Day Shift

19

Olivia took care to be sitting on the same spot on the couch when she saw Manfred returning, though of course she’d been looking around while he was gone. She could tell from the way he walked that she would get her way.

“All right, we’ll ask Joe,” Manfred said as he came in. “Maybe we can eat at Home Cookin tonight and talk about it. That way I won’t miss any more time off work.”

“So ahead of time, I need to ask the oldies if they’re willing.”

“Go right ahead. Since this whole crazy idea is based on them saying yes for some unknown reason.”

“Unknown reason, hell,” Olivia said. “They’ll do it for money, same as anyone else.”

“And think of something to call them besides the oldies,” Manfred called as she let herself out.

Olivia, the bit firmly between her teeth, felt purposeful and much more cheerful. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail as she walked to the hotel. She felt the beginning of a trickle of sweat on her back, knew it would roll with an unpleasant ticklish feeling down the crack between her hips. She found she was looking forward to talking to Tommy again. He was a rascal, through and through.

Olivia liked old people. It surprised her to realize this, and she wondered if it had something to do with her relationship with Lemuel, who was the oldest person she’d ever met… though perhaps calling him a person was a bit of a stretch.

But then she remembered her father’s mother. She’d liked Grandmother. There had been a few moments in her childhood that hadn’t actually sucked, and the times she’d gotten to stay with her grandmother had contained all those moments. So she walked into the hotel with pleasant anticipation. Two old women were sitting in the lobby, which contained several comfortable chairs and a table or two. One of the women was knitting, and the other was listening to an iPod. They both looked up with interest as she came to a stop in front of them.

“I’m Olivia Charity,” she said. “I met Tommy the other day. I believe you ladies must be Mamie and Suzie?”

Mamie turned out to be the knitter, and Suzie the listener. Mamie had to use a walker, and Olivia discovered quickly that her conversation tended to wander away from time to time. Mamie’s knit pants hung on her, and her shoes were orthopedic, but she wore makeup, by God, and her hair was white and curly like a lamb’s coat. Suzie was (to Olivia’s surprise) of Asian descent, though her speech was purely American. Her thick gray hair was cut short at her earlobes, and her eyeglasses were decorated with rhinestones. Suzie was wearing a red T-shirt and white crops with red sandals. She looked as if she were about to go on a Golden Age cruise.

“Yeah,” Suzie said, when Olivia introduced herself, “Tommy told us about you. I’ll go get him.” Suzie was able to walk on her own with relative ease.

Left alone with Mamie, Olivia asked her how she liked the hotel.

“It’s safer than the Five Aces,” Mamie said. Her eyes were a faded blue, and her eyelids looked very thin and delicate with their trace of blue eye shadow. “We were going to get murdered in our beds there. Or right out in the street.”

“So you were glad to move?”

“Glad? Well, I don’t think ‘glad’ really covers it… I never have liked Texas. I loved Vegas. But I wanted to live, more than I wanted to be in Nevada.” She looked at Olivia with close attention. “I expect you’ll be that way, too.”

“Probably,” Olivia said. But it was a creepy thing to think about, and she was relieved when Tommy and Suzie returned, Tommy moving slowly with his cane and Suzie in possession of a bit of news. “We have asked if we can use what Mrs. Whitefield calls the parlor,” she said. “Mrs. Whitefield said yes.”

Olivia was relieved. The lobby was wide open, and there were several doors behind which could lurk any number of listeners. At the moment, there was no one there besides them and a sleeping man in the chair in the corner of the room, a newspaper half off his lap. He was several decades younger than the people Olivia had come to see. In fact, he seemed to be Olivia’s age.

“That’s Shorty’s grandson,” Tommy said, pointing with his cane. “He came in late, couple of days ago. He jumped out of his car and ran into the hotel like he was on fire.”

“Shush,” said Mamie. “You’ll wake him up. I think Shorty’s having his visit with the nurse.”

“Then this guy ought to be in his own room!” Tommy said. He seemed to be in a grumpy mood. Olivia wondered if Suzie had woken him from his own nap.

The parlor turned out to be a small room leading off the south side of the lobby. Olivia glanced back, and she saw that the younger man’s eyes were wide open and fixed on her. He hadn’t been asleep at all. He hadn’t wanted to talk to the old ladies, so he’d been feigning. He looked faintly amused, and as his eyes met hers, he winked. She almost smiled. His eyes are gorgeous, she thought. Brown and large and emphasized with perfectly arched dark eyebrows, he looked like someone out of an old Spanish painting. And as she thought this, he batted those long eyelashes at her. She smiled and shook her head and followed her old people.

