was all for letting them do a mural on the side of one of the businesses.”
“You’re kidding me. No making them clean up after their vandalism—just giving them something fun to do?”
“Well, no. She actually did propose making them clean up their mess first with paint they paid for out of their own pockets.”
Murph nodded. “Okay, good. That’s responsible. But—what?—they’ve been in and out of the system a hundred times already?”
“Uh, not exactly.” He shifted in his seat. Tipped his bottle up and drained the last sip of beer from it. Because he knew this was where self-righteousness got a little shaky. “It was their first run-in with the police.”
Murphy lowered his own bottle, which he’d been raising to his lips, and sat a little straighter in his seat. “Let me get this straight. The kids have never been in trouble. The Babe was going to have them clean up their mess with paint they’re responsible for purchasing. But she wanted to take it a step further and have them also paint a mural on the side of a building. So…what? She just tossed the idea out there on the table for someone else to implement?”
Crap. “No, she offered to supervise. She wants to ‘make a difference’ in their lives.”
The old man snorted. “Right. That’s likely to happen,” he said, deadpan. “Still, if she’s willing to do the work, why would the committee vote against the idea? It’s not like it’d be any skin offa their noses.”
Crapfuckhell. “I might have gotten a little carried away with my ‘tagging is the first step to crime’ talk. Could have maybe scared them off some.”
“For God’s sake, boy.” Murphy scratched his thinning iron-gray hair. “Why?”
Back straightening, he looked Murph in the eye. “You know damn well why. Once you start torquing the rules it’s a slippery slope. One day you’re rewarding kids for trashing people’s hard-earned businesses. Next thing you know you’re giving in to the temptation to just take that old-lady-bashing mugger around the corner and stick your service revolver to his temple to ‘help’ him cough up a confession.”
There was a moment’s silence in which his words clanged in his head like buckshot fired into a steel chamber—and he wished he could get the past few seconds back so he could cut his tongue out.
Then Murphy said dryly, “I’m gonna take a wild stab here and speculate we’re not still talking about a bunch of merchants deciding to vote down the Babe’s proposal.”
Burying his head in his hands, Jase groaned.
He felt Murph rub rough fingers over his hair.
“One of these days,” the old man said gruffly, “I’d like to see you give yourself a break and realize you’re not like your dad or grandpa or Joe.”
“That’s never going to happen…because I am.” Dropping his hands to the tabletop, he raised his head to look at the old man. “I’m a goddamn de Sanges male,
which is a lot like being a recovering alcoholic—I’m one act away from being just like the rest of the men in my family.”
“That’s bullshit, and you oughtta damn well know it by now. But, no—you’re too fucking stubborn to take your head outta your butt. You have never knocked over convenience stores. You have never kited checks or destroyed bars in a drunken brawl. And I’m guessing now is probably not a good time to tell you about this, but I’m going to anyways. I got a call from your brother today, looking for you.”
Everything inside him stilled. “Joe’s out on parole?”
“Looks like.”
“Shit.” Jase laughed without humor. Then, spreading his fingers against the faux wood, he lowered his head again and thunked it once, twice, three times against the tabletop. “I guess I’d better get in touch with him quick then, hadn’t I? Because God knows he won’t be out for long.”
Chapter Three
Holy shitskis, that “Be Careful What You Wish For” thing is no joke. Just when things were starting to settle down and I was finally getting that man out of my head…this!
“SHARON, YOU want to come take a look?” Poppy twisted around on her perch near the top of the stepladder to look for the coffee-shop owner.
The woman popped her head out of the kitchen. Brushing flour from her hands against the white apron tied around her waist, she stepped into the retail area and studied the blackboard, closely inspecting the updated menu Poppy had just completed. Then she smiled. “Lookin’ good.”
“Excellent.” Poppy packed up her case of colored chalks and climbed down off the ladder. She slid the container into her big tote, which she’d left by the register, then folded in the ladder’s legs and tipped it carefully onto its side in the narrow area behind the glass bakery case until it was parallel to the floor and she could get a grip on it with both hands. Glancing out the door at the pale glow of daybreak beginning to lighten the eastern sky, she said, “I’ll just go put this back in the closet, then clean up and get out of your way.”
“I took a blueberry coffee cake out of the oven about ten minutes ago,” Sharon said. “You have time for a slice and a cuppa joe? My staff’s going to start trickling in pretty soon and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a break.”
“That would be great.” As if to demonstrate its appreciation, her stomach growled and, patting it, she laughed. “Don’t tell my mother, but I skipped breakfast this morning.”
She maneuvered the ladder through the kitchen to the big utility closet by the back door, where she stored it away. Then she washed the multicolored layers of chalk from her hands and joined Sharon at a table. They visited over cups of full-bodied coffee and luscious, still-warm cake.
She didn’t linger long after the snack was consumed, however. She still had three other boards to do this morning at sites scattered from Madison Park to Phinney Ridge to the Ballard neighborhood where she’d grown up, and they needed to be completed before the businesses were open to the public.
When she finished the last job, a deli just off Market Street, she looked at her watch. She’d planned to drop in on her parents but schools were closed for a teachers’ “professional development” day, she had a date with some kids in the Central District—or the CD, as it was called by native Seattleites—and she had to stop by the mansion first. So with a regretful glance in the general direction of her childhood home, she steered her car toward the Ballard Bridge.
She lucked into a parking space on the block below the mansion on the steeply pitched western slope of Queen Anne and, getting out of her car, she paused to look up at the house.
The sunroom that had been scabbed onto the front of the edifice was now whittled down to a size and style in keeping with the rest of the structure and the Kavanaghs had repaired the facade to match the original. Her artist’s soul smiled to see the elegant bones restored to the early-twentieth-century mansion. The sound of hammers, pithy obscenities and male laughter coming from the kitchen as she approached the back door elicited yet another grin.
She let herself into a room filled with buff guys
