Love Mercy

LOVE MERCY.

by Earlene Fowler.

For Jo-Ann Mapson.

beloved friend and sister in heart may you never run out of words or chocolate.

and.

For Kathy Vieira.

dearly loved friend, favorite riding partner and chosen hermana.

Acknowledgments.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

ROMANS 12:9-12.

My grat.i.tude to:.

Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Ellen Geiger-dynamite agent and wonderful friend-thank you for your support, wisdom and awesome sense of humor!

Kate Seaver-my enthusiastic and talented editor-I appreciate your hard work, your deft touch and your high-spirited encouragement.

Andy Rau-gifted musician, banjo player, songwriter and teacher-thank you for your patience in answering all my crazy questions.

Lela Satterfield-faithful friend, talented musician and writer, sister in Christ-your loving spirit and devotion to Jesus always inspires and amazes me (and thanks for the bridge!).

Tina Davis, Janice Dischner, Jo Ellen Heil, Cathy Higgins, Christine Hill, Karen Meek, Carolyn Miller, Pam Munns, Karen Olson, Laura Ross Wingfield-some gave information, some prayed, some listened to me whine and some sent chocolate. You are dearly loved and cherished friends. Thank you all.

Always to Allen-all my days-if I had a choice, again I would spend them with you.

Note from the Author.

The Central Coast of California holds a special place in my heart, so when I started Love Mercy, I decided to set this book in some of the same places I"ve used in my Benni Harper mystery series. The town of Morro Bay resides in the fictional county of San Celina. The series characters my readers have come to love-Benni Harper, her police chief husband, Gabe, and her gramma, Dove-are minor characters in Love Mercy. The difference is that the Benni Harper series is set in the 1990s and Love Mercy is set in 2008. And, to those of you who have not read my Benni Harper books, yes, I know that San Celina is improper Spanish. If you want to know the reason why, check my website"s FAQ section.

The Love Mercy novels (and I"m hoping there will be more) are not mystery novels, so don"t expect a dead body behind every hay bale. But they will deal with another kind of mystery: that of the human heart, especially with how it pertains to family. I"ll still write the Benni Harper novels, but I hope you fall as much in love as I have with Love Mercy Johnson, her friends Melina LeBlanc and Magnolia Sanchez, and Love"s banjo-playing granddaughter, Rett.

ONE.

Rett.

The Magic Genie Weight and Fortune machine in the gift shop of Larry"s Speedy Time truck stop in Amarillo, Texas, gave Rett her weight but stole her fortune. She smacked the silver machine in frustration. A perfectly good quarter down the drain. Rett needed that fortune. She already knew how much she weighed. One hundred thirteen pounds. In her scuff-toed Justin boots.

"Hon, that contraption ran out of fortunes years ago," said the gum-smacking woman behind the shop"s cash register. "It"s just a big ole piece of junk, if you ask me."

Rett ducked her head and didn"t answer, embarra.s.sed to be caught putting money in something so stupid. She picked up her dirty aqua backpack and black banjo case and headed for the Speedy Skillet cafe attached to the gift shop. Dwaine said they"d be stuck here for at least six hours.

Loretta Lynn Johnson-who would only answer to Rett despite her mom"s insistence that Loretta Lynn was a perfectly nice name-figured a person could have a real full life traveling around the country from truck stop to truck stop. You could do about anything you wanted at a Flying J truck stop or a TravelCenters of America: take a hot shower; get a haircut; buy sugar-free Red Bull, a banana MoonPie or some banjo strings; even learn Spanish from a bilingual Bible.

Rett contemplated becoming a trucker while she chewed her grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. How old did a person have to be to drive long-haul trucks? Her twenty-first birthday was still two and a half years away. Would she have to know how to parallel park? She"d never gotten the hang of that. She wasn"t too hot at backing up either. Dimpled trash cans back home in Knoxville, Tennessee, bore witness to that fact.

She nibbled at the gooey sandwich middle and considered her options. She had a for sure ride until Albuquerque with Brother Dwaine Porter Wilburn, a traveling evangelist who held nondenominational church services in the back of a white Peterbilt truck he"d christened the Holy Roller. From there, he was driving north to Denver for the national board meeting of the Jesus Loves Truckers Outreach Ministries. He was vice president this year. Rett was headed for the West Coast.

Brother Dwaine approached her yesterday while she was perusing the candy aisle at a Petro truck stop in Little Rock, Arkansas, trying to decide between a dark chocolate Milky Way and a PayDay candy bar. He said if she needed a safe ride to somewhere, he"d be glad to help her out. He had an accent like Roy, her second stepdad: pure Texas Panhandle.