Then she thought, It’s just like he knew what I was thinking. And she frowned. Exactly like he knew.

Exactly.

She put this thought on her mental back burner as she explained Manfred’s problem to Mamie, Suzie, and Tommy. And then she sketched in the plan she’d devised to solve it.

“Seems pretty weak, but I want to get out of this place for a day, so I’ll say yes,” said Tommy. “Girls?”

“He won’t hurt us?” Mamie said cautiously.

“No. If our friend Joe can’t go with you, another one of us will. We won’t let you get hurt.”

“What about stairs?” Mamie was being sure all her obstacles could be overcome.

“There are three steps up to the front door, and a flight of stairs inside. But there’s an elevator.” Olivia remembered seeing what had certainly seemed like an elevator door when she’d gone up the stairs, right beside the library. “I’ll make sure,” she said, though how she was going to do that she couldn’t imagine at the moment.

“So,” said Suzie, after an expectant pause, “what’s in it for us?”

On her walk over, Olivia had anticipated the question. “Two hundred dollars apiece,” she said.

“Two fifty,” Tommy said.

“Two twenty-five.”

“Done,” Mamie said, in her faint voice.

“Do I have to square this with Mrs. Whitefield?” Olivia asked.

“She ain’t our keeper,” Tommy said. “We can go where we want.”

“Long as we tell her we’re missing a meal,” Suzie said. “By the way, it would be nice to have a lunch or dinner somewhere else, while we’re making this big trip of yours. And not at our own expense.”

“Done,” Olivia said. After all, everyone had to eat. “I’ll come back and let you know, when we’ve finalized our arrangements.”

“And we want to go to the library in Davy,” Mamie said unexpectedly. “We need something to read, and they got the audiobooks there, we called to ask.”

Olivia was not much of a reader herself, but she approved of it as a pastime, so she said, “I’ll see if they have some kind of bookmobile, and if they don’t, I’ll take you myself.”

There were nods all around, and it seemed they’d struck a bargain.

“A real pleasure dealing with you, Olivia,” Tommy said.

When she exited through the lobby, Mr. Big Eyes was nowhere in sight. As Olivia walked back to the pawnshop, she felt well pleased with the day. Forward progress was always a good thing. Even a weak plan was better than no plan. And anything would do to fill in the time until Lemuel returned, especially since she hadn’t had a chance to start working on the proposal she’d received days before.

Olivia took a shower before she walked down to dinner to meet with Joe. Since the Home Cookin restaurant was the only place to eat in Midnight, it was fortunate for the Midnighters that Madonna Reed was an excellent cook of the home-style variety. Tonight, Madonna was experimenting with a chicken potpie, which meant that she’d had a lot of leftover vegetables and chicken. Since the menu at Home Cookin stayed pretty steady, a change was interesting.

Olivia met up with Manfred on the way through the door. Joe was waiting for them, and Chuy with him, which was no surprise. Rasta was sitting in Chuy’s lap. The Peke often came to meals with his humans, though Madonna had forbidden any feeding from the table or plate. Joe and Chuy had pretended to be shocked she’d think such a thing was possible. Instead of sitting at the big table in the center of the little restaurant, the usual spot for all town residents (and until the hotel had reopened they could all fit around it), the four settled in one of the booths against the west wall, which signaled they had something to talk about.

A teen boy from one of the ranches to the south of Midnight was working as a combination busboy/waiter. He hurried to bring them water and to take their drink orders. Chuy put Rasta down on the floor and pretended he wasn’t curious when Joe said, “What do you all want to talk about?”

Manfred said, “It’s like this. You know about my situation. With the law and with Lewis Goldthorpe.”

Joe and Chuy nodded.

“And you heard what Rachel said at the séance.” They nodded again.

“So Olivia has come up with a plan.”

Joe listened patiently as Manfred explained. Then Olivia told them about her bargain with Suzie, Mamie, and Tommy. Chuy, after he’d grasped the outline of the proposal, sighed and looked down at his cutlery.

“I can’t do it,” Joe said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t go with the old people.”

Whatever Olivia had expected, it wasn’t a flat refusal.

“What — why?” she said, shocked.

“Olivia, we can’t be involved in this. Unless there’s a direct threat to us or our town.”

Olivia opened her mouth to protest. Chuy held up his hand.

“We aren’t what we once were. But we still have rules,” Chuy said.

“This is a direct threat,” Olivia argued.

“Not to us,” Joe said.

“Not to Midnight,” Chuy said.

“How is this different from Connor Lovell?” she asked. She did not raise her voice, but her intensity was laserlike.

