Debra Salonen - His Daddy's Eyes

Everyday the two women would make their way from their rooms in the crummy hotel down the street to No Page Unturned, Sara’s bookstore. They’d drink coffee at Sara’s new coffee bar, or, on nice days, they’d sit out front at one of the three tiny tables and poke fun at the general populace.

Sara was content with her life as a single mother and small-time bookstore owner. She’d inherited the store when her long-time employer, Hank Dupertis, a gruff old widower with no children or close relatives, passed away in his sleep. Brady was a gift that accompanied the most grievous loss of Sara’s life—her beloved sister’s death.

The book Sara was holding slipped from her fingers, just as the bell above the door tinkled. When Sara straightened, she saw Daniel stride into the shop.

“Hello, Sara love,” Daniel said, his dark eyes teasing. “Will you marry me today?”

Once—about three lifetimes ago—Daniel had proposed in earnest. Fortunately, Julia had intervened. “You and Danny both need to find out who you are before you jump into a relationship,” Julia had told her. “Get out and live a little, girl.”

For Sara that had meant a stint in the Air Force; Daniel had headed to college, then to a job in Seattle. He’d returned to Sacramento just after Julia’s death, and although he and Sara remained good friends, both knew his proposals were in jest.

“Sara J. don’t need no stinking man in her life,” Keneesha said. “She’s got us.”

Daniel looked from the large black woman to the petite blonde, then back to Sara. “Two hookers and a bookstore—why does that not sound like everybody’s idea of heaven?”

Sara laughed and pushed the now-overflowing box across the display table. “I guess everyone’s idea of heaven is different. Actually, I’ve been very blessed. I have three wonderful friends. And business is good. In fact, Channel Eight News is doing a show called The New Downtown next Friday. They want to interview me about No Page Unturned.”

“Next week?” Claudie squealed. “I thought you said next month. Good Lord, Kee, how are we going to get her done by then?”

Daniel looked confused, so Sara explained. “They think I need a new look to be on TV.” She glanced down at her calf-length cotton dress, a sort of wallpaper print with a pale rose background and tiny yellow flowers. Her white sneakers were gobbling up her anklets, heel first. “Who has time for glamour?” she said, tugging up her stockings.

“You’re beautiful to me just the way you are,” Daniel said. He tenderly reached out and tugged on a lock of Sara’s shoulder-length hair.

Sara hated her hair. Bone straight, baby fine and the color of dishwater, her mother always said. Compared to her sister’s vibrant red locks, Sara’s always looked washed out. The idea of being interviewed by someone as beautiful as Eve Masterson left her more than slightly unnerved, which was why she’d agreed to the makeover.

“Yeah, but you’re a man, so what do you know?” Claudie said spitefully.

Sara sighed. “Stop squabbling, children. I told you you could play with my hair, so be nice.”

“And a new outfit,” Keneesha reminded her. “I am royally sick of those baggy dresses. You need some color, girl.”

Sara looked at Keneesha’s leopard-print tank top plastered over fuchsia pedal pushers, and involuntarily cringed. “Maybe.”

The bookstore bell tinkled, and Sara glanced at the nondescript gentleman in a baseball cap who quickly made his way toward the back of the building. The patron seemed vaguely familiar, but since he didn’t seem to require her assistance, Sara turned to Daniel, who was talking.

“…and you can have first pick.”

“What?” she asked, noticing how Claudie’s gaze stayed on the customer as he meandered into the cookbook section.

“Jenny just cleaned out her closet. She never keeps an outfit longer than a year and she only buys the best. I was taking the bag to the shelter, but you can go through it first.”

Daniel’s sister, a true fashion diva, was Sara’s size and had excellent taste. “That’s fantastic. Thanks!”

“No problem,” he said, giving Sara a hug. “Now, where’s my godson?”

Keneesha scurried around the desk to stand defensively in front of the playpen. For a large woman, she moved with surprising speed. “Back off, light-foot. He’s our godson, not yours.”

“Do you have that in writing?”

“I’ll show you writing, white boy,” Kee said, her bluster taking on volume.

The noise woke Brady.

Sara hurried to the playpen and picked him up. “Hey, baby love,” she said, kissing his soft, plump cheek. His sleepy, baby smell made her heart swell and her eyes mist. “How’s my boy?”

Daniel walked over and planted a kiss on Brady’s cheek. The sleepy child chose that minute to rub his eyes, and his small fist collided with Daniel’s nose.

“See, there,” Keneesha chortled, triumphantly, “he likes us better.”

Sara saw a hurt look cross Daniel’s face and impulsively drew him close with her free arm. “We both love you, Danny boy, you know that,” she said softly.

“I know,” Daniel replied. “I love you, too. I’ll see you Sunday, right?”

Before Brady came into her life, Sara had participated on Sundays in a literacy program at a local shelter. Unfortunately, nowadays her free time was so limited, she seldom had the energy to join the other volunteers at the Open Door family shelter.

“I’ll try, but Brady’s cutting teeth, and my neighbors don’t like the way my eaves look.” She rolled her eyes. “I keep getting nasty letters from the Rancho Carmel Homeowners’ Association.”

Daniel gave Sara a peck on the cheek. “Don’t sweat it. You’ve done your share.” He picked up his box of books. “So? Who’s going to fetch the bag of clothes?”