When he gently repeated his offer, Rett glanced nervously over at the big-haired woman stocking the potato chips shelves. She wore a Petro name tag. The woman smiled and said, "He"s okay, girlie. You"ll be fine." She reminded Rett of Dolly Parton, so she believed her.

"I reckon I could find you rides with decent people most the ways to where you"re going," Dwaine said after he cajoled a little of her story out of her. "Young ladies like yourself shouldn"t be out on the road alone. Jesus says to love your fellow man, but I"m here to tell you, there"s some bedbug-crazy folks traveling the highways and byways of our fine country."

"Yes, sir," she"d murmured, staring out the window at the toy-sized cars darting around them. She loved the high vantage point of the semi"s orange-scented cab. It made her feel like she was in charge of the whole world. On the truck"s satellite radio, a gospel group was singing an a cappella version of "Nothing But the Blood of Jesus." The alto was slightly flat.

Normally a statement like his about the dangers of young girls traveling alone would cause her to roll her eyes. But she wasn"t stupid. Att.i.tude was fine, but survival was better. Ten years of navigating the fringes of the gospel and bluegra.s.s music business taught her that. It had been her good luck to run into Brother Dwaine. He"d called it G.o.d"s Providence.

Whatever, she thought. He was kinda preachy, but that was easy enough to tune out. She"d been doing that most of her life. Listening to him definitely beat taking a chance on another van full of college guys, which had been her transportation from Knoxville to Memphis. At the Winn-Dixie two miles from her house, while standing in the ten items or less line, Rett met a Vanderbilt student named Derek. She was buying a bottle of water and some Hershey bars for the road. She"d vaguely thought about taking the bus to California, but she didn"t want to waste what little money she had saved. Luckily, the Vanderbilt guy and his buddies were heading in her general direction and offered her a ride. They were okay, didn"t ha.s.sle her at all and she did pitch in ten bucks for gas. Things were fine until the driver pulled out a Jack Daniel"s bottle. She"d ditched them when they"d stopped for snacks at a Wal-Mart outside of Memphis. She wasn"t about to become a grease spot in the middle of Interstate 40 because of some drunk frat boy.

She had stood at the side of the road with her thumb out, trying not to think about all the Dateline NBC shows she"d seen about serial killers and missing girls. A little later, a girl not much older than Rett picked her up. Her name was Eunice Shumaker, and she drove an older white SUV with a faded pink Mary Kay cosmetics sign plastered on the driver"s door. She offered Rett a ride clear to Little Rock, where Eunice"s mother was having kidney stone surgery. Eunice dropped her off at the Petro truck stop and handed her some samples of Mary Kay sunscreen.

"Do not leave the house without wearing this," she"d warned. "You might have brown hair, but, girl, you got the skin of a redhead."

Brother Dwaine had approached Rett not ten minutes later, a concerned look on his grizzled face.

"More coffee?" The waitress stood in front of Rett holding a stained Bunn coffeepot. She had tired brown eyes and a cool-looking heart-shaped mole on her left cheek. Or maybe it was a tattoo.

"No, thanks," Rett answered, looking down at her plate where a shriveled pickle was the only thing she"d left uneaten.

"Brother Dwaine says this is on his tab," the waitress said in a gravelly, Tanya Tucker voice that Rett immediately envied. "He does that all the time. Cook just baked some peach pie. Want some?"

Rett almost refused, hating to take more of the minister"s help, but she thought about the crumpled money tucked down into her dusty red boot. Sixty-eight dollars and forty-three cents, and she still had half the country to travel. She"d started out with a hundred bucks but hadn"t paid real close attention to how much she was spending, a trait her mom often pointed out. At the Wal-Mart where she"d ditched the frat boys, she"d bought wool socks, gloves and a red knit hat. It hadn"t occurred to her to stick those things in her backpack when she left Knoxville. But it was the first week of December and cold across most of the country. It had seemed likely that she"d be spending most of her trip on the side of the highway with her thumb out.

At the same time she"d foolishly splurged on a Rhonda Vincent CD, the one the bluegra.s.s singer recorded at the Sheldon Concert Hall in Missouri. Rett had the CD at home, but at the last minute decided to leave it since her backpack had been jammed full, and she knew every song lyric and banjo lick by heart. She sighed. If she had an iPod, that would have solved her problem. But Mom was old school, thought they were a waste of money and Rett never had the discipline to save her own money for one. So, unable to resist, Rett tossed the CD in her basket at Wal-Mart. Somehow it made her feel less scared to have it nestled in her backpack against her favorite Nashville Sounds sweatshirt.

