Kitabı oku: «Sugar Plums for Dry Creek», sayfa 2

The older men shifted in their seats. Judd knew they were all aware of the troubles Amanda and Bobby were having. They might not know the details, but he had told his landlady, Linda, back in the beginning of September that he was watching the children for his cousin for a couple of weeks. By now, everyone in Dry Creek probably knew there was something wrong.

Even if he was a newcomer, he would be foolish to think they hadn’t asked each other why the kids were still here. Of course, the old men were polite and wouldn’t ask a direct question, at least not in front of the kids, so they probably didn’t know how bad it all was. They probably thought Barbara had called and made arrangements for the kids to stay longer.

“Speaking of letters, maybe we could write a letter to the new woman and tell her we all want a bakery more than a ballet school,” Charley finally broke the silence with a suggestion.

“We can’t do that,” Jacob said with a sigh. “You don’t write a letter to someone who’s right across the street. No, we need to be neighborly and tell her to her face. It isn’t fair that we let her think she’ll make a go of it here with that school of hers.”

“Well, I can’t talk to her,” Charley said. “I’m the one who promised her everything would be fine.”

“Too bad she wasn’t the one who was deaf,” one of the other men muttered.

“I’m not deaf. I had a bad connection is all,” Charley said. “It could happen to anyone.”

“Maybe he could go talk to her,” the other man said, looking up at Judd. “He seems to hear all right.”

Judd felt his stomach knot up at the idea. “I got to count me out some nails. I’m building a fence.”

He walked back to the shelves that held the boxes of nails. Amanda and Bobby trailed along after him. Judd looked down at Bobby. “Why don’t you take your sister and go across to the café and put your order in for some of that cocoa? Tell Linda I’ll be along in a minute.”

The Linda who ran the café was also his landlady. She was renting him the Jenkins place, with an option to buy come next spring. Judd had saved the few thousand dollars the state had given him when it settled his uncle’s estate and added most of the other money he’d gotten to it for the past six years.

He’d started out working as a ranch hand, but the wages added up too slowly for him, and so he’d spent the next couple of years on the rodeo circuit. He’d earned enough in prize money to set himself up nicely. Right now, he had enough money in the bank to buy the Jenkins place, and he’d already stocked it with some purebred breeding cattle. He could have bought the place outright, but he wanted to take his time and be sure he liked it well enough before he made the final deal. So far, the ground had been fertile and the place quiet enough to suit him.

Judd watched Amanda and Bobby leave the hardware store before he reached into the nail bin and pulled out another nail. Fortunately, the older men had given up on the idea that he should talk to the new woman. They probably realized he’d botch the job.

Outside of talking with Linda at the café and smiling politely when Mrs. Hargrove had delivered the books the school had sent him when he’d decided to homeschool the kids, Judd hadn’t had a conversation with a woman since his cousin had left the kids with him. Well, unless you counted the court clerk he’d talked to on the phone.

Judd never had been much good at talking to women, at least not women who weren’t rodeo followers. He had no problem with women at rodeos, probably because they did most of the talking and he always knew what they wanted; they wanted a rodeo winner to escort them around town for the evening. That didn’t exactly require conversation, not with the yelling that spilled out of most rodeo hangouts in the evening.

As long as his boots were polished and his hat on straight, the rodeo women didn’t care if he was quiet. He was mostly for show anyway—if he was winning. If he wasn’t winning, they weren’t that interested in talking to him, or even interested in being with him.

The few temporary affairs he’d had with rodeo followers didn’t leave him feeling good about himself, so eventually he just declined invitations to party. By then he was counting up his prize money after every rodeo anyway, with an eye to when he could leave the circuit and set himself up on his own ranch.

In those years, Judd hadn’t known any women outside of rodeo circles, and he thought that was best. Judd never seemed to know what those women were thinking, and he didn’t even try to sort it all out. He liked things straightforward and to the point. The other kind of women—the kind that made wives—always seemed to say things in circles and then expect a man to know what they meant. For all Judd knew, they could be speaking Greek.

