Chapter Thirty-Nine

I pulled into the empty space next to Mitch's pickup that was parked outside the local gossip corner. Once I had my car turned off, I took a good look around me. The coast was clear. And this old gal's curiosity refused to allow me to take the extra minutes it would mean to lock myself inside the ladies' room before I hiked the bottom part of my dress up the thighs.

I continued to keep a close watch around me as my hand wormed its way up the front of my panty hose until I had hold of the little book. I quickly flipped back the cover and leafed through pages. They were not pages filled with addresses and telephone numbers like I had thought. I had in my hands the diary of one Marie Adams Traditor.

For one mouth-drying moment, I considered what I was about to do. It's not that I wasn't accustomed to invading peoples' privacy. I'm a newspaper publisher, after all. But it almost seemed sacrilege to read someone's personal diary without their permission. You can't get permission from a dead woman, that inner voice reminded me.

I know that still didn't give me the right to read Marie's diary. But since she was no longer with us, I didn't feel quite so guilty.

As I started to scan down the first page, I did it in hopes of reading things differently than Joe had. Maybe he missed the part that explained why Marie took up with Thomas when she was carrying Joe's baby. Before I got past the first paragraph of neatly written longhand, I was interrupted by the tap on my door window.

I saw the cowboy hat before I saw Mitch's weatherbeaten face. He had to have seen what I was doing. He wouldn't know what I was reading, but I still closed the book and shoved it under my seat before I hit the window button.

"Everything okay?" he ask as the window slid down.

"You're getting wet," is how I answered.

"Was just about to take off, but I've got time for another cup a coffee."

"You mean you haven't downed your limit for the day yet?"

Mitch snickered. "I'm weeks ahead of my two-cup-a-day limit."

I understood. Or thought I did. The man who had held fast to this nutrition kick he was on for the last several months was backsliding. And in his case, I thought it was an asset. He had grown way too uptight to suit me. First it was the pepperoni pizza and soda, and now the extra doses of caffeine to the system. Then again, maybe he was backsliding too much, too fast. If he wasn't careful, he might just flip open a can of beer before the weekend was through.

He held the door for me while I worked myself out of the front seat and into the rain. Not the heavy stuff like earlier, but it was still coming down enough that it wouldn't take long to get soaked. Mitch left his hat and rain coat on the rack inside the entrance door. I left the floppy black hat on my head.

When Willie stopped by our booth to take my order, I told her I was back to the midday rabbit food Mitch was so hooked on these days. At least I thought he still was.

I watched her jot down salad on her order form and quickly said water when she started to write coffee. Mitch didn't say a word about what I ordered. But I could tell by the way he was looking at me, he was happily surprised. Maybe a bit confused as well.