"Sure, I"ll have some pie," Rett said. She might as well fill up while she could. But, after this, she wouldn"t accept any more charity from the minister. If she was careful, her money would last her until she reached Morro Bay. Then, hating that it was her mom"s stupidly optimistic words that sprang to her mind first, she"d "rea.s.sess her opportunities."

While she waited for the pie, she reached over and rubbed a nail-bitten thumb over a new scar on the black banjo case. Riding in the college student"s van had banged it up more than twenty county fair gigs.

"You can leave your banjo in the cab," Dwaine had said when they pulled into the truck stop where he was going to have a pinging sound in the engine checked on. "Won"t no one bother it there."

"That"s okay," she replied, hugging the case to her chest. "I"ll keep it with me."

The preacher would probably be shocked to know the banjo inside the raggedy case was worth twenty-five thousand dollars. And even more shocked to learn it wasn"t exactly hers. He"d probably call it stolen. Rett called it getting even.

TWO.

Love Mercy Love Mercy Johnson stared at the bright computer screen, trying to resist the urge to grind her molars. The uncooperative numbers blurred before her eyes. Balancing the books was her least favorite part of co-owning the b.u.t.tercream Cafe. December was usually a good month, but so far they weren"t in the black. She sighed and leaned back in her old office chair, the loud squeak startling her dozing tricolored corgi, Ace. He jumped up from a dead sleep, his full, chesty bark loud enough to rattle the windows of her little bungalow.

She twirled around and laughed. "Calm down, flyboy. It"s only my chair. Like the tin man, it just needs a little oil." He shot her a distinctly cranky look and flattened his batlike ears before settling back down on the braided rug in front of her gray river stone fireplace. She stretched her arms out and flexed her long fingers, then turned to the screen, pushing back the discouragement that was starting to build a wall in her chest.

"We can figure this out," she said out loud. "We"ve been in worse financial straits when Cy and I owned the feed store, right?" Ace didn"t lift his head. He was accustomed to Love"s conversations with herself.

Unless the b.u.t.tercream raised its prices, something that would cause the locals to howl like wounded wolverines, she and Magnolia would have to dip into the money that they"d been saving for a new stove. Dang. Magnolia had mooned over that commercial stove catalog like a teenager would an American Idol finalist. Three months ago Love had told her the silver and black Viking stove of her dreams was practically being loaded on the delivery truck. That was before the dishwasher had to be repaired-twice-and the ancient garbage disposal had to be replaced. Plus it seemed people just weren"t eating out as often as they used to. Not really a recession, the government kept a.s.suring everyone.

She and her best friend, Magnolia Rosalina Sanchez, bought the restaurant three and a half years ago. It was something they"d fantasized about from the first week they met twenty years ago while working as waitresses in the very same building, back when it was called Freddie"s Fish House. A small inheritance from Love"s great-aunt Bitsy and Magnolia"s ability to squeeze a nickel had helped Love and Magnolia to buy and fix up the cafe. It had been a struggle from the beginning, but they"d always made a small profit. Until three months ago. Love even used some of the money she"d made when she sold the feed store after Cy died, but she"d had to set back a little to live on. Even though her house was paid off and she lived frugally, that wouldn"t last forever. The cafe had to start making a profit again, or they"d have to sell it.

"What now?" she said, wishing for what seemed the millionth time in the last thirteen months that her calm-spirited husband was here to give his two cents.

"Since when have you ever taken my advice?" he would have asked.

"Not often," she"d have answered, grinning. "But it"s always amusing to hear your opinion." The truth was, he wasn"t really much better than she was at business. He"d been too much of a soft touch to make a real profit at the feed store, always giving away free dog, cat and bird food to grateful rescue groups and allowing folks credit far longer than he should have. He"d been a sucker for every sad story that trotted up the trail.

How she missed his laid-back personality and that foghorn laugh of his, the laugh that rarely failed to make her join in, even if they"d been quarreling. He"d been totally in favor of her and Magnolia buying the cafe when it came up for sale. Whenever she worked the counter, he"d come in, pretend he didn"t know her and flirt outrageously. He"d leave her a twenty-dollar tip, which she always slipped right into the cash register.

