No quitter no quitter no quitter.
If the sun had been shining, I might have headed straight for the jail. But it was gray and overcast, with a blustery wind. A cup of coffee would give me a lift, and I hadn’t had a drop that morning. The Maxwell House can at my office was empty.
A diner sat on the south side of the square, around the corner from my office. As I hurried down the sidewalk, I checked out the exterior to make sure it was open for business.
A neon sign sparkled in vintage glory, blinking an outline of a pan of eggs and bacon in yellow and hot pink. Above the blinking pan, SHORTY’S was spelled out in sparkling white bulbs.
A brass bell hanging from the door jingled to announce my entry. I’d only frequented Shorty’s diner a few times since I’d moved to town. In the storage room behind my office, I had a microwave, a hot plate, and an ancient refrigerator; since I was counting pennies, I made do.
I surveyed the booths, upholstered in bright orange vinyl, but since I was eating alone, I sidled up to the counter and sat on an old-fashioned bar stool.
I swiveled on the stool like a schoolkid, taking in the surroundings. A waitress delivered a breakfast plate to a man down the counter from me: pigs in a blanket. Steam rose from the pancakes.
Oh, Lord, have mercy.
A man wearing a white apron walked up with a mug and a coffeepot. “Coffee, ma’am?”
“Yes, please.”
As he poured, I stared at the apron. Over his heart, in bold black stitches, it read SHORTY. I’d swear he was six foot four. I snorted.
He pointed an accusatory finger. “Just what are you laughing at, ma’am?”
“I beg pardon, I don’t mean to laugh. It’s your apron.”
“It’s clean.” He brushed the front of it, looking down. “What about my apron?”
“It says Shorty.”
He stood tall: six foot four, for certain. Extending his hand, he said, “Yes ma’am, it sure does. Shorty Morgan, damn glad to meet you.”
I shook his hand. He squeezed it just right: a friendly grip, not too tight. “I’m Ruby. Ruby Bozarth.”
“Ruby from the Ben Franklin!”
“Yep, that’s me.”
“Well, then, this is a special pleasure. That old dime store was sitting vacant for too long. Just looking at it made me blue. Everybody was awful glad to see the lights turned back on in there.”
I nodded, stealing another glance at the breakfast plate nearby.
“Ruby, you’re giving Jeb’s pancakes and sausage links the eye. You want me to order them up for you?”
I checked the prices on the menu. “Short stack, please. Butter and syrup.”
He wrote “SS” on a pad and disappeared into the kitchen. I sipped my coffee and pondered the best way to approach Darrien Summers.
Shorty was back in a New York minute, carrying a steaming plate of pancakes. A magazine sat on the counter near me, a copy of Foreign Affairs. He nudged it out of the way to make room for the syrup pitcher.
As I poured syrup on my pancakes, he marked a page inside the magazine with a paper napkin and set it beside the coffee station.
“So you’re doing some light reading this morning?” I said. The pancakes were making me feel sociable.
Shorty smiled. “Just trying to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world.”
I was curious about his reading choice, but my fellow customer at the counter interrupted. “Shorty! Your coffee’s weak this morning!”
“Jeb, hush your mouth.” He grabbed the pot and refilled the man’s mug.
“Just look there. Like a cup of weak tea.”
Jeb swung around on his stool and called to a dark-haired man sitting alone in one of the orange booths. “Hey, Troy? How you like the coffee today?”
The lone diner looked up from a newspaper he’d been studying. He looked to be older than me—maybe in his thirties. A port-wine stain birthmark covered one side of his face.
The man with the newspaper said, “I didn’t order any coffee.”
His tone was so chilly, I’d swear it lowered the temperature of the diner by ten degrees.
Jeb turned to me. “How about yours, honey?”
I sipped my coffee and said, “I like it.” It was true. I didn’t care for those hip coffee places where baristas gave you the caffeine shakes with a single cup.
Shorty set the pot on its coil and smiled at me. To Jeb, he said, “Hear that? A satisfied customer. And she’s a lawyer, so she knows what she’s talking about.”
Feeling a little self-conscious, I dug into the pancakes. As I mopped up syrup with my last bite, Shorty refilled my coffee and asked, “How’s the murder case going?”
I almost dropped my fork. “How did you know?”
“Oh, come on, now. We get the courthouse crowd at lunch and dinner. You were the main topic of conversation yesterday.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said under my breath.
“Hey, you’re famous now. So how’s it going?”
“No comment. Attorney-client privilege.” I gave him a wink. Because he was really pretty cute. I dug into my wallet and pulled out some bills to pay the check. As he rang it up on the cash register, Shorty said, “You going over to the jail today?”
I nodded. My counter companion, Jeb, shook his head. “Sure better hope it goes better for you than yesterday.”
Oh, my God. Rosedale was a goldfish bowl. Even the man with the port-wine mark was staring at me; his scrutiny made me uncomfortable. I kept my mouth shut, but I must not have been wearing a poker face, because Shorty called to me as I walked away. “Come back for lunch. Bet you’ll have a whole new attitude by noon.”
“That right?” I said over my shoulder.
“I can feel it. And I have great gut instincts.”
I laughed at that. It sounded like something I used to say, before I was tripped up by my own misguided instincts. As the bell on the door jingled over my head, Shorty called out.
“Lunch is on the house, Ruby. You’re good for business. See you at noon.”
“See you at noon,” Jeb echoed.
I looked over my shoulder to reply. The port-wine man was smiling. But not in what you’d call a friendly way.
Chapter 6
BACK IN THE interview room at the county jail, an overhead vent blasted hot air at me. I pushed the sleeves of my sweater up past my elbows.
The door on the other side of the cubicle opened. I tensed, waiting to see Darrien Summers’s reaction to my reappearance. I withheld the toothy grin I had displayed on my first visit.
They repeated the procedures from the day before. The jailer unlocked Darrien’s cuffs. Darrien sat down in the chair. I picked up the phone receiver.
As he stared through the glass, I wished I could see what was going on in his head. Though I itched to break the silence, I was determined to make him speak first.
He picked up and said, “Yesterday, we had fourteen days to do this. Now we’re down to thirteen.”
In a guarded tone, I said, “That’s right.”
“How can a woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing handle my defense?”
I bristled, though the question was justified. “How do you know I don’t know what I’m doing?”
Darrien smiled—a beautiful smile, though there was no humor in it. “You know what the inmates are calling you in lockup? Jailtime Ruby. Some of them are calling you Execution Ruby. Have you heard that?”
The revelation made me want to wince, but I kept a dogged face. “Why’d you try to punch out your last lawyer?”
His cynical expression slipped away, replaced by anger. “They brought me into court to see that dude—the public defender. I’d met him, what? Like, twice before? He says he’s got a deal for me, I’m going to plead guilty to capital murder, get life without parole.”
I listened. Kept my mouth shut.
Darrien gripped the receiver and edged closer to the glass panel. “I told him—like I’d told him before—I didn’t do it. He said he was trying to save my life.”
At that, he paused.
“Then what?” I asked.