Judd had a feeling the new woman in Dry Creek was one of that kind of women.

No, he wasn’t the one to talk to her about what she was doing here, even though he had to admit he was curious. She sure knew how to hang a sign in that window.

Chapter Three

Lizette shifted the sign with her left hand and took a deep breath. It had taken her the better part of three days to get the practice bar in place along the left side of the room and the floor waxed to a smooth shine. She still had the costumes hanging on a rack near the door waiting to be sorted by size, but she’d decided this morning it was time to put the sign she’d made in her window and start advertising for students.

She could still smell the floor wax, so she’d opened the door to air out the room even though it was cold outside. At least it wasn’t snowing today.

Lizette had bought a large piece of metal at the hardware store yesterday and some paint so she could make her sign. The old men sitting around the stove in the store had obviously heard she was setting up a business, because they were full of suggestions on how she should make her sign.

Of course, most of the words centered on the Baker part of the school’s name, but she couldn’t fault them for that. She was heartened to see they had so much enthusiasm for a ballet school. If this was any indication of the interest of the rest of the people in the community, she just might get enough students to pull off a modified Nutcracker ballet for Christmas after all. She’d even assured the men in the hardware store that no one was too old to learn some ballet steps. In fact, she’d told them that lots of athletes used ballet as a way to exercise.

The old men had looked a little dismayed at her comments, and she wasn’t surprised. At their age, they probably didn’t want to take up any exercise program, especially not one as rigorous as ballet. “You’d want to check with your doctor first, of course,” Lizette added. “You should do that before you take up any new exercise program.”

The men nodded as she left the hardware store. All in all, they’d been friendly, and she wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t get a student or two out of the bunch. And if she didn’t get any students, at least she’d gotten some good neighbors. One of them had already been over to check on the smoke coming out of the small kitchen off the main room when she’d been baking some cookies earlier and had forgotten they were in the oven. He’d even offered to bring her over some more flour if she was inclined to continue baking. He’d expressed some hope of a cherry pie.

The chair Lizette stood on gave her enough height so she could lift the sign and hook it into the chain she’d put up to hang it with. The sign had a white background with navy script lettering.

Lizette planned to take a picture of the sign later and send it to Madame Aprele. She wasn’t sure she’d tell her old teacher that she didn’t have any students yet, but she could tell her that the school was almost ready for classes now that the practice bar was in place. Lizette had planned to use a makeshift practice bar at first, because she couldn’t afford a real one. Madame Aprele had surprised her by sending her one of her own mahogany bars. Her old teacher had shipped it before Lizette left Seattle, and Linda, next door in the café, had kept it for Lizette until she arrived.

Lizette had called Madame Aprele, thanking her and insisting that she accept payment for the equipment. It would help enough, Lizette explained, if she could just pay for the bar over time. She didn’t add that she had no need of charity. Madame Aprele agreed to let Lizette make payments if Lizette promised to call her with weekly updates on her school.

At first Lizette was uncomfortable promising to call Madame Aprele, because she knew her mother would disapprove. But then Lizette decided that whatever problem there had been between her mother and Madame Aprele, there was no need for her to continue the coldness.

Twenty years ago when Madame Aprele had bought the school from Lizette’s mother, the two women had been friends. But, over the years, Jacqueline spoke less and less to Madame Aprele until, finally, her mother wouldn’t even greet the other women when she picked Lizette up after ballet class.

At the time, Lizette didn’t understand why. Now she wondered if her mother didn’t look at Madame Aprele and wish her own life had turned out like the other woman’s.

Not that there was anything in Jacqueline’s life to suggest she wished for a different one. Madame Aprele had been born in France in the same village as Lizette’s mother. Both women had studied ballet together and had left France together. Lizette’s mother had become more Americanized over the years, however, especially after she’d started working in the bakery.

As Lizette’s mother became more conservative in her dress, Madame Aprele became more outrageous, until, in the end, Lizette’s mother looked almost dowdy and Madame Aprele looked like an old-fashioned movie star with her lavender feather boas and dramatic eye makeup.