They"d met in Redwater, Kentucky, when he was on leave from Fort Knox. He bid seventy-five dollars for her strawberry-rhubarb pie at the Redwater Baptist Church Vacation Bible School fund-raiser. That was good deal of money in 1967, so it was clear he was announcing to her and the congregation his serious intentions. He was visiting with one of his training buddies, Jim Sh.o.r.e, whose father was head deacon at the church. Both boys were shipped out to Vietnam a few weeks later. After charming her mother, father and twin brother, DJ, Cyrus courted Love the old-fashioned way, through the mail. He wooed her with his square, neat printing, his silly jokes, his kind and thoughtful observations about the Vietnamese people and his mesmerizing descriptions of the Valley oaks, red-tailed hawks and rolling emerald hills of the cattle ranch his family owned on California"s Central Coast. They"d married two weeks after he was discharged from the army.

Love glanced at the calendar. Thursdays were Italian day at the b.u.t.tercream. This week Magnolia was serving her famous gnocchi and homemade lasagna. Maybe if they cut down on the cheese and imported sausage in the lasagna, they could save a little money. Or they could make the portions a little smaller. Shoot, they could do that with all the menu items. The media was always saying that people ate too much. Would anyone notice?

She shook her head. Even if no one else knew it, Magnolia would, and she"d not stand for it. Her daddy was from Alabama, but her mama was pure Italian. Magnolia had spent every summer of her first eighteen years visiting her mama"s sisters on Chicago"s Italian West Side. She"d been taught to cook and bake by her aunts Teresa, Marie and Bettina, loving taskmasters who showed her the secret to flaky cannoli and, as Magnolia called it, smack-your-daddy-good spaghetti sauce. Magnolia"s recipes were the one reason, Love believed, that San Celina County Life readers had voted the b.u.t.tercream Cafe as Best Locally Owned Restaurant for the last two years.

Love turned back to the computer and stared at the unchanging figures. Maybe they could find cheaper hamburger buns that still tasted good. Or quit using the incredible maple syrup from that cute little family in Springfield, New Hampshire. It was unbelievably delicious, but was also a lot more expensive than what they could buy at San Celina"s new Costco.

She traced a forefinger over the boat-shaped crystal desk clock next to her computer. It had been a gift to Cy from the guys at the Morro Bay boatyard when he sold his boat shortly after his second round of chemo, when the doctors said things didn"t look hopeful. That had been a hard day for everyone.

Cy bought the battered old boat thirty years ago when their son, Tommy, was ten years old. He and Tommy spent countless hours fishing and bird-watching on that boat. They"d sanded, sc.r.a.ped, painted or stained every bit of the old vessel. Cy named it the Love Mercy, despite her protests or the fact that she"d ridden on it only a handful of times. She loved the ocean, never grew tired of photographing its endless colors and eclectic variations, but she preferred to remain onsh.o.r.e. She always claimed it was because of her eastern Kentucky genes.

"I"m a backwoods girl," she"d declare when anyone teased her about it. "I prefer solid ground beneath these size-eight feet." The ocean and its mercurial moods were too unpredictable. She remembered that every time she walked by the tiny Anchor Memorial Park on the Embarcadero. The seven-thousand-pound iron anchor set into a concrete square showing the names of the men and women lost at sea reminded her too much of the coal mines in Kentucky that stole so many people from her life.

The boat was the one subject that Cy and Tommy could always discuss when the pangs of adolescence and later, the disagreements between generations had made everything else unapproachable.

After Tommy up and married Karla Rae Murphy and they moved to Nashville a week after the wedding, when Cy missed their son, he would take the boat out and float aimlessly around Morro Rock, watching the peregrine falcons and their chicks through his old binoculars. Love still used those binoculars to watch the ocean from her backyard, placing her fingers in the same spots worn smooth by Cy"s calloused fingers. It comforted her to put her hands where she knew his had been.

After Tommy was killed fourteen years ago, working on the boat had been Cy"s way of coping with a grief too big for him to talk about, even with her. Love spent hours walking on the beach with only her old Nikon camera for company. The photos she took those first weeks after Tommy"s death were packed away in a trunk. Once developed, she"d never looked at the photos, though they were as fresh in her mind as the gash that scarred her heart the moment she received the phone call about Tommy"s accident from a friend of Karla Rae"s. It always hurt Love that she"d heard the news from someone she didn"t even know.

