Part 4

“Morning, Blake,” Charlotte said as she placed a cup down on the table and filled it from the coffee pot.

“Hi, Charlotte,” I said and smiled.

It’s what people in small towns did. They ate at diners and they smiled at their neighbors, even though smiling wasn’t something I did before I’d moved to Epworth. Charlotte walked off to serve other customers but I knew she'd be back in approximately seven minutes, the time it took me to empty my first cup of coffee.

“Here’s your orange juice,” she said and put the glass down next to my cup in passing. Today was Friday and on Friday’s I always had an omelet filled with cheese, mushrooms, and peppers with extra bacon on the side. It had taken her three weeks to figure out my preferences and started asking me if I was having my regular Monday breakfast on a Monday.

It might seem odd that I ate the same things for breakfast every day of the week but it was just something I did. Jack called it home OCD and the thought had made me laugh. My morning routine at the farm consisted of me having a cup of coffee when I came into the diner, after that I’d have orange juice with my breakfast and I finished that off with a glass of warm water. Charlotte would bring the bill and take my card.

Charlotte McAllister was twenty-eight years old, she owned the diner and worked from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. She lived alone in a comfortable single-story house on Second Avenue SW. She was five foot four and about a hundred and twenty pounds. She liked to read thriller novels and preferred romantic movies where she always cried at the end.

She had light blue eyes with dark brown hair, and a smile for every person she encountered. She believed that the world was filled with people only trying to survive and that they were generally good. Her real name though was Charlotte Douglas and she had moved around quite a few times from Elko, Nevada before settling in Epworth almost five years ago. She had changed her name and worked at the diner for four years before buying it from Mr. Carlson who finally decided to retire at the age of seventy.

I knew that she was married and that there was a history of domestic abuse and I guessed that she was hiding from him. She hadn’t told me any of this but I had asked Bluebird to look into her and on two previous occasions, I had broken into her house. She religiously wrote in her diary and it had been very informative. The truth probably was that she more than intrigued me.

We would make small talk and joke and sometimes I would catch her looking at me like she knew something about me, which was impossible of course. She always kept my table open in the mornings and I knew she liked me for some reason. She had written about me in her diary numerous times.

I took my card out as she walked over to me with the bill and the card machine. “You should just open a tab.”

“So you can send some guys over to the farm to break my knees if I pay late?” She laughed at my stupid attempt at a joke. She had a beautiful laugh. She was beautiful too and she had more than one admirer in town. I saw how the other single men in town looked at her and for some reason that made me jealous. It wasn’t an emotion I was familiar with.

“Are you attending the band night tonight?” she asked as I entered my pin into the machine.

“Maybe,” I answered.

“You should come,” she said. 

“I’ll think about it.” 

Charlotte’s eyes held my gaze for longer than ever before until she seemed to remember that we were in public. She smiled again, a bit nervously this time. “It’ll be nice to see you there.”

I drove to Dubuque to get my mail from the postal box I kept there and bought groceries for the next week. At home, I left the mail on the kitchen table and went upstairs to sleep. I had barely slept since Wednesday night when I had gone to Chicago.

I woke up at 4 p.m. and went downstairs to make coffee and check my mail. At the kitchen table, I opened the first envelope. It was a birthday invitation and I didn’t even need to read the card. I knew exactly who it was from. I placed it back in the envelope and pushed it aside. The second envelope was a letter from Nataly. I recognized her handwriting on the envelope and I threw it in the trash without opening it. I wasn’t interested in reading her letter.

My phone beeped once and I opened my text messages. I smiled as I read her message.

Lynda: If you’re bored, check your email.

I wasn’t bored yet, but I might be by tomorrow. I got my laptop and checked my email. Lynda also had a soft spot for me, one I didn’t understand because even as dedicated as I was, I also broke the rules a lot.

I clicked on the link and the screen opened to show an image of an older man with salt and pepper hair. The photo of him was taken on a yacht, which was moored and I wondered if he ever took it out or just kept it moored. What a waste.

His name was Paul Jameson, aged fifty-four and currently living on his yacht with only one bodyguard at the Port Royal Marina in Redondo Beach. He obviously wasn’t worried about anything. He was married but separated and his wife and two children were living a life of luxury in their California mansion. He owned a string of strip clubs all down the coast and his current business partner had taken out the contract.