simon should have known better than to ask. Of course the Raintrees hadn’t come back. He’d even read one of Gabe’s novels a few years ago. It was too dark and violent for Simon.

  Suddenly all those happy memories turned gray. And the painful ones percolated to the top. He needed to get away from Zeph before they overwhelmed him. “Well, it’s nice to see you again, but I’ve got to get going. I’ve been sent on an errand, and you know how Mother can be. I’ll be here in Last Chance for a while settling Daddy’s estate.”

  Zeph nodded but didn’t look up. “It might be best if you didn’t come out to the Jonquil House or anywhere out that way.”

  Simon understood. The memories had to be painful for Zeph, too. So he nodded and headed on down the sidewalk.

  CHAPTER

  5

  After the Purly Girls meeting, Molly fired up Momma’s computer and took a look at the yarn shop’s profit and loss statement.

  Jeez Louise, Momma was doing much better with her business than she’d let anyone know. To hear Momma talk, the shop had been barely making a profit. But to Molly’s astonishment, the Knit & Stitch had been bringing in modest yet steady income for a long time. Further investigation of the accounting software revealed that Pat Canaday had been socking away the profits and living entirely on Daddy’s paycheck.

  On Friday afternoon, just three days before she left, Momma had taken a huge chunk of cash out of her money market account. With that much money in her pocket, she wasn’t coming back anytime soon.

  This discovery left Molly reeling. Maybe Momma hadn’t gone to see the world like she said. Maybe she’d taken all that cash and moved off to some other town and was planning to permanently set up shop there. Molly suddenly missed her momma something fierce. Surely Momma wasn’t gone for good?

  She wasn’t going to cry over it. No, sir. The way Momma had slunk out of town had been hurtful and maybe just a little bit hypocritical. Momma talked a great line about being mindful and calm and collected, and all the while she was orchestrating her getaway. Well, running away didn’t seem like a very good way to deal with problems. And Momma running away made Molly hopping mad. So mad that she actually thought about hauling out that dumb book Momma had left for her and trying one of those one-minute meditations.

  But there was a silver lining in this disaster that Momma hadn’t fully thought through. The shop was earning enough to support an employee. Of course, that would eat into any profits Molly would pocket, but if she could hire someone to manage the store, then whatever was left over could be plowed into the Shelby, or maybe used to rent the Coca-Cola building. Maybe things were looking up.

  So Molly called Ricki Wilson, and the next morning at o-dark-thirty they met at the front door of the yarn shop. Molly had Ricki fill out all the necessary employment forms and then gave Ricki the one-hour training session on the point-of-sale equipment, which Molly had repaired last night.

  Then she escaped, intent on getting a cup of coffee at the Kountry Kitchen—there still wasn’t any milk in the refrigerator at home—before heading off to work.

  As she left the store, her attention was drawn down the block, where Simon Wolfe was peering through the big picture windows of the Coca-Cola bottling plant while simultaneously talking on his cell phone. Molly immediately went on guard.

  She didn’t like anyone peering into those windows. That building was hers, and Simon needed to keep his distance.

  He’d already upset things in this town, even if he had taken Junior off Kenzie’s hands yesterday afternoon and come back with doughnuts and a completely tamed toddler.

  Kenzie had been flabbergasted when Simon had taken a seat in the couch at the front of the store and quietly played with Junior for the better part of half an hour.

  So he was the Pied Piper when it came to demon children; she still didn’t trust him. He had no right to be investigating her building.

  She needed to know what he was up to. So instead of heading toward the Kountry Kitchen, she strolled up the street toward the abandoned building. As she got closer, she could hear what he was saying into his cell phone.

  “Well, it’s got windows. They don’t face north.” He stopped talking and looked up at the sky. “They face east. I suppose it would do.” He backed away from the windows and started pacing, listening to whoever was on the other end of the line.

  This morning, he’d traded in his wool slacks for a pair of faded blue jeans and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose sinewy forearms with a road map of veins traveling across them. His Toms lace-ups were beginning to fray at the toe, but they gave him an air of shabby urban elegance that didn’t belong anywhere in the vicinity of Last Chance.

  He was still talking into his phone. “This building is probably the best I can do. And it’s only short-term. But I have to get back to work, so I need you and the painting here ASAP.”

  Molly listened unabashedly as he discussed plans for the next several weeks with someone who was probably his assistant. It didn’t take her long to realize that he was going to see if he could lease her building and turn it into some kind of studio.

  What the heck? He had hundreds of square feet in his daddy’s house, which was practically a mansion. Why did he need to rent commercial space? She needed to put a stop to this right away.

  When he finally finished his call, she stepped right up to him, hands on her hips. “You can’t lease this building. It belongs to me,” she said bluntly.

  Molly had no idea what a sardonic stare was, but she reckoned that the look she got from Simon probably qualified as one. Although she had to admit maybe his look was more surprised than anything else. After all, there was a big, if faded, “For Lease” sign in the building’s window. She scrambled to explain. “I mean, it doesn’t belong to me … yet. But it will. Soon. I’m going to put a car showroom and garage in there. So you can’t have it.”