She remembered in detail each photograph she took those weeks of walking. She could still see the loopy wave-diving surf scoters who reminded her of crazed bodyboarders, the black oystercatchers with their chisel-shaped, blood-colored bills, the frantic western sandpipers who were always running and screaming their high-pitched, teenage-girl screech-a sound that, at the time, she was tempted to mimic-and the peregrine falcons, so majestic and distant, perched high on the sheer edges of Morro Rock, looking down on them all, like they possessed the answers to any number of life"s complex questions. But the ones she found the most heartbreaking were the black turnstones: plump, tiny birds with streaks of white in their plumage. They liked rocky areas and, true to their name, spent most of their time turning over stones and seaweed looking for food. Their frantic searching echoed something deep inside her. She spent hours watching them, capturing their struggles to survive on film. Those first few months she and Cy seemed to live on separate planets, each trying to make sense of why their only child was killed by a drunk driver one rainy night in Nashville. The irony of how much that sounded like a country song was something that occurred to her during those long, solitary walks.

She pushed her chair away from the computer, rubbing her stinging eyes. A walk. Yes, what she needed was a good long walk with Ace. Stop thinking about all the losses of her life and concentrate on the living. Maybe it would clear out the cobwebs, and she"d figure out how to keep the cafe going, serve their expected high-quality dishes, not lay off anyone or cut back on portions. She"d take the Nikon and see if something inspired her. Clint would be wanting February"s photo and column soon. Then she"d head to the cafe and talk to Magnolia about how they could cut costs and still keep everyone happy. Wasn"t that every middle-aged woman"s lament-how do I keep everyone happy? For pity"s sake, she thought, who in the heck made us keepers of the world"s contentment?

She was in the kitchen pulling Ace"s leash off the hook when the phone rang.

"Love, you got to get down to the cafe right now," Magnolia said.

Love touched her right temple with her fingertips, already feeling a throbbing start. What had broken this time? Where would they get the money to fix it?

"There"s this girl here," Magnolia said, her voice as big and lush as the curly black hair that drove her crazy. "She says she needs to talk to you. Darlin", she favors you some around the mouth. I"m thinking she might be one of your granddaughters."

One of her granddaughters? Love"s stomach twisted into a knot. Over the phone she could hear the cafe"s normal background sounds, a cacophony of rattling pans and loud laughter. Music tw.a.n.ged from the jukebox, a frenetic, vaguely country-sounding song. Love couldn"t make out who was singing, but it didn"t matter. As talented as they were, all those narrow-hipped, pretty young girls being pushed by the record companies looked and sounded so much alike. What happened to singers who"d actually lived a little life before they sang about it? Patsy Cline would be appalled. Or have a good belly laugh.

"I offered her one of my cannoli, but she turned me down flat." Magnolia took it real personal when someone turned down her food. "She just ordered coffee. She"s sitting there staring at the wall and drinking it."

"Maybe she just ate," Love said, making excuses for the girl before she even knew whether they were related.

"Maybe so." Magnolia"s voice sounded doubtful. "Her arms are as skinny as broom handles. A little cannoli would do her a world of good. She said she hitchhiked here."

"Hitchhiked? From where?" The last Love knew, her three granddaughters and their ditzy mother, Karla Rae, lived in Pensacola, Florida, with Karla"s second husband, Pete somebody-or-other, who owned two Ford dealerships. Love hung Ace"s leash back up. "Did she tell you her name?"

"Nope," Magnolia said. "Believe me, I tried to squeeze it out of her, but she"s a persimmony little thing. All she said is that she has some business with Love Mercy Johnson, then she shut herself up, tight as a tick. What should I tell her? I said I"d call you but that I wasn"t about to just hand out your address to any ole person who asked. I told her that, for all I know, she was a serial killer."

Love smiled to herself. "What did she say to that?"

"Not a blessed thing. Just nodded her head and held on to her banjo case like I was going to s.n.a.t.c.h it from her first chance I got."

Banjo case? Love tried to picture one of her granddaughters fitting her tiny hands around the neck of a banjo. Then again, she hadn"t seen them for almost fourteen years. They wouldn"t be tiny anymore.

"How old does she look?" Love asked. She had three granddaughters: Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Faith Leann. Their names screamed out their mama"s unfulfilled aspirations. Pursuing her singing career was the reason Karla Rae and Tommy had moved to Nashville. Love quickly calculated her granddaughter"s ages; Patsy would be nineteen now, Loretta would be eighteen and Faith would be fourteen. Faith had been a baby when Tommy was killed. He"d been driving to the Piggly Wiggly to buy diapers for her when a truck broadsided his little Toyota.

Lord, don"t let it be Faith, Love automatically sent up a prayer before catching herself. She"d stubbornly been avoiding conversations with G.o.d since Cy had died. Still, she didn"t take back the prayer, despite a slight feeling of guilt, because the mental image of a fourteen-year-old girl bearing Tommy"s sweet, round face hitchhiking on a desolate highway made her blood freeze in her veins.

"Eighteen? Twenty?" Magnolia guessed.