Claudie grumbled about being the company slave, but she followed him out the door.

Brady squirmed, so Sara knelt to put him down. His bare toes curled against the sturdy nap of the new gray-blue carpet. Until recently, the store’s flooring had consisted of worn tile squares circa 1955—some black, some green, about half of them broken. Hank had refused to waste money on a building he regarded as “a piece of junk waiting for the wrecking ball.” Sara never had the funds to re-decorate, but finally decided to use some of the trust money Julia’s lawyer sent each month to make Brady’s play area safe and comfortable.

“Mine,” Brady said, reaching for the bottom drawer of Sara’s desk. She’d been careful to have all the drawers fitted with locks—except one, which belonged to Brady. She made sure a healthy snack was in the drawer at all times.

She couldn’t help smiling at his triumphant chortle when he pulled a thick hunk of toasted bread from the drawer. His ash-brown curls, as thick and lush as his mother’s had been, bounced as he toddled to his miniature cash register and sat down to play.

Sara glanced around; she’d nearly forgotten the customer now unobtrusively tucked in a corner near the cookbooks. That’s odd, she thought. Her occasional male cook usually carried the tragic look of the recently divorced. This fellow didn’t strike her as needy or interested in cordon bleu cooking. And he definitely seemed vaguely familiar.

She started in his direction, but was deflected by Claudie’s loud “Whoopee!”

“Holy sh—shimany,” Keneesha exclaimed. “Look at this, Sara J. Lord God, what I wouldn’t give to be size eight!”

Sara joined her friends at the counter to examine Jenny’s discarded clothes. It wasn’t until the bell tinkled that she remembered the cookbook man.

BO POCKETED his palm-size camera and exited the bookstore, ducking into the alley. A mural of the store’s name was painted in five-foot-tall lettering along the brick wall. Clever name for a bookstore, he thought. I wonder if Sara made it up?

Thinking of Sara made him scowl. Normally, Bo liked his job, but at this particular moment he felt like a piece of excrement wedged between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Ren Bishop was the brother Bo never had, his one true friend, and Bo owed him more than he could ever repay—but he wasn’t happy about the turn this case had taken.

I should have seen it coming, he silently groused as he opened the door of his car, a twenty-year-old Mazda with peeled paint and two primed dents in the fender. His work car, like Bo himself, knew how to be inconspicuous. “Two years without a goddamn lead,” he muttered. “The only witness finally comes home after trekking through India, and what do I find? A dead Jewel and a kid that’s got Bishop written all over his face!”

Lowering himself to the tattered upholstery, Bo pictured the sideswiped look on his friend’s face when he’d left the courthouse. It reminded him of that night two years ago when Ren had stumbled down the gangplank of Bo’s houseboat, vulnerable, exposed and all too human.

“I screwed up, Bo,” Ren had confessed, pacing from one end of Bo’s tiny living room to the other. “Positively. Beyond all screwups.”

“Did you kill someone?”

“Of course not.”

“Then stop pacing. You’re making me seasick.” Bo had been surprisingly unnerved by his friend’s agitation. In college, Ren had been known as Mr. Unflappable. Bo didn’t like seeing him flapped.

Ren proceeded to spill his guts about the redhead who’d mysteriously disappeared after one night of passion. Bo recalled half hoping that Jewel was a blackmailer so he’d have a chance to meet her. But nothing happened. If that night clerk had stayed in India, Bo never would have had a clue to Jewel’s true identity.

“That’s Mrs. Hovant. Julia,” the twenty-year-old clerk told him, after Bo gave her Ren’s description of the woman. “She and Dr. Hovant used to come up from Sac five or six times a season, depending on the snow. Maybe they still do. I don’t know. I don’t work at the lodge anymore.”

With a little cautious probing, Bo also found out that the day in question stuck in the clerk’s memory because Julia had come to the lodge alone. “I asked her where the doc was, and she said something like ‘Getting his rocks off at a medical convention.’ She didn’t seem too happy,” the clerk told him.

The rest had been child’s play for the PI.

Bo heaved a sigh, stirring the dust on his dashboard. He’d expected Ren to mourn Jewel’s death, but this thing about the kid had caught him off guard. Bo had tried to downplay Ren’s concern, but he had to admit the possible date of conception fell eerily close to the one-night stand.

Still, Bo had balked at pursuing it, partly because of what it might do to Sara, an innocent bystander in this little passion play.

“Even if, for argument’s sake, the kid is yours,” Bo had argued, “there’s nothing you can do at this point. It’s your word against the mother’s, and she’s dead.”

“As the biological father I’d have more rights than an aunt.”

“But it comes down to proof. How can you get the proof without admitting what you did? Which, if I remember correctly, was what you hired me to make sure never happened.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can. But regardless of how it affects my political future, I still have to know.”

Bo sighed and started the car. A couple of discreet photos and the kid’s blood type from his medical records. This Bo could do, but that would be it.

“You have to draw the line somewhere,” he muttered to himself. “Even for a friend.”

REN YANKED ON THE CORD of the wooden blinds with more force than the old rope could take. The handle came off in his hand and the heavy shades crashed back to the mahogany sill with an ominous thunk. He sighed and tossed the yellowed plastic piece on the sideboard.