  He stood there with this hard-to-read expression in his eyes and those infernal curls at the corners of his mouth doing their thing. He said nothing, though. It was annoying how much Simon could say without opening his mouth.

  “It’s too big for a studio anyway.” Molly forged onward, laying out all her arguments. “You don’t belong here.”

  “You’re right about that. But I’m here. For a while anyway—while Eugene Hanks wades through my father’s affairs. And I need a place to paint.”

  “You could paint at home.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” He didn’t elaborate, and Molly got the feeling that arguing about that would get her nowhere.

  “Well, you can’t paint here. It’s mine.” She turned on her heel and walked away, painfully aware that she had just sounded like some kind of pitiful little kid facing down one of the big boys on the playground. Only Simon hadn’t behaved li
ke a bully. A real bully would have mashed her flat or said something mean or ugly about her butt or her hair.

  No, Simon didn’t do any of those things. He’d just stood there looking at her from out of those big, brown eyes. Okay, so they didn’t look sardonic; they looked kind of puppy-dog-ish. Which was annoying as hell because Molly had always wanted a puppy but Momma was allergic. And sad puppy eyes were like kryptonite to her. One look and she was rendered soft and pathetic and … girlie.

  Damn.

  Simon watched Molly as she headed back down the sidewalk, her dark curls lit up by the morning light, and her hips swaying in a pair of baggy pants. She had a long, confident stride, like a person who knew exactly where she was going in life.

  He admired that.

  She was a piece of work all right. She always had been. Even as a little girl in her overalls, standing with her daddy on the sidelines of every Rebels game.

  He let go of a breath. It was all ancient history, better forgotten, like those summers with Luke Raintree. He’d spent years pushing those memories deep. No sense in dredging them up now. He was getting out of this place as soon as he could.

  He turned and inspected the old building. The place was run-down, practically decrepit, and way too big for him. But it had the advantage of having large windows and being close to his parents’ house, without actually being in it.

  He couldn’t paint at home. Mother would have a fit. His art had always been a bone of contention. Even more important, Mother didn’t know who he was. She vacillated between treating him like a servant and a thief.

  In a sad way, he was a thief. And Aunt Millie and Aunt Frances weren’t above trying to guilt him about it, while Bubba thought he should just drop everything, go to war with Uncle Ryan, and assume management of the car dealership.

  But none of those actions made any sense. He couldn’t live permanently in this town. He was willing to stay in order to unsnarl his father’s finances. He would try to convince Uncle Ryan to sell the dealership instead of liquidating it, but he wasn’t becoming a car salesman. And of course, he’d have to see about selling Mother’s house and making an informed decision about her future care.

  That might take weeks or months.

  But Simon didn’t have weeks or months. He needed to focus on finishing the Harrison commission, which was due to be installed at the end of July in Harrison’s new country estate in Sonoma.

  He needed a sizable temporary studio to finish the painting. And he didn’t have time to screw around. So Angel, his assistant, was going to bring the unfinished painting all the way across the country.

  He looked down Palmetto Avenue. When he was a teenager, he couldn’t wait to get away from this place. The feeling hadn’t changed.

  He needed to get back to Paradise. But before that, he had a meeting with Eugene Hanks, and then he needed to visit Arlo Boyd at the real estate office and see if the owner of the building would rent it to him cheap.

  Molly was in a terrible mood when she finally arrived at work. The parts had arrived for the piece-of-crap Hyundai, just as the rental car agency informed them that they would be sending a tow truck from Orangeburg. It appeared that Simon Wolfe didn’t actually need a rental car anymore since he had his daddy’s Taurus, not to mention all the vehicles on the lot at Wolfe Ford.

  She turned her attention to Lessie Anderson’s fifteen-year-old Chrysler, which needed a tune-up. Molly was hip-deep in motor oil when her cell phone rang. She ignored it.

  It rang again.

  And again.

  She climbed out of the service pit, wiped her hands on a dirty rag, and fished the phone from her pocket. She didn’t recognize the number. She was about to put the phone on silent when it rang again.

  “Who the hell are you and why are you calling me?” she bellowed into the phone.

  “Uh, it’s me, Ricki. You said I should call?”

  “Oh, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize the number.”

  “I’m not using the store’s phone. There seems to be something wrong with it.”

  Great. One more thing on Molly’s to-do list. “Besides the phone, what’s the problem?”

  “Where do I find merino, and what the heck is it?”

  Oh, brother. “Merino is a kind of wool.”

  “Oh.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Yes, but all this yarn is made of wool, isn’t it?”

  Molly saw red. She opened her mouth to say something really snotty. But she stopped. Ricki wasn’t actually the person she was angry with. Momma was the main villain. Ricki was just an innocent bystander.

  She took a calming breath and decided to treat this as a teachable moment. “Ricki, yarn is made from all kinds of fibers, like cotton and silk and even bamboo.”

  “Really?”