Manfred inhaled sharply. He had not wanted to ever hear that name again. He knew Olivia had made a misstep.

“Let it go,” he told her. “Olivia, that’s their right.”

“Okay, then,” she said, struggling to regain her composure.

Manfred noticed uneasily that Joe’s eyes, normally a calm, boring brown, were sort of glowy. Chuy’s, too. Rasta had leaped up beside Chuy. He was relieved to see that the dog’s eyes looked absolutely normal. “We’ll make another plan, guys. No problem,” he said, in a brave attempt at a cheerful voice.

There was a lull in the conversation, during which they all took a step back from being upset.

Manfred said, “Olivia, didn’t you tell me that you were looking for a desk for your apartment?”

Olivia took the cue. “Thanks for reminding me. Joe, I do need a desk, if one comes in that’s not too fragile or pricey.”

“I did get a fauxtique desk yesterday,” Joe said, smiling. “Probably from the nineteen sixties and very sturdy. I don’t know if we could get it down the stairs to your place, though. We’d have to come around to the side, take it straight in the east door….”

They embarked on a technical discussion about moving the desk.

“Maybe I can use my high school math skills for once,” Manfred said. “I knew there was a reason I had to take it.”

They were able to have a decent dinner together, though Manfred became distracted by trying to figure out another plan. He yearned to be out from under his situation the way a man in the desert yearns to spot a palm tree.

Olivia elbowed him when he was thinking vaguely about suing Lewis for slander. Or some other defamation. “What?” he asked her.

There was a stranger inside the doorway.

“That’s Mr. Big Eyes, Shorty Horowitz’s grandson,” she said.

The stranger waited to be seated, and Manfred called, “Just take a seat anywhere. Madonna or the kid will be with you in a second.” He nodded and took one of the tables for two along the front wall. Unfortunately, it was the Rev’s table.

“Any one but that one!” Olivia said. He raised his eyebrows and pointed to the one nearest the door. They all nodded.

Olivia muttered, “I could kick myself. I should have thought that at him, to see if he’d react. I know he heard me thinking about how pretty his eyes are, at the hotel.”

The man was looking down at his silverware rather pointedly.

“He can hear my thoughts,” she said to Manfred.

Joe and Chuy had gone to the counter to talk to Madonna for a moment, while the new boy was coming to their booth with the credit card and charge slip.

“I’ve met a person who could do that, before,” Manfred said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all.” Manfred signed the slip and got out of the booth to walk to the newcomer’s table. Mr. Big Eyes looked up, unsurprised.

“Hi,” Manfred said. He hesitated. “Do you, by any chance, know a waitress in Louisiana? Works in a bar in a little town called Bon Temps?”

The difference in the newcomer’s face was comical. He looked startled, alarmed, and panicky in quick succession. “Why do you want to know?” he said, with unconvincing indifference.

“Because I know her, too, and my friend here believes you share a trait with her.”

Olivia, who’d been right on his heels, stepped up to Manfred’s side.

“I’m Olivia Charity,” she said. “I hear you’re Shorty Horowitz’s grandson?”

“Your buddies told you,” the newcomer said. He was tall and lean, and he looked as if he’d spent a lot of his life looking behind him and around corners, waiting for an attack. “Yeah, I’m Rick Horowitz.”

“Manfred Bernardo.” Manfred held out his hand, and somewhat reluctantly, Rick shook it. When he let Manfred’s hand go, he looked a little surprised.

“So you do know Sookie,” he said. “You’re a friend?”

“Yes, I am,” Manfred said. “Olivia, I’ll tell you about her someday.”

“Is everyone in this town different?” Rick said, keeping his voice low.

Manfred smiled. “Brother, you have no idea,” he said. “If you’re going to be in town for a few days, drop in to see me. You can’t spend your whole time in the hotel.”

Olivia said, “We don’t see too many new faces here, Rick.”

The newcomer looked from one of them to the other. He seemed to come to a conclusion. “Please,” he said. “If we’re going to know each other beyond saying hello, you can call me Barry.”

Rick — or rather, Barry — told Manfred he’d visit the next morning. He’d glanced down at his cell phone at a weather screen, and then told them he needed to order.

“You have somewhere to be tonight,” Manfred said.

“Not exactly,” Barry said. “I don’t stay out after sunset in Texas.”

They both regarded him with some astonishment. When he didn’t expand on this statement, Manfred said, “Sure. Well, see you around.” With the new busboy hovering to take Barry’s order, they waved and left Home Cookin.

“Doesn’t stay out after sunset in Texas?” Olivia muttered to Manfred as they walked home.

“I don’t blame him,” Manfred said. “I think he’s vampire-phobic.”

