Struck by Lightning Read online

  “What?” Bess had him up on a ladder hanging another watercolor that had been in the back room. He stood on top of the ladder with the screwdriver dangling from his hand and a mouthful of screws.

  “Can I have this?”

  “You want Trouble?”

  Rebecca sighed. “I have trouble. I just want this little guy.”

  “Why are you taking stuff out of stock?” Bess demanded. “You can’t just take stuff out of the gallery stock like that.”

  “I asked if I could have him.”

  “What are we supposed to sell?”

  Rebecca looked around the room pointedly. “It looks like we’re supposed to sell watercolor landscapes.”

  Bess scowled. “I’m trying to make the place look good for the woman from the paper.”

  “Claudia Sanchez.” Rebecca snapped her fingers. She smirked. Bess used to be a likable, pleasant person to be around, but the gallery had brought out a previously unknown competitive streak. When they first opened, she had been outselling everyone else with her inoffensive, competent landscapes, but when Rebecca had turned to high art and been discovered by the local art crowd Bess had stopped being the gallery star and started being a huge pain.

  “Claudia Sanchez?”

  “The art reviewer at the paper. She bought one of my pieces the other day.”

  “She what?”

  “She bought one of my pieces. Look at the log.” Rebecca gestured to the desk where they kept the sales log so they would know at the end of the month how much commission each of them was owed. “So Max, can I have this guy or not?’

  Bess stalked over to the desk and flipped through the log.

  “You can have it,” Max said from the top of the ladder.

  Rebecca smiled and ran her thumb along the edge of Trouble’s ear. Behind her she could hear Bess grumbling. She carried her goblin to the desk and slipped him inside her bag. “You know, this does look nicer. The floor is so open now.” She walked across the middle of the gallery and stopped in front of the window. “Hey Max, could you run a wire across the window about a third of the way from the ceiling that we could hang a couple of Edie’s necklaces from? I think they would catch the light really nicely.”

  “I have to go to work.” Bess slammed out the front door.

  “Why do you do that to her?” Max asked when the windows stopped rattling.

  “Because she makes it so easy.” Rebecca shrugged. “I want to move the jewelry case back where it was too. Why do you let her talk you into this stuff when you know I’m just going to make you move it back?”

  Max shrugged and straightened the watercolor he’d just hung. “So you want a wire across the window?”

  A customer walked in, so Rebecca went to work helping her while Max moved the jewelry case back. By the time the woman left, having purchased two of Max’s larger goblins as bookends, Max had the wire strung. Rebecca climbed on the window’s deep sill to start hanging a few of Edie’s larger necklaces. She had three clasped around her neck to keep her hands free.

  “You have students this afternoon?” Max asked.

  “I have a student this afternoon.” Her student, Monica Raines, had been taking lessons for two years. Monica didn’t want to be a professional, she just wanted to be good at her hobby. Rebecca suspected she also wanted to contribute to Rebecca’s income. She looked out the window. The owner of the second-run movie theater across the street was changing the marquee, and the woman who owned the newsstand next to the theater was putting up a new window display. A group of people walked out of Meechan’s Kitchen. Not many people roamed on the sidewalks at this time of day, but school would be out pretty soon and they would have to chase kids out of the gallery before they broke stuff.

  A blond guy ambled along the sidewalk looking at the shops with interest. Rebecca took another necklace off her neck and reached up to hang it in the window without taking her eyes off the guy. They didn’t have a lot of trouble in the neighborhood, but everybody tended to keep an eye on suspicious people too. She watched him turn slowly, taking in the bank and the grocery store. Just as he focused on the gallery, she recognized him. Leaping out of the window, she bounced a few steps into the gallery so she stood in shadow where he wouldn’t see her.

  The professional hero. What was he doing strolling down the street so intently today? She didn’t remember ever seeing him around before. In fact, she didn’t remember ever seeing him before last night. He wasn’t looking for her, was he? Her heart skipped, but she wasn’t sure if it was with hope or fear.

  “What’s the matter?” Max asked. He looked out the window.

  “Nothing,” Rebecca said. Her face felt hot. He was still standing under the marquee of the theater staring down the street at the library or the apartment building next to it. He certainly did look like he was searching for something. Or someone.

  Max walked closer to the window and peered out. “It didn’t look like nothing.”

  “Get out of the window.” Rebecca grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him out of the light. Across the street, the professional hero started making his way up the street again. She watched him until he walked around the corner of the theater.

  “Do you know that guy?” Max asked.

  “No.”

  Max nodded. “Okay, are you playing games with that guy?”

  “You have no faith in me.”

  Max put his arm over her shoulder. “I have absolute faith in you. Are you playing games with that guy?”

  The door opened. Claudia Sanchez stepped in as though she was far too good for this one-horse town. She smoothed her hand over her perfectly coifed hair before speaking. “Hello, I’m Claudia Sanchez. From the paper. I called earlier.”

  Rebecca plastered on her best sales face. “Hello. It’s a pleasure to see you again. I hope my Dream sculpture found a good home with you.”

  “That was yours, wasn’t it? It looks very nice in my spare bedroom.”

