Pink Neon Dreams (23 page)

Or so he thought. It turned out places to buy a cup
of coffee before three thirty in the morning were rare in Branson.
 
Once Daniel figured it out, he decided to
head on to Springfield.
 
In the larger
city, he found a 24 hour McDonald’s and bought a pair of large coffees, then
headed for the closest Wal-Mart Super Center where he bought her a phone.
 
“Anything else?” he asked as they headed for
the check-outs in the almost empty store.

“I can’t think of anything,” Cecily said.

“If you need to use the bathroom, go ahead,” he told
her. “We’ll stop for breakfast in Joplin or somewhere.”

Once back in the truck, he headed out Sunshine until
it became Highway 60. Then he picked up the James River Freeway to head north
to I-44.
 
Daniel hit the interstate and
brought the speed of the old truck up to the limit.
 
The motor hummed along without a hitch and
they headed west.
 
He drank the remainder
of his coffee and tossed the cup to the floorboard.
 
Cecily nursed hers, he noticed, and yawned.
“You can snatch some sleep if you want,” he said.

“I doubt I can,” she said as she drained her cup.
“I’m tired, though.”

Before they reached Mount Vernon, however, she’d
scooted across the seat and put her head against his shoulder.
 
Daniel resisted the urge to remove one hand
from the wheel so he could put an arm around her, but he liked her body against
his.
 
When she shut her eyes, he knew
she’d be out in no time and within a few miles, her breathing shifted into a
deeper, easy pattern.
 
In the dim light
of the dash he could just make out her features, but he noticed how peaceful
her expression became while she slept.
 

He turned the radio on soft and low for
company.
 
With the original factory
installed AM radio, he couldn’t tune in anything but country music, but he
fiddled with the buttons until he had a station playing traditional tunes.
 
Although most of the songs weren’t ranked
among his favorites, most were tolerable.
 
Somewhere along the way as the steel-belted radial tires sang over the
pavement and he passed every eighteen wheeler in sight, the voice of Elvis
Presley poured from the speakers in a love song so old his grandmother counted
it among the favorites from her youth,
Love
Me Tender.

Although Daniel’d heard it many times, he listened
to the lyrics and understood them now when he hadn’t before.
 
He glanced down at the sleeping woman curled
against him and a single stray tear slid down his cheek.
 
Yeah, he loved her and he believed now she
loved him, too.

If they could just find their way to the future,
they might have something worth keeping.
 
As he drove west, he’d never been more aware how the first rays of dawn
lit the sky in the east behind him or that where he headed, there seemed
nothing but darkness.

Chapter
Thirteen

Sandwiched into the booth, Cecily sipped her second
cup of lousy coffee and tried to focus.
 
She’d awakened thick-headed and dry-mouthed when Daniel wheeled into a
chain restaurant just off the interstate in Joplin.
 
Sleep still fogged her senses, but the
enticing aromas of frying bacon and sausage roused her appetite.
 
Her eyes locked with his over her mug and he
smiled.

“You look like you’re finally awake,” he said. “It’s
about time.”

“I’m trying,” she said. “I guess I slept hard.
 
So this is Joplin?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’ve never been here
before.”

She shook her head. “No, but I’ve heard about it and
the big tornado that ripped up half the town a while back.
 
You’ve been here before?”

Daniel nodded. “I’ve stopped here for fuel or food
on my way back to Texas a few times.”

“Speaking of Texas, how much farther to El Paso?”

He put down his empty cup. “It’s at least another
sixteen hours,
querida.
And that’s
not counting if we stop to eat or anything else.”

“Aren’t we going to stop for the night?”
 
Some basic fast math indicated they wouldn’t
reach their destination until at least ten o’clock, maybe later.
 
Although she’d slept, she craved more and she
didn’t want Daniel to drive for so long.
 

“I wasn’t planning to,” he said. “I’m used to just
driving it straight through. Do you want to?”

“Well, yeah, sugar, I’d rather,” Cecily said.
 
Her words came out crankier than she intended,
but she preferred a few hours rest in a comfortable bed and a chance to
recharge before they descended like the plagues of Egypt on Daniel’s mother.
“You’re going to be exhausted if we don’t.”

His lips narrowed and he wrinkled his nose. “I’ll be
fine, but we can stop if you want, maybe at Amarillo.
 
It’s just seven or eight hours.”

“
Just?”
she
said.
“How long from there to your mom’s?”

“Another eight, at least.”

Despite the coffee she’d had, fatigue swaddled her
like a heavy blanket. “Damn, it’s a hell of a way no matter what,” she
said.
 
It would be a long day today, no
matter what, and if they stopped at a motel, a long day tomorrow.

Something in his eyes softened as he looked at
her.
 
Daniel reached across the table and
caught her hand in his.
 
“I’m sorry,
querida
.
I wish we could go slow, see the sights, make it a real vacation,
but we don’t have the luxury right now.
 
We’ll stop tonight for your sake. I’m not using to traveling with
anyone, especially not a pretty lady.”

The simple compliment pleased her. “It’s not just
for me,” she said. “You’d be worn to a frazzle to drive so far straight
through.”

God, he brought out such tenderness in her soul.
 
She’d never wanted to fuss over Willard but
then she didn’t give a shit about him, not really.
 
But Cecily couldn’t remember having such a
desire to care for someone else the way she did Daniel.
 
He offered her a strange little smile, one
she hadn’t seen on his lips until now, but the food arrived before he could say
anything.

Her Belgian waffle seemed huge until she glanced
over at his platter.
 
