Remember When (Foster Saga 1)

“After you’ve flown in that, everything else is a letdown. Is your husband going to pick you up?” he added.

“I have to call him first.”

Inside, the little metal terminal building was hot and stuffy. Across from a desk with a Car Rental sign on it was a vending machine. A woman in a waitress uniform whose name tag said “Roberta” was chatting with two elderly men who were drinking coffee from paper cups at a small lunch counter. On the opposite wall between two restrooms was a pay phone.

After twenty minutes of busy signals, Diana had the operator check the line and was informed there was no one on the line. Diana assumed Cole’s uncle’s phone was out of order and decided to rent a car.

“I’m sorry, miss,” Roberta said, looking as if she truly was, “but we only have two rental cars. The one with the bad muffler was rented this morning by a drilling company man who came in on that red plane. The car with the bad tires got wrecked last week and it’s being fixed.”

“In that case, where can I find a taxi?”

That brought a guffaw from one of the elderly men at the lunch counter. “Girlie, this ain’t St. Louis, Missouri, nor even San Angelo. We ain’t got no taxicabs standin’ around here.”

Diana was frustrated but undeterred. “When’s the next bus into Kingdom City?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

She decided to appeal to the gallantry of the male native Texan. “I’m here to meet my husband. We were married last weekend, and this is our honeymoon.”

A honeymoon touched a responsive chord in Roberta’s heart. “Ernest,” she pleaded, “you could take the lady to Kingdom City, couldn’t you? It’s only a few minutes out of your way. Do it and I’ll give you free coffee every time you come by for the next two weeks!”

The man named Ernest chewed thoughtfully on his toothpick and then nodded. “Make it three weeks and you got yourself a deal, Bobbie.”

“Okay, three weeks.”

“Let’s go then,” said Ernest, shifting off a stool at the counter and sauntering toward the front door.

“Thank you very much,” Diana said, relieved. She held out her hand to the man. “My name is Diana Foster.” He gave her outstretched hand a quick shake and introduced himself as Ernest Taylor. His gallantry clearly didn’t extend to suitcases, because he glanced over his shoulder at her luggage and said, “I’ll meet you at the curb so you don’t have to lug them things out to the parking lot.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Diana said with concealed sarcasm as she turned to get the first of the three cases. She’d nearly completed her third and final trip when she shoved the hair out of her eyes and saw the vehicle that was going to take her into town, and if she hadn’t been so tired and frustrated, she’d have sat down on the nearest piece of Louis Vuitton luggage and laughed till she cried. Gliding up to the curb was a dusty dark blue pickup truck with a Ronald Reagan bumper sticker and a mountain of oil drums, fishing gear, toolboxes, and cable piled in the bed. “The latch on the tailgate is broke. Just hoist them suitcases over the top of it into the back,” Ernest suggested from the corner of his mouth that wasn’t clamped on the toothpick.

Diana knew there was no way she could lift the heavy luggage over the tailgate, into the back of the truck. “I wonder if you could possibly give me a hand?” she asked.

Ernest opened his door, but stopped with one booted foot on the ground. “You thinking of giving me something for my trouble?” he asked. “Like five bucks, maybe?”

She’d intended to give him twenty dollars for the ride, but she was no longer feeling quite so charitable. “Fine.”

Ernest swung down from the truck and proceeded to toss five thousand dollars’ worth of Louis Vuitton luggage on top of dirty toolboxes and filthy rags, but when he aimed the third piece for the oil drums, Diana’s voice burst out in a desperate cry. “Could you handle that a little more carefully? Those suitcases are very expensive.”

“What, this thing?” he said with a disdainful expression as he held the suitcase at arm’s length as if it were weightless. “Can’t see why. Looks to me like it ain’t nothing but canvas with a plastic coating on it—”

Knowing it would be futile to try to debate this point with a man who willingly drove such a filthy vehicle, Diana chose not to comment. Unfortunately, Ernest misconstrued her speechlessness as sudden recognition of the truth, which drove him to press his point. “Nasty-lookin’ color combination—brown with kinda greenish tan letters all over it saying ‘LV.’?” That said, he tossed the last case onto the oil cans, then slid behind the steering wheel and waited, watching Diana clear a stack of road maps, fishing tackle, and a can of WD-40 off her seat. “?‘LV,’?” he pointed out, “ain’t even a word.”

Since he seemed unwilling to put the truck into gear until she said something, Diana reluctantly replied, “They are initials.”

“Secondhand stuff, huh?” he concluded sagely as the truck’s gears cranked and they headed down the short gravel driveway toward the highway. “You know how I figured that out?”

Diana’s mood went from mild irritation to mirth. “No, how did you guess?”

“?’Cause your initials ain’t LV. Right?”

“Right.”

“Who’d that ugly stuff belong to before it got foisted off on you?”

“Louis Vuitton,” Diana said straight-faced.

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

He slammed the brake pedal to the floor along with the pedal beside it and shifted gears at the stop sign. “He a boyfriend of yours?”

Perhaps it was the exhilarating effect of the mountains and Cole’s nearness, but Diana suddenly felt in complete charity with everything. “No, he’s not.”

“Sure glad to hear it.”

She turned her head and gazed in fascination at Ernest’s profile. He had skin the color and texture of dried leather, brown eyes, hollow cheeks, and a toothpick hanging out of the side of his mouth. “Really, why are you glad?”

“?’Cause there ain’t no red-blooded American male alive who’d be caught dead carrying suitcases with his initials pasted all over them, and that’s a fact.”

Diana tried to remember details about the men she’d seen in the Louis Vuitton store making purchases for themselves. After a moment she stifled a smile and nodded. “You’re right.”

Chapter 46

&nbs

p; HERE WE ARE. KINGDOM CITY on the left,” Ernest said as he stuck his arm out the window, giving a hand signal for a left turn. “This is Main Street.”

A thrill went through Diana. This was Cole’s home, and she tried to absorb everything about it. The downtown district comprised ten blocks of businesses and stores, including the Capitol Theater in the center, which was flanked by a drugstore and a hardware store. Across the street was The Hard Luck Café, a Farmers Insurance agency, the Kingdom City Bank, a bakery, and three variety stores that seemed to carry everything from tape recorders to horse saddles.

Ernest let her off at The Hard Luck Café to use their pay phone, but to Diana’s disappointment, Cal’s line was still busy. She’d already ascertained that Kingdom City had a taxi service, so she resigned herself to that.

As they pulled up at a stop sign in front of Wilson’s Feed and Grain, however, Ernest shifted his toothpick to the other side of his jaw. “You got any other ideas about how to get where you’re going?”

“Yes, I’m going to take a taxi.”

“It’s busted.” As proof, he nodded meaningfully toward the parking lot in front of Gus’s Repair Shop, which was nearly blockaded by vehicles waiting to be repaired. In the front row, parked parallel to the curb, Diana saw a white Mercury sedan with its hood up and the word TAXI printed in black on the door.

Ernest had already made it clear that he wasn’t available to take her to Jeffersonville, so at the moment, Diana’s choices seemed to be limited to hitchhiking or standing on a corner with a fistful of money in her hand, asking passing vehicles to give her a ride. Neither one seemed safe. “Ernest,” she said in a voice of helpless femininity, “I’m really desperate, and I just know you can think of something. Is there someone around here who would rent their car to me?”

“Nope.”