  Rebecca half expected her to say it matched her bed spread, but she didn’t. “Glad to hear it. Feel free to look around. Max and I will be here to answer any questions you have.” She turned back to the window. The hero was most definitely gone so she stepped up on the sill and finished hanging the necklaces.

  Why was he wandering down the street today? She felt pretty sure she’d never seen him before last night. Rebecca licked her lips. It had been a great kiss. But if it hadn’t been raining and there hadn’t been lightning and he hadn’t been in uniform, it wouldn’t have been so great. No, she thought, it would have been a pretty average kiss. She could prove that by going back to the station some rainless night and looking up the professional hero for a control kiss. And then maybe a rain-only kiss.

  And then one out of that uniform.

  That image sprung to mind. Rebecca shivered and hung the last of Edie’s necklaces in the window. The large, chunky amethyst on it caught the light and flared it around the room. She had to put that guy out of her mind at the soonest opportunity. She didn’t have time to be messing around with heroes.

  * * * *

  Dan opened the door of his car, which he’d parked around the corner. Before he’d even settled into the driver’s seat, he had out his map. She could have been coming from anywhere and going anywhere. According to the marquee, a movie had let out not long before he’d seen her and the restaurant sign said it had been open, as had the newsstand. The crabby woman in the gallery said they usually closed before then. The library and the bank had both been closed also, but that didn’t narrow the field enough. Her destination wasn’t any easier to figure out. The block she’d turned onto had half a dozen houses split up into apartments and one actual apartment building along with several single-family dwellings. Worse, there was one alley connected to the next road down and a cul-de-sac with yet more apartments.

  He studied the map for something he might have missed that would point to the only logical location for her. Anything that would narrow his search a little bit.

  Maybe if he walked it. He could park at the station and walk the route he’d seen her take. She hadn’t had on any shoes, and if the alley was rough and glassy she couldn’t have gone that way. Or he might spot the purple skirt hung outside to dry someplace. Or the girl herself might be sitting on a porch drinking her morning coffee. And failing all that maybe Kevin’s ungirlfriend would say, “Her? Oh sure I know her. You want her number?”

  He had to find her. Had to. He couldn’t really explain to himself why, but he had to. He set aside the map and started the car. He had two days to patrol before he had to be back on duty and if he hadn’t found her by then, he’d just have to take up his spot at the bay doors, watching down the street for any sight of her.

  Chapter 2

  “It’s just amazing. It’s like she was swallowed up by the earth.” Dan toyed with his remaining french fries. Since Jack’s wedding last Saturday, he’d been eating every possible meal at Meechan’s. The waitresses knew him, and he pronounced it “Meechan’s Keetchan” like a local. “They said she used to come in once in a while. But she hasn’t been here for at least a month. The waitresses, the cook and the regulars. Nobody has seen her.”

  “Maybe she moved away,” Lew offered.

  Dan groaned. “I thought of that. You don’t think she did, do you? I mean, it wasn’t like end of term at the university, was it?”

  “So when do you give up?”

  Dan flashed him a trademark grin. “As soon as something more entertaining comes along.” Before he’d looked back down at his plate, he was frowning again. “I’m beginning to think I made her up. Like I was standing there watching the rain and I daydreamed this ethereal woman.”

  “Ethereal?”

  “It was the word of the day yesterday. Sort of
fits.” Dan shrugged. When he’d torn the page off the calendar yesterday morning and read the definition the first thing he’d thought of was that girl. Of course he’d thought of her first thing every morning since he’d met her, but the word of the day for the day before that, “disingenuous,” hadn’t reminded him of her; nor had it become permanently linked to her and the purple puddles she’d left on the apparatus bay floor. “You saw the puddles on the floor. You believe she was really there.”

  “Sure.”

  “Good, because I’m starting to think I imagined the whole thing.”

  Lew shoved his plate back and leaned his elbow on the table. “Why are you so interested in this one?”

  “This one?”

  “This girl. You’re wrapped up in pursuing a girl you can’t find. Why?”

  Dan looked down at his plate. He’d asked himself that same question many nights as he’d fallen asleep and over many Meechan’s burgers. He’d dated prettier women, more exotic, exciting women, but something about this one wouldn’t let him go. The amused glint in her eyes when she teased him about his job within thirty seconds of meeting him. Or maybe it was her scornful smile as she challenged him to her experiment. Or the fact that she sat down on the push bumper of the engine and started wringing out her long black hair like she felt more at home there than he did. Or the nagging feeling in his gut that there was something more here. Something significant, larger than life. Like she had dropped into his world and fit perfectly as though she’d been made for him, the way her wet hair smelled and the satin of her skin. That little catch in her breath in the moment before they kissed. She wasn’t too hot or too cold or too hard or too soft. She was just right.

  But he couldn’t tell any of this to Lew without getting seriously ridiculed, possibly for the rest of his life. “She’s a challenge. I mean, how many women walk away from Dan McWilliams?”

  “Yeah.” Lew stood up and dropped a couple of bills on the table. “I gotta get to the junkyard. See you later.”

  Dan grunted. She couldn’t have moved away. She had to be here someplace. It was just going to be a matter of time before he found her again.