“Just in Texas?”

“He hasn’t told us the whole truth about anything but that. He’s really worried about vampires. I guess it’s lucky Lemuel isn’t around.”

Olivia obviously disagreed, but she said, “There aren’t any other vampires in a two-hundred-mile radius of Midnight. Did you know that? This Rick, rechristened Barry, might be glad to hear it.”

“No,” Manfred said, very surprised. “I never realized… well, okay. Interesting. Listen, what do you think of asking this new guy to step into Joe’s place in your plan?”

“You have that much confidence in him after knowing him for ten minutes?”

“Would you quit your bitching? Who else are we going to find?”

To Manfred’s surprise, she laughed. “I wish I could think of someone. You’re chipper all of a sudden.”

“It’s interesting having someone new in town,” he said. “And I think you’re right. From what I get from him, I’m almost certain he’s a telepath, so that’s even more interesting. Kind of unnerving, though.”

“To have someone know what you’re thinking? Damn straight, it’s unnerving. Did I understand you were telling him you knew another telepath? You kept that one close to your chest.”

“You have more secrets than I do.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Manfred laughed again. “I haven’t heard anyone say that in years.”

“My grandmother…” But then Olivia clamped down on whatever she’d thought of telling him, somewhat to Manfred’s disappointment.

“Too many people know too much here, anyway,” she muttered. “I have to take over the pawnshop now.” She hurried up the front steps of the pawnshop and the CLOSED sign flipped over to OPEN.

Bobo popped out of Midnight Pawn almost as soon as Olivia went in. “Hey, buddy,” he said easily. “I’m just about to go grab some supper before Home Cookin closes. Sometimes Madonna doesn’t want Dillon around anymore, so she sends him home.”

“Dillon?”

“Dillon Braithwaite. The new kid. The waiter.”

“Only you would know his name,” Manfred said.

“You didn’t ask him who he was?” Bobo seemed surprised and a little reproachful.

“Never occurred to me,” Manfred said with absolute honesty. “I’d never do that in a city, so I never thought of doing it here.”

“Well… gosh.” Bobo shook his head and hurried off to get some food. From Dillon the waiter.

As he stopped by his mailbox and retrieved a hefty bundle of envelopes, Manfred wondered if his lack of curiosity about the boy made him a bad person. Did he routinely ignore waitstaff? He shrugged. He couldn’t work up a lot of concern about it.

From the size of the bundle, Manfred did realize he hadn’t opened his mail in a couple of days. He sat at his desk, conveniently handy to a trash basket, to sort through it. He pitched several ads, two offers for credit cards, one letter from a local cemetery offering to give him a tour and sell him a plot at a reasonable cost for his final resting place, and one Hallmark card from his mother, who wanted him to know that she was “Thinking of You.” Though Manfred loved his mother, he couldn’t say that he gave her a lot of thought in return. But he did need to call her. He was overdue in his duty. He glanced at his calendar and saw that he hadn’t talked to her for three weeks.

He dug out his cell phone and placed the call, knowing that if he didn’t do it right at this moment, he’d put it off again. Rain Bernardo picked up on the first ring.

“Hi, Mom,” he said. She responded with almost embarrassing fervor. He thanked her for the card, told her he was working long hours as usual, told her he still liked his house and the town, and came very close to telling her about Rachel. But the enormity of the gap between his life and hers seemed so wide; there would have to be so much fill-in before he could talk across it. In the end, he told her nothing new.

But she had news for him. “I’m getting married,” she said, almost defiantly.

For a second, Manfred was too stunned to say anything. “Wow, that’s great!” he blurted, desperately trying to fill the silence. “Gary, I’m assuming.”

“Yes, of course, Gary.”

“When will it be?”

“We’re just going to slip off some weekend soon,” she said evasively.

“I’ll come,” he said, absolutely certain that he must make the effort. He owed his mother that much. “Just let me know for sure.”

“Well, we haven’t set a date yet,” she said.

“What are you not telling me?”

“Oh, son, you’re so sharp.” She sighed. “The thing is, Gary’s kids aren’t as… agreeable to the idea as you are.”

“Why not? You’re one of the nicest women I ever met,” Manfred said honestly.

She laughed, but only a little. “That sounds like you came up to me at a party or something, instead of me being your mom.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. He waited.

“Well, the thing is, they… oh, they’re just silly, stupid people,” she said, in a burst of anger that was as unexpected as it was refreshing.

“Me,” he said, suddenly understanding. “They don’t like me.”

“They don’t even know you,” she said, and the anger was still there, full force. “They just don’t like the idea of you. A psychic. Isn’t that stupid?”

