Mary Anne Wilson - Discovering Duncan

Lauren hunched her shoulders into the cold, biting wind that seemed to have come from nowhere as she stepped down off the walkway and onto the parking shoulder. She waited for a car to pass, then she hurried across to Rusty’s. She pushed back the entry door and stepped inside. The diner was larger than it looked from the street, and was decorated in wood and stone.

Booths lined the front wall, and tables were covered with red-checkered tablecloths that surrounded a huge stone fireplace framed by more booths along the side wall. A bar was against the back wall, with the kitchen visible through an order window. The air was warm and smelled wonderful from a mixture of coffee and cinnamon. Soft music played in the background, Christmas music that was over a month early. As she stood absorbing the atmosphere, a waitress spotted her.

The thin, blond woman in jeans and a red-checkered shirt strode over to her in the entry and smiled. “Welcome, welcome.” She motioned to the almost empty restaurant. “Take your choice.”

“Thanks,” she said and moved to a booth by the front wall, where she could observe the whole layout without looking obvious.

She sank onto the plastic seat, took the menu the waitress offered and asked for a glass of water. When the waitress left, she picked up the menu, ready to use it as a prop so she could look over its edge. But she’d barely opened it when a man came out of a side hall off the entry. She had a pretty good idea who he was—Dwayne Altman, the owner.

He was the right age, medium height, a bit of a paunch under a gray-flannel shirt he wore with Levi’s, and his hair and full beard were a deep red. He spoke to the waitress and then made his way to the kitchen.

As Lauren watched him through the order window, the waitress returned to her table, and Lauren ordered a grilled-cheese sandwich to go and a cup of tea while she waited. As the woman headed back to put in the order, Lauren sat back in the booth and casually studied the rest of the room. Paneled walls, heavy beams overhead, rustic chandeliers that looked as if they were made of antlers and a huge deer head over the stone fireplace.

She looked away from the trophy and glanced at the entry. A four-shelf unit on the wall by the cash register held an assortment of mugs, all different and all carefully arranged. Above the shelves was a wood carved sign, Home Is Where You Hang Your Mug.

She glanced back at the kitchen, but the only person she could see through the half window was the cook. Not Duncan Bishop. She was beginning to think he’d ducked out another door she hadn’t been able to see from her vantage point. Then she saw him come out of the side hall. He was headed for the kitchen.

His watch cap was off, his jacket undone and he walked quickly, with long strides. He stepped into the kitchen, and as the door swung shut, the waitress appeared with her tea. She took it, but never drank it. She watched as Rusty and Duncan came out of the kitchen and walked toward the front of the diner.

They stopped at the greeting desk, with Rusty’s back to her and Duncan facing the restaurant. He looked up and his gaze met hers for a fraction of a second before turning away and refocusing on Rusty. She quickly looked down into her cup of steaming tea, but listened intently to their conversation.

“Hey, it sounds good to me and I appreciate you doing it,” Rusty was saying. “I wouldn’t know where to start dealing like that.”

“Okay.” Lauren glanced up from her tea at the sound of Duncan Bishop’s voice. It was deep like his father’s, a bit more rough, and carried easily in the almost empty restaurant. He was tugging at the sleeves of his jacket as he talked to the other man. “I’ll be back here no later than five p.m. on Thursday.”

“You watch yourself driving on that highway,” Rusty said. “And watch your back in Vegas.”

“I intend to,” Duncan said as he pulled his watch cap out of his pocket and put it on. Then he left. Through the windows, Lauren saw him stride across to the new SUV he’d gone to earlier.

He was leaving, going to Las Vegas, and she couldn’t follow him. She couldn’t get outside fast enough to get to her car and trail him. And she didn’t think, even if she could, that it would be a good idea. She didn’t know where he was going, but she knew he’d be back here on Thursday by five. Three days, days she could use to figure out how to approach him, how to get close enough to find out more about him and, in the end, get him to go back where he belonged.

She watched him stop just as he was about to go around the front of the SUV, turn and look back up the street. She twisted to see what he was looking at and saw the same kids who had made a commotion earlier. A gang of kids with time on their hands and money enough to get into trouble.

Three of them broke away from the main group of six or seven, and caught up with a girl who was probably in her late teens, very tiny and pretty, in a bright pink skiing outfit. The three were yelling at her, laughing uproariously, catching up quickly. She was obviously trying to ignore them, but she didn’t make it past Rusty’s before they were on her, circling her like a pack of hyenas right near Duncan and the SUV.

One of the guys, wearing loose, hanging pants, ski boots and a bulky down jacket, made a grab for her arm to stop her. He caught her by the sleeve, pulling her back and spinning her around. Even through the glass, Lauren heard her say, “Just let go of me, you creep!”

The other two were laughing, blocking her way if she tried to keep going. Then things changed. The one who had a hold on the girl moved backward, but not of his own volition. Duncan was there with a handful of the guy’s jacket, pulling him away from the girl as if he weighed nothing. The kid turned, his hand balled into a fist, then reconsidered doing something drastic when he found himself facing Duncan, who was a good eight inches taller than him. He twisted, and Duncan let him go, and when one of the other two started to say something, he hushed his friend with a slap on the kid’s upper arm.

Duncan was talking, his voice so low she couldn’t hear it at all, but the boys heard it. Duncan’s expression was unreadable, giving away nothing. Not anger, not disgust, or even aggression, but Lauren waited for something to explode. It never did.

Instead, Duncan was leaning toward the ring leader, using his size the way his father did. He got close, and all three of the hoodlums backed up, shook their heads in unison and, quite remarkably, walked away…quickly, without looking back once. The girl was watching them with wide eyes, then looked up at Duncan, touched his arm. Lauren could see her cheeks were flushed as she spoke to him.

Duncan shook his head as he said something to her, then, with a nod, he went back to his SUV. But he didn’t get in. He went around it and kept walking across the street, to the far side, and disappeared from sight. Dusk was approaching. Old-fashioned lamps lined the street and flashed to life. Twinkling Christmas lights framed display windows and outlined rooflines.

“Here you go,” someone said, and Lauren looked up at the waitress who was putting a take-out container on the table. “Anything else for you tonight?”

“No, no thanks,” she said.

“Thanks for coming in,” the waitress said, laying the bill on top of the take-out carton. Lauren paid and left. Stepping out into the chilly twilight, she hurried down the street to her rental car. Once she got the heat going she sat and ate the sandwich.

Duncan Bishop had walked off without his car. One of the charges on his personal credit card had been for Silver Creek Hotel. She’d looked it up, expecting to find a luxury hotel, but she’d been wrong. It was the original hotel in the town, built back in the 1800s, with only twenty rooms in all, and the charges had been recurring, every two weeks. From the address, she’d mapped it as two blocks north of Rusty’s. If he was on foot, chances were, he’d gone there. She wouldn’t attempt to watch him again. Not tonight.