“Don’t think you’re getting by me.” The voice, made low and wheezy by decades of smoking, stopped him before the diner’s front door had even swung closed.
Ruby Sue sat in her usual spot on a high stool behind the cash register. She looked like the stereotypical little old lady, with her tight white curls and her thick glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. Sean knew better. The woman was a restaurant owner, gossip mastermind, and PhD–level pot stirrer. She’d seen through him the first night he’d rolled into town looking for a warm meal and a menial job. He’d washed dishes in the back for three months before she’d manipulated Julian into hiring him at the brewery.
Fact was, Sean owed Ruby Sue. And she knew it.
“Now why would I want to do that, Ruby Sue?”
“Come on, there’s a corner booth open.” She made a half–snort, half–honk sound, grabbed her purse, and sidled down off her stool. “We wouldn’t want any of these rumor mongers to listen in.”
It took everything he had, but Sean managed not to laugh out loud at her sass. She was like the housekeeper in the original Parent Trap movie who always swore she “never said nothing about nobody” and then managed to tell everything about everybody.
Still, he followed her spry shuffle across the crowded restaurant, past the packed lunch counter, and to an empty booth in the far corner.
She took the seat with the back to the wall. All the better to keep an eye on her customers and the front door. “Sit.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He slid into the seat across from her already set up with silverware wrapped in a white paper napkin.
Ruby Sue leaned forward on her elbows, gave a shifty–eyed look toward the lunch crowd, and dropped her voice. “Is it that fool Carl Brennan? His mama tried to steal my pecan pie recipe when she worked here. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“That’s what they say about the Sweets.”
“Whoever’s saying that obviously doesn’t know shit from Shinola.” Her eyes crinkled at the corner. “But you sure are awfully protective of that family…or at least one Sweet in particular from what I hear.”
He shifted in his seat and fidgeted with the wrapped silverware. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I always liked that Natalie Sweet. Girl’s got fortitude.”
He kept his attention focused on the silverware now held in a tight grip. He couldn’t look at Ruby Sue. She took in too much at a glance.
“Here’s Ellen. Do you want the regular?” She glanced up at the redheaded waitress making a beeline toward them while holding a giant glass of sweet tea in each hand.
He nodded.
Ellen placed the condensation–covered plastic glasses on the table.
“Boy, it wouldn’t kill you to step out of your comfort zone every once in a while,” Ruby Sue said.
He didn’t bother trying to smother his laugh this time. That advice coming from Ruby Sue was like hearing Dixieland jazz from a punk rock band. “Have you been watching the daytime talk shows again?”
“Hush your mouth.” She ripped open three packets of sugar and poured them into her already diabetic–coma–inducing glass of the sweet stuff. “He’ll have the pot roast on a hoagie with extra potato salad. I’m good.”
“You should eat,” he urged. “It’s lunchtime.”
The look she gave him would have made his old cold–blooded Hollywood agent take a few steps back. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
The waitress gave him a what–can–you–do shrug and ambled off to the kitchen to place his order.
Ruby Sue took three large drinks of spiked sweet tea, five years coming off her face with each swallow, before beginning her interrogation. “Okay, spill it.”
He filled her in on the troubles at the brewery and the fact that all signs pointed to the permanently pissed–off former brewmaster.
Ruby Sue shook her head. “Make a decision in haste and repent on your own time.”
“Come again?” he asked.
“Joni Peterson was a wild child. Her mama and daddy warned her. Hell, half the town warned her about Carl Brennan, but she was too headstrong to listen. She tied her wagon so tight to Carl that she cut off contact with her family. Her daddy died a year ago. Cancer finally got her mother a few weeks ago.” She poured another pack of sugar into her sweet tea, stirring it with her straw until the white granules dissolved. “Seems bad news and old gossip always circles back around.”
“What do you mean?” Cold air blasted up his spine even though they weren’t anywhere near the front door.