Lizette stepped down from the chair just as she saw two little children cross the street from the hardware store. The sun was shining on the window so Lizette could not see the children clearly, but she could tell from their size that they were both good prospects for ballet.

Lizette didn’t know how to advertise in a small town like Dry Creek, but she supposed she could ask about the children at the hardware store, find out who their parents were and send them a flyer.

When the children passed her door, they stopped. The little girl was staring at something, and it didn’t take long for Lizette to figure out what it was. The sunlight was streaming in, making the Sugar Plum Fairy costume sparkle even more than usual. Lizette’s mother had used both gold and metallic pink on the costume when she’d made it, and many a young girl mistook it for a princess costume.

“If you go ask your mother if it’s okay, you can come in and look at the costumes,” Lizette said. She doubted things were so casual in Dry Creek that parents wanted their children going into strange stores without their knowledge.

The girl whispered something in the boy’s ear. He nodded.

Lizette had walked closer to the children and was starting to feel uneasy. If you added a few pounds and took away the scared look in their eyes, those two kids looked very similar to that snapshot she’d seen several days ago. She looked up and down the snow-covered street. There were the usual cars and pickups parked beside the hardware store and the café, but there were no people outside except for the two children. “Does your mother know where you are?”

Both children solemnly nodded their heads yes.

Lizette was relieved to know the children had a mother. Their father hadn’t looked like much of a parent, but hopefully their mother was better.

“Our mother won’t mind if we look at the dress,” the boy politely said after a moment and pointed inside. “That one.”

The rack was very close to the door and Lizette decided she could leave the door open so the children’s mother could see them if she looked down the street. Really, if she moved the rack closer, the children could touch the costumes while they stood outside on the sidewalk.

Lizette pushed the costume rack so it was just inside the door. “The pink one is my favorite, too.”

Lizette watched as the little girl reached out her hand and gently touched the costume.

“That’s the dress for the Sugar Plum Fairy in the Nutcracker ballet,” Lizette said.

“What’s a ballet?” the boy asked.

Lizette thought a moment. “It’s like a play with lots of costumes and people moving.”

“So someone wears that dress in a play?” the boy asked.

The boy and Lizette were both seeing the same thing. The little girl’s face was starting to glow. One moment she had been pale and quiet, and the next her face started to show traces of pink and her eyes started to sparkle.

For the first time, Lizette decided she had made the right decision to come to Dry Creek to open her school. If there were more little girls and boys like this in the community, she’d have a wonderful time teaching them to love ballet.

Chapter Four

Lizette heard a sound and looked up to see a half-dozen men stomping down the steps of the hardware store and heading straight toward her new school. She wasn’t sure, but she thought every one of the men was frowning, especially the one who was at the back of the group. That man had to be forty years younger than the other men, but he looked the most annoyed of them all.

“The children are still just on the sidewalk,” Lizette said when the men were close enough to hear. While she hadn’t thought anyone would want children to go into a building alone, she certainly hadn’t expected there would be a problem with them standing on the sidewalk and looking at something inside. If the citizens of Dry Creek were that protective of their children, she’d never have any young students in her classes.

Lizette braced herself, but when the men reached her, they stood silent. Finally, one of them cleared his throat, “About this—ah—school—”

“The children will all have permission from their parents, of course,” Lizette rushed to assure them. “And parents can watch the classes any time they want. They can even attend if they want. I’d love to have some older students.”

The younger man, the one who had hung back on the walk over, moved closer to the open door. He seemed intent on the two children and did not stop until he stood beside them protectively. Lizette noticed that the young boy relaxed a little when the man stood beside him, and the girl reached out her hand to touch the man’s leg. She knew the man wasn’t the children’s father because she’d met that man already. Maybe he was their stepfather. That would explain why the father hadn’t known where the children lived.

“Well, about the students—” The older man cleared his throat and began again. “You see, there might be a problem with students.”

“No one has to audition or anything to be in the performances,” Lizette said. She wasn’t sure what was bothering the men, but she wanted them to know she was willing to work with the town. “And public performance is good for children, especially if it’s not competitive.”

