Page 33 of Deputy Brand Gets Her Man
The little girls didn’t seem to recognize him, and the grandparents were too involved in their meals to pay him any mind. There were three other groups of folks in the diner, so he didn’t stand out much, nor did he want to. He scanned the place but didn’t see any problems. A couple at one table seemed happy and hungry, two older guys sat at another, one with a nasty scar, and a group of seven elderly women were gathered around two tables that had been pushed together. The ladies caught his eye because they all had snow white hair, but their skin tones were every shade of the spectrum, all of them chattering and laughing.
“What can I get ’cha?” asked a young Native man of maybe nineteen. He wore a long, striped polo shirt under a white apron and he stood behind the counter.
“Just a coffee for now.” He didn’t want to hang around long enough for Frankie’s family to recognize him and start a whole thing. He glanced their way as he thought it, and caught Frankie looking at him. He nodded, sent a half smile over, but Jeremiah thought his eyes looked sad. Then he bent to his notebook again.
The server, who’s name tag said Charlie, flipped over a coffee cup in front of him, and filled it. It was one of those heavy ceramic cups you only see in diners, off white with a green stipe around the top. The coffee tasted better out of them, for some reason. “Listen, Charlie, I’m trying to find info on my old man. He used to come here a long time ago. Is there anyone?—?”
“You want to talk to Marv,” Charlie said. “Hang here a sec.” He replaced the carafe on its burner, and pushed a swinging door into the kitchen in the rear. After a moment, he returned followed by a woman whose straight posture and strong stride didn’t match up with her map-lined face. When she smiled her eyes disappeared amid the wrinkles.
“You’re Marv?” he asked, not hiding his surprise.
“Short for Marvella. And you are… Oh, I know who you are. You’re Ethan Brand’s long-lost brother, Jeremiah Brand.”
“Thorne,” he said. And at her confused frown, “Jeremiah Thorne is the name my mother gave me.”
“Right. Well, what can I do for you, Jeremiah Thorne?”
“Well, first, I wanted to say Willow—uh, that is, Deputy Brand—told me your history here, how you fought the state and won. I respect that.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “That was mostly my folks. I was just a young thing.”
“Still. I’m here because my father ate here frequently when he was in town, almost thirty years ago.”
“And you think I might remember him?” she asked. “From thirty years ago?”
“Twenty-seven to be exact.”
“Twenty-seven?” She rolled her eyes at him, shaking her head as she walked the length of the counter to the cooler and helped herself to a bottle of Coke. She was twisting off the cap, still grinning at him when she apparently finished doing math in her head, and piecing together the rumors she’d heard. “Wait, that was when that criminal was here, looking for young Bubba Brand–Ethan, now, I suppose. De Lorean. I’ll never forget it. He was in here every day for…” her eyes widened. She took a long pull from her bottle, then slammed it down onto the counter. “That’s who your father is?”
“Was,” he said. “He died in prison.”
“I’d heard that, too.” She lowered her head, shaking it slowly. “You and Bubba Brand, you got some baggage. I hope you’re sharin’ that load. Seems a lot.”
“Not so much,” he muttered, but she didn’t hear. Louder, he said, “Can you tell me what you remember about him?”
She reached her hands over the counter. “Well, what can I say? I was waitin’ tables, then, me and three other girls. Business was really hopping. It was our heyday. Mr. De Lorean didn’t seem like a criminal to me. He was handsome, charmin’, funny, a big tipper, an even bigger flirter. I was half in love with him by the time he stopped showing up, and so were the other gals. We could hardly believe it when we heard what he’d done.” She gazed at Jeremiah, and tilted her head. “You have his bone structure. You’re very handsome.”
“Thank you, ma’am. That’s…um, do you remember anything else?”
“Only…well, I mean, I don’t know her but…he came in here for dinner one night with that pretty young thing from the inn. What was it, the Bluebell, the Blueberry?—”
“The Bluebonnet?”
She snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “That’s it.”
“Do you mean Juanita Lopez?” he asked. “Wasn’t she still in high school?”
“Oh, you already know then. I think Juanita was as smitten as the rest of us. Sure looked that way to me.”
The bell on the diner door jangled and he turned to see young Frankie coming inside. He hadn’t been aware the kid had gone out. But he returned to his table, head down, and stared at his food, which had to be cold by then. The rest of the family was finished.
Jeremiah sipped his coffee. Marvella said, “I’ll rack my brain to try and remember any other details,” she said. “He drove a fancy black car. I always wondered how it always seemed so shiny when every other vehicle wore a layer of dust. But aside from that…” She shrugged.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll leave my phone number, if that’s okay.”
“I never say no when I handsome young man offers me his number.”
He left a generous tip, because he wasn’t about to be shown up by his father and he headed to the Jeep.