Two eggs rested
next to several sausage links, hash browns, and two biscuits.
 
“Are you going to eat all that?”

Daniel laughed. “Yeah, I am, but I was about to ask
if you had enough to eat over there. Want a sausage?”

It felt good to laugh with him. “No thanks. I’m
good,” she said. “Are those eggs even cooked?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Over easy just the way I like
‘em.”

Cecily ended up eating one of his sausages and
savored the taste of the seasoned pork.
 
She hadn’t eaten real sausage in years, but she decided she’d have it
again, soon.
 
They didn’t linger over
coffee but headed back out to the highway.
 
By then, full daylight illuminated the landscape and as they rolled into
Oklahoma, the terrain began shifting.
 
At
first rolling hills vanished into the horizon but the deeper they drove into
the Sooner State, the land became increasingly flat and open.
 

Leaving Joplin, Cecily kicked off her shoes and
curled up on the bench seat like a comfortable cat.
 
She sprawled across the seat with her feet
tucked beneath and leaned toward Daniel.
 

He gripped the wheel as he drove, often exceeding
the speed limit, but he glanced over at her. “You’d better hope we don’t wreck
or you’ll go flying,” he said but his smile cancelled out the stern words.

“We won’t,” she said. “You’re a good driver.”

His dry laugh lacked much amusement. “Yeah, I am but,
chica,
its
all the other sons of bitches we have to watch.”

“That’s your job, sugar,” she said. “And I’m not
worried.”

“You sound like you’re in a good mood.”

For whatever reason, despite the long haul ahead of
them and the issues haunting her, she was. “Yeah, I am.”

“Is it gonna ruin it if we talk serious?”

Dread shadowed her cheer.
“About
what?”

“We need to talk about Bradford,” Daniel said. “I
need to hear who else knew he kept gems and jewelry at home, who might have
motive to kill him, and anything else you can think about.”

“All right,” Cecily replied after a pause.
 
“Give me a minute to think, okay?”

“Sure.”

To get her mind in a serious mode, she sat up and
faced the windshield although she remained close to Daniel.
 
Her hand rested on his thigh and she drew
comfort from his proximity.
 
She
struggled to collect her thoughts, to go back to the life she’d loathed and
wished she could forget.
 
After a few
minutes, she cleared her throat and said, “I’ll tell you everything I can
remember and knew, but it’s not much.
 
I
never had any part in Willard’s business except to come down to the main store
once in a while.
 
Even then, the store
staff did everything.
 
I offered to redecorate
the store, but Willard had fits, said he’d paid some high price decorating firm
to do it and asked me what I knew about it anyway.
 
I suggested I could help with advertising,
but he said no although he did feature me in a few ads in the papers and on
local TV.
 
I wasn’t much more than a toy
Willard liked to play with and show off, Daniel.”

“You’re a beautiful, smart woman,” he said without
taking his eyes off the road. “You probably know more than you think.
 
I want to hear your gut instincts and
impressions of people. When we first talked about it, you told me the house staff
probably all knew about the safe.
 
How
many people are we talking?”

She made a swift mental count: cook, Willard’s PA,
the two gardeners, the two domestics who cleaned and did laundry, and the
driver.
 
Cecily refused a personal
assistant or maid and Willard’s one time valet quit after some incident.
 
“Seven,” she said and listed them all. “I
can’t imagine they weren’t aware although Willard tried to keep it secret.”

“Do you think any of them could be responsible?”

One by one, she imagined them and rejected any
possibility. “I doubt it,” she said. “They were all good people, folks like me
who grew up poor. None of them were ever anything but nice to me although I
think everyone but Max, the driver, couldn’t stand Willard.
 
I’ll give the devil his due—Willard paid them
all pretty well.”

“Okay, so they all liked you—did you like them?”

Damn he’s insightful.
 
No one, including Willard, ever asked me that
question.
 
Cecily opened her mouth to say she did and
then paused.
 
She
did
like all the staff, all except one—Willard’s PA.
 
From the first day he came to work, something
about him made her skin crawl with invisible cootie vibes.
 
“I didn’t like the personal assistant Willard
hired,” she said, with honesty. “Johnson’s a creeper.”

Daniel removed his right hand from the wheel long
enough to stroke hers. “Is that his first name or last name?”

“First name,” she said. “Johnson Hamilton.”

“What didn’t you like about him?”

“Everything,” Cecily replied. “Sugar, he’d watch me
with his greedy eyes, look at me like he thought I was ice cream or something.
 
And behind Willard’s back, he’d make remarks
sometimes, hateful ones.”

With an edge in his voice, Daniel asked, “Like
what?”

Remembering made her feel both small and icky. “He’d
say you can take the girl out of the ghetto but you can’t get the ghetto out of
the girl.
 
That was one of his favorites
he thought was so witty.
 
And he’d
snicker behind my back when I got all dolled up to go to some posh event with
Willard, call me Cinderella and things.
 
I caught him more than once in the part of the house where he didn’t
have any business to be, like upstairs near the bedrooms, skulking around.
 
If it’d been up to me, I’d have fired the
asshole, but Willard liked him.”

“Why didn’t you tell your old man about all the crap
he dished your way?”

Her laugh caught in her throat and she had to force
it. “Johnson wasn’t stupid.
 
In front of
Willard, he treated me so nice, like some fucking queen or something.
 
I didn’t figure Willard would believe me and
besides, I never knew how he’d take something.
 
He might have got mad at me
instead,
say I was
trying to get Johnson in my bed.
 
He used
to do that, accuse me of cheating or wanting to cheat but I didn’t.”