“Anyone can be in the play,” the boy said softly.

The men had all stopped talking to listen to the boy, so they all heard the next words very clearly.

“I’m going to be a Sugar Plum Fairy,” the girl said, and pointed to the costume she’d been admiring.

Judd swallowed. Amanda never talked to anyone but Bobby, and then only in whispers. Who knew all it would take was a sparkly costume to make her want to talk?

“How much is the costume?” Judd asked the woman in the doorway. He didn’t care what figure she named—he’d buy it for Amanda.

“Oh, the costumes aren’t for sale,” the woman said. “I’ll need them for the performance, especially if I want to have something ready for Christmas. I won’t have time to make many more costumes.”

“About this performance—” The older man said, then cleared his throat.

Lizette wondered what was bothering the old man, but she didn’t have time to ask him because the younger man was scowling at her.

“So the only way Amanda can wear this costume is if she’s in your performance?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t say it was my performance.” Lizette felt her patience starting to grow thin. “All of the students will see it as their performance. We work together.”

“About the students—” The older man began again and cleared his throat for what must have been the fourth time.

“I’ll sign Amanda up,” the younger man said decisively. “If she signs up first, she should get her pick of the parts, shouldn’t she?”

“Well, I don’t see why she can’t be the Sugar Plum Fairy,” Lizette agreed. After all, Lizette herself would be choreographing the part for the children’s ballet, and could tailor it to Amanda’s skills. She’d just gotten her first student. “She’ll have to practice, of course. And we’ll have to have a few more students to do even a shortened version of the Nutcracker.”

The younger man squeezed the boy on his shoulder.

“I’ll sign up, too,” the boy offered reluctantly.

“There—I have two students!” Lizette announced triumphantly. “And I only just hung up my sign.”

The older man cleared his throat again, but this time he had nothing to say. All of the older men were looking a little stunned. Maybe they were as taken aback as she was by the fierce scowl the younger man was giving them.

“You might want to see a doctor about the cold you’re getting,” Lizette finally said to the man who had been trying to talk. “Usually when you have to clear your throat so often, it means a cold is coming on.”

The older man nodded silently.

“And you might ask him about taking up ballet while you’re there,” Lizette said. “Just to see if the exercise would be all right for you. Now that I have two students, I can begin classes, and you’d be more than welcome.”

Lizette decided the older man definitely had a cold coming on. He had just gone pale. He even looked a little dizzy.

“You’ll want to wait until you’re feeling better before you start though,” Lizette said to him. That seemed to make him feel better. At least his color returned.

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbled.

Lizette nodded. She knew she couldn’t manage for long on the income she’d get from two students, but just look how much people wanted to talk about her school. With all of that talk, she’d get more students before long.

Lizette smiled up at the younger man. He might scowl a lot, but she was grateful to him for her first two students. “Your wife must be happy you take such good care of the children.”

The young man looked down at her. “I don’t have a wife.”

Lizette faltered. “Oh, I just thought that because their father showed me their picture that—”

“You know the kids’ father, Neal Strong?”

If Lizette thought the men had been quiet before, they were even more silent now.

“No, I don’t know him. Some man just showed me their picture in Forsyth when he asked me to give him a ride out this way. He said they were his kids and he was trying to find them. He probably didn’t know the address or something.”

Judd felt Amanda move closer to his leg, and suddenly he had as great a need to be close to her as she had to be close to him, so he reached down and lifted her up even though he had his heavy farm coat on and it probably had grease on it from when he’d last worked on the tractor.

“Don’t worry,” Judd whispered into Amanda’s hair when she snuggled into his shoulder.

Judd reminded himself that the papers Barbara had shown him when she left the children with him included a court order forbidding the children’s father from being within one hundred yards of them.

Judd knew the court clerk well enough now that he could ask for a copy of the court order if he needed one. Of course, that would mean the clerk would guess that the children were with him. No, there had to be another way. Besides, he didn’t actually need a copy of the order for the court to enforce it.