“It’s an excuse,” Manfred said. He’d had more experience with human beings than some people three times his age. “They just don’t want their dad to get married, to you or anyone else. I can bet that if I were super-wealthy, they wouldn’t have any objections at all to what I do.”

“I hate to think that, but I have to say there’s something to it,” Rain said.

“Mom, you’re just barely over forty, so you can have a long and happy marriage with Gary. Go for it.” Rain had been unmarried and in her teens when she’d had Manfred, and she would never talk about his father. If his grandmother, Xylda, had known, she hadn’t said a word. Manfred thought she didn’t know who her daughter had been sleeping with, or she’d have found a way to let him know without actually telling him. Xylda had loved him, maybe more than she’d loved her own daughter, Rain, but she’d loved drama most of all.

“I do deserve to be happy,” Rain said now, as if she’d been told that but was just now believing it. “I am going to marry Gary. And if we decide not to tell his kids in advance, we may not tell you, either. We’ll just go do it.”

Since he’d already told her that was what he wanted, Manfred could only repeat that he agreed and wished her luck. “Tell me when it’s done,” he said. “I love you, Mom. If Gary’s the guy you want, go for it.”

When he hung up, after having the whole conversation with Rain several times, Manfred sat back in his chair and worried for a minute or two. Gary and his mother had been dating six years, but those were years that Manfred had not been around much, since he’d been living mostly with his grandmother. He realized that he didn’t know Gary very well. Presumably his mother did, and that was what was important. Should he check Gary out? But Rain had dated the man for a long time. If she hadn’t found out if he had a criminal record in that length of time, she didn’t want to know.

Manfred decided to leave well enough alone.

It would be strange when his mother had a last name that was different from his.

Once he had thought of that, he realized he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember Gary’s last name. He laughed out loud. The great psychic couldn’t remember his mom’s future name. Redding. That was it.

Having settled that, Manfred gave the subject no more thought. Instead, energized by his interest in the new guy, Rick (or Barry) Horowitz, he settled in to work for over an hour before knocking off to watch some television. He figured he’d made back what he’d had to pay Magdalena Orta Powell… but he’d thought of something else he needed from her. And he knew he couldn’t get it in a straightforward way.

He found the bill and cover letter he’d received from Powell’s office. He examined it carefully.

Then he started comparing fonts in his Word program.

—

“I sent a letter to Rachel’s house,” he told Olivia the next morning, after he’d been to the Davy post office. He knew he sounded smug, but he was feeling pretty optimistic. Ever since Fiji had laid the “confidence” spell on him, he’d had these moments of sheer… rightness. Like he couldn’t do the wrong thing and every idea he had was a good one. “It’ll be delivered tomorrow, and Lewis will have to sign for it.”

Should he be worrying about this? He didn’t know, and he only realized theoretically that he should care.

“Why?” she said blankly.

“I duplicated Magdalena’s letterhead. Her letter tells Lewis that the old folks are coming and they should be allowed access to search for possessions of theirs in the library.”

“Show me,” she said.

So he did, smiling all the while. “Pretty damn official, huh?”

Olivia looked at the “letter” very carefully. “You idiot,” she said, but she didn’t sound furious, which Manfred took as a compliment.

“Sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“When did you get the idea that lawyers talked like this?”

“What, you know a lot about lawyer talk?”

“I know more than you do, apparently.” She reread the letter. “However, this isn’t bad, and Lewis may swallow it. It gives us a kind of layer of credibility. Unless he calls Ms. Powell. Didn’t think of that, did you?”

Manfred felt that he should be crestfallen, but he wasn’t. “He won’t. He’ll be so angry he’ll be getting ready to repel the boarders. So he’ll get the letter tomorrow. And we should plan on going to the house the next day, or tomorrow afternoon, even. What do you think would suit the old folks best?”

Olivia said, “Say we leave here day after tomorrow at nine. We’ll have to stop at least once, because they’ll have to pee. We get to Dallas, take them to a Golden Corral or an Outback or something, and then go to Bonnet Park. We’ll get to the Goldthorpe house between one and two, give or take. And we’ll spend about an hour there. We should be able to have them back by dinner.”

Manfred had been confident she’d end up being glad about his taking the initiative. “Now we have to enlist Barry. We’ll have to take two cars. He can ride with one of us, and the other will drive the old people.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” she said.

“I’ll go over to Fiji’s,” Manfred said, to his own surprise. “I haven’t seen her today.”

As Olivia set off for the hotel, Manfred crossed Witch Light Road to see Midnight’s own witch.

As soon as he saw her, he felt completely sober.