  * * * *

  Rebecca sat behind the desk with her chin in her hands, staring out the window. For five weeks now she’d been living like a hermit. Other than one foray to the Salvation Army for supplies, she’d been staying home working on new stuff when she wasn’t drawing the hero in her sketchbook. She’d been walking to the gallery the long way down Market and carrying her lunch so she wouldn’t need to head to Meechan’s and risk being spotted on the street. Now she was starting to miss Billy’s chocolate shakes. The hero hadn’t been on the street for a couple of days. Maybe he’d given up. She couldn’t stay in hiding forever, assuming he was still looking for her. He’d have to be nuts and she didn’t need another nut in her life.

  Unless he was still looking for her because he’d felt something in that ridiculous kiss too. Felt that mad surge she couldn’t entirely convince herself was electricity in the air from the storm.

  Who cared if he felt something? She hadn’t. It was just electricity. Lightning. A Romeo like that needed to be put in his place. If he was intent on pursuing her, then it was her duty to womankind to remind him that he wasn’t God’s gift.

  But he couldn’t still be looking for her because that would be maudlin and she really wanted a milk shake. She picked up the phone.

  “Meechan’s,” Billy answered.

  Rebecca smiled. So far the fates were with her. Billy was working. “Hi Billy, I need to place a carry out order.”

  “Okay.” Billy always sounded so happy. Thirty-five and mentally handicapped, Billy’s entire job had been taking phone orders and ringing register until Max discovered his gift for milk shake making about a year ago.

  “I need a cheeseburger, jojos and I want you to make me one of your special chocolate milk shakes.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really. You make the best milk shakes in town, Billy.”

  Billy giggled. “You want peanut butter in it? It’s good with peanut butter.”

  Rebecca hesitated. She really only wanted a plain-Jane chocolate milk shake, but she never could resist Billy’s excitement. “Sure Billy. Peanut butter would be great.” Peanut butter would be fine and nothing would ever be as bad as the tuna salad milk shake incident last spring. That had been her own fault. She’d told him anything he ate with milk would probably be good in a milk shake. Then she found out he ate everything with milk, after the tuna salad milk shake, but before she ended up with a spaghetti milk shake.

  “It’ll be all ready in fifteen minutes. Are you coming over?”

  Rebecca often wondered how he thought anyone would get their carry out order if they didn’t come get it. Meechan’s didn’t do delivery. Billy tried once and got lost going to the bank at the end of the block. “I’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  “Okay. Bye.” Billy hung up.

  Rebecca hung up the phone. She no longer entertained the hope that they would train him out of hanging up on people. Rubbing her hands together greedily, she checked the time. Fifteen minutes between her and her chocolate peanut butter shake and the sure knowledge that it was once again safe to walk the streets. She opened her sketchbook. She’d started this one about a year ago when she, Bess and Max were planning the gallery. There were floor plans and notes interspersed with her drawings of trees and flowers because she and Bess had been in a heavy landscape phase, which Bess had not yet left. Rebecca flipped forward to two whole pages of calculations determining what she needed to live on and what she needed for the gallery so she could ask her parents for a loan. The math was wrong in a couple of places. The paper was water stained and thin from crying and erasing. Then the sketches picked up again for a while until she’d discovered high art and started drawing thumbnails with supply lists beside them. Then pictures of the hero. Dozens of them, from all angles. Did he really did look like this or had her memory reshaped him?

  She left the book open on the desk and picked up her keys and some money for lunch. The weather had remained at the same level of unbearable hot since June. School started next week and for the first time in her life, Rebecca had no classes to attend. The first loan payment to her parents was due that day though. She had it and most of the second one too, not due until Thanksgiving. A gallery in Chicago had contacted her about doing a show with a few other up-and-coming artists. She was succeeding beyond her wildest expectations.

  Succeeding as a con artist, instead of as an artist. Too much time alone these last few weeks had given her lots of time to reflect on that. She pulled open the door of Meechan’s mumbling under her breath, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the biggest fraud of all.”

  The place was jammed like always. About a quarter of the people she knew and another quarter knew her. The rest just came to see what all the fuss was about because Meechan’s was famous citywide. Billy looked at her blankly when she stopped at the register.

  “I called in a to-go order a few minutes ago. Remember, Billy?”

  He brightened. “I remember you now. You haven’t come to see me for a long time. Where’s Max?”

  “Hasn’t he come to see you either? I’ll tell him you miss him.”

  “Tell him I have a new secret recipe for my shakes.” He leaned over the counter and whispered, “I’m going to put soda pop in them.”

  “That’s a good idea, Billy.” A good idea that several other places had already had, but good nonetheless. “I’ll tell Max.”

  “I’ll get your lunch for you.”

  “Okay.” Rebecca folded her hands and waited while Billy trotted to the kitchen at the back of the restaurant.

  “Well, hello again.”

  The voice sizzled through every nerve ending in her body. The hero. As morose as she’d been lately it might be nice to have a distraction. She turned and smiled at him. “Hello, hero.” Her memory had not recast him in the least. The precise set and mold of his features had apparently been burnt into her mind by the lightning.