“You’re sure it was him?” Judd turned to ask the woman. He didn’t know how the children’s father would even know where they were unless Barbara had told him.

“He had a picture and he said he was their father,” Lizette said. “He had a snake on his arm.”

Amanda went still in Judd’s arm. The kids had told him about the snake.

Judd nodded. He should have figured something like this would happen. He wondered if his cousin had gotten back with her husband, after all. Generally, Judd was a supporter of married folks staying together. But some of the things Bobby had let slip while he was at Judd’s place would make anyone advise Barbara to forget her husband.

The one thing Judd knew was that he didn’t want that man to come within shouting distance of the children.

“You have a lock on this place, I suppose,” Judd said as he looked inside the building the woman was going to use for her school. If he brought the kids to the lessons and then came back to pick them up, they should be safe.

“I could put a lock on,” one of the older men spoke up. “It’s no trouble. They have some heavy-duty ones over at the hardware store.”

“And it wouldn’t hurt Charley here to come over and sit while the kids have their lessons,” another older man offered. “He always complains that the chairs at the hardware store are too hard anyway. Now that he’s got his fancy phone, he can call the sheriff any time, night or day.”

Judd nodded. It felt good to have neighbors, even if he hadn’t been very neighborly himself. He wasn’t sure what he could do to repay them, but he intended to try. “I’ll be watching, too.”

“Is something wrong?” Lizette looked at the men’s faces.

“Their father isn’t fit to be near these kids—even the court says so,” Judd said quietly. He could see the alarm grow on Lizette’s face. “Not that you have to worry about it. We’ll take care of the guarding. You won’t even know we’re here. We can even sit outside.”

“In the snow?” Charley protested.

“Of course you can’t sit outside in the cold,” Lizette said. “I’ll put some chairs along the side of the practice area. And I’ll be careful about who else I accept as students. I’ll check references on any grown man who wants to join the class.”

Charley snorted. “Ain’t no grown man hereabouts that’ll sign up. Not if he wants to keep his boots—”

One of the other older men interrupted him. “I thought you was gonna sign up yourself, Charley. You can’t just sit and watch everyone else practice. That wouldn’t be right.”

“Why, I can’t do no ballet,” Charley said, and then looked around at the faces of his friends. “I got me that stiff knee, remember—from the time I was loading that heifer and it pinned me against the corral?”

“The exercises might even help you then,” Lizette said. “We do a lot of stretching and bending to warm up.”

If Judd hadn’t still been thinking about the children’s father, he would have laughed at Charley’s trapped expression. As it was, he was just glad Charley would be inside with the children. For himself, Judd thought, he’d set up a chair outside the door, so he could keep his eyes on who was driving into Dry Creek.

Judd didn’t trust the children’s father and was determined to keep the man as far away from Dry Creek as possible. First thing in the morning Judd decided he’d tell Sheriff Wall all about the court order.

Judd had only met the sheriff once, but he trusted the man. Sheriff Wall might not be one of those big-city sheriffs who solved complicated crimes, but he had the persistence and instincts of a guard dog. And the man knew every road coming near Dry Creek, even the ones that were just pasture trails. The kids would be safer with Sheriff Wall on the job.

“I can pay in advance for the lessons,” Judd announced. He didn’t like the sympathetic look the ballet woman was giving the kids now that Charley had accepted his fate. Judd didn’t want the woman to think they couldn’t pay their way, especially not when she’d have to give special attention to the security of her classroom.

“There’s no need to pay now,” the woman protested.

But Judd already had two twenty-dollar bills in his hand and he held them out to her. “Let me know if it costs more.”

“That should cover their first couple of lessons,” Lizette said as she took the money and turned to a desk in a corner of the large room. “Just let me get a receipt for you.”

Judd watched the woman walk over to the desk. He couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t just walk—she actually glided. He supposed that was what all of that ballet did for a body.

Judd tried not to gawk at the woman. The fact that she moved like poetry in motion was no excuse for staring at her.

Judd heard a soft collective sigh and turned to see all the old men watching the woman as if they’d never seen anyone like her before. Charley had obviously forgotten all about his reluctance to be in the class.

