“Six months of cabbage soup to lose ten pounds? I don’t think so. Come on, Ellie, you know I’m about ready to reach for a doughnut.”
Ellie knew she’d lost the battle. She and Peanut—Penelope Nutter—had worked side by side in this office for more than a decade and been best friends since high school. Over the years their friendship had weathered every storm, from the ruination of Ellie’s two fragile marriages to Peanut’s recent decision that smoking cigarettes was the key to weight loss. She called it the Hollywood diet and pointed out all of the stick-figure celebrities who smoked.
“Fine. But just one.”
Grinning at Cal, Peanut placed her hands on the desk and pushed herself to a stand. The fifty pounds she’d gained in the past few years made her move a little slower. She walked over to the door and opened it, although they all knew there’d be no breeze to suck the smoke away on such a wet and dismal day.
Ellie went down the hall to the office in the back that was technically hers. She rarely used it. In a town like this, there wasn’t much call for official business, and she preferred to spend her days in the main room with Cal and Peanut. She dug past the signs from last month’s pancake breakfast and found a gas mask. Putting it on, she headed back down the hall.
Cal burst out laughing.
Peanut tried not to smile. “Very funny.”
Ellie lifted the mask to say, “I may want children someday. I’m protecting my uterus.”
“If I were you, I’d worry less about secondhand smoke and more about finding a date.”
“She’s tried everyone from Mystic to Aberdeen,” Cal said. “Last month she even went out with that UPS guy. The good-looking one who keeps forgetting where he parked his truck.”
Peanut exhaled smoke and coughed. “I think you need to lower your standards, Ellie.”
“You sure look like you’re enjoying that smoke,” Cal said with a grin.
Peanut flipped him off. “We were talking about Ellie’s love life.”
“That’s all you two ever talk about,” Cal pointed out.
It was true.
Ellie couldn’t help herself: she loved men. Usually—okay, always—the wrong men.
Peanut called it the curse of the small-town beauty queen. If only Ellie had been like her sister and learned to rely on her brains instead of her beauty. But some things simply weren’t meant to be. Ellie liked having fun; she liked romance. The problem was, it hadn’t yet led to true love. Peanut said it was because Ellie didn’t know how to compromise, but that wasn’t accurate. Ellie’s marriages—both of them—had failed because she’d married good-looking men with itchy feet and wandering eyes. Her first husband, former high school football captain Al Torees, should have been enough to turn her off men for years, but she’d had a short memory, and just a few years after the divorce she married another good-looking loser. Poor choices, to be truthful, but the divorces hadn’t dimmed her hopes. She still believed in romance and was waiting to be swept away. She knew it was possible; she’d seen that true love with her parents. “Any lower, Pea, and I’d be dating out of my species. Maybe Cal here can set me up with one of his geek friends from the comic book convention.”
Cal looked stung by that. “We’re not geeks.”
“Yeah,” Peanut said, exhaling smoke. “You’re grown men who think other men in tights look good.”
“You make us sound gay.”
“Hardly.” Peanut laughed. “Gay men have sex. Your friends wear Matrix costumes in public. How you found Lisa, I’ll never know.”
At the mention of Cal’s wife, an awkward silence stumbled into the room. The whole town knew she was a run-around. There was always talk; men smiled, women frowned and shook their heads at the mention of her name. But here in the police station, they never spoke about it.
Cal went back to reading his comic book and doodling in his sketch pad. They all knew he’d be quiet for a while now.
Ellie sat down at her desk and put her feet up.
Peanut leaned back against the wall and stared at her through a cloud of smoke. “I saw Julia on the news yesterday.”
Cal looked up. “No kidding? I gotta turn on the TV more.”
Ellie pulled off the mask and set it on the desk. “She was dismissed from the lawsuit.”
“Did you call her?”
“Of course. Her answering machine had a lovely tone. I think she’s avoiding me.”
Peanut took a step forward. The old oak floorboards, first hammered into place at the turn of the century when Bill Whipman had been the town’s police chief, shuddered at the movement, but like everything in Rain Valley, they were sturdier than they appeared. The West End was a place where things—and people—were built to last. “You should try again.”
“You know how jealous Julia is of me. She especially wouldn’t want to talk to me now.”
“You think everyone is jealous of you.”