  Les Hayes came strolling into the garage. Les was supposed to be at work. What was he doing here? His big baby blues looked worried, even in the shade of his ball cap.

  “Look, Ricki, I gotta go.”

  “Oh, well, Lola May called, and she’s looking for dye lot 9824 of superwash merino.”

  “Uh, Ricki, how could Lola May call if the phone isn’t working?”

  Another long silence stretched out. “Well, uh, I kind of broke the phone. I mean I was trying to see if the yarn in the front was what she was looking for and the wire kind of came out from the phone.”

  “Great.”

  “No, it’s kind of not great, because the phone keeps ringing and I can’t answer it.”

  “Unplug it, Ricki.” Molly no longer hid her exasperation. “I gotta go now.” She put the cell on silent mode and turned toward Les. “What are you doing here?”

  “We have a big problem.”

  Molly hoped he was talking about Momma leaving town and Ricki being clueless about yarn, because Molly didn’t need any more problems. “What is it?”

  “The bank closed the dealership. Everyone was sent home—without pay. They gave us directions to the unemployment office. I’m headed there after lunch.”

  Given the magnitude of his announcement, it was really rather remarkable that Les’s voice was steady, and he didn’t even sound panicky.

  “Damn it! They didn’t waste any time, did they? And we don’t have anyplace to work on the Shelby. You got any ideas? When do we have to clear it out of there?”

  “Uh, Molly, you don’t understand. The Shelby is locked up with everything else on the premises. And even though we have a bill of sale for the car, apparently it doesn’t matter. Ryan Polk was the one who made the announcement, and he told me that, as far as he was concerned, the Shelby is an asset of the dealership.”

  “Well, that’s ridiculous.” The pitch of her voice headed toward the upper registers. Her hands started to shake, and the tops of her ears started to burn. She was furious. How could Ryan Polk do such a thing? He knew darn well the Shelby didn’t belong to Ira.

  Greedy bastard.

  “I tried to argue with Mr. Polk,” Les said, “but he had a bunch of security goons with him, and they were armed. Everyone was forced to leave with about five minutes’ notice. Molly, we aren’t going to get the car back anytime soon, and we’re going to have to fight the bank tooth and nail.”

  She pulled a rag out of her pocket and started wiping grease from her hands. “We’ll just have to go talk to Eugene Hanks. Or maybe we could take a contract out on Simon Wolfe.”

  “It’s not Simon’s fault,” Bubba said, climbing out from under the Chevrolet he was working on.

  “Of course it’s Simon’s fault.”

  Bubba shook his head. “No. It’s not. Rachel’s uncle is in some kind of big hurry, and Simon has no power to stop him. I mean, Simon’s daddy owed Ryan’s bank a lot of money. I don’t think Simon set this in motion. I really don’t.”

  “But he’s in a hurry to leave town,” Molly insisted.

  “I know that. But it wouldn’t matter if he were staying,” Bubba said. “Ryan isn’t going to let Simon lay his hands on t
he dealership. That’s pretty clear. And I doubt Simon would be successful fighting over it in court since the business owes the bank all that money. The only good news is that the business is separate from Ira’s personal finances. Simon is planning to stay because he was named executor of the will, which means he has control over what happens to the house. It’s a good thing Aunt Charlotte’s house is protected from the bank, otherwise I wouldn’t put it past Ryan Polk to turn his own sister out. Course Simon is probably going to sell the house and move her off to California. So either way it sucks to be Aunt Charlotte.”

  “Simon probably wants to pocket the money from the sale,” Molly said.

  “Nah. Not Simon. I don’t think money motivates him. I think he’s just stuck here between his mother and his uncle. I kind of feel sorry for him. I’m telling you, some of my wife’s kinfolk could be described as money-grubbers. It’s not easy being related to those people, even by marriage. You should hear the conversations I sometimes have with my mother-in-law. Honestly, the Polks can be pretty narrow-minded when it comes to cash.”

  Les plopped down on a shop stool and changed the subject. “Bubba, you think LeRoy might hire me? I’ve got a lot of contacts with F-150 owners. There are going to be a lot of them looking for a reliable service center now that the dealership is closed.”

  “You should talk to him,” Bubba said.

  “Les, we need to make a plan for getting the Shelby back and finding a place where we can work on it. Why don’t I take you to dinner tonight at the Pig Place? I mean, Momma’s gone and—”

  “Uh, well …” Les’s face turned red.

  “What?”

  “I, uh, kind of have a date with Tammy Nelson.”

  “With Tammy? Of the horse teeth?”

  He gave her the stink eye. “She does not have horse teeth. They are just really white.”

  “And big. Almost as big as her—”

  “Don’t say it, Molly.” Les hopped off the stool. “I’m going to go talk to LeRoy. Is he in?”

  “Yeah, but we need to—”

  “Molly, take a big breath and calm down, will you? There isn’t anything we can do about the Shelby right now. So there isn’t any point in letting it make you angry. And I have a date with a pretty woman, which I’m not going to break. Maybe tomorrow we can talk to Eugene, but I don’t have the money right now to hire a lawyer. Do you?”