“There’s no need for a receipt,” Judd said.

The woman looked up from the desk. Even from across the room he could see she was relieved. “But you should have one anyway. Just as soon as I get all my desk things organized, I’ll see that you get one. I could mail it to you, if you leave me your address.”

“I’m at the Jenkins place south of town. Just write Jenkins on the envelope and leave it on the counter in the hardware store.”

It had taken Judd two weeks to figure out the mail system in town. The first part was simple. The mail carrier left all of the Dry Creek mail at the hardware store, and the ranchers picked it up when they came into town. The second part still had Judd confused. For some reason, if he wanted to get his mail sooner rather than later, he still had to have it addressed to the Jenkins place even though no one by the name of Jenkins had lived on the ranch for two years now.

When Judd finally bought the Jenkins place, he told himself he’d get the name changed. He’d asked the mail carrier about it, and the man had just looked at him blankly and said that’s what everyone called the place.

Judd vowed that once he had the children taken care of and the deed to the place signed, he’d take a one-page ad out in that Billings paper everyone around here read. He’d make sure people knew it wasn’t the Jenkins place anymore.

But, in the meantime, he didn’t want to have the woman’s envelope returned to her, so he’d go along with saying he lived at the Jenkins place.

The woman nodded. “I know about the hardware store. I’ve been meaning to post an announcement about the school so everyone will know that we’re currently taking students.”

“About the students—” one of the old men said and then cleared his throat. “You see, the students—well, we’re not sure how many students you’ll have.”

“Of course,” Lizette assured him. She knew she needed a few more students to do the ballet, but surely three or four more would come. “No one knows how many people will answer the flyer I put up. But I need to start the classes anyway if we’re going to perform the Nutcracker ballet before Christmas.”

Lizette figured the students who came later could do the parts that involved less practice.

“Christmas is only five weeks away,” Judd said and frowned. He knew when Christmas was coming because he figured his cousin would surely come for the children before Christmas.

Judd had gone ahead and ordered toys for the kids when he’d put in a catalog order last week, but he thought he’d be sending the presents along with them when their mother picked them up. Thanksgiving was next week, and it was likely the only holiday he’d have to worry about. He figured he could cope with a turkey if he could get Linda to give him some more basic instructions. She’d already told him about some cooking bag that practically guaranteed success with a turkey.

“I don’t suppose you have a real nutcracker in that ballet?” one of the older men asked hopefully. “I wouldn’t say no to some chopped walnuts—especially if they were on some maple doughnuts.”

“You know there’s no doughnuts, so there’s no point in going on about them,” Charley said firmly as he frowned at the man who had spoken. “There’s more to life than your stomach.”

“But you like doughnuts, too,” the older man protested. “You were hoping for some, too—just like me.”

“Maybe at first,” Charley admitted. “But I can’t be eating doughnuts if I’m going to learn this here ballet.”

Lizette smiled as she looked at the two men. “Well, I do generally make some sort of cookies or something for the students to eat after we practice. I guess I could make doughnuts one of these days.”

“You mean you can bake doughnuts?” Charley asked. “I didn’t know anyone around here could bake doughnuts.”

Lizette nodded. “I’ll need to get a large Dutch oven, but I have a fry basket I can use.”

“Hallelujah!” Charley beamed.

“And, of course, I’d need to have some spare time,” Lizette added.

“And she’s not likely to have any time to bake now that she’s starting classes,” Judd said, frowning. It would be harder to guard the kids if every stray man in the county was lined up at the ballet school eating doughnuts.

Judd told himself that it was only his concern for the safety of the kids that made him worry about who was likely to be visiting the ballet school. He’d been in Dry Creek long enough to know about all the cowboys on the outlying ranches.

A woman like Lizette Baker was bound to attract enough attention just being herself without adding doughnuts to the equation.

Not that, he reminded himself, it should matter to him how many men gawked at the ballet teacher. He certainly wasn’t going to cause any awkwardness by being overly friendly himself. He was just hoping to get to know her a little better.